London's daffodils

The daffodils are out in London. Finally.
They're more than a month late.
But now, they're everywhere. Every park, every green, thousands of them.
Hello, hello, hello! You sunny little harbingers of spring, you.
What a winter.
Everywhere had a bad winter, it seems.
Not just here.
I've worn one of two big black coats I own every day for months here. With a big scarf.
I am so sick of it. My scarf is fraying.
What the hell. I want to chuck it in the bin, as they say here.
This morning was beautiful, warm, balmy almost.
Everyone immediately dressed down.
I walked to the Tube on the sunny side of the high road, letting that sun just shine on me.
It felt so good.
When I got in, someone at work suggested we go sit in a nearby park at lunch and eat outside. Yes.
Within an hour, it had clouded up. Gotten windy.
We got busy. Scrapped lunch.
By the time I got home, it was raining.
Didn't have the umbrella, of course.
My hair got wet. Looks like complete shit when it gets wet like that. Just as frizzy as all get out.
Gotta take what you can get here.
When it's sunny, you go out then. Right Then. Not two hours later.
That's the trick.
Been thinking about Italy.
Been talking to my son there a lot.
At least we're in the same time zone.
Italy feels like another planet, though.
Always does when you're here.
It's close, yeah.
One cheap(ish) flight away.
But really far too.

Cream tea

Another thing that makes this country great: cream tea.
Anything to do with tea really, the Brits excel at.
But cream tea -- tea served with scones, cream and jam -- is special.
Even at Sainsbury's, the local grocery store, cafe.
Even when it's the last one they've got there, all wrapped tight in clear plastic.
Which is kinda gross.
But it's still good.
Certainly preferable to anything they make with coffee here. Which they're not very good at. (Wrong temperature, too much milk, coffee too weak. I could go on.)
Back to tea.
I've told you about its healing powers here, how it's trotted out as a remedy to everything that ails you.
How where I work, people make it for each other by the mugful, every day, several times a day.
I'm really starting to feel guilty about that.
But I never want it myself. So I always pass.
It's a genetic thing.
You either want tea or coffee.
I want coffee.
Like an Italian.
Little powerful shots of it.
Throughout the day.
They just do not know how to do that here.
Anyway, do like the odd cream tea, though, must say.
So many cute little places, grand hotels, or everywhere in between, do it here.
And it always feels like an occasion. Even at Sainsbury's cafe, surrounded by a pack of suburban housewives.
Scones, sliced in half, with raspberry jam spread on top and a big dollop of cream as punctuation.
What could be wrong with that?
With a nice cup of tea.
With a friend.
A chat.
Of an English afternoon.
Lovely.

The Place to Get Sick

Still really liking Britain's National Health Service. Although I am ready for the time I won't.
I mean, compared to the States, where we've just got nothing.
C'mon, you old tired, lazy Washington politicians. You can do something! Redeem yourselves, please, if you can.
My husband got sick as a dog this past weekend at a friend's house on the south coast of England -- the land of hedges I was telling you about.
Just vomitted and vomitted and vomitted for 12 hours straight basically.
Now, my husband is a bull.
He doesn't get sick.
Unless he gets REALLY sick -- as in life-threatening disease, or emergency operation to remove a body part.
He doesn't just get kinda sick, like you and me.
So, after all that non-stop vomitting, I thought, okay, time to figure out if this is bad.
So my friend and I called the NHS hot line.
We talked to a nurse pretty quickly and explained to her the problem.
No problem whatsoever that we don't live anywhere near there, have no doctor there, or any connection to that part of the world at all really. And there's no mistaking that I'm American.
The nurse didn't like that my husband couldn't stop vomitting. Said that if he didn't stop soon, they'd have to send a doctor over to make sure he did stop, via an injection or something.
Send a doctor over? Boy, did that sound good.
Said the doctor would call in an hour or so.
After just about an hour, a doctor called.
Asked to talk to my husband directly.
That was smart.
Much better to talk to the patient than to the hysterical wife or the concerned friend, right?
Wife and friend always want the doctor to come.
At that point, my husband hadn't vomitted in about an hour and a half.
Doctor zeroed in on that right away.
Talked to him for about five minutes. Asked him exactly what was happening, down to the color of what was happening.
Told him a violent stomach bug was going around, how to wait it out for awhile, what to watch for, when and if to call back.
All turned out to be right.
Pretty impressive show actually.

The Country of Hedges

I have never seen hedges like here in this country.
No country does hedges like England.
They're a work of art.
Every great country has something that just sets it apart.
And hedges may be what sets this little, once-mighty island in the rain and mist apart.
That's right. The hedges.
We drove down through the South Downs this weekend -- just a beautiful part of England. Rolling green hills, tidy little brown brick villages, winding roads, old country pubs.
But it's the hedges that get me every time.
Seven-foot high, perfectly curved or ramrod straight, not a branch out of place, just going on and on all over the place.
Amazing.
Maybe I should take this further, though, and say gardens are what set this country apart.
Spent some time with two amazing gardeners this weekend.
Both men.
Both really proud of what they can make come out of this great ground of ours.
One showing me his seedlings, what he's planning for this spring, what's coming up soon in his lovingly-tended garden.
The other, pictures on his cellphone of the big garden he creates and maintains each year. One of those big formal English gardens. That go with a big stately house.
I was humbled by both of them.
By their love -- and tending -- of mother Earth.
It's not surprising, I guess.
They're both from the land of hedges.

Work, Part 5,468

If we could sort out work, I figure we'd have a lot of life worked out.
Work is a big one.
When we don't have it, we want it. When we do have it, we want to get away from it.
Now that I have just a bit of it, you'd think that might be right.
Wrong.
Shall I try to get more?
There?
Elsewhere?
Working somewhere just a couple days a week means not having to care.
It's actually hard not to care.
Part of me cares.
Another part doesn't.
If you care, you're really part of it.
If you don't, you're not.
Do I want to be more a part of this new place?
Part of me says yes, of course.
You're lucky there is this new place.
Another part of me screeches 'no way.'
Do other things! Fulfill those dreams, girl, damn!
I read a study recently that said older people are much happier than younger people.
And one of the main reasons cited is that they don't have to care about work anymore.
Their careers.
Or lack thereof.
If they've fulfilled their ambitions.
Or haven't.
Or any of that.
What freedom.

Home

I want to go home.
Or rather, I want to be home.
As in feel at home where I am. Wake up in the morning, knowing where I am and why, and where I'm headed in life. Near things I love, both people and objects.
Settled.
Is this a function of my age?
Or, failing that, I want to just jet off and live somewhere exotic and new that I've never been. That I can discover. That's hot.
Either nest.
Or cut and run.
Am I crazy?
I'm sick of this flat now. And I'm certainly sick of winter, like everyone is, all over the northern hemisphere, I think.
I just hang out in my bedroom all the time because it's the only room that welcomes me.
My knees hurt now too, like they never used to. Is that from the two sets of steep stairs here?
Can't wait to move now. A month still to go though. And plenty of packing.
It's not like I want to go home to Washington, if Washington even is home. What would I go home to now there? House long sold, jobs long gone.
Neither of my kids live there either.
And the longer you're away from somewhere, the less tied you feel.
Not that I ever felt hugely tied to Washington.
Even though I grew up there, after my Italian parents emigrated to D.C. when I was three years old.
And I just spent a dozen years there, raising my boys.
So quite a few years there, all added up.
Then there's Italy, the other half of my new home here. Not half at all though. Maybe a quarter, if I'm lucky.
As soon as you come back here, Italy feels like another universe.
Another planet.
And now, I need to stay away, leave my son to get on with making a life there for himself, without his mother around.
And I need to work.
To support our life here.
Work here.
And keep working on making a life here.

Habla German?

Amazing how many languages are spoken where I work here in London.
Even by the same person.
There's this one woman who sits near me, who you wouldn't think was anything but British.
Beautiful posh upper-class British accent.
Long blonde hair. Blue eyes. The whole package.
Other day, she gets on the phone, and out spews, uh, perfect German.
Even though I don't speak a word of German, I could tell it was just, well, fluent. Joking, laughing, talking fast, breaking in, like that.
I asked around and someone told me she's actually German, from Berlin. Not British at all.
Okay, that explains that.
Then yesterday, I hear her blabbing away in quick Spanish on the phone.
Spanish I understand, although there is no way in hell I could have carried on the conversation she was having.
She spoke really good Spanish too.
Geez. Spanish and German just aren't that similar.
In the States, I was special. Because I had another fluent language.
Italian.
I could always impress people with that, if I needed to. Break out the old Italian when needed.
Not that many Americans speak any other language.
Unless they're Latinos. In which case, they speak Spanish. Or they're Vietnamese. And then they speak Vietnamese. Like that.
I guess that's me too. I'm Italian-born, so I speak Italian (thank you, mamma e papa.)
They say Brits aren't good at languages either.
But in my office they sure are, this office full of hybrid creatures.
I feel like a slouch now.
Only one other fluent language?
What a disgrace, girl! Try to keep that to yourself.