Thursday, August 14, 2003
LONDON AT 100 DEGREES (Summer 2003 review)
London was sizzling, record-breaking hot. But no complaining. I was a trooper and have the blisters from walking all over the place to prove it. Poor air quality was also record breaking -- with daily weather advisories warning people to JUST STAY INDOORS. Judging from the odorous sea of sweating tourists jockying for pictures of Big Ben, I don't think many heeded the advice. I figure in my walking around London’s midday, ozone-thin toxic haze for six days, I have probably managed to fast-forward my skin’s inevitable quest towards raisinhood by about five years. And I can now boast having Marlboro-Man lungs to boot.
THE UBIQUOUTOUS. London’s eye catching red telephone booth – not one of which I ever saw occupied the entire week I was there -- thanks to the even more ubiquitous cell phone. Someone needs to come up with a new purpose for these lonely red relics!
Double-Decker’s are still around although half of the fleet has morphed into sawed-off tour buses to accommodate hoards of sun-thirsty tourists too young to remember London’s pre-global-warming days when the city was actually known for rain and fog – not scorching heat.
The ever elegant London taxis, with their rounded rumps and black exteriors, are going rainbow! Sort of. Hunter green and deep burgundy are popular colors now. Or there are also a small percentage of drivers who are getting their cars painted bumper-to-bumper ad copy e.g. London Financial Times pink, or Laura Ashcroft’s red lips splashed on the door promoting Tomb Raider. Want to make a unique car statement in the States? Contact Car Bodies in Coventry, England and for about $55K (doesn’t include shipping), one of those very adorable cars can be yours. http://www.taxi-l.org/tx1.htm
Starbucks are everywhere and during the heat wave I was very thankful for them too. Deep freeze temperatures in every one thank you. But what’s up with the new phallic cups? Or maybe in the guy’s subconscious, they’re boobs? Whatever. Filled with an iced mocha-colored espresso latte, a straw stuck in the round hole in the middle of its clear domed top, there is definitely something sexually subliminal going on. Hubby thinks I’m crazy i.e. the domed top is just to make the customer think he is getting more and keeps the whipped cream from getting squished. Yeah right. I don’t believe for a minute that those Starbuck’s marketing folks didn't think about all this stuff when they talked about launching a new worldwide design for their summer drinks campaign. Just go buy an iced latte today and you’ll see what I mean. When did all of humanity take to nursing water bottles and suckling on straws in public all the time anyway? There is a doctor’s thesis in there somewhere…
CLOSED DURING THE DAY. London’s Eye, a huge Ferris wheel of sorts that offers panoramic views of the skyline, had to be closed all week. “Gee honey. It’s 100 degrees out. Let’s climb into a clear plexi-glass pod for half an hour until the kids get fried a nice shrimp-pink and fall over from heat exhaustion...” http://www.cityeventsonline.com/eye1.htm?afid=dhtd1
FASHION EYE SORES. For such a cosmopolitan city, London’s 2003 summer fashion was abysmal occasioned by a good-looking anomaly now and again. I think we all pretty much have the visual of the super-sized American tourist: white Nike sneakers and white Nike socks incredulously supporting 300+ pounds of congealed fat on which somewhere dangles a camera. Enough said other than that is most assuredly not a pretty sight in hot weather. Let’s move on. The English, French, and Eastern European men this summer were sporting the Robinson Crusoe stranded-on-an-island look replete with frayed Capri pants and hoop earrings. Thanks to the heat, they also had the, I’m-dying-of-thirst-on-my –stranded-island look too. The Italians are all sticking with their cornered niche on fashion: tight-fitting expensive short-sleeve t-shirt tucked into black cigarette pants cinched by expensive leather belt. And over-cool sunglasses.
The women were an utter disappointment. Turns out if you forget to stand up straight and suck in your stomach, those too-tight tank tops even make thin women look flabby (I’ll have to remember that). The Italian and African women saved the day somewhat – not because what they were wearing was that exceptional but because their graceful carriage lends itself to anything looking good on them, including probably, a burlap bag. Which leads me to a tip for American women: don’t bother spending a lot of money on an outfit if you’re going to walk like you’re trudging across a Prairie trail…
MUSEUM HEIST POTENTIAL. Next to the London Eye is the County Hall Museum which houses a really superb Salvador Dali exhibit – a rare collection of sculpture, etchings, lithographs, jewelry, glassware, and watercolors. I’m no thief but I do have an imagination. While resting from the heat for a bit (again no A.C.), I started to case the joint. OK, no security guards anywhere. The exhibit is situated on the first floor, about a five-foot jump from any one of the numerous gaping-open-wide windows facing the street below. Even if there was a surveillance camera I didn’t see, so what? With a convincing wig, quick hands, and good shock-absorbent knees, you could bag three or four of Dali’s watercolors in seconds, jump out the window, and be off in your get-away car. What you would then do afterwards I do not know.
BRITISH MUSEUM. Speaking of stolen goods, the British Museum has quite an impressive collection of plundered Egyptian artifacts including the Rosetta Stone. The visit to this museum as well as my visit to the National Portrait Gallery was in lieu of a visit to London’s hot-ticket Saatchi Museum; I just couldn’t bring myself to pay to see pickled sheep.
SOLD OUT. Manchester United David Beckham soccer jerseys Nr. 7 (I got the last one [for my son]).
HAD THE DOLLAR BEEN HIGHER. And me about twenty years younger, I would have liked a Tanner Krolle handbag. Originally an English saddle maker, Krolle has retro-fitted its business model to the 21st Century and now produces very beautiful luxury leather attaché cases, jewelry boxes, and handbags in attractive zippy colors. Maybe when my daughter turns eighteen I’ll get her one…
THEATER. Noises Off – a farcical funny play that’ll make you laugh a lot in a slapstick kind of way but won’t change your life one iota for having seen it other than you’ll be $70 poorer afterwards and a lot sweatier (no A.C.) if you happen to be in London during a heat wave. Prepare to have your pants or skirt sticking to your back upon exiting and under no circumstances wear linen (or risk looking like a walking accordion).
GOOD RESTAURANT. Quillon Restaurant at 41 Buckingham Gate, Tel 020 7821 1899. Just go. It’s very good Indian. But again no A.C. It’s a romantic setting particularly if you like your mate perspiring profusely throughout dinner.
IN THE NEWS. The Hutton Inquiry (David Kelly’s suicide). The Heat Wave. Fires in Portugal. Arnold Shwarzenegger...(the jokes are already coming in on that one what with my Schwarzenegger-esque Austrian husband...)
HALLMARK MOMENT. The elderly English couple having a picnic way down on the Thames, far from the tourists. He in a pale yellow short-sleeve dress shirt and brown slacks. She in a button down pink A-Line dress and sensible walking shoes. Between them on the bench a navy blue canvas bag – one which looked like it had shared many a picnic with them. She was taking out sandwiches wrapped in wax paper while he poured into small cups from a matching navy blue thermos (tea perhaps?). They each had magnificent white hair -- his parted on the side and styled a little longer the way English men seem to prefer. Hers swept up neatly in a bun. Judging by the lines on their faces, they looked like they had enjoyed a pleasant life together. Very quaint. Very nostalgic English.
London was sizzling, record-breaking hot. But no complaining. I was a trooper and have the blisters from walking all over the place to prove it. Poor air quality was also record breaking -- with daily weather advisories warning people to JUST STAY INDOORS. Judging from the odorous sea of sweating tourists jockying for pictures of Big Ben, I don't think many heeded the advice. I figure in my walking around London’s midday, ozone-thin toxic haze for six days, I have probably managed to fast-forward my skin’s inevitable quest towards raisinhood by about five years. And I can now boast having Marlboro-Man lungs to boot.
THE UBIQUOUTOUS. London’s eye catching red telephone booth – not one of which I ever saw occupied the entire week I was there -- thanks to the even more ubiquitous cell phone. Someone needs to come up with a new purpose for these lonely red relics!
Double-Decker’s are still around although half of the fleet has morphed into sawed-off tour buses to accommodate hoards of sun-thirsty tourists too young to remember London’s pre-global-warming days when the city was actually known for rain and fog – not scorching heat.
The ever elegant London taxis, with their rounded rumps and black exteriors, are going rainbow! Sort of. Hunter green and deep burgundy are popular colors now. Or there are also a small percentage of drivers who are getting their cars painted bumper-to-bumper ad copy e.g. London Financial Times pink, or Laura Ashcroft’s red lips splashed on the door promoting Tomb Raider. Want to make a unique car statement in the States? Contact Car Bodies in Coventry, England and for about $55K (doesn’t include shipping), one of those very adorable cars can be yours. http://www.taxi-l.org/tx1.htm
Starbucks are everywhere and during the heat wave I was very thankful for them too. Deep freeze temperatures in every one thank you. But what’s up with the new phallic cups? Or maybe in the guy’s subconscious, they’re boobs? Whatever. Filled with an iced mocha-colored espresso latte, a straw stuck in the round hole in the middle of its clear domed top, there is definitely something sexually subliminal going on. Hubby thinks I’m crazy i.e. the domed top is just to make the customer think he is getting more and keeps the whipped cream from getting squished. Yeah right. I don’t believe for a minute that those Starbuck’s marketing folks didn't think about all this stuff when they talked about launching a new worldwide design for their summer drinks campaign. Just go buy an iced latte today and you’ll see what I mean. When did all of humanity take to nursing water bottles and suckling on straws in public all the time anyway? There is a doctor’s thesis in there somewhere…
CLOSED DURING THE DAY. London’s Eye, a huge Ferris wheel of sorts that offers panoramic views of the skyline, had to be closed all week. “Gee honey. It’s 100 degrees out. Let’s climb into a clear plexi-glass pod for half an hour until the kids get fried a nice shrimp-pink and fall over from heat exhaustion...” http://www.cityeventsonline.com/eye1.htm?afid=dhtd1
FASHION EYE SORES. For such a cosmopolitan city, London’s 2003 summer fashion was abysmal occasioned by a good-looking anomaly now and again. I think we all pretty much have the visual of the super-sized American tourist: white Nike sneakers and white Nike socks incredulously supporting 300+ pounds of congealed fat on which somewhere dangles a camera. Enough said other than that is most assuredly not a pretty sight in hot weather. Let’s move on. The English, French, and Eastern European men this summer were sporting the Robinson Crusoe stranded-on-an-island look replete with frayed Capri pants and hoop earrings. Thanks to the heat, they also had the, I’m-dying-of-thirst-on-my –stranded-island look too. The Italians are all sticking with their cornered niche on fashion: tight-fitting expensive short-sleeve t-shirt tucked into black cigarette pants cinched by expensive leather belt. And over-cool sunglasses.
The women were an utter disappointment. Turns out if you forget to stand up straight and suck in your stomach, those too-tight tank tops even make thin women look flabby (I’ll have to remember that). The Italian and African women saved the day somewhat – not because what they were wearing was that exceptional but because their graceful carriage lends itself to anything looking good on them, including probably, a burlap bag. Which leads me to a tip for American women: don’t bother spending a lot of money on an outfit if you’re going to walk like you’re trudging across a Prairie trail…
MUSEUM HEIST POTENTIAL. Next to the London Eye is the County Hall Museum which houses a really superb Salvador Dali exhibit – a rare collection of sculpture, etchings, lithographs, jewelry, glassware, and watercolors. I’m no thief but I do have an imagination. While resting from the heat for a bit (again no A.C.), I started to case the joint. OK, no security guards anywhere. The exhibit is situated on the first floor, about a five-foot jump from any one of the numerous gaping-open-wide windows facing the street below. Even if there was a surveillance camera I didn’t see, so what? With a convincing wig, quick hands, and good shock-absorbent knees, you could bag three or four of Dali’s watercolors in seconds, jump out the window, and be off in your get-away car. What you would then do afterwards I do not know.
BRITISH MUSEUM. Speaking of stolen goods, the British Museum has quite an impressive collection of plundered Egyptian artifacts including the Rosetta Stone. The visit to this museum as well as my visit to the National Portrait Gallery was in lieu of a visit to London’s hot-ticket Saatchi Museum; I just couldn’t bring myself to pay to see pickled sheep.
SOLD OUT. Manchester United David Beckham soccer jerseys Nr. 7 (I got the last one [for my son]).
HAD THE DOLLAR BEEN HIGHER. And me about twenty years younger, I would have liked a Tanner Krolle handbag. Originally an English saddle maker, Krolle has retro-fitted its business model to the 21st Century and now produces very beautiful luxury leather attaché cases, jewelry boxes, and handbags in attractive zippy colors. Maybe when my daughter turns eighteen I’ll get her one…
THEATER. Noises Off – a farcical funny play that’ll make you laugh a lot in a slapstick kind of way but won’t change your life one iota for having seen it other than you’ll be $70 poorer afterwards and a lot sweatier (no A.C.) if you happen to be in London during a heat wave. Prepare to have your pants or skirt sticking to your back upon exiting and under no circumstances wear linen (or risk looking like a walking accordion).
GOOD RESTAURANT. Quillon Restaurant at 41 Buckingham Gate, Tel 020 7821 1899. Just go. It’s very good Indian. But again no A.C. It’s a romantic setting particularly if you like your mate perspiring profusely throughout dinner.
IN THE NEWS. The Hutton Inquiry (David Kelly’s suicide). The Heat Wave. Fires in Portugal. Arnold Shwarzenegger...(the jokes are already coming in on that one what with my Schwarzenegger-esque Austrian husband...)
HALLMARK MOMENT. The elderly English couple having a picnic way down on the Thames, far from the tourists. He in a pale yellow short-sleeve dress shirt and brown slacks. She in a button down pink A-Line dress and sensible walking shoes. Between them on the bench a navy blue canvas bag – one which looked like it had shared many a picnic with them. She was taking out sandwiches wrapped in wax paper while he poured into small cups from a matching navy blue thermos (tea perhaps?). They each had magnificent white hair -- his parted on the side and styled a little longer the way English men seem to prefer. Hers swept up neatly in a bun. Judging by the lines on their faces, they looked like they had enjoyed a pleasant life together. Very quaint. Very nostalgic English.
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