Mr. Piper goes to London Town

I haven't managed to get a post done from our recent adventures yet. In the meantime, please enjoy one from the archives, back when I was an international man of mystery

Circa 2010

AUSTIN PIPERS - INTERNATIONAL MAN OF MISERY

As part of a new consulting gig, I had to go to London for a few days of training and orientation. I was excited to go because it had been about 10 years since I had been there and, well, they have loads of pubs there. But I was a little out of practice in terms of my Jason Bourne-like ability to seamlessly blend into any culture the moment I touch down.

After a long overnight journey, I made my way to the little B&B squashed into a small, two-story row of houses on a tiny side street in Hampton Wick, southwest of London. I was jetlag spacey and there didn’t seem to be anyone around early in the morning who could help sort things out. So I just dozed off in their microscopic reception area while their regular guests had breakfast. I was starving but didn’t want to ask.

Finally, the proprietress arrived and informed me that there was no reservation for me (my client had said it was all arranged) and that they could only put me up for one night. “Don’t get too comfortable” she advised. That turned out to be easy advice to follow since the “Queen Victoria Suite” to which I was led was nowhere near big enough to fit Queen Victoria, or me. I walked into the room behind the innkeeper and had to place my luggage on the bed and then carefully back out of the room again, just to let her pass. As soon as the door closed I fell into bed and passed into a dead sleep. It was one of those beds you find in England where the bedding feels like it has been stuffed with horse hair or pine straw or something. It is more heavy than soft. It kind of pins you to the mattress in a not entirely unpleasant way. I tried to get up several times to fend off sleeplessness later that night, but I lacked the muscular strength to remove the bedding and just slipped back into unconsciousness.

Eventually, I came to and forced myself to go for a run. I ran south along the Thames and soon came upon Hampton Court Palace, Henry the VIII’s favorite palace and hunting grounds. It was impressive in a Palace of Versailles sort of way.

Trivia note: Hampton Court is where the original hedge row maze was built back in 1690. It’s still there, though it is less popular now due to the invention of cornfield mazes in the U.S.

Back in the Queen Victoria Suite, I began to take stock in my situation. First a shower. The water pressure was amazing. Typically, in England, I expect nothing more than an encouraging trickle to emanate from the pipes. This was a full-on fire hose. Unfortunately,

when I first spun the faucet, the shower head in my weirdly elevated and very narrow shower

box was pointed straight out instead of the customary downward direction. A massive torrent of water jetted out onto me and the bedroom carpet (remember, there is only one very tiny room, I am not in an actual bathroom). I couldn't reach the showerhead to turn it down without first climbing up a good 18 inches into this thing. So it took a second or two.

Still, I wasn't that worried. I figured this was par for the course in this odd set up and that it would dry out in due course. I was forgetting that this is England. Nothing dries here. Not in due course, not ever. It is a permanently moist country. This would be an issue later.

Next, I investigated the room’s equipment. In particular, I was going to need an iron to make myself presentable to my clients the next morning. I am a wrinkled mess in the best of times, and after a transcontinental flight with carry on luggage, this was not the best of times. The iron was easy to find. But damn if I could find any electrical outlets. Evidentially, all the buildings in London pre-date electricity and when it did come, sometime around 1990, they thought that one outlet per room would be more than sufficient. Also, it should be hidden from view, completely.

I finally found the outlet behind a table, unplugged the lamp that was using it, and attempted to maneuver the ironing board over to that area. But since there was only space for me or the ironing board next to the bed, I had to sort of kneel on the bed to iron. Complicating matters was the fact that the cord on the iron was a foot long. My ironing skills aren’t that impressive as it is, and with these impediments, I think I only managed to add additional creases and wrinkles to my already sad wardrobe.

It was a similar situation with the little hot pot for making tea and coffee. Same issue, the cord was a foot long and there was absolutely nowhere to set it up except on the carpet where I imagined I would quickly set the room, and probably the whole block, on fire.

Giving in, I set off into the village to try to find something to eat as I hadn’t had anything since the day before. By my quick count, I identified four pubs within a two block radius of my hotel. I love pubs and decided to visit all of them before making my decision. I started at the White Hart Hotel which had a pub attached and a nice outdoor seating area. The weather was mild and almost sunny so it was very pleasant. But the comely pub keep was a touch cold. I worried that it was because I was ordering wrong, or standing wrong, or committing some other cultural miscue. So I just had the pint and moved on to the King’s Head—but it was jammed with soccer fans all watching a match. Contemplating walking in, I was imagining the scene from An American Werewolf in London where they walk into the local pub and all the conversation and noise instantly stops as everyone stares at the newcomers. Too risky.

I moved on up the road to the Black Swan. They had stopped serving their Sunday dinner menu a few minutes before. I movd on to the last pub, Forester's, and began dreaming of some bangers and mash. They had stopped serving too. It was 5PM. I guess if you’re English, you know that Sunday dinner starts early and ends thusly. I just couldn’t quite get in sync with this country. Panicky with stravation now, I sprinted across the road to a Curry place that appeared to be open. I couldn’t understand a word my server said. I’m sure his questions were the usual questions one gets in a Curry place, but I couldn’t begin to guess, so I went with a largely random selection of yes, no, no, yes and absolutely. A meal arrived that was different than what I had selected off the menu, but I wasn’t going to starve this day.

Monday began with another missed meal. I just figured breakfast would run until 9 or 9:30. But when I showed up in the lobby at 8:30 the place was deserted again. Once at the client site, I was being introduced around and speaking with my contact person about the hotel situation. She indicated in a very loud voice for all to hear that she had been told by the innkeeper that there had some sort of flood in the room...? Uh oh.

Everyone sort of glanced uncomfortably at me. I was just hoping she wouldn’t bring up the state of my underthings that were strewn about the room as well.

The good news was that I got to keep my suite for the next 3 nights. They probably couldn’t

rent it to anyone else with the standing water situation. Later that afternoon, I took a long walk in massive Bushy Park. Bushy is adjacent to Hampton Court and still has a large herd of deer from King Henry’s original hunting stock. I wandered through the forests and thick waste high fens and had several very tense moments with the big bucks who were clearly in the fall rut. They would appear out of nowhere and be just a few feet away. It was so unnerving. I thought that at any minute one might come and thrash me to bits just for glancing at some of the female deer that he was courting.

Every so often one of them would let out a massive braying, honking, deer-mating

noise that you could hear for a great distance and would scare the piss out of me. I think it meant: “don’t even think about mounting that doe over there pal.” I moved on obediently.

The next morning at 6:45AM in London (I was still busy REMing on Eastern Standard Time), the fire alarm began blaring. Now I’m not one to take an emergency lightly, but I was very, very tired. So I decided to hope it would stop rather than get up. Seconds later someone begins banging crazily on the door, which due to the size of the room is quite literally inches from my head. Out I go into a cold, dark, damp street to await the arrival of the London Fire Brigade (it’s still called that) along with the other guests.

In the end, I never heard what caused the fire, but I suspect it was someone trying to make tea on their carpet, underneath the bed. Back in my suite, I saw that I had no shampoo. Having noticed some in the lobby, that I assumed it was complimentary, I ventured back and grabbed some, only to be fixed with daggers by the proprietress for nicking her little soaps. In shame, I was groggily getting ready for my day in the semi-darkness of the "bathroom." I grabbed my little travel tube of toothpaste and began brushing my teeth only to discover that I had actually grabbed my little travel tube of shaving cream. For two days after that I felt like I was sucking on a Draino-flavored breath mint.

My final indignity was later that morning. There was a big meeting with the whole company. As a new consultant, I was asked to introduce myself. However, it was very hot, humid and crowded in their small meeting space. I was on my 3rd cup of coffee and the nerves involved in this sudden request to speak generated an unbidden flop sweat.

“Hi, I’m the sweaty, starving Yank who floods bathrooms, steals soap, brushes his teeth with shaving cream, sets fires, and fornicates with the King's deer."

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