Chapter 3
The ties that bind

Email To: Christi
From: Leslie Ann
Date: 5 April
Subject: Thought for the day

Dear Christi,

It’s always good to hear from you as it brings back fond memories of our salad days together in California enjoying taco lunches, pitchers of margaritas and suntanned skin—none of which are available here.

Soon, London will go into my scrapbook of memories just like Palm Springs, as Bill and I prepare for our move to the countryside. It’s ironic that the things I will most likely miss won’t be the big events, but the little niggles that define my own personal space. They’re the ones that seem to form the warp and weft of real life. Take, for instance, the grumpy bus conductor who only last week broke a smile at me despite having been a loyal passenger on his route for years. I wonder if he will notice that I am no longer there? And who will snarl at the legions of mothers with their bulging baby carriages blocking every entrance and aisle in Peter Jones department store making shopping virtually impossible? You know, it is conceivable the city won’t be able to get along without me. I’m glad we’ve had this little talk.

Bye for now,
Leslie Ann

‘You must be bonkers. What can you possibly do in the countryside all day?’ interrogated Blanche, my American soul-sister and London mate, as we sat on a bench sipping tepid tea from our styrofoam cups while being traumatized by the unruly children playing in Hyde Park. ‘You don’t shoot, you don’t have dogs and you never walk without a shopping bag in your hand. Won’t you get bored to death up there?’ she continued as her brow slowly wrinkled, unveiling an expression of bewilderment.

Coming from such a close friend this was a perfectly valid question. After all, a move like this was not for the faint-hearted, which made me wonder if I had taken the matter as seriously as I should have. Some of our friends even said it was tantamount to social suicide.

As far as I can recall these were the only two questions consistently put to us by our friends, family and business colleagues when Bill and I announced our move, after a decade in London, to deep within the English countryside. We certainly didn’t expect cheers of support, but neither did we anticipate being compared to characters in the 1970s American television series Green Acres or the limey equivalent The Good Life.

Swings and roundabouts was a perfect description of our life so far. One more ‘about face’ seemed of no real consequence. Even Bill, despite being a hopeless nester, had demonstrated his flexibility about our life choices. Born in Britain, raised on the south coast in Sussex, and initiated into manhood in the corporate world of the City, he had been more than willing to move to Los Angeles following our chance meeting in London in 1980. The truth is, Bill was strikingly handsome and rather debonair for a Brit, so not surprisingly he swept me off my feet. From there it was only a matter of time before we married and became official Californians with a home on the third tee of a country club and a golf cart in the garage. Fourteen years and multiple earthquakes later we returned to England.

And so it was that we regarded this relocation as just one more adventure. Our overseas friends, however, took the view that leaving London was some sort of penalty we had to pay for having spent so many decadent years in a coveted location. More importantly for them was the realization that our well-placed flat, on one of the city’s smartest streets, would be a thing of the past. Whether our friends’ holidays were planned in advance or the result of a spur-of-the-moment, heavily discounted airline ticket, our door had always been open.

The decision to sell our penthouse apartment, a tongue-in-cheek term for former servants’ quarters located at the top of a Victorian home, had more to do with serendipity than sanity. It was as though a biological clock had awakened us to the need for earthy pursuits, the very same ones that had often been the butt of jokes about people with anoraks and walking sticks.

At this juncture in my life the only thing I knew for certain was that London would be my eternal home as Bill was honour-bound to keep his promise to sprinkle my ashes amongst the well-tended shrubs of my chosen grotto in Green Park. This was a pledge I knew he would keep even if it meant wearing a dirty old raincoat to avoid detection while he distributed his cache observed only by the beady eyes of the local geese and ducks.

Up to this point, our knowledge of grass and all that grew on it had been limited to Sunday walks in New York’s Central Park, Paris’ Jardin Des Tuileries and Sydney’s Royal Botanic Gardens. They all offered outdoor enthusiasts open space and freedom of movement without encroaching upon what we considered to be the necessities of life: fashionable shopping haunts and trendy watering holes. We had our priorities.

There was one aspect of London life that we understood all too well—public transportation. Always a love-hate relationship, it was nevertheless the linchpin of our daily lives. The idea of straying too far from the sound of a Number 19 diesel-belching, red double-decker bus was unthinkable. Even the unmistakable grinding motor of an ageing black taxi cab conveying a lavishly paid CEO to a rendezvous on Sloane Street was comforting to our ears. Yet, there were two tones even dearer to our hearts that represented the continuity of life and the belief that the world was intact.

Each morning around 5.15 the first flights of the day would arrive at Heathrow Airport from such exotic destinations as India, Indonesia and Thailand. As these fully loaded aircraft began their slow descent over the city, skimming across the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and our bedroom, I would lie snugly tucked under my duvet thinking of the variety of humanity waiting to enter the airport’s arrivals hall. Soon their clothing, skin colour, language and religion would be gracing the streets of London. It was such an important aspect of life in the Capital, one that few cities could offer with such depth and certainty.

The other distinctive sound that called me to the window each evening at 6.20 was my personal American connection. Lifting my head slightly, I could see the gentle glide path of Concorde arriving from New York as she lowered her wheels like a mallard duck preparing to land on a remote mountain lake. Unlike the passengers on the early morning flights, Concorde delivered her cargo in style and elegant exclusivity. Soon, London would be infused with shoppers, movie stars and entrepreneurs anxious to spend dollars, which seemed to those of us on this side of the pond to be in a never-ending supply.

Viewing life from the perspective of a cultural transplant (you never entirely forget your roots) made me an expert at spotting the idiosyncrasies of other nationalities. Sniffing out ethnic groups manoeuvring through the crowded streets and Tube stations became an amusing pastime. Italians were the easiest to recognize. Their sculpted facial features, toned bodies and dedication to fashion detail made them pleasing on the eye and always welcome. Germans made less of a statement, actually none at all, while the Spanish, famous for roaming in rowdy packs, were known for their display of copious amounts of uncoordinated colour. Aussies, the most popular social tribe, were ecologically responsible, hard working and could fit in anywhere with their easy going ‘no worries, mate’ attitude to life.

As an American, I took particular interest in locating my fellow countrymen and women in a crowd. The obvious indication of their presence was that they frequently seemed vocally challenged. To my now Anglicized ear, their voice boxes lacked a volume control. Intimate space meant nothing to them. The other telltale sign was that they often looked like they were going off to climb Mount Everest rather than navigate the streets of one of the largest and most prestigious cities in the world. Hanging from hip, buttock and shoulder would be an assortment of survival gear only a mountaineer would invest in. Their colourful casual wear could have come from the locker room of any professional sports team as they invariably carried the markings of a brand name or other ‘need to know’ advertisement. Seldom would their clothing be made of linen or natural fibre, but rather of some NASA-inspired fabric or petroleum byproduct that could easily be removed, folded, placed in an envelope and posted back home to be opened and laundered upon arrival. The fact that London was the fountainhead of bespoke clothing was often lost on them.

By contrast, it was a pleasure to see American businessmen in London. With their polished teeth, valet-pressed pinstripe suits, immaculate nails and coiffed hair they were the essence of success. They instinctively knew that they earned more money, and thus had more style, than their British counterparts. Flashing the newest iPod or quad-band mobile phone was never showy. It was expected.

The ‘I can have it all’ female American executive was, on the other hand, a formidable creature. Camouflaged behind skin half Sarah Jessica Parker, half Joan Rivers, she set out to singlehandedly defy the laws of gravity and the statistics on aging. Her style was accomplished and perfected right down to her calfskin briefcase and Burberry scarf, casually tied at the neck to complement her tightly cinched raincoat which provided protection from the elements as well as from any human contact that could spoil her Spray and Starch appearance.

These were my companions on the streets of Chelsea and Kensington. They served as a constant reminder that London was the beating heart, at least in Europe, of everything vibrant and happening. Shopping was no exception. As designer lingerie, bling-bling jewellery shops and handbag boutiques were only a stone’s throw from my front door, I was in constant jeopardy of being victimized by the never ending siren call to ‘just take a look’. These little temptations usually manifested themselves while I was en route to the bank or supermarket, distracting me from my more mundane chores.

Parking in London was a nightmare, which meant car ownership was not a practical option. It was a luxury. One we did not enjoy. Therefore, several times a week I had to make the twenty-minute journey to Waitrose, my local food purveyor on foot. I often thought of my friends back in the States and how different our daily lives had become. They had only to get into their Mercedes, press the automatic garage door opener, drive to a thoroughly modern, air-conditioned superstore only minutes away where services from dry cleaners to hair salons, poodle parlours to post offices could be found under one roof. They could then select enough items to fill a small campervan, have the contents bagged and placed in the car by an attendant, then make the identical journey home.

My experience, on the other hand, was slightly more complicated and involved some pre-planning. For starters, my purchases were restricted to what I could carry, which often meant sacrificing a large six-pack of toilet paper for more important items such as a bottle or two of cheeky Rioja. Life was about choices and I was proud of mine. Each time I returned home from the grocery store my fingers would be the colour of mashed red berries and my arms inches longer, having been stretched from the weight of the shopping bags. This supported my theory that the further I walked the heavier my load.

As an urbanite who preferred concrete and steel, public transport and congestion to endless fields and tranquility, I enjoyed my proximity to absolutely everything I had ever wanted. Situated halfway between London’s two great department stores, Harrods and Harvey Nichols, I was spoiled for choice. I had no idea what my options might be up the Great North Road. For me, London was the centre of the universe.

There is a case to be made for going into a new venture with eyes wide open; however, we took the position that ignorance, up to a point, was bliss. We would debit our personal account by losing amenities of a proportion only a city the size of London could provide and credit our new account with never ending fields of green grass and animals we had previously seen as either roadway casualties or on posh restaurant dinner plates. Taking too much time to reminisce over the loves of our life could have stopped us in midstream, and so with all the awareness of navel-gazing we prepared, with courage, to forsake the familiar for the black hole of life beyond the London M25 Ring Road.