london: week four

When I published my week 3 recap, my friend Stephanie texted me and asked, “Are you getting any sense yet of what it would be like to live there?” I have been thinking about that question for the last week. My guess is that if we did live in London, we would not have an apartment so close to the craziness of Piccadilly Circus and would more likely be situated in a quieter neighborhood. My sense is that we would need to own a car but would rarely drive it within central London. After being here for a month, I am much more accustomed to walking on the left and looking for drivers on the opposite side of the street. I expect people to speak with a British accent and am surprised when I hear American English. Otherwise, my response for Stephanie is – I have no idea. I think I would feel out of place for at least a year not knowing if I’m reading cues correctly and feeling awkward when I make silly mistakes. 

We did have one interesting peek into the London lifestyle when we were invited for coffee with our new friends from our weekly Hyde Park padel clinic. It was a very kind gesture to have us over to their home and we were touched by the hospitality. This couple is from Ireland and Wales, have lived in England for several years and were eager to ask us about American politics. LIke other British people who have engaged us in conversation, they wanted to know more about the deep partisanship in America and what our thoughts are on the pending election.

If I was living here, I would have to figure out what to do with my hair. Apparently (and according to my stylist Camilla at Hari’s Notting Hill), London has very hard water which means it contains a lot of minerals like calcium and magnesium. I had to do a conversion from parts per million to grains per gallon so check my math but London water has 17.1 grains per gallon – which is “extremely hard” and on the same level as the worst cities for hard water in the U.S. including Indianapolis, Minneapolis, and Las Vegas. For those who have never despaired over their hair behaving strangely in a new city, hard water makes your hair dry, brittle and more difficult to style. Because I am hair styling challenged, an extended period of time with hard water makes me compulsively buy products that “may” counteract the effects of hard water and consider switching to a drastically shorter haircut which is unlikely to be very flattering.

During week four, we spent an entire day in Cambridge that was packed with activities. The impetus to go there was to have a real tennis lesson. As mentioned in week 2, real tennis is the predecessor to lawn tennis – the sport I have played since age 4 – and is played indoors with a hand made ball, asymmetrical wood racquet, sagging net and a court that can only be described as a mismatched pair of socks (photos below). Other than some of the scoring, there is not much overlap to lawn tennis and I’m not sure you could come up with a more niche, eccentric sport to pick up in 2024. It may come as no big surprise to those who know him, but of course, that is what makes the game so attractive to my husband who is desperate to find a way to pursue real tennis when we return to the Bay Area. With only ten courts in the US and the closest one in Chicago, it will likely translate into a frequently discussed, aspirational hobby.

While in Cambridge, we also went “punting on the Cam” which is a very slow boat ride along the river and a chilly but cool way to tour seven of the 31 colleges in Cambridge. My husband was immediately drawn in by the Cambridge setting and is now telling people that he plans to go back to school at King’s College to earn his degree “in being a gentlemen” (the founding purpose of the college). There is a healthy rivalry between Cambridge and Oxford, and our tour guide emphasized that Cambridge has 121 Nobel Prize winners over Oxford’s 73. Founded in the 13th century, I could not help comparing the 800 year old campus to that of my alma mater, UCLA, (founded in 1919 which is old in California years) or stop thinking about how different student life would be attending King’s College which is centered around an enormous chapel completed by Henry VIII in 1515. I am sure dorm life is just as fun but must lack several modern conveniences. I bet hair dryers blow fuses on the regular.

Our friends from New York, Julie and David arrived over the weekend and we decided to jump into a last minute show called, “I Wish You Well” a 60-minute musical about the lawsuit resulting from Gwyneth Paltrow’s ski accident in Park City, Utah. It is exactly as campy as it sounds and was not quite as entertaining as the other musical I saw last week “Why Am I Still Single.” This show from the creators of “Six” includes a super relatable number called “I got off the plane” about how all the two lead characters’ romantic expectations are entirely derived from “Friends” and the ultimate, fairytale ending when Rachel gets off the plane for Paris and commits to Ross.

Now that we have passed the mid-point of this trip, we are going to sprint to the end. We have friends from Boston, New York and the Bay Area visiting through the fifth week of our stay and then we have ten days mostly on our own. The more we reflect on the time we have already spent here, it feels like 7 weeks or even two months is the exact amount of time where you can be somewhere and still be experiencing that place as a tourist. Any longer and we would need to start building new friendships and settling in as a resident (which essentially means we would have to stop eating dinner out every night!)