Ahh...

I am here in the UK, and I’ve had a wonderful time. I really couldn’t be happier. Apart from getting the chance to see Stephen and Annette and their kids Tim, Oscar, and Esme, which is wonderful, it’s just a more comfortable place for me to be. It helps that I’m on vacation, so to speak, but just to be here is a huge relief.

On Tuesday night/Wednesday morning, I decided that, in light of the fact that I had to get to the airport at 2:45 in the morning, I should just stay awake. It would be easier, I felt, than only being able to sleep for an hour or so. I packed everything up, and tried to find enough things to keep me busy until the driver came to pick me up. He arrived at 2:15, and we struggled downstairs with my mountain of luggage. After stuffing it into the car and bidding everyone a fond farewell, we took off for the airport.

Upon arriving at the airport, I was informed that the ticket office didn’t open until 3 am, which wasn’t too bad, I only had about 15 minutes to wait. I was one of the first in line, and was promptly informed that my ticket was for July 20th, my original date of departure, and they had no record of the date change in their system. This is not what I wanted to hear at 3 in the morning. I carefully explained that my travel agent had changed it weeks ago, and that I had re-confirmed my tickets twice the day before. They looked at me skeptically, and a guy took off with my passport and a piece of paper that had my original reservation dates on it. I looked at his retreating form with a growing sense of unease, and figured that I had to call my travel agent somehow and either chew them out or have them talk to the people at Emirates Air. I finally got through to them, and as I watched the guy who, at one point, was holding my passport, walk aimlessly to and fro, I explained my predicament, emphasizing that it was 3 am, and I was spectacularly ill-equipped to handle the situation at my current level of exhaustion. The woman on the other end, Tammy, was very sympathetic, and informed me that the changes had been made and accepted by the Emirates computer system as of June 17th. We talked for a few minutes, and as I saw the shadowy figure of the man who formerly had my passport flitting past me once again, I leapt to my feet and told him that I had my travel agent on the line, and that the reservation had been made for some time, and that I wanted him to speak to her. He condescendingly informed me that it wouldn’t be necessary and that it was alright. I looked at him, barely controlling my rage, and said quite curtly “Unless you are now holding a piece of paper in your hand that says I am supposed to be on the flight that leaves in two hours, it is not remotely alright.” He took the phone and said “okay, okay” a few times, handed the phone back to me and wandered off. I asked the travel agent if she would kindly do me a favor and call British Airways for me to confirm that I wouldn’t have this same problem if/when I got to Dubai. She did, and at that point, there was nothing more she could do for me, as the people at the airport in Karachi weren’t all that interested in helping me.

The supervisor then came out holding the same piece of paper and said “but you were supposed to be on the July 20th flight.” So once again, I explained that I was originally booked on the July 20th flight, but it had been changed weeks ago. At this point, my voice was shaking, and I was seconds away from losing it. I said that I didn’t care if I had to buy another ticket, but that I had to get on that plane to Dubai. I really couldn’t handle the thought of being stranded at the airport, or staying in Pakistan one second longer. He walked away, and I went to go sit back down with my luggage. I like to consider myself a fairly rational person, but when I am greatly deprived of sleep, when I feel powerless, and when I am in the middle of a situation where things that should work just don’t, I have a very unfortunate reaction. I cry. I hate that I do it, but the frustration and fatigue and all of those things just build up and it’s just what happens. My options were crying, or flying into a rage and beating to a pulp all the condescending men behind the Emirates counter who didn’t seem to care whether or not I got on the plane. I, however, cared very much about getting on the plane. So crying seemed like the way to go, because at least you don’t get thrown in a Pakistani jail for crying.

The supervisor finally approached me and said that they would let me on the flight. I made my way back up to the counter, over 90 minutes after the first time I approached it, and they were printing out my boarding cards. I asked the man for my passport, and without looking up, he said “I give back to you before.” This was really the last thing, and I curtly informed him that he did not give me my passport, he gave it to someone else who had walked off with it, and that I wanted my passport back immediately. He then bothered to look up and asked someone else if they’d seen my passport, after some shuffling of papers, it appeared, and with that and my boarding pass, I took off for the immigration line before someone else decided to think of something that was wrong. I couldn’t help but think about how things in Pakistan often felt like they were so much harder than they needed to be. I made it through immigration and up to security, where they made me unpack the entire contents of my laptop bag, which I was happy to do if it meant that I could get out of the country faster. We finally made our way onto the plane, and I settled into my seat, praying that nothing else was going to go wrong. The plane took off and landed in Dubai two hours later, and even though I wasn’t at my final destination yet, I somehow just felt lighter, knowing that I didn’t have to go back any time in the foreseeable future.

I had slept for, at best, 20 minutes on the flight from Karachi to Dubai, and spent the rest of my time listening to the girl next to me tell me about her secret marriage and how she was going to go see her husband but her parents didn’t know and would never have approved. Very star-crossed lovers, and I was doing my best to be sympathetic and engaged, since it was an interesting story and all that, but my eyes were about to cross from fatigue. After landing in Dubai, I got to the British Airways counter and handed them all my baggage claim tags from Emirates, since they were unable to check my baggage all the way through to London. The guy there was very nice, but I had to go to a different counter to pay my excess baggage fee, which turned out to be $200. Yeeowch. But fine – I paid and made my way to the gate.

The flight from Dubai to London is somewhere in the neighborhood of 7 – 8 hours, and it was a fairly uneventful trip. I slept in bits and pieces, a few minutes here and a few minutes there. By this point I had already figured that it was going to be a fairly early evening for me. I got off the plane in London and headed to the immigration line. You don’t need a visa to enter the UK if you’re a US citizen, so I didn’t expect that it would take long for them to stamp my passport and have me on my way, which it didn’t. It did, however, take them a bit of time to get through all the people from Pakistan and parts of the Middle East who were in front of me, given recent events. However, people mostly kept their good humor, and as I said, it didn’t take long at all to get my passport stamped.

I made my way to baggage claim, and found two of my bags immediately. Since it had taken so long to get through immigration, most people had already found their bags, so the carousel was largely empty. The one thing missing was my huge suitcase. I waited a few minutes, thinking that, perhaps, it was at the bottom of the pile in the luggage hold, which I knew wasn’t the case, since I already had my two other bags. I rolled my trolley o’ bags over to the customer service counter, where the very nice guy from British Airways gave me the proper forms to fill out and looked through my baggage claim tags to see which one was missing. He was typing away at his computer and said “Mind you, luv, I’m not sayin’ it’s not ‘ere, let’s just have look. Oh. Sorry luv, it’s definitely not ‘ere, it’s in Dubai. Bad luck there.” I was, however, relieved that he could actually tell me where it was, so it wasn’t so much “lost” as “misplaced”. Misplaced is the far better option, if you have to choose between the two. After leaving contact information and all that, I finally went out through customs, with nothing to declare. I spotted Annette in the waiting line, and there was much squealing and hugging, as we hadn’t seen each other in years. She then told me that, since it had been so many years, she wasn’t quite sure if she’d know me when she saw me, and so had been smiling broadly and subtly waving at every tall woman who had walked out of the door for the last 30 minutes. She said that she was certain people must think she was a lesbian who went to the airport to pick up women.

We got to the car, and I briefed her on my little odyssey of the past 14 hours, and she was very sympathetic, bundling me into the car and saying that she was so happy to see me, and that everything would be sorted out soon. I knew it would, but it was nice to hear someone else say it. She also told me that Stephen had managed to get us tickets to see Guys and Dolls in London for Friday night, which I was SO excited about, I’d been wanting so very much to see it. She apologized for the dog hair in the car, and I said not to worry about it, pet hair didn’t faze me in the slightest. I asked how many pets they had and she said “one dog, four cats, and three feral children”. I adore Annette, and the way she expresses herself. Unfortunately, I wasn’t to see Stephen that night because he was stuck at work pulling an all-nighter. He’s a lawyer and this was much more a staple of his professional existence when he was younger. It’s not as frequent an occurrence, but it still happens from time to time. After the three kids went to bed, Nettie and I stayed up talking for a while, and by 10:30, it was getting painful to keep my eyes open. I went to bed, and managed to sleep until 8:30 the next morning. Given that, in Pakistan time, it was 12:30, that is very remarkable, particularly in light of my whole “I can’t sleep late, ever” thing.

Nettie and I planned to spend Thursday in London so she could show me around a little. We has breakfast with the kids, who are hilarious and energetic and very cute. Tim, the oldest, was the only one I had met, but he was a toddler at the time, so to say that he’s changed is an understatement. He’s a big fan of his X-Box, and asked if I’d play with him. We ended up playing some atrocious WWF game, and for someone who is generally lousy at video games and hadn’t played this particular game, I thought I did well. But Tim and I started to exchange some smack talk, with him issuing cries of “I’d never hit a lady, but you’re asking for it!” and “Oh! Right in the willy!” It was hilarious. He also kept either forgetting my name, or pretending to, and referred to me as “The Cousin”, as in “Oscar, come over here. You can sit next to the cousin.”

Nettie and I went in around noon, taking the train from where they live in the near suburbs, into Waterloo station. From there we took the Underground to Hyde Park and had a nice walk through the park. The weather was beautiful, sunny and mild, and we had a nice, relaxing walk. Hyde Park is quite large and there’s lots to see, including this lovely memorial fountain for Princess Diana. We made our way through the park, toward Harrods which isn’t far outside it, where we decided to have lunch. Harrods is an amazing place – it defies explanation. To say that it’s a department store doesn’t do it justice. Anything you could ever ask for or want in the world is available at Harrods. There’s a story that one time someone walked in and ordered an elephant, and all the sales associate said was “African or Indian, sir?” So we had lunch, as there were many restaurants to choose from. We then noticed that there was a shoe polish stain on Nettie’s shirt, because her nanny had decided to be nice and polish her bag. We went up to go buy her a new shirt, and ended up finding her a shirt, a sweater, and two jackets, all of which fit really nicely and looked good. (This is how you manage to justify a shopping splurge if anyone is interested.)

We came upon the hat department, and the first thing to know is that hats are serious business in England. They wear them to weddings, to social events, and they don’t mess around. As evidenced by the massive selection of elaborate furred and feathered creations on display. I couldn’t resist, and started to try them on, absolutely cracking myself up. Fortunately, Annette is of a similar mind, so we had a great time. You’re not allowed to take pictures in Harrods, so I don’t have anything to post, but just think “My Fair Lady” and you’ll get the picture. It’s amazing to me how much these things can cost – I didn’t see one cheaper than £200 – which is in the neighborhood of $400. There’s plenty of workmanship and detail involved, but I just can’t fathom that. We were weak with laughter by the time we left, and the sales woman looked slightly put out that we didn’t appreciate the majesty of the hats. But we had a great time, which was the main point. As we walked through, I spotted a beautiful jacket that I had no intention of buying (it was £640), but wanted to try on just for fun. It fit like a glove, as if it was made for me, which it really should for $1300. I sadly peeled it off and we moved on. After a little more wandering and shopping, we realized, with no small amount of surprise, that it was 6:30. We had been in that store, just the one store, for five hours and didn’t even notice.

We got home and all had dinner together, which was nice because it was the first time I’d seen Stephen since I got there. We had a really nice time catching up, talking about life and work and all that good stuff. Nettie and I were really excited, because we were to see Ewan the next night!!!

We went to go take Esme and her friend Jennifer to a kids show the next day – Postman Pat Live. Or, as Nettie says “Postman Bloody Pat”. It’s one of those kids programs that is, apparently, intolerable for adults. It was playing at the Richmond Theater, a beautiful, historic theater in Richmond, a very posh London suburb – home to Hugh Grant and other rich and fabulous people. I went to do a little shopping and explore the town, as I realized I had packed somewhat unevenly, and although I had plenty of clean underwear, I didn’t have much else. I picked up a black t-shirt, a white t-shirt, and a pair of jeans, figuring that would hold me until my bag resurfaced or I got home, whichever came first. Nettie and the girls got out of the show, and we all headed for the car. The girls loved the show, but I think Nettie is still working on recovering from the trauma.

We came back to the house and got ready to head into London to see the show. Stephen had gotten these ungettable tickets for a Friday evening, thinking that Ewan was least likely to use an understudy on a Friday night performance. We were chattering excitedly all the way in to the West End, and after making sure that we knew where the theater was, we went to find a place to have dinner. We settled on an Indian restaurant and had a nice dinner, watching the clock constantly for fear of being late. We arrived back at the theater and joined the crush of people waiting to get in. We quickly found our seats, which were in the middle of the third row – I don’t think I could have picked more perfect seats myself!

The show was amazing, the cast was fantastic, and it was just a wonderful experience, except for the cow who took frequent bathroom breaks and managed to tread on my toes each freaking time. Ewan was beautiful and fabulous and sang marvelously. Jane Krakowski, best known as the secretary from “Ally McBeal” was Adelaide, and with the exception of my friend Marsha, was the best Adelaide I’ve ever seen. (I may be partial, but I don’t care.) The choreography was also incredible - the whole production was just wonderful. Tim had begged us to try to get an autograph from Ewan because he’s an enormous “Star Wars” fan. We hadn’t planned on doing it, but as we were leaving, we noticed a clump of people standing outside the stage door and decided to wait for a few minutes. Of course, the longer you wait, the longer you’re likely to wait, because you start to think that just when you leave, the person for whom you’re waiting will come. A lot of the cast and crew made their way out, but it was clear that most people were simply waiting for Ewan. After a good 30 to 40 minutes, Nettie and I were laughing at ourselves for waiting out like groupies with another 15 or so people, and we heard a loud engine roar off down the street. A woman came over and told us that Ewan had just sped off on his motorbike, which was, to say the least, disappointing. I don’t know that I entirely blame him, as they were all working really hard and he probably just wanted to go home, but knowing that a crowd of people are waiting just to see you, to not even walk out and smile and wave at the crowd is a little sucky. However, I still lurve him…

Today was a relaxing Saturday with the family. I woke up to the delightful surprise of finding my missing suitcase sitting in the front hallway, totally unmolested. Hurrah!! Annette and Oscar went to a birthday party, and Stephen, Tim, Esme and I went to Hampton Court Palace, which used to belong to King Henry VIII, after he blackmailed Cardinal Woolsey for it. It’s an amazing place to look at, and the kids had fun running around. We went through the maze there, and I got to take some more pictures. Esme had emptied the contents of her change purse into her back pocket, and as a result, her pants kept falling down, which was actually funny to look at, as she periodically hitched them up in the unselfconscious manner of a three-year-old. It was quite chilly and began to rain, so we bundled back into Stephen’s new sports car and came back to the house.

It’s been so great to be here. I can really sleep, despite the pets and the kids and the general craziness of ordinary life, and it’s so nice to be around family and not worry about much of anything. I’ve had lots of crumpets (they are yummy things), and I love it here – if it weren’t so dang far away, I think I could easily live in London as well. Although, it’s horrifyingly expensive to live here, so maybe that’s a few years off. Or never. Well, I can always visit, just like with Paris. And who knows what will happen one day. But for now, I’m really looking forward to getting back to my actual home. Annette and I have an appointment at a posh spa called The Sanctuary on Tuesday, and I’ve got a day in London to myself on Monday. I’m so grateful for this time here, away from work, away from Pakistan, and almost home.