From London, with love

"Do you like London?" I asked my London-born hubby.
He shrugged helplessly. He doesn't know; he's never given it any thought. It's just London: though it keeps changing, it's familiar -- for better and for worse. He doesn't think of it as a tourist destination; he comes to see family and friends. If it were up to him, he probably wouldn't set foot in a single shop. He'd just buy a few staples in the duty-free on the way out. You know -- essential stuff like Cheddar, Stilton, Cadbury's, and good Irish whiskey.

But I go ga-ga over London, and over the UK in general.

We've always stayed with family or friends; or, in recent years -- in a small place in SE London. This time, for the first time ever, we actually booked a hotel in the center of town, and went gallavanting around for hours and hours. My head was spinning. There was a constant buzz all around me: the endless stream motor vehicle and human traffic; the sounds, sights, smells -- everything was overwhelming in a wonderful sort of way. After only 24 hours in town, I felt as if I'd accomplished a lot... a lot of window-shopping and people-gazing, that's for sure. The shops are full of a huge selection of everything I always want when I'm in London and everything I always try to convince myself not to want: alluring toiletries and cosmetics at Boots, clothes at Gap, shoes at Ecco, books & notebooks at WHSmith...

The hotel we stayed at was the Danibius Regents Park, overlooking Lord's Cricket Ground (which means a lot to some people). And we knew nothing about it when we booked. Imagine my surprise when, upon going down to breakfast, I found myself surrounded by Moslems. We live in Israel, a small country surrounded by Arab countries, and you'd think I'd be accustomed to being surrounded by Moslems. Well, I'm not. Mostly it was the burka-wearing, head-to-toe covered women who stood out. As we soon realized, the hotel was a stone's throw away from London's Central Mosque , and the time was a couple of days before a major Moslem holiday -- Eid Ul Adha. And indeed, on that special day hundreds of people flocked to the Mosque.

The hotel was pleasant and comfortable, falling short of "wonderful". But, to be fair, I think its target clientelle is business people, not vacationers. Among other travellers, it caters to airline personnel. Why, if it weren't for the hotel's affiliation with BA, and the fact that we could utilize our BA "points", we wouldn't have considered staying there.

The hotel's pride and joy, it seems, is its restaurant, called Minsky's New York Deli, which I took to be homage to a NYC establishment by that name. Can any New Yorker confirm?
I didn't care much for the subdued lighting, especially at breakfast time. But in the evening, and particularly on the evening of our wedding anniversary, it seemed very apt. Even apter was the musical trio, who played Cheek to Cheek  at my request, bless them;

Time to catch a train. Additional notes and musings about London, Devon, and Lancs in my next posts.

Back on track: I'm off to see the wizard

At long last, I'm back on track!
After about 6 months of being stuck at home and having to cancel trips, I'm once again packing my suitcase and backpack, including hat-gloves-scarves-umbrella, my prescription pain meds, and spiral notebook for taking notes (duh!).
What does all this have to do with the wizard? Surely I'm not going to Oz.
Well, not exactly.

See, the last trip I wrote about in this-here blog concerned going to hospital. Unfortunately, the surgery I underwent didn't turn out as planned. Complications ensued, time went by, and I was still unfit to travel. And so, with heavy heart, we had to cancel our trip to Canada. The plan was to attend our daughter's convocation ceremony at U of T, where she'd studied Landscape Architecture ; spend a few days with Daughter and other family members in Toronto; then rent a car and go driving to Quebec City, and down through beautiful countryside of Maine etc as far as NJ and MD to see my cousins. Imagine our disappointment when these plans fell through.

Fast-forward to a few months later. Strong painkillers, plenty of physiotherapy & exercise, lots of support and encouragement from family and friends, plus sheer determination seem to have worked. At least enough for us to consider foreign travel once again. Sensing that I was still a bit worried, my therapist said: "My own doctor once told me that he knows of a magic cure. It's called Passport Control".

Hence the idea of going to see the wizard. I shall meet him or her in a few hours. My passport will be stamped, and off to the Duty Free I shall march, to look at L'Occitane's latest collection -- the exquisitely designed Collection de Grasse; then to the BA Lounge where I can eat and relax until takeoff time.

Shucks! I just remembered! My wizard may be a machine. I often use the biometric system to get through passport control. Never mind -- as long as I emerge safely at the other side! And as for L'Occitane -- their prices are high, and I haven't smelled any of the new collection yet, so who knows. Maybe I'll save my dough for Boots or The Body Shop.

Back to what really matters: the trip. First few days in the heart of London, seeing family and doing touristy things; then by train to cousins in Delightful Devon (even grey skies and drizzle won't spoil our delight); then another train to cousins in a godforsaken little village in Lancashire, which will doubtlessly be an adventure; our hosts are no longer in the village where we got lost last time, so we get another chance at getting lost elsewhere :-)  From there, on to a couple of days in York, which we last visited in 1982. And back to London for a couple of days before catching our flight back home.

Of course, there should be lots of interesting things along the way. About which I hope to write and post in this blog, if I have the time and energy. No camera this time -- only my smartphone; it had better not let me down, or else! (Or else what? I'll replace it with another smartphone? Empty threats are so pathetic.)

Ta-ta for now. Or as we say in Hebrew: L'hitra'ot להתראות . Don't bother with Google Translate. It means ciao, au revoir, be seeing you, etc.

What not to bring to hospital --

-- when you’re scheduled to go under the knife.

 

The most recent tracks I made, quite of my own volition, were to a Tel Aviv hospital and back. Or, to put it more bluntly, to General Surgery, to be cut up and sewn back together again.

 

When packing my bag on the preceding day, I spent an inordinate amount of time fretting about what to pack:

- Toiletries, of course. But do I take my fave shampoo-and-conditioner, or do I travel light and pack one of those small complimentary bottles provided by hotels? I have quite a collection of those, and they’re so cute! Do I need my hair dryer, or will there be one in the bathroom? It is supposed to be a good hospital, after all. And what about makeup?

 

I had this long, carefully thought-out list…

 

Then came Reality and laughed in my face.

• What on earth made me think, for example, that I would be in any state to make progress with knitting my scarf?

• And what possessed me to bring along a pencil case with three kinds of pens and two pencils? As well as a clipboard with Sudoku puzzles… my kindle…  laptop… iPhone… chargers for all… a thriller… Not to mention essentials such as bathrobe, slippers, flip-flops, and some sweatpants and Ts in case I didn’t like those hospital PJs. 

I spent only 4 nights in hospital. But, as Hugh Laurie says in The Gun Seller (which I’d also packed),

“Time is a funny thing.

I once met an RAF pilot who told me how he and his navigator had had to eject from their very expensive Tornado GR1, three hundred feet above the Yorkshire dales, because of what he called a ‘bird strike’…. Anyway, the point of the story is that, after the accident, the pilot and navigator had sat in a de-briefing room and talked to investigators, uninterrupted, for an hour and fifteen minutes about what they’d seen, heard, felt and done, at the moment of contact.

An hour and fifteen minutes.

And yet the black box flight-recorder, when it was eventually pulled from the wreckage, showed that the time elapsed between the bird entering the engine intake and the crew ejecting, was a fraction under four seconds.

Four seconds. That’s bang, one, two, three, fresh air.”

 Time in hospital stretched out for me like… sorry, no good simile or metaphor comes to mind. Every night seemed interminable as I tried to get comfortable, despite the IV drip, the disgusting little drainage thingy, the dressing that was either too tight or too loose, and trying to decide whether to attempt reading, listening to music, or texting someone who’s awake in the wee hours (such as my daughter in Canada, bless her and bless the time difference.) Every day was divided into shifts according to the nurses on duty – the efficient-but-nasty one, the well-meaning but bumbling one, the always-late one.

Whatever I chose to do, I needed my hands. But when you’ve got an IV stuck in a vein, you’re a bit restricted. Within my short stay, the doctors had to move the IV to a different spot several times. Not fun.

 

I was lucky in that my husband and son came to visit, keep me company, bring me anything I needed. And I was in a room for two, which isn't bad, compared to the usual over-crowding in government hospitals.

 

Of course, all this is based on my blissfully limited firsthand experience. But I am pretty certain that, on the whole, my observations apply to patients and hospitals everywhere. 

 

By now I've been home for two months, and even though my surgeon thinks I'm fine in purely medical terms, full recovery is still somewhere in the offing. I'm aiming for it, laboriously chasing it, as I mutter under my breath the theme song of that 1962 French film, La Guerre des Boutons, where the youngest urchin keeps complaining (in French), "If I'd've known, I wouldn't have come!"