You remember Andrea, right? The lovely Londoner who knocked around with us in Newcastle the first day or two? Yes, her. She was to be my salvation. I had no place to sleep that final night before my flight out. Andrea had graciously offered me her apartment for that evening, and I decided to take her up on the offer.
It didn't quite work out that way, though. Jeff was in town. You know, my Canuck buddy? He had come straight back to London after Edinburgh and had been bumping things off his "must-see" list. He'd be taking a train through the Chunnel and into France in a few days. For now, however, we were briefly reunited: Andrea, Jeff and I. And how did we celebrate? Like any red-blooded Londoner would after the sun went down: at the pub, with copious amounts of beer.
I took the Underground from the train station into some dark, crooked, half-remembered borough of London; Gloucester Road, maybe. It's dim in my memory. The twilight was still dark blue. The canopies of the trees lining the sidewalks ('scuse me, pavement) were black silhouettes against it. My brain was in that "wow-did-I-really-just-do-all-that-and-am-I-really-doing-what-I'm-doing-right-now?" fugue. It hits me like clockwork, immediately after an adventure begins and right before it ends. We were nearing the ending, and the bittersweet taste of the moment was on the tip of my tongue. Try as I might with cider and ale, I could not dispel it.
Jeff, Andrea and I sat in some pub or other (I was done scribbling in my little red notebook) and had our last, desperate chat. I was vacillating between total exhaustion and homesickness and the desire to get back to the patch of sand I called home...and hiding out in Andrea's attic for a year and attempting to garner British citizenship. Over Jeff's half-finished plate of fish and chips, we discussed life, travel, careers, and the charming nature of Northeast England.
After a couple of hours, we said our final goodbyes to Jeff and caught a double-decker to Andrea's neighborhood. It was, by now, well after midnight. I was torn between staying at Andrea's and just going right to the airport and sleeping on the floor. I didn't want to impose myself upon her, and could not bear to see her charming flat; it would make leaving England too painful. So I begged off, and requested to be led to Heathrow. Andrea cheerfully complied, and after a whirl of tangled streets, glaring lampposts, foreigners from all nations, brightly-lit storefronts and crowds of drunken merry-makers, during which we switched buses at least twice, Andrea escorted me safely through the sliding doors of Heathrow Airport and said her goodbyes.
This was it. I was on the threshold. This building would take me home. Well, not literally, of course. But inside this building were the means to take me home: airplanes and other stuff that flew through the air at incredible speeds. That was my train of thought. My mindset was not the most lucid, as I've already pointed out.
And then came the most unpleasant night of any I had spent thus far in England: those six miserable hours I attempted to snatch some sleep in the main terminal of Heathrow. There were no couches, no chairs, no lounge, no quiet rooms, nothing. Even the benches had these bloody metal armrests between each seat. After wandering blearily about the ticket counters and closed shops for an hour, I gave up. I bent myself around the armrests as best I could, propped my head on my elbow, snugged my baggage as tightly to me as possible, and tried to catch some Z's. At this I failed, almost universally. The unfortunate S-position into which I was forced to contort my body was extremely uncomfortable. Compounding the matter were my bulky clothes, the unpleasant warmth and stuffiness of the terminal building, and the unforgiving hardness of the wooden seats. Sleep remained a lofty goal. I flip-flopped between unsatisfying catnaps and stints at the Internet consoles (which cost me more pounds than I care to remember).
It was with some base form of relief that six o'clock finally rolled around and with it, the opening of the ticket counter. I grabbed my boarding passes, negotiated security, and found my gate ("When you get a minute, your belt!" harped the security agent at the X-ray machines). Two hours later I was aboard the jetliner and ready to pass out.
There remains little to tell, dear reader. I disembarked at Ontario Airport in the good old US of A eleven hours later. Mom and Pop met me at baggage claim, practically carried me to the car, and trucked my limp carcass 50 miles through the Cajon Pass and back into the High Desert. I got home, slept for five hours, showered, dressed, sat down at the computer, and began to wonder how I was going to write about all of it.
And now, here I am. The drama's done. The tale is finished. The story's ended, two weeks shy of one year after it happened.
Whadja think?
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