London Calling

Weekend in the city, here I come. Or there I went. For I made my way up to London Friday. Running away to the bright lights and swingin' vibes of the big city. Made it there in the evening and immediately joined a queue to buy Underground tickets, and then proceeded to wait there laughing and singing The Shins 'Australia' while a large Spanish family deliberated over what they wanted and finally paid an inordinate sum for whatever tickets they needed. Keep in mind, this day was one of those inexplicably wonderful days where the world turns in your honor, and every dark moment is made golden. So then I paid my own inordinate sum for tickets and shoved my way onto the next train. But I didn't take the available seat. No. Instead I had a romantic image in my head of standing there, swaying with the motion and peering over the top of a high-brow novel, Kerouac's 'On the Road,' at the crowds seething and surging around and past me. But I got distracted and started reading instead. And only just in time looked up to see my station. So then I came bounding off the train with some bizarre, unbridalled enthusiasm and a boundless energy and made straight for the middle escalator, the broken one, thinking I could race up it in no time and skip past everyone laughing. And I bundled onto it, negotiating the first half steps, which I'll add are a beyond treacherous mind-game, and then looked up to find myself on the longest escalator in the universe. I've since checked. Why oh why did I forget I was on the lowest level of the Underground? But it was too late and I plunged on, taking the steps two at a time and passing another wayward, struggling fool halfway up. And I tried to look nonchalant and relaxed and maintain that energy, but it was agony, and I stumbled off the apparently moving half-steps at the top with my legs shaking and crawled through the turnstile and out onto the crowded streets.

'Welcome to London,' they said down to me.