com­pleat tourists

Let’s see: it all start­ed on Box­ing Day with the Big Bus Com­pa­ny Sight­see­ing Tour of Lon­don! From there it degen­er­at­ed (or was ele­vat­ed, depend­ing upon your per­spec­tive) into every tourist site in the greater Lon­don met­ro­pol­i­tan area. It’s like this: in New York, no self-respect­ing cit­i­zen would go to 1) the Empire State Build­ing, 2) the Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty, or 3) one of those tacky horse-drawn car­riages in Cen­tral Park. Like­wise, in Lon­don, no one who lives here does any of the touristy stuff. Suf­fice to say, if you have out of town vis­i­tors (espe­cial­ly who promise to make you mat­zoh ball soup), all such restric­tions fly out the prover­bial window.

As a con­se­quence, although I have always want­ed to do the tour bus thing, and my anti-tourist hus­band would not let me… Ah ha! Alyssa comes to town and I can do exact­ly what I please, because SHE wants to as well! So Tues­day morn­ing found us shiv­er­ing on top of the dou­ble-deck­er red bus, swan­ning our way through May­fair, Fleet Street, across Tow­er Bridge (to the accom­pa­ni­ment of the tour guide who threw out such gems of wis­dom as point­ing out the shop who sup­plies knick­ers to the Queen, and the Angus Steak­house, “who has got back some of its pop­u­lar­i­ty since it put the miss­ing “G” back in its name”). At the Tow­er we descend­ed and thought we’d vis­it the Instru­ments of Tor­ture and Doom, but the Tow­er was closed, since it was Box­ing Day. So off to the boat half of the tour back to the Hous­es of Par­lia­ment. Peri­od­i­cal­ly John, who had tak­en him­self off to do oth­er things, like stick hot nee­dles in his eye­balls, called to get an update on all the cool things he had missed. Steve passed the time on the boat ride back by look­ing at the same map we were all look­ing at and say­ing OUT LOUD all the things we were pass­ing. “That’s Black­fri­ars Bridge,” he’d announce, to which I could say only, “Oh, look, it’s Black­fri­ars Bridge on my map too.” This is the sort of broth­er-sis­ter­ly con­ver­sa­tion that makes get­ting me and Steve togeth­er real­ly annoy­ing to every­one around us, but we don’t seem to mind.

Then, let’s see, I had to point out all the things Steve was pro­nounc­ing wrong, and mak­ing us look like tourists (oh, wait, we were tourists, but as Avery always says, we don’t have to look like it). “If you say one more time how close your flat is to SOUTH-WARK Cathe­dral, I’m not mak­ing bolog­nese for you,” I said severe­ly, “say it three times quick, ‘Suth-ick, suth-ick, suth-ick.’ ” At that point Steve said just “ick,” so we moved on to annoy­ing each oth­er in some oth­er way.

Then there was the vis­it to the actu­al Tow­er of Lon­don itself, which I remem­ber vis­it­ing about three thou­sand times when we lived here 15 years ago, but since all my inter­nal brain ener­gy has since been replaced by an ency­clo­pe­dic knowl­edge of pic­ture books and recipes, was new to me. And ter­ri­ble fish and chips! And six­ty dif­fer­ent kinds of beers! And the only, accord­ing to Annabelle and me, bad hot dog ever invent­ed. But there you go. Tourist traps.

Mean­while we’ve been watch­ing the Christ­mas episode of our favorite show, “QI” with Stephen Fry. My favorite line? “When I was up at Oxford at Christ­mas we used to ring up Jesus Col­lege and ask, ‘Is that Jesus?’ and then sing, ‘Hap­py Birth­day to you…’ ”

And what else? The Chang­ing of the Guard, where I near­ly had to hire a chi­ro­prac­tor to help me recov­er from car­ry­ing Annabelle on my shoul­ders (John had Avery, to be fair). Why were they play­ing show tunes? I swear, not even show tunes, at one point the band was play­ing, “Peo­ple who need peo­ple… are the luck­i­est peo­ple… in the world.…” WHY? I final­ly decid­ed that because the Queen was at Bal­moral, all the Guards were just goof­ing off. From there we had lunch in Pic­cadil­ly, and then shop­ping at Fort­num and Mason, and then Steve and Alyssa went off to din­ner by them­selves and we hung out with Elliot. He is offi­cial­ly the fun­ni­est child I have ever met, with real­ly an adult sense of humor. And no, Steve, by that I don’t mean you have to pro­duce a dri­ver’s license to think he’s fun­ny. He’s just one of my favorite peo­ple, who hap­pens to weigh 40 pounds. He can be read to for an infi­nite amount of time, and final­ly suc­cumbed to “San­ta Mouse” and was down for the count.

Today was a rid­ing les­son for Fifi, final­ly. Annabelle came along to pick­up and got to hear Avery’s full-on Eng­lish accent, from when she’s been hang­ing with Eng­lish chicks. “There was a leaf-blow­ing machine, and the ponies were scared, but Smokey was the best pony EVAH.” Then home to feast on some of the Lin­colnshire Poach­er cheese Steve kind­ly brought to me from Neal’s Yard Dairy, yum yum. Then we part­ed ways: John to haunt the neigh­bor­hood of the house he wants to buy, Steve and Elliot to the Lon­don Eye, and us girls to the Six­ties Fash­ion Exhi­bi­tion at the Vic­to­ria and Albert, where I got all nos­tal­gic look­ing through the glass doors of the Nation­al Art Library where I did so much research, these 15 years ago. What fun that was.

Whew. I’m going to take a break, see what the chil­dren are up to, and then I’ll tell you about the real rea­son for the entire Sad­off fam­i­ly vis­it: the Mat­zoh Ball Soup… I’d tell you I’m just kid­ding, but Alyssa knows the truth. Actu­al­ly, here’s some food (so to speak) for thought: the whole song, and con­cept, “Make new friends and keep the old, one is sil­ver and the oth­er gold.” What does that mean, exact­ly? Because in the taxi on the way to the V & A, we ana­lyzed it. “Well, gold is more valu­able, so…” but that did­n’t seem right, because there’s no way a new friend like Becky or Anna is less valu­able than an old friend like Alyssa or Annabelle. In the end, I think, like a jew­el­ry box is more sat­is­fy­ing to open if you see both shiny gold and shiny sil­ver… maybe that works? Who knows. I just feel extreme­ly lucky to be able to show our old friends around Lon­don and see, around so many cor­ners, hap­py mem­o­ries that involve new friends. The best of both worlds. The glass-half-full approach. Because truth­ful­ly, in my dark Scan­di­na­vian heart of hearts, I’m glass-half-emp­ty. Wher­ev­er I go, there’s some­body to miss.