Shopamania

The speed -- and optimism -- with which Brits open up new shops is nothing short of astonishing.
I mean, I know it's a nation of shopkeepers and all that, but cor blimey!
At least two dozen new shops and restaurants have opened on and around our high street (an almost endless stretch, that just joins on to the next high street) in the year since we've been here, many of them just recently.
Replacing stores that closed down.
That doesn't seem to stop them though.
They just keep trying.
How long they'll do that is anyone's guess.
My husband and I were talking the other day about how supermarkets have done in the local butcher and fishmonger, once staples of the British high street. We've got a quaint butcher -- and a fishmonger -- near our Tube stop here, but have I ever shopped in either of them?
No. I'm sorry, I haven't. Even though I buy a lot of fish. Because there are also four great supermarkets near us. Which is precisely the problem.
But do I like that butcher and fishmonger?
Absolutely.
And do I want them to close down?
Absolutely not.
Last night, we we were out on the high street for something, when we noticed a sign that said a new butcher's is opening right by the bus stop, in a storefront that's changed over three times in the past year.
A highly-trafficked spot, but obviously hard for retail.
A new butcher?
You gotta be kidding.
Today, the butcher is there. I kid you not. And I swear, it looks like it's been there for years.
Three guys with big white butcher hats standing behind gleaming counters, stacked full of fresh, appetizing meat ready to purchase.
New polished wood storefront.
Last week, it was an Italian gelateria.
There's a new shop next door too.
A new tanning salon.
And a bunch of new estate agents, since the real estate market in London is buzzing.
At least for now.
All feels a bit shaky to me.
Wonder how long the new butcher will last.

British convenience

The U.S. is supposed to be the land of convenient, of convenience foods, of packaged stuff, of everything-to-make-your-life-easier, no?
I've actually found, that for my taste, it's all more convenient here.
Especially the food thing.
I know that sounds absurd. Let me give you a couple examples.
I like to do a homemade minestrone. My mother's recipe, natch. And other soups. Especially in the winter.
But frankly, I never liked all the chopping involved beforehand to make a good one. The onion, the garlic, the carrot, the celery, all the veg you want to put in, all chopped up small. Use just one, or two, of what you buy, rest you gotta use for something else before it goes bad in the fridge.
Not here.
Here, in my local grocery store (I've got four nearby), they sell something called "soffrito" in a packet, (very Italian, yes) which is a chopped up onion, a carrot, a celery stick and some garlic. All fresh, and ready to just throw in the pot with a bit of olive oil to get the minestrone started.
Yep. I'll have that.
Then, they sell a medley of interesting vegetables in a bag together, again in small bits. Hmmm. Saves me buying two zucchini, a head of broccoli, some French beans, or whatever other vegetables I want to put in my minestrone, all separately, and then maybe not use them all.
Yep. Throw that in the shopping cart.
Oh dear. What do we have here? Three potatoes already peeled and cut up in a bag. Ready to throw in with all the rest.
Wow. That was easy.
Three bags -- which, although it's produce cut up for me, cost less than what I would have spent if I had bought all the ingredients individually.
One virtually effortless homemade minestrone.
If you're not in the homemade mood, there's also just so much more prepared food here. Or semi-prepared.
Just a ton more selection than in the States.
I mean, yeah, they have Whole Foods here too, but a whole lot more than that too.
Marks & Spencer's, the department store every Brit loves and where they all get their underwear and socks, also has a separate food chain, called aptly, Marks & Spencer's Food.
There's one near us, thank God.
They do a nice Indian take-away dinner for two, sometimes for under £10, if you're in the mood for Indian. If you go to M & S Food late, things you can make that day can be heavily discounted. Love that.
They also do very nice prepared soups, salads, pasta dishes, pasta sauces -- all kinds of things really.
My husband likes their breaded cod fillets that you bake in the oven for 15 minutes.
That sounds easy.
May pick that up for dinner tonight.

London 2012

Went to see the new Olympic Park under construction here the other day. Drove over there on the weekend to see what was happening in the east end of London where the Summer Olympics are going to be held in 2012. In just under two-and-a-half years from now.
The Olympics. That was our intended stay-through date.
I can't believe a year has gone by already. I'm hardly settled yet.
Gotta move still. Have hardly enjoyed myself yet.
Back to the Olympics.
Watching the Vancouver Olympics -- and reading how they're coping there -- has brought the London games into focus for us.
You really do wonder why cities put themselves through it.
So we decided to go have a look.
Boy, is there a lot of money swishing around down there in east London, a depressed, immigrant-filled part of the city. We saw all that money pretty clearly, pretty quickly.
Just a massive amount of building. A couple of big stadiums. More than a dozen huge cranes in the sky. A big new mall by the same company that opened one over here in the west side of London a year ago, just after we arrived.
Signs everywhere to Olympic Park already.
Looked pretty advanced to us.
I'm dying to see how this all works out.
If that part of the city will really benefit in the long-term. If the mall will be successful, like the one near us certainly has been, even in this recession. What the Olympic legacy will be for London, as they like to debate here.
We drove round and round awhile, taking it all in, and then ended up on a road that took us to a big entrance -- two of whose gates were already manned -- directing us to different sections of the new Olympic broadcast center.
Hmm. Looked pretty official. Just for one place.
Vancouver is taking a lot of heat for its Olympic perfomance. But when you actually read the stories, they mostly just repeat old news about the luger that got killed before the Games started.
The transportation needs scare me though.
I read somewhere that Vancouver's mayor warned London's mayor to be very careful about that.
They've had trouble with buses from the Olympic venues in Vancouver.
And London's public transport system, while efficient, seems clogged to me already.
It certainly did tonight. When I was reading my Evening Standard (free, thank you, kindly) pushed up against the back door of a carriage. I'm getting better at that.
The Olympics.
Coming soon, really.
In a heartbeat.
Or an eternity.
Depending on the day.

Moving On

It's official now.
We're moving.
And someone is moving in here.
All sorted. As they say here.
At the beginning of April.
They're good at the property game here. They do it all quickly and efficiently.
And despite the recession, both the for-sale market and the for-rent market is brisk.
When I first started looking for somewhere else to rent, the first agent I met told me that if you see somewhere you like, you gotta jump on it quick.
I thought that might just be agent talk. Because last year, when we rented this place, it wasn't like that at all.
But he was right. Good places go quickly. I can see them going.
The place we're moving to had only been on the market a week when we got it. As soon as I saw it, we put our offer in. It was the only place I saw that was worth the move, for us.
Our place here went just as quick, a week, maybe less.
They called today and said they had rented it, and they only started showing it last Thursday.
The for-sale market is even tighter, here in London, anyway. Lots of buyers; not enough houses. Who would've thunk it.
We went to our new place over the weekend to take another look at it.
I think we're going to like it much better.
It's a house, albeit a small one.
Feels like a house.
With a front door, a hall closet, and hell, a hall.
No neighbors downstairs, which will be a relief.
No steep stairs to get to the living area.
And then more to get to bed.
A patio to eat outside on, on those long summer evenings when the sun can actually come out for an hour or so.
Only two floors instead of three.
It's in a grittier area though, but only slightly. Near a building that's been vacant for a long time.
Looking forward to moving.
Starting spring in our new place.
Turn the page on this hard year.
Best thing about looking for a new place to rent was that I saw where Colin Firth lives -- with his Italian wife. (what else?).
One of the agents showed me after I told him that I had seen Firth in my local sushi place, getting take-away sushi.
Ever since that night, I wondered where Firth lived. I read he lived somewhere in my neighborhood.
I would look at the rows of identical houses though, and wonder, does he really just live in one of these?
The agent showed me his house.
It's a big detached house, not like the thousands of others around here at all.
With a big garden around it.
Worth several million, the agent said.
I should hope so.
He is Colin Firth. He won a BAFTA last night.
I mean, gimme a break.

The Olympics -- and the Marking of Time

Been watching the Vancouver Winter Olympics on television. Which has brought me back to the Turin Winter Olympics in Italy four years ago.
Nothing like a big event like the Olympic games to mark time for you.
It feels like so much longer than four years ago, which is not usual, is it? Time usually races by.
I was just at the end of my raising-kids phase then. Just on the cusp of empty nesterhood, with all its changes -- both inherent and, in my case, self-imposed. So much has changed since then. It feels longer than four years ago.
My older son was at college already, but my younger son was still at home, a senior in high school four Februarys ago. He was on the high school football team -- going to the games on Friday nights was one of our funnest outings -- but had recently injured himself in a game.
He had torn the ACL in his knee -- the anterior cruciate ligament -- which is quite a big thing for a knee (not that I knew much before then). He was scheduled for complicated knee surgery, that would use some of his hamstring and make it into this ligament he had torn in his knee.
I was going off to Turin for my newspaper to blog about the area surrounding the Olympic games. I was writing for the web site of my paper then, and had proposed going to northern Italy to write a personal-travel blog with one of the website's videographers. My Italian mother was from that wine-and-truffle-rich Piedmont area of Italy and I didn't know it at all. I was thrilled they said yes. It was one of the best assignments I had at the paper.
We had scheduled the surgery right after I returned from Italy, so I could take a bit of time off to be with my son after his surgery.
That's why I remember it all so well. And it all came flooding back to me now, watching the double-luge this morning from Vancouver.
I went to Turin for my newspaper. I was still working full-time there then and not thinking about leaving. If anything, thinking about doing more there, energized by this latest assignment. Newspapers hadn't started their free-fall yet. At least management hadn't acknowledged it yet.
My son was still at home, a senior in high school. So our nest wasn't empty yet.
We were still in our family home, living the life we had led for the past decade, so it was like a comfortable old slipper.
But then it all changed.
Nobody's fault.
Just life evolving.
My son grew up and went to college. Both my sons grew up.
My newspaper started going down the drain hole. Even though, it's still there.
For how long, and in what form, is anyone's guess.
But people I worked with, even my age, are still there, although in much fewer numbers. So I could've stayed for awhile after all, I guess.
I couldn't have stopped my kids' growing up, of course.
Not that I would've wanted to. I'm not saying that.
But it's the end of an era. Hastened to its conclusion by moving here.
Which seemed like a good idea at the time.
But the jury's still out.
We've been here a year now.
What an upheaval it's been.
And it doesn't feel that permanent.
Does that matter though?
What will the rest of our life bring? What to do now?

Following your dreams

More about working.
Let's face it, it's a huge thing in all our lives. Most our waking hours are spent there. Or not.
When I didn't have to work yesterday after all, but I was in the West End of London, and not a shopper, I ended up catching an early matinee of "Up in the Air," with George Clooney. You've probably all seen it. I hadn't yet.
What really stayed with me about that film was not Clooney, who's gotten an Academy Award nomination for his role, but all the people he fired.
The 57-year-old guy with the big pot-belly who just cried and cried at the loss of his long-held job.
The woman who asked what she would do with herself every morning from there on.
The man who pulled out the pictures of his young children and asked how he would tell them.
The woman who jumped off the bridge -- and changed the story of the movie.
Work.
Ohmigod.
What a powerful force in our lives.
I understood exactly what those people felt.
But wait. I didn't get laid off.
I took a paid buy-out.
To start a new life. In Europe.
And I've gotten some work here, although not full-time.
But still. I related to all those characters.
Because I too, left that cocoon, that all-encompassing, no-time-for-anything-else life that is working full-time.
You don't have to think about your life when you're working. Because that is your life. With just a bit of time squeezed in for other things.
Mind you, you resent that robbing of your time terribly. You yearn like hell for more time.
But still.
It stops you from having to fill your time with anything else. To find, maybe, that your dreams are too hard -- or silly in some way -- to follow.
In the film, Clooney and his young colleague tell the people they're firing that great people have been precisely where they are now, at the bottom the implication is, but have done amazing things from there.
You can finally follow your dreams, they tell the devastated employee. Remember what your dreams were when you were in your early twenties? Time to go follow them.
Sounds great. The kind of thing life coaches, self-help books, shrinks -- and people who are firing you -- tell you.
And the kind of thing we all tell ourselves. All the time.
I'm gonna stick my neck out here.
Working's easier.

The purple hula skirt

Getting the London clothes thing down.
You can wear your summer clothes.
Even when it's positively freezing outside. Everyone does.
You gotta just layer the thing up.
As in, summer skirt, yes, fine, but then tights underneath (and even woolen cable-stitch, knee or thigh-high socks over the tights) and boots -- short, tall, over-the-knee, ankle, whatever.
There's no such thing as summer and winter clothes here.
It's just layer it up. Or peel it off.
Makes you feel better to wear a bright skirt in the middle of a dreary winter, I find.
And you never know if the weather will ever really warrant the bright skirt -- with bare legs -- by itself here anyway.
So what the hell? Wear it with tights.
And your down coat.
At least you're wearing it.
Wore a cotton purple hula-like skirt today. Never wore that in the States except in the throes of summer. When it was really hot outside (like it never gets here).
With sandals. And painted toenails.
Today, wore it with black tights. Tall black boots. And a black cardigan. Over a pink t-shirt.
Made me feel summery somehow.
Mediterranean even.
Got to work.
They had changed my days. I wasn't supposed to be there.
My bad. They had told me.
I had gotten the days mixed up.
So no work this week at all.
Not great.
Oh well.
Should work on other things anyway.
Leaving the office soon. Before midday.
Gonna take my purple skirt to a movie matinee in the West End.
And then start on all the other things I should do in my life.
Tomorrow.

Been Here, Done That

It's odd that our eldest son has been -- and gone -- already. That he called this flat here in London home for awhile.
But then moved on.
You can still feel him here. See him in our little office on the Mac, editing his videos. Or lying on his bed, watching a show on his lap-top. Opening the fridge, looking for something to eat.
Where did those months go when he lived here? And those weeks that he went to work with me as an intern?
The Christmas party we were all at.
I'm going to work tomorrow. But he won't be coming.
They've got a whole new batch of interns there now. Don't know any of them. Don't talk to them any more.
We still call our spare room here, his room. And he left stuff here, like he always does wherever he goes these days.
A movie poster from the show he worked on, the basketball we bought him when he arrived, the one he went to shoot hoops with a few times at a park down the road.
It feels like his room still.
But he's gone now.
He's done a month at his internship-job in Rome now, just started his second month today.
He's enjoying it. He's doing well. We're proud of him. I bet he'll stay awhile.
He's onto his new life.
Which wouldn't have happened if we hadn't moved here.
Back to Europe.
But we're here, in London.
And he's there, in Rome.
Which sounds close. But really isn't.
A world away.
We'll see him this summer again.
He's onto his new life.
Which is how it should be.
But still. It hurts.
Because after all those years of caretaking, what is your life?

The Wild Ones

Saw what divides Italy and Britain so vividly today.
Commuting in on the Tube, there was an announcement that the escalators at the Piccadilly Circus station were out, the station I use for work.
Ohmigod, chaos.
I thought of the two really long, steep escalators at the station there. And all the people, some of whom might not be able to walk up all those stairs, I worried.
And still in an Italy mind-set.
I even considered getting off at another station, but we were only a station away when I heard the announcement.
Got off at Piccadilly Circus.
Really orderly procession -- aided by London Transport staff positioned in key areas along the way -- through an alternate exit there. With not as many stairs.
Everyone behind each other, respecting their distances, moving slowly, but deliberately through the detour.
Until we get to a smaller escalator at the end.
It was full of people, laughing, talking loudly.
They weren't lined up on the right side of the escalator, letting those in a hurry walk up the stairs to the left -- like is customary on the Tube.
Then I heard the Italian voice, the teacher talking to the group of Italian teens crowded all over the stairs.
"Keep right," she said, loudly, to be heard over the din.
"Here, people stay to the right in a line and let others go up the left," she said, sorta laughing. "Move to the right."
Most of the kids moved to the right side.
But not all.
It was like taming a herd of wild animals.
You couldn't get them all.

Our Own Front Door

How important is your house?
Very.
We've got to decide whether to stay in this flat -- or move soon.
Our lease is coming up in two months -- we've been here a year already -- and our landlord's agent has been writing, wanting to know what we're doing.
We're in a pretty spacious flat -- for London, I've got to admit -- a three-bedroom, two-bath place with a big master bedroom carved out of the attic.
But there's no outside space at all. And we live in an old house above an elderly woman and her middle-aged daughter, whose bedroom is just below the flat-screen TV in our living room. She feels the echo whenever we have the TV on. So we try not to have it on much.
And I don't like the kitchen.
We feel cooped up in here. No view out the windows.
Saw a little house the other day near here.
It's about the same size, maybe even a bit smaller, if you measured them up.
But it's a little house, with a front and back garden.
And it has a kitchen with not one, but two French doors, leading out to the garden.
And the garden is sweet, with a rectangular brick patio running along the back of the house lined by a decent patch of grass shaded by a big tree.
It's a little bit more expensive, but it's a nicer living environment. More open-plan, more of an American lay-out.
And it's got parking, which is good for my husband.
I'm working now.
So why not?
Suze Orman would tell you why. Haven't worked that much lately, actually. Been in Italy a lot with my son.
You need some outside space in life, I'm finding, just a tiny bit of Mother Earth to call your own.
If you've ever had it. You get used to it.
The best thing is we get our own front door.
Which is a great luxury. That I've missed.
Although it's more suburban like that, a little house, it's also more urban than here, closer to the high road, but in a quirky, more modern gated community of ten houses. Only a couple minutes from the nearest Tube stop though -- and newspaper.
And there's a mini-cab place just outside the gate, with all the drivers hanging out, which makes it kinda city.
But cool too.
I think we might be moving.
To make life nicer here. You need a place you want to call home.
But I hate moving.
And this will be my third move in 18 months.
Everything finally has its place here in this flat.
Took a year.

Back to Tidy England

London is so tidy compared to Rome.
Got back, the sun was shining, the English windows gleaming, driving in, the city looked so beautiful -- and neat as a pin. That's what struck me the most.
Compared to where I've been hanging out in Rome. Which is not the historic center of Rome, mind you. Didn't get there at all this time around.
Mostly, I've been on the southern edges of Rome a lot, where my son's new job and room is, where a lot of big businesses, international and Italian, have offices.
Anything outside the center of Rome is chaos, basically.
People parked everywhere, double and tripled-parked, lights flashing. Or not. In front of the city's big green trash cans is a favorite. I parked there several times actually.
Billboards everywhere, which clutter up the place. Trash around. Lots of barbed wire around endless building sites.
Not that pretty really. Chaotic more than anything else.
London felt like your grandmother's tidy little sewing box in comparison. Not that much building. Not that much trash (even though the British would disagree). No haphazard billboards everywhere.
Neat and tidy.
As opposed to chaotic and lively.
Whatever.
It's good in a way to be back.
It couldn't be more different really.
What have I missed?
My husband.
Newspapers.
The high street.
Movies in English.
Working.
Good central heating.
Civility.
What will I miss now that I'm back?
My son.
Caffe macchiato schiumato al vetro (coffee with a dollop of milk in a glass, my new favorite). And puntarelle. And mozzarella.
The view out of my living room window.
My own house.
Driving.
Not working.
Chaos.