Tues, 8 March 2016, 11:30 am: Two hours and twenty minutes after curtsying to the Queen’s likenesses at Gatwick Airport, I finally emerge onto proper London ground.
Yes, it really does take that long to get through passport check, retrieve your luggage, navigate out of the airport, and ride a train into the city. And that is WITH me as your experienced travel companion who has purchased our train tickets in advance and knows the most expedient way to satisfy the customs & immigration officials. (Smile, but a reserved British-type smile, not the American south’s full-on happy smile where you bare all your teeth and the agent thinks you’re on something.)
The only time you might really hate life while on a Europe adventure with me is the morning you’re first arriving, because you’ve had little or no sleep and little or no coffee and little or no personal grooming. Before you finally get to see the magnificent city you’ve crossed the ocean for, you’re blocked by a colossal line of fellow sleep-, coffee,- and grooming-free passengers. You might’ve been closer to the front of this line, but you were not about to run as you wound your way from the plane through the concourse and toward customs. Or, let’s be clear: I was not about to run, and you’re traveling with me, right?
So you and your bedhead (seathead?) finally make it to the front of that line. Maybe you’re lucky enough to be motioned forward by the one customs agent out of four who is smiling (not a teeth-baring smile, of course). This agent wants to check your passport photo, in which you look more attractive than you look in person at this moment.
The agent asks you what your plans are in this foreign country. Your only plan right now is to take a whore’s bath in the first normal-sized sink you see (hell, a water fountain might suffice) and to finally give that annoying passenger who repeatedly leaned her seat-back into your kneecaps the entire flight a punch in the face when you pass her on the moving sidewalk to baggage claim.
But you’ve got to summon up a plan that sounds reasonable to this agent, who clearly has had more sleep and coffee than you have this morning. You’ve got me, so you’re already prepped with a response. Our documents are stamped and we are free to move on to the luggage carousel and the freedom of the train tracks and taxi stands beyond.
That life-hating is only because you’re grouchy, and who wouldn’t be? I know it’s coming every time, and I still react with all the grace of Caitlyn Jenner the first time she walked in stilettos. It’s a brief stretch, and it starts to fade as soon as you realize… you’re here.
Had you been with me on either of my two most recent London expeditions, you would’ve ridden this from the airport.
Standing with relief and stretching your legs on the platform at London Blackfriars, you would’ve seen this sign, pointing you right for the north bank of the Thames and left for the side of the river that I call home when I’m in London.
