Heathrow Airport has many, many ways of letting you know that you have finally arrived in London, the center of the civilized world:
After the required trip to the Toilet (also known as Washroom in Canada), I take the Queen Elizabeth to downtown, a very modern line: an electronic wall of ever-changing ads and information minds the gap between the door and the platform, and when the doorbell sounds and the doors slide open, you feel giddy, like a kid who’s just discovered that his toy truck’s wheels can actually turn for real.
I suppose, being part of the Commonwealth of nations, London and Vancouver share many things in common, but they were not immediately apparent to me until I enter the train and see the familiar checkered blue seat cushions, looking exactly like those in Translink buses and Skytrains.
Queen Elizabeth pulls out and I look out the window. The scenery leaves me breathless and almost in tears: warehouses and buildings and trees dappled in sunlight – looking exactly like, well, just about everywhere else.
But the mundane acquires a whole new layer of significance once you put Bronski Beat on top of it all.
Run away run away run away run away run awaaay…
What the hell are you running away from?
And why does it feel this good?
At this point, I am excitedly messaging Stella, my friend and former co-worker who has agreed to host me for a few days. She directs me to get off at Liverpool Street station and take another train to Bethnal Green. I do as instructed and follow the signs to the London Underground, walking through a rabbit hole of tunnels, escalators, and more tunnels, burrowing ever deeper below the known earth, making Lewis Carroll very proud indeed…
I see circles in blood orange, the same shade on the carriage…
Welcome to Hell, erm, the Tube! Built in 1863. The oldest underground system in the world, still working, still as hot as ever.
The passengers are hot. The British don’t have bad teeth at all. Granted, no one’s smiling, but I can’t fathom why anyone wearing waxed Barbour jackets and fine brogues would ever let their teeth go bad. The ladies’ lashes are as long as the sky. The men are looking straight out of Savile Row. I’m quickly smitten with the guy in front of me because of the way he’s reading his pocketbook: so casually, so matter of factly, the read pages folded carelessly into his right hand as he flips over the next one.
Five leaves left.
I have tried my utter best to dress up for London: a black vest on top of a white cotton long sleeve polo shirt, tucked in and belted on flared designer jeans, until I realize this is exactly how the theater ushers at The Prince of Wales look. I smile at Allah cleverly poking fun at my fakery.
I won’t mind looking at you heroically holding in your bowels and calmly directing you to the washroom, err, toilet. And when the deed is done and you are back, I don’t mind whispering in your ear, not just yet, Act One will be over in a few more minutes.
Not just yet.
I emerge onto Roman Road from Bethnal Green, and I imagine this is same road that the ancient Romans once trod upon. There is a church, a Buddhist center, Indian restaurants, a nail salon, a perfumery – all on the same road. Inner roads of cobblestone. Nothing English about this, I see this chaos all the time back in my East Vancouver hood. Where is the semblance of Stonehenge? Where are those Druidic headstones at? Isn’t England legendary for preserving everything? But there is nothing extraordinary here (not yet anyway) except the weather, which is quite unexpectedly cold, and I am chilled despite wearing my waxed coat and my theater usher costume.
The phone, as well as my gut, tells me I’m close to my destination: a couch in the living room of an East London flat. I ring Stella, and inform her I’m on her street. A bearded English guy standing around in the corner has been eavesdropping warmly: number 8 is that door to your right, just ring the bell. Stella has already come out, all smiles, to let me in. It is the defining moment of my Day One: Filipino sunshine in a cold place.
Also – my first sighting of a London flat.
The door is painted a deep electric blue, one of many in a red-brick building. Then there is another door to the right. Then a mud area, coat closet, a foyer, and more doors. Doors, even when the place is small. Not at all like our Vancouver condo, one door through and you can see it all, including me wrapped in a tiny towel running around. Ah, the English and their talent for regimenting privacy! I’ve come to a place where boundaries are a way of life.
Stella takes me to the living room, and I have arrived at my true destination:
Elizabeth
Has been my friend since 1994, when we joined a sorority back in Manila. From the same college/uni. Majored in Broadcasting while I took up Journalism. I was there before she became All This: an accomplished Business Development Consultant for a global company; a partner to my former co-worker Stella, who is a self-confessed Anglophile from a respected artistic family north of Manila. And Elizabeth was also there before I became All This: a novice Couchsurfer well on her way to becoming an Accomplished Couchsurfer.
Beth and Stella moved to London three years ago for lesser drama and greener pastures, and their work visas have just been extended. I am giddy for her success. Despite it all, she lives simply. Their flat is unadorned, but their couch is magical. It becomes a bed at night, and the living room where it is has perfect heating, with a cute kitchenette. In a day or two, I will let a dignified looking sixtysomething man named Peter into the flat and exchange a few words as he attends to a faulty valve in the kitchenette.
The hospitality she and Stella extend is legend. This is why they have many, many friends, and they are fiercely loved by them in return. How was your flight? Do you want anything to drink? Later, when I get sick (there is a bug going around and the temperature has plummeted), Beth and Stella throw open their medicine cabinet in my face and I help myself to the buffet of paracetamol and codeine.
Through Beth, I come to know London as:
- Salt beef bagels with gherkin obtained after lining up at the jampacked Beige Bagel and being told by a character straight out of Downton Abbey – what can I get you, love?
- Vintage markets and record shops (Rough Trade) along Brick Lane;
- the mosque at Whitechapel;
- the red double-decker 8 bus that stops at Morpeth St; the hijab-wearing Indian lady with gapped teeth and her gangsta-looking husband with a silver canine tooth sitting across from me;
- uniform-looking council houses (supportive housing in Canadian lingo);
- tube rides to Liverpool Street, Tottenham Court, Lancaster Gate…and the long escalators where everyone appears comically slanted;
- Trafalgar Square: Poppies Fish and Chips for dinner, Caffe Concerto for dessert
- Sunday roast at Hawksmoor Seven Dials at Covent Garden, a dungeon turned restaurant;
- Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, London Eye
- Savile Row
- Stella and her English lore about a ubiquitous street sign which the Duke of Westminster had commissioned some artist to create in honor of his great love, Coco Chanel;
- The ancient River Thames, which has seen it all: plague, fire, famine, feast. And now, me and old friends standing around and feeling a great kinship with all things past.
The mundane acquires a whole new level of significance once you put Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt on top of it:
Time will make amends…
Here’s to old friends
Shahanni
Has been my sister since 1982. The youngest, most sensible and funniest sibling I have. She, her husband Eric and their son Enzo are in London to celebrate Enzo’s 24th birthday and their 20th wedding anniversary. She is my Day 2, my next destination.
She was the one who turned me on to this vacation in the first place, and is guilt-tripping me now for having too many friends in London to see. “What ‘me’ time are you talking about?” she says upon seeing my color-coded items in the itinerary. “You are spending time with ME!”
I take the train to Paddington, our meetup location, and I gasp as I emerge onto the station. People everywhere, the sound of international trains pulling out, cafes and Saintsbury and Marks & Spencer and dizzying human traffic…
And Paddington himself, mad hat on, frozen in time. Travelers are recognizing him and taking photos.
We take the train and emerge onto Kensington Gardens, where I am due for another rendezvous with a friend. Hanni treats me to avocado and toast at some café. Swans and ducks are floating carefree in the man-made pond. Hanni marvels at how white and clean the swans are as she holds my hand. I take dramatic photos of her and her husband Eric looking at the birds, and their son Enzo photobombing the whole thing.
With Hanni, I come to know London as:
- Carpeted rooms and authentic fireplaces (since decommissioned) in royally white Victorian buildings subdivided into smaller independent hotels;
- Victorian buildings of practically the same style and color lined up along Sussex Gardens close to Paddington station. Your hotel’s street number will save your sanity (and precious time), so remember it.
- Warning signs inscribed on the pavement – Look To The Left; Look To The Right…
- Sisterhood: while perusing a slim volume at Rough Trade, she offers to buy it for me and I let her.
- West End musicals: Book of Mormon, Phantom of The Opera. Loved the former, slightly underwhelmed by the latter. (Shoutout to Nate Kwon for the free tickets to Book of Mormon!!!)
- Free meals: pasta, drinks, Nando’s Paddington is the shit! The chicken liver is awesome!
- Immortal love for family. Love you my Hannitotz!
Mary Grace
Year 2000, at a writers workshop in a scenic town north of Manila: I meet this classy, deeply intelligent bilingual poetess. Introduces me to Mary Oliver, Louise Gluck, and the very Virginia Woolf art of keeping a room of one’s own in your interior life. She and I have since been witness each other’s lives in one of the strangest and most mysterious ways possible, and my trip to London will never be complete without a pilgrimage to her and her current life.
After brunch at some tony place close to Kensington Gardens, she takes me to northwest London and to her home to see her family and experience a few hours of glorious English countryside.
Mill Hill is postcard pastorale, complete with ponies and cows grazing on windswept fields. Locals love taking long walks on the dirt path that circumscribes the whole field. This is as close to Downton Abbey as I can get for now.
A lifetime ago, Mary Grace – I know her better as Jing – had a house right next to a river. She said I could spend time there if I needed to get any writing done. Now, she lives in a quaint little cottage on this hill, and no other place could possibly be more ideal for a writer’s retreat. What a dream.
Through Jing, I come to know London as:
- a world of possibility, where one can start over and be successful;
- redemption via art every single day. Museums are free for everyone to visit. I see JMW Turner’s paintings up close at Tate Britain – his unfinished ones are the best: spectral, spiritual and breathtakingly genius!
- Where Fame goes outdoors and no one minds, or at least tries not to (Ric, Jing’s hubby, ran into Paul McCartney once);
- Art, art, and more art: Jing takes me to the Delaroche mural at the British Museum and points out the beatific expression of Lady Jane Grey in the hands of her executioner, in stark contrast to the epileptic fright of her handmaiden beside her.
- A nursery where you can pick dahlias for 60 pence and have coffee or tea after;
- Murphy’s dark beer, tasting like caramel, a clear second to my first love Guinness but by no means unspecial;
- Love in many forms: her daughter Savvy naming flora and fauna during our long walk and pointing at the stand of brambles where she picked the berries she made into ice cream on her birthday.
- Twenty seven thousand steps that day. A delicious kind of ouch.
MUMMY NIEVES
Year 2000, Manila. The world overcame the Y2K bug, internet was booming, and a small independent jazz label from England arrived quietly in the Philippine music industry.
I was a music journalist making my own music, and wanted an opportunity to record. I did it the old-fashioned way – by applying! A woman named Nieves Pascua Bates requested a showcase, and I performed a short set of originals for her at a club in Eastwood in Manila. After that gig, she gave me a contract to sign! Officially, her British husband, trumpeter and jazz producer Alan Bates (who personally knew Thelonious Monk, Bee Gees’ Andy Williams, Clint Eastwood, etc) made the dream come true, but I really think Mummy Nieves extended a much bigger part of that hand to me and many other Filipino artists on the label’s roster. I went on to record a full album and an EP under my stage name Isha with a handful of amazing musicians. I didn’t really know what I was doing: I was just very, very, very lucky.
The label, Candid Records, was a lone wolf in an industry that was loud and masa-driven. Its footprint is still felt in the lives of its artists: the impossibly talented singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Mishka Adams is still making her mark in Buenos Aires right now (look her up!). The label has since been sold to an American company, around the time when Alan became unwell. When he passed away in January 2023, Mummy sold their home and moved to a smaller house in the same neighborhood in Richmond upon Thames. A bit of sunlight is visible when we cross the Hammersmith Bridge going into her home, but the weather turns later in the day. I swear: even the quality of the rain is nothing short of cinematic.
The highlight of our evening was a flash mini-gig I take on at the world famous King’s Cross St. Pancras station, which has seen surprise performances by Alicia Keys, Rod Stewart, Elton John, Jools Holland. No more time for false modesty: I’m pretty paking good at playing the piano too, you know!
Through Mummy Nieves, I come to know London as:
- Long walks everywhere;
- Sky: an impossibly cute little terrier who latches on to me right away;
- Where Silence is both courtesy and currency;
- Where people come and go: Mummy has been travelling the world quite a bit. She was just in Malta before we met up.
- Survival of the fittest: Mummy is so strong and healthy for her age, and was constantly outwalking, outpacing and outclassing me on our long walks. Cheers to your continued great health and happiness, Mummy!!!
PEARLSHA
Makes a wish and speaks it aloud.
I’m going to London.
And just like that, she gets her wish. Because the desire has emanated from the deepest part of her heart. She has never listened to her heart that way before. Her only regret is she didn’t act on this sooner.
Photo: Enzo Garcia
I walked with this woman for a very short time on this trip. I think I will be walking with her a few more times over the next few years. I can feel how deeply she wants this: listening to the rain fall on the pavement; to her breath as she presses her body into the headwind; admiring the Victorian houses, the insignias on lamp posts, the cobblestone roads; experiencing the punk rock velocity of life inside Underworld in Camden Town as she watches English youths mosh and break their knees to the hell-raising music from Morn and Lip Critic (the band pauses their set to announce someone has been hurt and must be taken to the hospital); feeling the mosh pit throbbing in sync to her frenzied heartbeat. I am beginning to understand her, and I am confident that I will eventually grow to love her more, even though she is such a drama queen. “You have too many crosses to bear,“ her wise older brother told her recently, and I am inclined to agree.
I am trying to grow an armour for her, a sheath for her vulnerability. These trips on her own will make her stronger and wiser. I know it. I feel it. Words end where wisdom begins.
And the things she’s seen!
Thine Self, who art in Thou
Hallowed be Thine Aim
Thy Kingdom Come
Thy Will Be Done
On Earth as it is in Being
Give Thyself This Day
Thy Daily Bread
And Forgive Thee
For Thy Trespasses
As Thou Forgive Those
Who Trespass Thee
Do Not Lead Thyself into Alienation
But Deliver Thee To Love
Praise be To Allah for His Words
