England and Scotland for fun
Day 1 - Saturday - England
Saturday morning I arrived at Gatwick at 7:20 a.m.,
stood in an incredibly long
line to enter the country (the "all others" line as opposed to the
"Euro Passport" line, which I stood in first) -- I'd thought it looked
like the Space Mountain at Disneyworld line, a woman standing behind me
told her friend she felt like she was standing in line waiting for a
ride, and shortly after that I heard a guy walking by me telling his
friend "but there's no ride at the end!" -- then took the Gatwick
Express to Victoria Station (staring out the window through the dreary
rainy morning at the countryside and small towns), and a cab (with a
driver who called me "luv" a lot) to Francesca's. It was after 10
a.m. when I arrived, so she had been expecting me for a while.
(The line wound up taking only 30 minutes, but it felt like an eternity
to be standing so long while I was exhausted from way little sleep and
lugging the luggage around.) I figured it would be a quiet day,
because Francesca had just returned the day before from a week home in
Sicily.
Francesca made coffee and brought out an assortment
of tasty almond paste cookies she'd brought back from Sicily the
evening before (some covered with sesame seeds, others with powdered
sugar or almond slivers, and other kinds), and told me about her travel
scare, where the Italian air traffic controllers had threatened to go
on strike beginning her on return day of Friday, and she'd panicked
that no one would be in London to meet me! Her good friend was in
Singapore, so she couldn't call her, so she called her cleaning lady
(who had a key) and begged her to come to her flat and wait for me, and
the cleaning lady agreed. But happily they called off the planned
strike (that's good). But then the coach (bus) people went on
strike, so she couldn't get to
the airport from her faraway home (that's bad). But her brother's
friend was driving home from work to the town where the airport was, so
he drove her to the airport (that's good). And she got back, and
all was well.
Francesca said I could call it and go to sleep
whenever I wanted, but she suggested I try to stay up all day and go to
sleep after 7 o'clock (which would hopefully get me on London time
faster). We spent the rest of the day taking an extremely
energetic walk to a little farmers market where she picked up stuff for
dinner, and her boyfriend Roger showed up a bit later and we had an
"Italian ploughman's lunch" lunch of cheese, bread, sliced tomatoes
with olive oil and fresh basil, olives (marinated by her mother in
Sicily), and fresh strawberries. (It felt like 4:30, but it was only
12:45 -- I didn't know if I was going to make it through the
day.) Then Francesca asked me if I'd seen The Interpreter yet, and said
perhaps we could do that this evening. (Yikes! A movie in a dark
quiet theater after 7 o'clock? I'd never make it -- especially a quiet
thriller.) I said sure, and we all went to Kensington, where
Roger got his hair cut, and Francesca and I picked up tickets for the
movie (reserved advance seating - so
civilized) and had tea and scones. Then Roger joined us, and we
went to the movie, where my head bobbled a couple of times from
exhaustion, but I actually snapped out of it and stayed awake through
the whole movie -- which is really saying something about the
movie! Then she asked if I thought I could make it through
dinner, and I said sure (Roger was really impressed with my stamina),
and we had little brick pizzas at a restaurant that was on our way back
to the car.
Then after dinner, while we were walking to the
parking deck, I was looking at Roger and Francesca as they were talking
to me, and behind them was the street -- giving me the perfect view of
a man being hit by a car! The car had been turning into a side
street, which the man was crossing, and it dawned on me that a sort of
bang noise I'd just heard was him being hit. I'd seen someone in
LA get hit by a car in a similar situation, and that person just sort
of gently got scooped up onto the hood and slide toward the windshield,
so I was expecting the same thing to happen. Instead, the man
went airborne backward, sailing into a sort of flip in the air, and
landed with a horrible Bam! onto
the sidewalk. I yelled, "Holy
cow! That guy just got hit by a car!" causing some people to turn and
look. The car had stopped -- and then revved up and speeded away,
going up the street it had just turned on to -- which, of course,
caused all of us to yell at it, with some people running after it to
get its license plate number. The guy driving the car continued
up the street, turning off his lights, and turning left at the top of
the hill and disappearing.
We all crossed the street to check on the guy and
compare notes for the police. I was shaking and felt sick at the
dread of what the guy was going to look like -- I didn't see any way I
was going to avoid seeing blood and broken limb. However, there
was no blood, he was sitting up, his left leg straight out and his
right pulled up like he was resting against his knee -- but he had an
egg of a bump protruding from his forehead where he hit the
ground. He looked to be in his late forties/early fifties, the
sort of timid slumping nice guy kind of a guy, extremely short hair
shadowing balding -- and obviously dazed. A woman was sitting
with him, checking on him while talking on the phone to the police
(others were cell phoning for help as well) and taking notes of what
eye witnesses were telling her, Roger giving her the make and model (an
unassuming gray/silver Renault Espasa) and others giving the first 4
digits of the license plate -- which the man corrected, because he'd
been staring at it as it drove away. I, still not believing his
leg wasn't pointing in the wrong direction in two pieces, asked him if
his legs hurt, and he said no, but his hip sort of did.
When the policeman arrived, he radioed in the info
on the car and took statements (I seemed to be the only one who saw the
whole thing, as everybody else said they'd only heard it -- another guy
said the car had stalled out on impact, and the guy had restarted it
when he was revving it and driving away). The victim, Tom, saw
the driver and said it was a man, and gave a bit of description.
Moments later, another police car came speeding by, going in the
direction of the car, and a couple of minutes later, another police car
with medical gear arrived to assess the situation (probably before
calling in the ambulance). The medic was checking Tom's neck and
spine while we were leaving, and Francesca later told me the man could
move his right leg, but said he couldn't move his left leg.
Needless to say, more excitement than I was
expecting for my first day.
England and
Scotland for fun
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