'Ello, Mate! (I can say that without getting a look!)

Disclaimer: Some of what I’ve said in the last day or two may have seemed like I was bragging. If you read my Facebook & Gchat statuses that way, then, “Whoops. My bad.” I didn’t want to brag; I was just excited!

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Sunday morning, 7 a.m. British Summer Time:

We get off the plane at the Gatwick Airport. I pull my stuff out of the overhead compartment after not sleeping at all on the trip. (I tried, but I never got tired enough to nod off.) I hurry up and wait for everyone else in front of me to move down the aisle toward the exit. I step off the plane, and I hear an air-traffic guy over a walkie-talkie. He speaks with a cockney accent.

It finally hits me. I’m in London.

We’ve all moved into our flats on Hatton Gardens between Holborn and Clerkenwell. (Which, by the way, is pronounced CLARK-en-well. There are no clerks in Britain, only Clarks.) (I’m constantly on the lookout for a Gable.) Caitlin, Katherine, Sam, Sam, Zach, Nick and I live in a seven-person flat on the second floor, and naturally the girls have their own bathroom. There’s a lot to complain about in the apartment (there’s not a lot of space, the balcony doors don’t stay closed, the guys’ toilet doesn’t flush, and the girls’ toilet makes you wait 10 minutes between flushes while the water resets), but honestly I didn’t care about that when we first got here. We had to buy some basic groceries, eat dinner at the Spaghetti House, stuff ourselves into a phone booth, and generally have a good time.

That included stopping at a pub. We HAD to do that the first night; London wouldn’t be London without it. We went to Penderel’s Oak on Holborn east of Chancery Lane, and all of us got a drink.

Including my teetotaler self.

That’s right, I had my first alcoholic beverage, legal and otherwise, in a London pub. Once I found out I’d be in London, I wanted my first drink to be a warm dark beer served in such a place. Any pub would do, and any warm dark beer would do. I didn’t have high standards, but frankly, the beer I got didn’t even meet those standards. I’m never getting Ruddlers Best again, but the experience of sitting in a pub and drinking a beer… really slowly… made it worthwhile.

[I tried other people’s drinks, and my favorite by far was Strongbow cider. It ruins the self-prophecy of a Stuff White People Like point (“Being able to walk into a bar and order a beer that no one has heard of makes white people feel good about their alcohol drinking palate.”), but it’s still really good. It’s like drinking apple juice. Believe me, however, I won’t drink it as much as I drink apple juice at home. I sometimes go through a full jug in a day and a half.]