A Lady in London

A few weeks ago I was surprised at how early the Christmas season started in London. But now that Thanksgiving is over, my resistance to all things Christmas is gone. With the days getting impossibly short and the winter chill setting in, I need something to get me through the gray gloom. On Sunday I found just such a thing: the Hampstead Christmas Festival in London.

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There’s rioting in London. The London riots started on Saturday night when police shot a man in Tottenham. I was in Manchester at the time, and awoke Sunday morning to reports of burning buses and blazing buildings.

In the beginning we all thought that the riots would be contained to the one small area of London. But over the past three days and nights, the riots have not only spread across London, but also across much of the UK. Seeing footage of the looted Manchester shops and the smoldering Miss Selfridge store on Monday was shocking. I had walked down those very streets just one day prior.

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A few months ago I engaged in my first ever stint of community activism. It wasn’t to ban a power plant from being built next to a school. I wasn’t to fight a corrupt city council. No, it was to save my local pub, the Duke of Hamilton. Back in the States I might have been a bit embarrassed that my first brush with activism was alcohol related, but in the UK, where binge drinking is a national pastime, I felt a small sense of pride.

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Today is my three year anniversary of moving to London. Three years since I left San Francisco. Three years since I packed the previous three years into boxes. Three years since I arrived on the Eurostar from Paris.

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Every good London neighborhood has a butcher. From the tiny ones in remote pockets of the city to the large ones in central London, they all have a shop with big cuts of meat hanging in the windows. Some are basic butcher shops that sell meat behind a glass counter in an otherwise bare room. Others have gone gourmet, incorporating organic cheeses, fine wines, and other foodie products.

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A tragedy has befallen my beloved Hampstead. No, Hampstead Heath hasn’t been bulldozed. More mobile phone shops haven’t opened on the high street. There’s still only one McDonalds and one Starbucks. The tragedy is far worse. The owners of one of my favorite Hampstead pubs, The Duke of Hamilton, are shuttering the almost-300-year-old establishment to turn it into luxury flats. Just what the neighborhood needs.

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It takes some searching to find the best place to watch the World Cup. When the last World Cup took place I was still living in San Francisco and still working at Goldman Sachs. One day my boss, who was South African and one of the few non-Americans in the office, somewhat un-mysteriously disappeared to find the perfect place to watch the tournament in San Francisco. The rest of us stayed chained to our desks hoping to catch a few glimpses when the TV screens above the trading floor flipped to the games.

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I love my neighborhood. From Hampstead Heath to Hampstead High Street, Hampstead Butcher and Providore to Hampstead Antique Market, I am smitten.

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Today is election day in the UK. Despite the fact that I’ve been asked “did you vote?” more than five times, I, as an immigrant, am not permitted to do so. But that didn’t stop me from begging all of my friends that could vote to choose whichever party would not revoke my visa and eject me and my fellow migrant laborers from their lovely country.

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Last month I was hoping for spring. I really was. But then the cold weather kept coming and the rain kept pouring and I kept escaping to warmer places.

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I was supposed to be cycling through Umbria today. Green fields, pastoral scenes, and wind sweeping through my hair were all on the itinerary. But thanks to our new friend The Volcanic Ash Cloud, my cycling tour of Umbria was cancelled and I’m grounded in Blighty for the foreseeable future.

It’s not all bad, though. In fact, it’s kind of a blessing in disguise. I’ve been traveling so much over the past few months that my lovely Hampstead has become almost unrecognizable to me. It was high time I got to know my neighborhood again after some important recent changes in the village.

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I’m so over winter. I’m tired of the rain, the short days, the grey skies. I know, I’m spoiled. I just got back from three sunny weeks in Africa and I’m already complaining about the cold again. But really, it’s been freezing for four months now and I’m ready for spring.

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Having lived in Hampstead for over two years now, I thought I knew the area well. I’ve been to all of the museums, explored the Hampstead Heath extensively, and eaten at almost every restaurant in the neighborhood. I’ve walked down almost every street in the area and I’ve gone into most of the shops, but the other day I found a place that I had yet to discover.

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This week it was time to celebrate my third expat Thanksgiving. Last Thanksgiving I cheated my way out of cooking dinner by ordering food from my favorite local grocer, Rosslyn Deli. In lieu of attempting to shove a huge turkey into my tiny oven and trying to cook stuffing while lacking any culinary skills whatsoever, I left the dinner to the experts and gave thanks for being able to shirk out of my cooking responsibilities.

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I want a dog. I really do. But I can’t have one. I travel too much, I’m never home during the day, and most evenings I get home late. But I still want a dog. I can’t help it.

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