Appendix B: Scenes from a British Pub

(No guarantees on the quality, so apologies to the inspiration; regardless, it has some charm. At least, I think so. Tell me if I'm wrong.
Free postcard for the first one to guess correctly who Michael & Betty are!)

A Guinness & rye, a bottle of Pimm’s,
Perhaps a Strongbow or some fish & chips.
On a sidewalk near the street
Standing on our shoehorned feet,
You and I, pint to pint.

A bottle of Pimm’s, a Guinness & rye,
It all depends on what your pounds will buy.
Cheer the top Premier League club
In our old-fashion Castle pub.

***

Things are okay with me these days.
I got a good job (inspired The Office!).
My partner is swell, the banks are not well,
but the family’s fine.
We lost touch long ago.
You moved away, I did not know
BBC could call you back after
So much time!

You remember that day hanging out on the Regent’s green?
Top button unfastened, collar popped, and tight blue jeans?
Hear the guy on the Tube play a song about ye olde Queen?
Warm beer (it's not light!), our hip romantic British night!

***

Michael & Betty were the popular steady
and the king & the queen of the squeeze,
Walking around with their three young kids
and their 32Cs.
Their surname could be “Moneymaker.”
Always more of a hit in The London Paper.
But we always knew they would want more than that out of life,
Sure that Michael & Betty would never know how to survive.

Michael & Betty had had it already
by the May of 2000 & 9.
Michael said, “Hey!” but Betty, “He's gay!
I swear, the horseman’s not mine.”
MP’s expenses were crazy,
The economy’s future looked much too hazy.
But the gossipers said, “Oh, my God!
How will Junior get by?”
Oh, I wish I could say to Michael & Betty, “Good-bye.”

But they got an apartment with deep pile carpet
On the front of the Mirror & Sun.
And Betty looked great, but Michael lost weight
They say ‘cuz he wanted his hun.
They started to fight over the custody right,
And the editors had all the fun!

They lived for a while in a very nice style
But it’s always the same in the end.
They got a divorce as a matter of course
And Betty hung out with her “friend.”
Then the king & his mate went back to page 8
But you can never go back there again!

Michael & Betty, I’ve had it already
By July of 2000 & 9.
But the papers still go, oh! the photos they’ll show
For the rest of their lives.
Couldn’t go back to the hard news
Best they could do was report on the loo-loos.
We always knew they would all find a way to get by.
So, that’s all I’ll sing about Michael & Betty.
Can’t tell you more, ‘cuz really, it’s petty.
And here I am, wavin’ Michael & Betty good-bye!

***

A bottle of Pimm’s, a Guinness & rye.
Whatever kind of drunk you want tonight.
Why would you want to go to a club,
When here we have our Castle pub?

Appendix A: Lookee here!

I'm here now. Check it out! And keep an eye out for concluding content for London.

Home, but Not Home Yet; To Be Continued?

As of about 3:30 p.m. yesterday, I've been back in the States. As I hinted at earlier, it's a bittersweet return, mainly because London became such a home in the last eight weeks.

I'm not home yet, though; despite a Welcome Back dinner at Applebee's with maternal relatives on the Eastside of Indy, I haven't made it back to the house yet. Instead, the family and I are in Michigan, right off the lake, taking a small vacation. It's small because my brother and I have to go home on Tuesday to work on Wednesday. (Dang responsibilities!) We'll be hanging out with my sister, a cousin, and an uncle up here, doing some fishing and playing the family card game: hand and foot. (If you don't know it, let me teach you some time. It's a long game, but as such it's highly social.)

As I ease back into regular life, I begin to think of keeping a regular blog. I mean regular in two senses: the one from the first clause of the sentence, meaning ordinary/not from London, Paris, or Dublin; and the one from a calendar, meaning a post per week or every four days or something. This travel blog is the first consistent record of my life's doings that I've kept, and given the success of this I might do more.

I've told one person that I'd like to keep a diary that's almost as thorough as hers ("almost" because I can't ever hope to be that complete!), but that comment refers more to a private journal than a public Web log. There is also the concern that, let's face it, my life isn't that interesting and it would be hard to keep up a blog where the usual entry would be:

Wednesday 15 July: Did some orthopedic research today. I chatted it up with the statisticians and talked about the current project over the phone with the head doctor. In my spare time, I checked Facebook a few times and visited icanhascheezburger.com once. Drove home in 90-degree heat and a faulty air conditioner.

I can expand on these everyday things, of course, by finding meaning or reasons or motivation or something, even if it's just for mental exercise. I wonder, however, if all of that will only be enjoyable for me. I don't think there's a wide audience for my daily activities or private thoughts. (If I'm wrong, by all means let me know! Then I can judge if you're a stalker or not. :D )

...God, I wish I could go back to London. I'm with my family right now, and I just finished an epic game of hand and foot (my sister and I were beasts!), so I should be firmly back home mentally. But no. I was walking in Lake Michigan earlier today, and all I could think about was London: what I had done, what I hadn't done, who I had met, who I wanted to get to know better, how my laptop is still on British Summer Time, everything. I love it back home, but... sigh. That's the only concise response I have. Sigh.

I might have more responses later: photos I skipped uploading, memories that somehow missed the blog, final observations of the city, lyrics ripped from a Billy Joel song. I'll be processing this trip for a while, so I don't know how many appendices I'll add to this Web log. Some processing, inevitably, will make it into the next blog (hey, I made my decision already!), but it won't be quick. Like I said earlier, there will be a Before London and an anno Brittanica to my life now.

So, besides the coming appendices, I now formally close the blog. As A.B began at 9 a.m. BST on 4 July 2009 (time is approximated, just to make future calculations easier), and as it's now 6:45 p.m. EDT on 5 July 2009, right now it is day 1 and 15:45 hours of the rest of my life. Here it goes.

Some Other Beginning's End

You know that one song that you hear at that perfect time when you're younger? The one that was a huge hit on the radio but then fell off the map to gain some nostalgia value? The one that comes back to you five or ten years later, in an entirely different circumstance than the first time, and is STILL perfect?

For me, that song is Semisonic's "Closing Time."

The perfect time as a kid was riding home from family Christmases on the Eastside of Indianapolis or trips to visit the grandparents in South Bend. At least five times, we'd be driving the van on the street approaching our house (Raceway Road), and when we were about three minutes from our driveway the song would pop onto the radio. "Perfect timing," I would think each of those five times, and each time I would lose myself in the sentiment of the song. (And I would pray to God that we didn't arrive at home and stop the radio before the end of the song!) On the rare occasions that I've heard it since, I've fondly recalled the home stretch of Raceway Road and envisioned a journey ending, even if there were no meaningful ending in sight.

This most recent time, there WAS a meaningful ending: a plane ride back to Indy and out of London, a place I confidently call a new home. It happened as I was walking to my last dinner here, listening to my iPod.

Until recently, I haven't paid much attention to the words of songs. As alluded to earlier, I usually basked in the sentiment of a song, manifested in the melody and some parts of the refrain. The verses of popular songs were always lost on me (Beatles songs excepted, of course), and as such I never really dissected any songs. I never truly understood them, either.

But analysis and attention skills inevitably improve once you're in college, and in the last few years I've examined all my favorite songs, if only to apply them more effectively (and correctly!) to my life. It is in this context that I heard "Closing Time" in my earbuds, and I realized that for this moment, this was the. perfect. song.

The sentiment came to me first, of course. How couldn't it? When you feel some way about something as a kid, it's bound to leave a print on you for a while. But, as I'm no longer a kid (at least, I like to think so), I dove deeper into the lyrics.

What did I find first? This gem 39 seconds in: "One last call for alcohol, so finish your whiskey or beer." I had my first substantial alcohol here (champagne at celebrations and church wine don't count), and I had two shots out of a bottle of Jack Daniel's to get rid of before returning to my teetotaler ways until my 21st birthday. This is my last call for four months. Oddly coincidental.

I kept listening, and at 49 seconds I got, "You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here." Again, weirdly appropriate because I have to leave. This one is more complicated, though, because I DO have to go home. Family are expecting me (and I'm expecting to see them!), we're going to Michigan, I have to work, and I'm filming a wedding. In my inability to fully explain that one I set it aside, confident that some other lyric would explain it.

1:21 provided the explanation: "Time for you to go out to the places you will be from." My dinner destination (::darts eyes:: McDonald's) was perfect for this. Even though Ronald and the Golden Arches scream America as loudly as Uncle Sam and baseball, this particular franchise was in London. Get that? LONDON. My third home, after Indy and Bloomington. I can say with pride, "I'm from London." If I can live and work on my own in London, what's gonna stop me from making Madrid, Dublin, or anywhere else in the world a place I will be from?

I pondered on that one for a while, so lyrics passed over me until 1:44: "I hope you have found a friend." Pardon me for being corny (I'm from Indiana, mind you), but I've found more than one. I've found 20 in the student group, seven at the Science Media Centre, and at least three in Dublin. Hope fulfilled, mission accomplished.

I got to the end, and remembering I had missed some lyrics, I started the song again halfway through my walk. I heard, "Open all the doors and let you out into the world." With my time in London, Paris, and Dublin, I can't see how I COULDN'T have let myself out into the world.

"How could this song fit this moment any better?" I thought.

Like this: "Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end." I see myself as a different person now after eight weeks here: more independent and interdependent, more confident (not that I wasn't confident before), and more understanding of nearly everything, including other people. As such, I don't think it unreasonable to eventually see my life as B.L. and A.B., Before London and anno Brittanica.

I've never had a song fit an experience so well. So, along with The Beatles and Frigg,"Closing Time" will always remind me of London. At least the bittersweet end of it. I'm gonna miss this place.

[You'll notice I didn't analyze the refrain. That's because the answer was easy: I didn't want anyone to take me home to Indy, but I knew who would: Delta Airlines.]

Final Events in London

Monday
Had the last J496 class of the summer, had lunch at the Ultimate Burger (should be called the Slightly Above Average Burger), and saw Billy Elliot

Tuesday
Woke up at 5:15, left the flat at 6, and got to Central Hall Westminster at 7 a.m. (by bus) to volunteer at the World Conference of Science Journalists. Met with a former member of the Royal Society, an editor with The Guardian, and a writer for Scientific American. Went to Wimbledon Park; matches were over by the time I got there, but I walked around in the park and took photos.

Wednesday
Woke up at 6, left the flat at 7:15, and got to Central Hall at 8 a.m. (by Tube) to volunteer a second day. [Updated 5 July: Walked a group from Argentina back to the conference from exhibitions at the Royal Society; got to practice my Spanish.] Went to the gala reception, talked to reporters from The Times and The Guardian, and hung out one last time with the people from the SMC. Wondered aloud how long it would take to drive to New York if one of them happened to fly into there one day.

Thursday
Woke up at 9, finished the J492 paper, and visited the conference (by Tube) for a little bit. Went to the Frontline Club for the closing group dinner with Owen Johnson and John Owen. Hung out at the flat.

Friday
Woke up at 9, finished the J496 paper, started packing, watched Wimbledon on TV (BBC hi-def coverage is wonderful!), continued packing, went to dinner, continued packing, listened to music, continued packing, hung out with the flatmates, finished packing.