London Calling

Three years in England and I finally have bought an electric tea kettle. My English friends don’t understand why such things don’t exist in America, and are horrified when I tell them it’s because we tend to boil water in microwaves (something rare in English flats), and because tea kettles in the US are largely for decoration, like cute vintage bottles or canisters you pick up at a flea market and put on the shelf above the stove.

The possibility that I may leave London soon has made me both mournful and enchanted once again with all things English. Pubs, the way people dress (for my money, English women are the best in the world at layering without looking bulky), the sound of English voices (and how much you can tell about a person here by his or her accent), even the look of the money in my wallet. I walk an hour to work (when it’s not pissing it down with rain) and look at the buildings along the way with wonder. Today I braved a Weight Watchers sausages and mash ready meal (not bad, actually) -- a dish that probably isn't even on the radar of U.S. weight watchers, capital W or otherwise. Frankly, last time I checked, the US still did not have low calorie ready meals that tasted good and were actually filling. I ascribe it to our Puritannical bent that Americans are willing to eat food that tastes bad just to lose weight – no such dog food exists in Britain. To be fair, the meals here aren’t quite as low in calories or fat as the ones across the pond, but nor do they make you immediately want to eat a huge fudgy brownie (also something difficult to find in England) because, damn it, you deserve it.

At dinner with an American friend on Friday, she said going home for Christmas made her appreciate London like she hasn’t done in a while. Reminded her that, despite the fact that people speak English, it’s still something special, maybe even exotic, to live here. Last night on my way home from a pub at 1 a.m., I didn’t call American friends on my mobile, the way I usually do at that hour. I watched the bridges and fish and chip shops and British spellings and churches and drunken mobs roll by in that ghostly haze of streetlights glowing in the rain, and I wondered what I would remember of it all when I’m gone.