Hypothermic in London

A tale of loss, the human condition and irresistable urges, all in beautiful London.

I love London. I've been to New York and LA, but London just cries out "me!" like no other. Everything a through-and-through urbanite like myself would want, without the loneliness and insignifigance I feel radiating from the other two. On the way back to Israel, my friend - we'll call him "Q", heh heh - and I had a 20-hour stopover there before heading back to the land where everyone's doing you a favor...

What would transpire in that time was completely unplanned, which is what made it so fun. Q and I showed up, met up with a friend of his - she was terrific to be with, a party animal yet somehow without an ounce of potentially offputting hedonism - hit some bars, met another friend and we were all having a great time until.. curfew hour came. 11 o'clock tick-tock, that was it! The bars shut down faster than government agency computers at 1 PM.

So, she invited us over to her place. We took a bus down near her area, turned some streets, and then walked down a row of identical-looking London red-brick houses, into one, up to the top floor, and into her apartment. At this point I feel I must point out that NOTHING HAPPENED, so all pervs can lay down their, ahem, arms. But it was still very enjoyable, the perfect end to our trip. We spoke late into the night on issues of punk, Israeli "legal alien" dilemmas, memories from the mother-land, and a fair share of politics in light of the new post-modern relativist thing going on. Sometime I've got to write my views on that. remind me. Riiight. Anyway, it gets time to leave. 3 AM, 4 hours to go to our flight, and we have to get back to our temporary pad, pack and catch a bus over to the airport. This is when things start going awry.

We step out into the cold, backtrack whence we came, and it hits me - I forgot my glasses at her place.

These are not cheap. and I need them. No problem, I figure, we'll go back and find her apartment. Easier said than done! We never took her proper address. There were around 10 apartments, and all I could remember was that this place wasn't one of the first two. So we're talking anywhere between apartments 3 and 9. It's freezing. To make matters worse, neither of us had the girl's number OR a cellphone, rendering any calls for help simultaneously useless and impossible. So, as Q paces to battle impending hypothermia, I run around buzzing top-floor apartments at 3AM. "Excuse me, sir, I'm sorry to bother you at such a late hour, but I've left something important in the apartment next door and for some reason they don't answer. If you could just buzz me in..." Must've been fun for them to hear.

4 buildings, three out-and-out curse-sessions, one classic "do you have any idea what time it is?!!", and an "I doubt that very much, the woman next door is very old" later, I finally hit the right button. Several times. Apparently this terrified the girls half to death and they greeted me with a knife and a carefully aimed deoderant stick. That's a stick, not spray, which they had planned to throw at me. this plan was based on the assumption that as a highly-trained lethal assasin, I'd be so overtaken by laughter that I'd be rendered instantly powerless.

So, time's a little short but we can now finally get on our way. It's freezing, sooo damn cold! figure we'll call for a cab. At a public phone, I dial the one number our now traumatized friend had given me, and the obligatory Indian/Pakistani answers. Many rephrases and clarifications later, he says the cab will be there in "10 minutes". The 20 that ensued were the coldest I've felt since my glorious army days. fun fun fun. The two of us could be seen hopscotching, running in circles and cursing at the top of our lungs.. this was straight out of "Band of Brothers". I call back and he says "oh, sorry, we don't have any taxis in the end", ignoring the fact I'd given him the number of our public phone, anticipating trouble... At this point we miss the once-an-eternity bus that could get us home. We resort to strategically placed ambushes round a major interesection to catch a cab, and *6* perfectly empty ones go by before one stops for us. Apparently nearly all cabs on the roads have actually been ordered by someone, in stark contrast to the rather anarchic taxi conditions back home.

But we're finally on a cab and, with a bit of luck, we're still ok. About an hour to take it home, have him wait while we pack faster than that one Indonesian who had an internet connection the day before the tsunami, and get the hell over to the bus stop. We pull up outside our apartment, and Q steps out of the cab. With a look of fierce determination, sweat on his brow and teeth clentched, he announces: "I'm gonna have to take a dump". Arguing was out of the question (you have to know the guy) and so it was that, with meter running, he spent some of the most expensive "alone time" in recent memory.

Since you're interested, we ended up taking the cab all the way to the airport - the map I used to try to find our bus stop was just plain defective, I tell you! - which cost us roughly half the GDP of a small Pacific country.

But I still love London.