Fear and Loafing in London

vagabond, noun, adjective, verb.
noun 1. an idle wanderer; wanderer; tramp.
(SYN) vagrant, nomad, hobo.
2. a good-for-nothing person; rascal.
(SYN) rogue.

This led to an earnest discussion (as you do after a weekend booze-a-thon) of what constitutes an ideal partner, and what vagabonds might consider the ideal spouse. For prosperity sake, (and also because those of you hoping to get my thoughts on London have probably moved on by now), here is our 5 Point Checklist of Love, placed in whatever order the individual prefers.

Attractiveness: Includes physical, and sexual
Personality: Includes intelligence, humour, and commonality of taste (style, movies, politics, food)
Connection: Includes mutual recognition, understanding, and approval, i.e. two people who simply “get” each other.
Stability: Includes emotional, familial, financial
Potential: Includes long-term viability, sacrifices and compromises

Or, SCAPP, if you were watching Countdown, which has been running five days a week on British television for twenty years, with the same hosts! Apparently Carol Vorderman, the Vanna White of the show, has one of the highest IQ’s in Britain! Anyway, there was hardly a moment this weekend when my hand did not have a cup of Pimms and lemonade, sprited up with some fresh mint and soft strawberry. Consuming large amounts of the ultimate English summer drink, I developed an upper crust English accent; the way one might develop the plague in London, 1662.
“Thing is chaps, I have met several lovely ladies who have passed the SCAPP test with flying RAF colours, and yet, here I am, with, dare I say it, you losers.”
“That’s because you’re a good-for-nothing person, a rogue, an idle wanderer,” says Gus, or at least he would have, if he knew the definition of vagabond I just stole from my dictionary. Vagabonds of the 18th century encompassed freethinkers, travelers, thieves, artists, madmen, witches and poets - basically, many of the same people who had hung out at Fruitstock that afternoon. SCAPP remained a topic of conversation until we realized that we had to get back to zone 6 with a dodgy cab, which Minesh expertly negotiated (the driver worked in IT and drove like a high speed processor).

Siv Wonder is having a blinder! We’re in the hopelessly overcrowded and understocked Green Man Pub on Great Portland Road, and together we start grooving to our own version of Ebony and Ivory. Everyone’s in stitches, except “Dino213b”, who is most likely filling out an online form for a penis enhancement cream in his mom’s basement. It takes us a fair while to get home, where six of us are crashing in Cookie’s tiny one bedroom apartment. Siv has passed out before the kettle is boiled, and everyone is completely exhausted from a day of loafing. Tomorrow, we’d be going back to Regents Park for a further day of idleness, as befits our vagabond status. On the telly, the remote stops on the very serious documentary series, The World at War, which happens to focus on the London blitz. In light of being in London, and on the latest mess in the Middle East, I was riveted. Did you know that Hitler’s Luftwaffe bombed London for over 70 consecutive nights? Did you know that English howitzers were powerless to defend the city? 40,000 people were killed, including 3000 people in just one, awful night. It’s a wonder that anything survived, from St Paul’s, to the Tower of London. When Churchill said, “We can take it!” the people pulling their dead from the rubble were not so sure. The English were all but defeated, but Hitler strategically miscalculated and chose to focus on Russia, where the harsh winter ultimately defeated his armies, as it had done to Napoleon’s forces over a century earlier. Click. Channel 82, Sky News. Over 450 people have been killed in Lebanon after four weeks of Israeli bombings, and a dozen or so in Haifa from the indiscriminate rockets of Hizbollah. A horrific figure, but compared to the carnage of war six decades ago? Well, let us hope Beirut recovers, and Haifa recovers, and we recover, and Israel finds peace with its neighbours. That’s’ all we can hope for.

I’m 40,000 feet above Baffin Island en-route to Vancouver, and my explanation of why I’m not writing a report this week seems a little silly now. All I can say is, there’s no place like London, and there’s nothing like good friends, family, and the passage of time to make you realize it. See you in Montreal.

BA 085
Seat 35F

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