Celebrity Sighting Number 2

I've had my second London celebrity sighting.
Not as big as seeing Colin Firth waiting around to pick up take-away at my local sushi place, for me, anyway, but pretty big in my 23-year-old son's eyes.
We caught a long glimpse of JLS, the cool British boy band that came out of X Factor, Britain's version of American Idol, on Sunday. They've had two UK chart-topping singles recently, "Beat Again," and "Everybody in Love."
So pretty cool.
And they were having lunch, like us, at the Wagamama noodle chain at Westfield Shopping Center.
Westfield is a story in itself, Europe's biggest mall, here in West London, just celebrating its one year anniversary, having opened its expensive doors right about the time Lehman collapsed last year. I'll tell you about that another time.
Back to Wagamama.
Two young British girls sitting near us tipped us off that someone important was amongst us. One of them suddenly stood up and snapped a photo with her cellphone of a far corner of the restaurant.
Then all of a sudden, like the dominos at the Berlin Wall celebrations yesterday, other people stood up and snapped photos too.
"JLS," the girl answered excitedly when we asked her who it was.
Later, the band left just as we left, even though we didn't plan it. So my son actually ran into one of the four of them near the door.
You do have more celebrity sightings here. I'm not sure why.
Washington doesn't have that many celebrities, of course, although some do breeze through town now and again.
It's mostly a government town.
Karen Hughes, one of President Bush's closest advisers, rented a house near me for awhile actually, and that felt celebrity-like. Before 9/11, I saw her sitting outside with her husband and teenage son having a beer after work a couple times. She moved after 9/11, I heard.
That's the kind of celebrities you got in Washington.
Here, Colin Firth lives in my neighborhood. Although I'm sure he's got "a pile", as they say here, or even two or three, in other places.
Anyway, he looked completely at ease when I saw him a couple weeks ago. No body guard or anything. Just on foot with an Italian friend.
These guys looked pretty normal too, just hanging out at the mall on a rainy Sunday afternoon. We saw two of them going up the escalator together a bit later.
Are there less paparazzi here?
Less crazies?
More celebrities living here? What is it?

Starbucks

I love that they give you your cappuccino in a real cup here.
Even at Starbucks.
Why don't they do that at home?
They don't ask you at home if you're staying, or taking your overpriced coffee out, because they always just give it to you in a styrofoam cup with a plastic lid whatever you're gonna do with it.
It's so much nicer in a real cup. It makes it an occasion. And you don't mind forking over $5 quite as much.
This morning, I stopped at Starbucks, for almost the first time.
There's a real anti-Starbucks thing here, and I understand it.
They're squeezing out, other, smaller chains. And that pisses people off.
In this recession, they've taken over leases of smaller coffee shops that have gone bust.
At home, I used to go to Starbie's all the time. It was really the only place TO go to get a reliable cappuccino. Or espresso.
Here, there's lot of coffee places.
But they're not all good, I've found. At all.
Not that I think Starbuck's is that good.
I think Italian coffee is good.
But this morning, hate to admit it, had a nice cappuccino -- right temperature, right amount of milk in proportion to coffee -- at Starbie's this morning. In a nice mug.
With a yummy almond croissant. On a plate.
Sitting at the window, looking out at the high street, reading my paper for half-an-hour.
Quite civilized.
Is is that hard to wash a few mugs?

The News from Home

To: President Barack Obama
From: An American Expat in London -- and the side of a hill in Italy (not much lately)
Re: Guns

Barack, you gotta do something about the gun situation at home.
Because we're always shooting each other there. In great numbers.
When we're crazy.
It's horrific.
And it's become our signature overseas, which is horrible. Stories about shootings in the States -- even a relatively small shooting, like yesterday in Orlando -- get huge play here, because it reinforces our stereotype.
Bunch of crazies. With guns.
But people are crazy everywhere, Barack. You know that. Despairing, barely getting through it. Don't know how people do get through it actually. And now especially, with so much sorrow around.
The difference is, in the States, you can just go get a gun and shoot people when you can't cope anymore. Which you can't in most places. Which you shouldn't be able to do.
Simple as that.
I covered the shootings at Virginia Tech University at my old newspaper job. The shooter there was simply crazy. No doubt about it.
The firepower he amassed was also simply shocking, someone as disturbed as that college kid was.
And now Fort Hood. Another horrific mass shooting.
By another crazy. At the end of his tether.
Barack, can we just try limiting people's access to lethal weapons used only to kill other people?
I mean, let's just try it and see if that helps at all.
Please.

The Lonely Commuter

Can you feel really alone when you're squished in like a sardine with thousands of other people?
In the Tube at the evening rush.
A huge crush. 'Cause my second train took about 15 minutes to come -- an eternity at that time -- and the people just stacked up a dozen deep waiting.
And then it came, packed to the sides with commuters.
Took more than an hour to get home.
It's a rickety old Tube line we're on. Everyone in London knows it.
Whew.
Is this my life now?
That's the end of my two days work, which this evening, as I waited on the cold platform, I was quite glad about.
But, I'm not working again until the last two days of next week, which is awhile away.
Financially. And otherwise.
I'll do too much housework in the meantime, which seems like a real waste of my life.
But someone's gotta do it. And who feels like paying for it now.
I could start on all the things I want to do with the rest of my life, of course.
What were they again?
Uh oh. They seem big. How do I get started?
I can write more to you, of course.
But you never write back.
So what is the point?

Where to Go

I still feel so disoriented here.
Been here just over eight months now, although I did spend a lot of time in Italy this summer.
Been working my freelance job a couple days a week now. That's what it looks like they'll want for now, a couple days a week. Not a week in a row, as I was thinking, and I guess hoping, but a couple days each week.
Anyway, it's something. Quite good, considering the shitty global job scene for journalists.
My son's working there too, as an intern, just for a few weeks, which is surreal.
Working with my son?
We go by Tube together there.
Lots of newfound togetherness for us. We haven't lived together for the past five years, since he went to college.
At work, we freelancers and interns, sit at different computers each day, "hot-seat", as they call it, which is disorienting in itself.
This afternoon, I found myself sitting across from my son for a few hours.
What?
What am I doing here?
I don't know. I've traded down in every aspect of my life -- my job, my house, financially.
Why?
I don't know. Italy was part of the reason. But when I'm here, and not there, it's hard to remember that. But my son is allegedly moving there at the end of this year. We hope anyway.
My job in the States was disappearing. They've had two buy-outs since I left. I'm hearing it's not that much fun there for those who are left. I could've gone to work somewhere else there though.
Do I want to stay here?
Really not sure.
We were going to look at it after a year. A year's not that far away now.
Don't like living in a rented flat. But not sure I want to buy anything here. Don't have the money for a deposit on a nice place. Even with the recession, property here is still really expensive. You get a better place renting.
Still need quite a big place -- if you call this big, which kinda it is -- because of the boys. Younger one is mulling over coming here after he graduates from college next spring. Only one can live with us at a time, my husband says, like having only one in diapers.
Do I even have a choice anymore?
Can I even leave? Or is this it for awhile?

Help

I used to have help. Boy did I.
I was the queen of having help. Anyone who knows me knows that.
I had the same woman work for me for almost 20 years. Helping me. In four countries.
How lucky is that?
She helped me raise my kids, bury my parents, work as a journalist. She cleaned my houses for all that time, too, did all my husband's ironing.
God, the things she did. Not cheap, of course, how could it be? But worth it.
God, I've missed her. It was like my left arm got amputated. Even though we both needed a break after all those years together.
She stopped working for us when we sold our suburban house last summer and I left my job. She was just coming a couple hours a week at that point, ever since my boys left for college, but still, she was still around.
But then we sold our house. And I left my job.
No job, no help needed, pretty much.
Not just because of the money, although you do think about that, if you're a woman, when you're not working.
Didn't really need any help though. We had moved downtown to a small apartment in D.C. for the last six months we were in the States. Most of our stuff was in storage.
My husband was traveling a lot those last few months in Washington, covering the presidential campaign. My boys were away at college. I was alone a lot in the apartment, not working. Not much got dirty.
And she didn't want to work for me there either. Both of us had had enough, I guess, which makes me sad.
And then here, it's taken us awhile to settle in. (Are we settled in now?) And it was just the two of us. And I was in Italy a lot.
Anyway, this morning, I spent half the morning cleaning the bathrooms here. Finally found a spray that removes the hard water stains on the shower glass door. That was driving me crazy. Never had that before.
With three of us living here now, you need to clean a good 45 minutes a day, I reckon, just to keep up.
There's always something, don't we all know it -- vacuuming, washing, the kitchen, the bathrooms.
With three adults, two of them male.
Perhaps I should get a cleaning lady now. Just a couple hours a week.
Don't know who to get. Feels like a chore to find someone.
People say you need a recommendation. Got to trust the person.
And does that mean you really live somewhere, when you get a cleaning lady?
The signs I've seen around are all Eastern European ladies looking for work.
Do I need to spend the money? Or can I just do it myself?
There's a part of me that would rather do it myself.
Because I know exactly what needs doing.
Like women do.
But I also hate doing it.
Like women do.
But I like it when it's done.
Like women do.

So Many People

One of the most striking differences between living in London and living in Washington is that here, you're living next door to all of humanity -- in all its life stages. In the States, you're much more segregated, always with your tribe of the time. In most places anyway.
In our neighborhood here, in west London, there's everyone pretty much. Suburban families, with kids in strollers up through secondary school. Older people, either couples or singles, living alone. Young people just starting out on their lives sharing flats.
Not to mention from every country. Americans. French. Polish. Italian. Middle Eastern. British, even. Colin Firth even. All right here. All ages of them.
In downtown Washington, where we lived for the last six months we were in the States, we were surrounded by young people. Our neighbors were mostly young adults in their late 20s or early 30s, just starting out on their careers, sharing apartments with others like them.
Washington has become THE place for East Coast kids just out of college to start their careers, since the job situation is better there than many other cities in the U.S. The federal government and all that.
And the neighborhood we were in attracted lots of young people, more and more each year.
It was nice -- lively, noisy, especially after the suburbs. But we felt old there. Didn't really fit in.
Before, for a dozen years while we were raising our boys, we lived in the quiet suburbs of Washington, where lots of other people were doing exactly the same thing as us. Raising kids in the suburbs.
Where the public schools were good. And there was room to play. And it felt safe.
But we outgrew that. Our kids grew up anyway.
New, younger families started to move in.
I like that there's such a mix of people and ages here -- that everyone lives together in the same neighborhood.
That's what American urban planners are trying so hard to achieve these days.
I just wish I had more of a connection to them.