LONDON CALLING... I answering. No matter how late I manage to stay up on the first night after the SFO-LHR flight, I always jolt into irrevocable consciousness at around 5 am. Three hours later, I can't handle any more pretending still to be asleep, so I get up as quietly as possible (so as not to disturb the sleeping beauty) and head into the city-- just around the block. This is the usual "first day in London" pattern. It wasn't too long ago that the fantasy of drinking a latte in London at 8 am was not even dream-able, but the page has turned on London's famous Days of Bad Coffee (though the Days of Exhorbitantly-Priced Coffee are still with us.) The Blogs of War HQ, London, is now caffeine-ified at the Cafe Patisserie, located in the strangely socialist-realist Brunswick Center, near Russell Square.
I'm a California boy, and it always takes some time to come to terms with the freezing temperature. It's also hard coming to terms with the Guardian. Today's headline: "The Bin Laden video-- is this the clinching evidence?" (Grumble, harrumph, sarcasm, bravado, the "evidence" isn't what needs "clinching" my fine, pink, friends...) Regain composure. Start again. Sub-head: "US Leaders revolted by laughs and boasts." (Harrumph, grumble, damn-someone's-eyes, sarcasm once more, erupting into internal monologue in form of parody editorial: yes, curse those disreputable "US leaders" and their mawkish emotional reaction to boasting and laughing about mass murder, not like the glorious ambivalence of the Euro-intellectuals we are so desperate to emulate... Yankee sentimentality has now taken us one step further towards its inevitable goal of the total destruction of the universe through a combination of missile defense, nuclear holocaust, global warming, and free trade... thanks to you, Reverend Tony, the blood of the new American century is now on our hands as well, though not in our name...) Regain composure. Start again. No, I can't right now-- this is a two-Latte Guardian day, I'm just beginning to realize. Anyway, Moira Breen will no doubt take care of the details more effectively and much sooner than I ever could anyway.
The nice Pakistani news agent who sold it to me noticed my accent and asked me why "we" were looking for bin Laden in Kandahar when everybody knows he's alive and well in Golders Green. I think it was a joke. Or should I phone in a tip to the proper authorities? (Nope-- I'm pretty sure the timing of the tape's release means they've got him already.) I admit I'm a little jumpy. I've learned, though, that it's best to gird yourself with as much outrage and patriotic puffery as you can, preferably in advance of the first time you hear someone mention what a shame it is that the repressive US government won't allow Richard Gere to have more of a voice in American foreign policy...
Posted by Dr. Frank at December 14, 2001 02:42 AM | TrackBack