The first Harry Potter came out in 1997. I only know this because I have incredible research skills.
I wonder if I’m the only one with a bad memory for the actual titles. In my mind, there’s “the first one” and “the last one” (which was recently replaced by a more recent last one) and the one with the flying car and the one with the tri-wizard championship. They all kind of morph into each other. I know the ‘godfather’ guy died in the fourth or fifth … or is it the sixth?!!!! …., and the headmaster died in the previous “last one”. Rumours are rampant that dear old Harry himself bites the wizard’s wand in the newly released, final, final one.
I shouldn’t think my last sentence was any kind of a spoiler. If you haven’t heard the rumour, then you are woefully out of touch; I would urge you to start, if not reading newspapers, reading the headlines when you mosey past your local news agents.
I don’t know if the rumour is true. I haven’t bought the book yet. But I will.
When? When!
I am a reluctant and tardy Harry fan. Slow to jump on the bandwagon. Mildly annoyed by all the associated hoopla.
When the first Harry came out in 1997, the UK was just a distant land and Harry Potter was just a plucky little wizard with plucky little wizard friends who spoke with sophisticated little accents. Harry Potter was a childrens book – albeit one that had been embraced by adults — and I had better things to read.
In 2001, having moved to the UK, I thought I had to do my part to assimilate. I bought the first three Harry Potters (resulting in a strong association of my early days in London with Harry Potter). Later I bought the fourth, and still later the fifth and then the sixth. I’ve not once been ‘on time’ with Harry. I’m always just a few months behind the crowd. I can’t pretend not to enjoy the series. It’s good, mindless entertainment. A whole hell of a lot better than entertainment masking itself as something more (would people please come to their senses and see The Da Vinci Code for what it is: a load of crap!?!?!).
Still, I cannot fathom camping out in front of Waterstones just to be sure to get a copy on the first day out. Let alone dressed up like a magician. Whoops, I mean wizard.
There is a Celebrity Sighting, and then there is Royal Watching. Not the same thing. I am not a Royal Watcher in any sense of the word. My knowledge of the goings-on of the Royals is largely driven by headlines walked by*.
The Royals do, however, figure prominently in my list of celebrity sightings: they are famous, they are in the media, they are part of history, but most importantly they are occasionally whisking about town thereby making themselves “accessible” to me.
To me!
How they excite my penchant to stutter and stammer and go all gangly by the mere prospect of proximity to greatness (fame).
My first Royal Celebrity Sighting was the Grand Dame of them all, and it wouldn’t have been possible without September 11**.
You guessed it: it was the queen herself.
Oh! Dilemma! Should ‘queen’ be capitalised? I am referring to THE queen after all? If in my head I capitalise all three little letters of the definite article … T … H …. E … then I should surely capitalise the q of Queen. Ah bugger it. I’ve not got research facilities (ie internet access ) at my immediate disposable so THE queen will have to do.
After the Twin Towers fell, and the Pentagon burned, and a commercial airline hit a field in Pennsylvania, a dazed grief seemed to spread across the globe (or at least trans-Atlantic-ally) – not unlike the grief expressed for the People’s Princess when she got mowed down.
You didn’t have any hesitation in capitalising the P’s in People’s Princess. Hmmmf. You are not consistent, my dear. Oh Bullshit! When would you ever refer to yourself has ‘my dear’: you, you who just used ‘mowed down’ in a most crude and insensitive way.
I don’t consider myself a joiner. When I go to the gym, I don’t go to classes. I work out individually on a treadmill or bike or any machine I can operate without involvement from others. I don’t go in for all those activities my university puts on for alumni. I can hardly be bothered to join a family reunion. Needless to say, I don’t consider myself the type to get involved in hyped-up-global grief. I didn’t for Diana, and I liked her. Really, I did.
It was different with the 11 September. Maybe I had too much time on my hands. I was living in a hotel, looking for work, walking around a lot, and haemorrhaging. I accidentally found myself in Grosvenor Square at a moment of silence for the victims. I was surrounded by a crowd, a crowd full of people whom I imagined were purposefully there to grieve. Little bastard tears escaped from somewhere behind my eyes. I struggled to suppress hiccupy gulps.
Sobs! Sobs! What the hell are you getting so worked up about. It’s just another global event!
I couldn’t persuade myself out of grief. Having resigned myself to it (and having nothing else to do), I decided to attend a special memorial service at St. Paul’s.
The streets were packed. There was no way I was getting near the church. I stood outside with all the other sundry commoners and listened to words now forgotten that were meant to give comfort to us ‘survivors’. Frankly, it wasn’t really worth it (for me). My feet started to hurt. The words were more religious than suit my agnostic character. I got bored.
But it was worth it!
At the end of it all I decided to walk back in the direction of wherever it was I was going and found myself on a small backstreet with a few other stragglers. Suddenly I realised I was being stared at …
Wha Wha What? What are you looking at?
After looking down at myself to ensure I wasn’t in one of those dreams where you’re naked in public, I had the presence of mind to look behind me.
There she was.
Like an angel.
In her special sedan with little flags attached to the bonnet.
The Queen.
With a capital Q.
*Oh, that mischievous Harry! Oh, that poor horse-faced Camilla!
**2001.
In 2001 a group of Middle Eastern men became pilots so that they could fly themselves into history (and their passengers along with them). Their names made headlines for a short while.
Shortly thereafter, I stood in my uniform of black trousers (or a black skirt) a black top, black shoes and tried to pawn off “all natural” facial creams and body lotions and hair potions to the shoppers buzzing around Oxford Street.
A Middle Eastern man asked my assistance.
“Some advice on this product please?”
Like I know! Do you really think they give me training?
“Oh, yes this should be good for adolescent skin. Who are you shopping for?”
“My daughter ….”
Somehow the conversation progresses; I ask what he does. His smile disappears. His eyes glance down.
“I’m a pilot. I’m ashamed to say.”
In 2007 I visit a colleague’s home for dinner. She and her husband are brown-skinned Muslims from Pakistan. We enjoy a delicious meal of what she initially calls ‘Indian food’ – out of habit for those of us who can’t distinguish a Pakistani dish from an Indian. Her husband pours the wine. We laugh at some light-hearted complaints about work; joke about this and that; banter and chuckle and generally have a good time. He is a doctor at the NHS.
A couple of days later, I think about my colleague’s husband and wonder if the recent actions of NHS doctors make him ashamed and hesitant to divulge his employer.
The lights didn’t come back on even after the interview. I went back to the hotel room and tried the tv. It sat mute. I pulled the curtains to let in some late afternoon light and changed out of my interview outfit and into my London kit.
I returned to the lobby for some answers.
Hotel guests mobbed the reception desk where the staff seemed ill-equipped to explain the power loss, although they assured us it had nothing at all to do with any terrorist type of activity. Obviously. The pub across the street had power.
And look! A TV!
Having found a source of news, I ordered a pint and joined the other slack-jawed patrons. We craned our necks up toward the television in the corner where world events unfolded.
I noticed pedestrian traffic had come to a standstill. Tottenham Court Road passers-by were stopped in their tracks by the images on the screen. Some paused then continued on their way. Others took a seat.
An American lady cop happened to be sitting on the stool next to me.
“We’re gonna git ‘em. We won’t take this. No. No. No. We’ll go after ‘em. Our president will make sure of it.”
Even in the throes of a crisis, I found myself sufficiently snotty to cringe at the reflex of my compatriot.
Oh. Shhhh. Please don’t get all American kick-ass on me.
Her partner (cop-partner; not romantic-partner) was there too. He put his hand on her shoulder. She began to cry.
As I sat watching the towers fall, over and over again and the flames burn the Pentagon, I began a mental inventory of loved ones and their whereabouts. I thought about how pissed off the Mista was going to be. A slur on New York is slur on the Mista. A majority of his family were there. I hoped, confidently, that they were all alright*.
I wanted to be with the Mista. I wanted him to come home, but since he wasn’t I was glad for the power outage. If it hadn’t been for that coincidence, I would have stayed in and watched the news from my hotel room. I found a strange comfort in the company at the pub.
Using hand gestures, a man at the end of the bar offered to buy me a drink.
*They were.
Filed under: 2001 September
I put down the toenail clippers and changed the channel. I stopped on Mark Haines who’d forsaken the market news for the excitement of a plane hitting one of the World Trade Center buildings.
Wow. That’s some news.
I picked up one of those little wooden sticks that almost looks like a pencil but is thinner and is used for pushing back one’s cuticles. I began pushing back my toenail cuticles. A 2nd plane then whacked into the other World Trade Center building.
What the?
All hell broke loose on the t.v.
One tower fell; then another.
An edge of histrionics seeped into the normally composed delivery of the newscasters.
Everything of significance that happened that day is already well documented. There was nothing unique to my reaction. There’s no need to recount the ash covered disbelief, the silent detachment. The tears that would come for noone because I didn’t know anyone in New York, yet still I cried and felt foolish for doing so.
I sat in the hotel room, which had been my home for the past 7 days. The Mista was in Brussels; there was no one to call. Instead, I finished pushing back my cuticles, put on a black skirt suit and, looking professionally uniformed, went downstairs to meet my interview.
The lobby was candlelit.
The power had gone out.
I half heartedly talked about myself and my reams of experience and my moxy and can do attitude and moral fibre and …
Can you believe it? Did what I just saw on t.v. really happen?
The interviewer half-heartedly asked me questions about myself and my reams of experience and my exceptional talents …
Am I really having an interview by candlelight? Did terrorists really just attack New York?
Filed under: 2001 September
I had a job interivew lined up.
The representative of my future employer* and I had agreed to meet in the lobby at 3**.
I didn’t fancy jumping into work straight away. I had quit my job to follow the Mista (who was merely ‘my husband’ at the time), and I not-so-secretly relished the thought of experiencing a period of unemployment. I’d not ever gotten the pink slip and gross severence that so many of my friends and colleagues had chanced into at the end of the last decade century. I wanted to know what it was like to sip cappuccini (or wine) all day while the rest of the ‘em slogged it off to work.
This is my chance!
But circumstances conspired against me.
An ex-colleague thought it was too uncanny a coincidence that her new company was murmuring something about starting up a UK-based office at the very time I set sail for good ol’ Albion. So, within a week of swooshing into town, the bitch ex-colleague set me up arranged my interview with the representative of her company.
I felt compelled to go through the motion of interviewing. I couldn’t in good conscience look the then-but-a-mere-husband Mista in the eye and tell him I didn’t fancy thinking about my career, but preferred to skive off to Hyde Park, thank you very much! I had at the very least to pretend to be interested in getting into a pair of hose, high heels, and boring skirt suit.***
That morning I walked London and tried to figure out how to stop the hemorrhaging.
When I could take it no more, I decided to groove it back to the hotel where I would pamper myself ready for the interview.
Ugg.
I put the hotel tv onto a classical radio station. I ran a bath. I took a bath. As I cut my toenails, a United Airlines flight hit one of the World Trade Center buildings in New York City.
*I got the job. My confidence, while healthy, does rise to the assumption that I am a ‘shoe in’ before formalities have commenced in earnest.
**15:00
***I’m exagerating. I don’t wear hose, rarely wear heels, and the 1 skirt suit in my wardrobe has been hanging there untouched for 3+ years.
The hemorrhaging began the morning after we swooshed into London, as soon as I left the hotel. It wouldn’t stop, no matter how much pressure the Mista applied.
I closed my hotel room door behind me. There was no need to lock it. I did double check my pockets to make sure I had the credit-card-sized piece of plastic that I would need to get back in.
Where did I put it? Damn it. Where is it?!
In my back pocket.
I began my stroll down the hallway, which seemed to stretch on forever. How has this building been patchworked together to give it so many turns and twists? Maybe it was an optical illusion: the red, floral print carpet and stripey wallpaper. Why this uniform for English hotels and pubs? I pretended I was stuck in the hotel from The Shining. My footsteps quickened as I approached the lifts and the staircase leading down to the lobby. I skipped down the steps, out the revolving door, and onto the pavement* where I was brought to a standstill.
So many people.
People going left and right, passing and strutting, sauntering, strolling, trotting, sashaying, plodding. Moving in so many different ways. Innumerable invisible little grooves followed by innumerable bodies of varying shades of visibility. I lifted a foot to make my move. I hesitated and drew back. I lifted my foot again, drew back again. And again. And again. Like the hesitation the girl’s gotta make before jumping into double dutch.
I took a breath. Held it. And took the leap. I think I probably disrupted the path of a couple of those grooves; but soon enough found my own.
I really didn’t do a damn thing. I bought a coffee. Maybe two. I walked. I bought a paper. I sauntered. I sat on a bench. I thought I was lost, and then I walked some more.
So what caused the hemorrhaging?
“You had £50 this morning! What did you spend it on?” the Mista didn’t quite bellow.
I honestly have no idea.
*sidewalk
Swooshing isn’t just for trains. The black cab swooshes away from Waterloo station. Our lives fit neatly into the uniquely-British, taxi-passenger compartment. The Mista fiddles with his pocket and some newly acquired coinage, secured at the station in an exchange of a pound note for a soft drink. I look out the window at the river. I assume the bridge is Waterloo bridge. It isn’t. Years later I’ll know it is Westminster bridge that the cabbie has taken to cross the Thames, to loop around the square that sits in front of the Houses of Parliament and the side of Westminster abbey, to head up Whitehall. I see a street sign. Charring Cross. I look out the taxi cab window at bookshops. I recall that there is an association between Charring Cross and bookshops. I do not recall the why behind the association or the where I might have learnt this tidbit. The bookshops look faded and dingy. Just like London. Even though London hasn’t been my first choice, excitement titters within. I have a hard time maintaining my composure. I think the bookshops must be full of Charles Dickens. Precious treasures hidden beneath reams of trash. We’ve not turned. Not right. Not left. But the street sign has changed. Tottenham Court Road. We’re close! We’re close! We’re close! The hotel is here somewhere. I’ve not made the arrangements, but I’ve paid enough attention to remember our hotel – a Radission – is on Tottenham Court Road. I crane my neck to look for a sign. The taxi comes to a stop before I can make out the hotel. It blends right in. The dread of heavy lifting returns. We now need to transport our lives from the back of the taxi to one of the hotel rooms above. At least the Mista’s pockets are now full of change.*
* With the quantity and weight of the bags, I believe tipping was entirely appropriate in this instance.
The Eurostar didn’t exactly chug into Waterloo station. I suppose it swooshed. A distinction that got lost somewhere in the excitement brought on by arriving.
We’re here! We’re going to live here! Here, here, here!
We swooshed in from Paris where the Mista had had one of what would be many Very Important Meetings on the continent. Our lives, intermingled in various bags and boxes, were mostly in tow. A couple of items had been sent ahead by post. If I remember correctly, they (our lives) fit into 6 good-sized duffel bags, a couple of ‘carry-ons’, and the couple of boxes that had been shipped.
Excitement turned to mild dread as the train applied a slow brake on its swoosh, and I thought of the prospect of transporting the 6 good-sized duffel bags and couple of carry-ons off the train and onto the platform. An activity that would probably cause a little glisten of sticky sweat and the Mista to grumble and mumble about how we have too much stuff …..
Oh, this is going to suck. 5 minutes of uncomfortable heaving and then it will be over. You can get through this.
And really, it didn’t suck that bad. It was probably only a couple of minutes of uncomfortable heaving and a couple of minutes of uncomfortable hurling. And then, there we were, the Mista and me, on the platform at Waterloo station; our first steps into this, our new terrain, behind us.
Excitement returned. We may have hugged or high-fived or given each other a secret knowing look. Probably not, though. We did look around for those always-available, always-free, and ever-handy trolleys to help us with our load.
Excitement turned to panic.
The always-available, ever-handy trolleys were right there, neatly snuggled into each other, and yet menacingly attached to each other with a chainlike doohickey, which, required 1 British pound to release 1 always-available, ever-handy trolley.
“God Damn it!”
I thought the Mista was going to have a coronary, while I meantime was internally abandoning myself to helplessness.
Oh no. Oh no. Oh no. Oh no. Oh no. Someone, “Help!”
And as if on cue, a group of travelling television cameramen passed by. As they did so, they must have been struck by my forlorn, vacant stare, the Mista’sthrobbing forehead vein, and the ludicrous amount of luggage surrounding us. Without even an exchange of words, one of the cameramen reached into his pocket and gave us not 1, but 2 Great British pounds.
I love you.
This leads me to two points:
1. Thank you, whoever you are. Wherever you go, may good karma follow.
2. What genius decided to make a buck off thealways-available, always-FREE*, ever-handy trolleys by requiring the use of local COINAGE in the international section of Waterloo before the decent folk alighting from the train have even had the chance to hit an ATM, visit a Thomas Cooks, or buy a pack of chewing gum to break the local paper currency that they, being the foresightful people that they likely are, might have sourced from abroad and brought along with them from their Euro dominated origins? Whoever you are, may shitty karma follow you around like the plague.**
*Always free in Europe, anyway. When the idea was introduced to the States, we of course charged for the convenience from the get-go. This was one of the first superior characteristics of Europe that I noted: free trolleys.
**I’ve been on the Eurostaronce since, but I didn’t need a trolley; so I didn’t notice if the charge-for-a-trolley-and-require-a-pound geniusness still applies. Hopefully some sense has prevailed since 2001.
