British History is a whirlwind of pageantry, poetry and splendid architecture. This is all readily available, even to to those who may be allergic to Chaucer or Milton, through the romantic novels of Phillipa Gregory and in movies.
Did you see Richard the 3rd? Shakespeare in Love? Elizabeth? Brideshead Revisted? The Queen? If so there may be no need for you to actually visit the National Gallery or read Boswell or Lord Byron at all. Or see London for that matter. You will get as hooked as I am by those incredible British.
Richard III
Shakespeare in Love (Miramax Collector's Series)
Elizabeth (Spotlight Series)
Brideshead Revisited
The Queen
Despite an unfortunate propensity, a few centuries ago, to chop each others heads off and burn each other at the stake, these people have evolved into a very good humored, fair minded sort of folk. Noble, forbearing, impeccably well behaved, and kind. You have to like them.
To me, it always feels as if the British are more alive than those of us who muddle through our exhausting lives looking for parking spots, paralyzed in traffic jams, standing in the checkout line at Walmart, staring at HDTVs and watching the rapid deterioration of our ticky tack houses in suburban USA. Well for one thing, the British talk so beautifully they can make even dreary, everyday events sound so much better than we can.
Even though, if you scratch the surface of London, most of the British live in the same flimsy houses we do, park in the same endless parking lots, and stand in line for the same cheap goods from China at the same universal stores as us, and pay more for the privilege. They only appear to be having a deeper drink of life than us because they have that evocative history, that sharp conversational wit and,I think,those charming accents.
Diva and I have always been favorites as speakers on the British Rheumatology Circuit, even though we are classic examples of the unevolved American: tactless, relatively inarticulate, flamboyant and gauche. But the British people love theatre. And theatre we do provide, wherever we go. Even if they are too respectable to behave like us, they really do admire us.
Here is an example of the cultural divide that unites in mutual admiration: One time, my friend Cowboy took me to see a Flamenco guitar dancer in London. Cowboy is a prominent, internationally respected lupus researcher with an uppercrust British accent worthy of Jeremy Irons (the actor, not the rheumatologist) in “Brideshead Revisited.” Cowboy is, in fact, quite similar to that character, being an overeducated, overachieving middle class soul with flashes of brilliance.
In fact he claims to be a nice Jewish boy from the East End. But, you may wonder, where did he get his effortless, authentic sounding Oxford accent?
That’s easy. He got it at Oxford. British society is very fluid and democratic even if everyone can’t be royal. If you are Asian or African or Jewish you can get to anything but…..as long as you go to one of the better universities so you can get the accent right.
There I sat in the middle of London in some 400 year old concert hall, listening to the bewitching melodies of a Flamenco guitar and watching a haughty young Spanish beauty billowing with ruffles throw herself around the room, tap dancing and clicking her castanets at ninety miles per hour with a stern expression on her face.
The music got faster and faster and she looked meaner and meaner, while at the same time, the undulations of her body over the tapping high heels grew more and more sensuous.
I think she had glitter around her eyes, because they sparkled like crazy. She personally stared down every man in the place, one by one, while tap dancing away with a dizzying syncopy, pausing only briefly for a toss of her body this way or that way, landing in physiologically impossible back bends which would tip her size D cups up towards the ceiling.
While she continued to sneer and tap dance without a hitch.
It was hot!
I found myself doing what any normal red blooded American who has ever been to a rock concert or a Flamenco performance would be doing, tapping my feet, swaying from side to side and snapping my fingers.
Beside me Cowboy sat perfectly quiet and still.
On the other side of him some other British person sat perfectly quiet and still.
Around us the entire audience sat perfectly quiet and still.
They were all being polite. Attentive. But the performance seemed to leave them cold. I looked curiously at Cowboy and he gave me a little sideways smile, without moving anything else, not even his neck.
I stopped snapping my fingers, but there was no way I could sit as still as the people around me. Embarrassed at first, I tried to tone down my swaying a little, but as the guitar and the lady got hotter and hotter it really got to me, and....
....my soaring spirits were merging into the magical music to the exclusion of any mindfulness for that permafrost audience surrounding me like statues. Or gravestones.
By the end of the performance, the guitar players fingers were flying over his strings with an unbelievable degree of complexity, creating intricate cascades of tunes within tunes, while the Flamenco dancer went into a red hot frenzy of tapping and bending and sneering.
Then the music stopped and she froze, holding a pose so unlikely that it would send any normal human being crashing down to the floor.
There was a deadly silence, while I pondered whether it would be rude for me to clap. I felt badly for these gifted performers who had just played and danced their hearts out.
Then suddenly everyone around me was rising to their feet with a roar of appreciation, whistling and clapping and yelling “BRAVO!” and “HUGH!” or something like that.
After what felt like ten minutes of standing ovation, when things had finally started to settle down, Cowboy leaned over to help me with my coat and said, mildly, “That was a quite a good show, wasn’t it?”
Masters of Flamenco Guitar
Flamenco Guitar Music of Ramon Montoya & Nino Ricardo
Flamenco Is Hot! - Campanilleros
Flamenco: You Can Do It! - Sevillanas
Which, I think, explains the English. It is not so much a natural reserve as it may be a little door that they keep closed during most of their stressful, overcrowded days, holding their raw emotions on lockdown during their commutes, while queuing in their checkout lines, or while a performance is in progress. Maybe they are worried that if they don’t keep the brakes on most of time they might start hanging and burning each other again.
But they can and will bust open the little doors in their heads at socially appropriate moments, to let off some steam or show appreciation to the Spanish sensualists they can never be. It makes you think they must all be very exciting in bed, though doesn’t it? Once the lights are off?
Cowboy at that time was the leader of SLAG which stands for Systemic Lupus Activity Group. This group is made up of 30 Lupus Doctors from Asia, Europe, North and Central America who meet twice a year, somewhere on the globe. Each member has a large clinic full of lupus patients to whom they have dedicated their entire careers, and we meet up in order to argue about how to measure lupus improvement, lupus flares, or the risks of atherosclerosis from this chronic, inflammatory disease.
In this group, some are quiet and hardworking and others are noisy and hardworking. But the key is that all must play an active role and pitch in to help each other on projects, or they don’t stay long. To be a member of SLAG you have to have respect for the other members of the group (at least from time to time) and work your scientific differences out together, even when you think the other person is addled.
Diva is probably the most passionate member of SLAG, but our friend Martha from Brooklyn would be a close second for that honor. Moira from Birmingham England is the most expert on measuring disease outcomes, Roberto Velasquez from Mexico and Sun Din from Korea are tied for having the largest clinics, Sol Gabinowitz from Canada has created the best SLAG project but also has the worst temper, I am probably the one who interrupts the most (where have you heard that before), and our friend Judy from Pittsburgh is both the smartest and the most reasonable, she is the one who almost always steers the ship back on course when the group reaches an impass. Especially if somebody is being pig-headed and illogical. Judy can clear that kind of situation up with one zinger of a comment.
Cowboy is the most famous member of SLAG. He is the King of Rheumatology in England and just to give you an idea of his international reputation, he has even more google hits than I do, and I did not earn most of mine for academic work.
Jeremy Irons (not the actor, the rheumatologist, whom I once got a date with in a castle in Spain) was invited to become a member of SLAG. Trust me, all the women delegates voted for him. But he did not last very long in this group.
He thought that the science being discussed at our meetings was not up to par. Which is a trouble with mouse doctors. They think all human science is not up to par. No wonder you can’t get an NIH grant to study actual humans with disease.
Perhaps the reader is unaware that by the dawn of the 21st Century the NIH had already cured most of the diseases known to scourge mankind. In mice.
Humans are messy, and therefore so is the science of studying them. If you are trying to design an interpretable experiment in humans, you have a huge handicap because you can’t make them do what you want. For example you can’t control who they mate with, what they eat (no matter how much they pretend they are sticking to the diet you prescribed), or how many pills they actually take after they fill the prescription you wrote them in your clinic. If you want to do more than cure mice, you need to wade into the swamp of human research where you never know what you are stepping on and where the fog of too many variables never lifts.
Jeremy Irons quit SLAG after only a year, citing other commitments. Some thought that he left because of La Petite. It is true that Jeremy went nuts at a meetings devoted to one of La Petite’s projects, and, granted, La Petite is a difficult, stubborn, inflexible, literal minded woman who believes that statistical significance is always meaningful and that patients really do everything she says, leading to overinterpretation of everything she finds out even if it contradicts what she found out last week. But we usually manage to set her straight at SLAG meetings, and she is also a heroic figure in the world of lupus, who practically invented the concept of a dedicated lupus research clinic followed by literally hundreds of publications. You have to respect that.
Jeremy could not.
Maybe he was right about some of the scientific problems he was perceiving in her work, but if we are ever to get new treatments lupus,for humans that is, he is wrong.
I think maybe Jeremy Irons quit SLAG because he is not a very good team player, unlike Diva or Martha or La Petite or Sol or me, who have equally dominating personalities, and egos that ate New Jersey, but are capable of being very good team players when somebody tells us to shut up and sit down.
It is Cowboy who does the best job of keeping us all in line. He can get me to be reasonable just by winking at me. But I have known him for a long time. If he were not so important to me, I am sure I would be in love with him.
Fortunately, I have so many other interesting and romantic men in my life, who seem to keep cropping up as if by magic (and at my age, too) with or without the internet. Which is why I sometimes fantasize, with good reason, that I am a witch.
One day soon after I first moved to Oklahoma, I was in the middle of writing an apologetic email to Cowboy, to explain why I was three months overdue on a paper for a journal he was editing, when my cell phone rang.
I had to scramble around for a while to find it because it had fallen into the carton in which my new computer had been packed.
“Hello?” I asked breathlessly.
“Waa’aal, ‘bout time you an-seered the phone, honeee,” drawled a male voice that was obviously from Oklahoma.
This was before I had met anyone socially or acquired any patients. “I think you have the wrong number,” I said.
“Well Ah will be durned, Sugah,” said the voice. “Ah guess you jest don’t rekuh-naaahze me.”
“Uh…..who are you?”
“It’s yer buddy!” He yelped. “Gosh durn, Ah was kinda hopin ah could come round with mah pickup truck and git you to climb up on the load of hay I bin movin so’s we cud crack opin some beers! Ah mean BEEEEEYURS! Ah mean COOOOOURS!
I paused, unsure of exactly how to reply, and then the voice continued....
....in his now recognizable British accent:
“It’s your Cowboy friend from London, you dotty woman, calling to find out when you are going to submit your extremely late paper!”
Which is how he earned the name of Cowboy.
The year that Diva and I changed British history forever we were at a SLAG meeting, summoned by the Cowboy for a serious stab at the problem of measuring outcomes in clinical trials. The flight over had been particularly rough because Diva is, of course, scared of airplanes and because Nota Petrosian bumped into a woman he knew on the plane, and I had to get drunk with him while Diva stole his airplane date.
These were the days when none of us in the lupus game were flying Business Class. All the rheumatoid arthritis doctors were sitting up there, because it was the dawn of the new biologic treatments for that disease, and they were being courted by every major pharaceutical company on the globe. There were not that many companies developing products for lupus, and those who had tried had all failed, so there were not enough invitations to Type 2 Advisory Boards to get us the frequent flier units needed for frequent upgrades.
But we accepted life back in steerage then, and we liked to fly together (and Diva was desperate not to fly alone) so Nota had gotten an itinerary that brought him from Los Angeles to New York so he could change planes for the same flight to London that Diva and I were taking.
This was so long ago that I was still living in New York with my husband Gary before we both decided we loved each other more in smaller doses and he started hiding his new lover in a closed off section of our apartment.
Which means it was also before the Head of Accounting at St. Elsewhere stole $275,000 from my NIH grant and my only choices became to sue the hospital and jeopardize the NIH grants of all of my colleagues, be miserable for the rest of my life, or leave. Portents of these life-changing events were already brewing at that time, such as the screaming fights I was having with Gary and the money dwindling out of my accounts at work that no one seemed to be able to explain.
We were on one of those big planes that has two seats together on each side and then six seats across the middle. We were frequent fliers enough to know better than to go for the middle seats. There is no good place to sit on a long flight in those middle seats, you are either forced to climb clumsily over people at regular intervals, stepping on their feet and elbowing their faces, or be climbed over by people with even bigger feet and sharper elbows that you have. Diva and I had selected one of the two-seaters together on the left side of the plane and Nota was right in front of us.
As soon as the plane had leveled off at some imponderably high altitude and I was able to get Diva calmed down, Nota leaned over the back of his seat to talk to us.
“Did you see that girl who waved at me when we were passing through Business Class?” he asked.
“Who was she?” I asked him, since I hadn't noticed any girl.
“I once went out with her,” he explained. “When I was doing my internship in St. Louis.”
“She was cute,” said Diva, who is always supportive of romance in any form.
“I think I might go up there and chat her up.” He mused.
The plane hit some minor turbulence and Diva shrieked. “What was that?”
“Nothing, nothing,” I murmured soothingly. “It’s completely normal.”
“How do you know, are you some kind of expert on aerodynamics?” She said suspiciously.
“See, its calming down now, its nothing.” I insisted.
“Do you think I should go up there and chat her up?” Nota asked again.
“Sure, sure, go get her!” Diva said waving him away as we hit some turbulence. “You may as well have some fun, life is short!”
“Sure, sure,” I agreed as Nota lurched away down the aisle.
“He shouldn’t be walking around with all this turbulence, though,"Diva pointed out.
“Close your eyes and try to calm down,” I said.
“No, I have to work,” she said grimly, pulling her computer bag out from under the seat in front of her. “If we get off this plane alive and I haven’t finish these grant reviews, Joe Murphy is going to kill me.”
“Whereas if we crash, nobody will ever see the work you did,” I pointed out meanly.
“Bite your tongue,” she hissed, craning her neck, rigid with stress, over her little computer.
"You know Joe Murphy is in love with you," I said to make her feel better.
Soon Nota was back with a woman he introduced to us as Sharon Glickman. I caught Diva’s eye and we smiled at each other. She looked like us.
Nota is younger than us and was making really good money at UCLA, so he could be considered quite a catch. But he always goes for women who look like us.
Not that his girlfriends are not charming. Not that we are not charming.
I am just saying....you never know who somebody is or is not going to be attracted to. If you sized up Nota, checked out his California lifestyle and his hip friends and then read his CV, you might expect him to go for some gorgeous, long legged blonde movie star. And maybe succeed.
But on the plus side, if there were ever an older version of Nota floating around, Diva and I would have it made. We always wished him well in his quest to find us the way we once were.
You might wonder why I put Diva and I in the same girlfriend category when she is a size 2 and I am...whatever size I happen to be at any given time. Let me tackle that for you.
We are both dark haired, (even if that takes some doing to maintain at our age) and we are both cute but offbeat looking New York Jewish girls even though I was raised in a small town in Virginia and Diva is from Vermont. Of course, once you buy an apartment in Manhattan you become a New Yorker, that’s the law. And Diva and I both have the credentials, hers on the East Side and mine on the West Side, where my ex-husband whom I may never divorce lives, and as long as he does, its half mine and we can both afford it.
Diva and I are equally smart and we both know most of what there is to know about lupus, and we both talk too loudly and too fast and wave our hands around a lot. It is a fact that people sometimes get us mixed up.
At the beginning of my career when Diva was a lot more well-known than I was, people used to walk up to me at the ACR meeting all the time and say “Diva, that was a great talk you just gave.” At first I would demur and try to explain the difference between us (such as about 40 pounds) but eventually I just learned to smile and graciously accept compliments on her behalf. Nobody has time, while rushing around those huge, overwhelming convention centers for long complicated explanations that don’t really matter.
But I knew that my career had arrived the day Diva came storming into our shared hotel room at EULAR and yelled that someone had complimented her for one of my talks.
Nota leaned over our seat and explained to us that he had been ignominiously kicked out of the Business Class Section by the flight attendant, but his friend Sharon was gracious enough to come back to steerage to chat with him. We smiled and nodded at them and they plunked themselves down in the two seats in front of us.
I reached down for my computer, got it disentangled from its case, and powered it up.
I love the sound of a computer testing its gears. Or whatever is in there. It hums. It vibrates. Then suddenly it bursts open into a deep world of stored music, statistical programs, all my current papers, grant applications, powerpoint slides and games. I love the balloon-popping game, Poppit. I put it on all of my laptops.
If you are faint of heart, you should not ask me exactly how many laptops I own, but I do recommend buying a new laptop every time you get dumped. It is really therapeutic to pick out your gigabytes and memory and Bluetooth features. And a laptop is a warm and vibrant friend for you on a cold airplane. If you have put all your most important music and work and games in there it is like having a date with yourself.
“I can’t believe this,” I heard beside me.
I was surprised to see that Diva wasn’t working. She was leaning her ear up near the back of Nota’s seat, straining to hear whatever they were mumbling about up there.
“Don’t eavesdrop on him!” I whispered.
“Shhhh,” she hissed. “I can barely make out what they’re saying.”
“Oh phooey,” I said, clicking open my powerpoint program. “Date’s aren’t interesting to listen to.”
Then I thought about it. “Unless he starts telling lies. That could be amusing.”
“Her name is very familiar,” Diva said. “I think I know that name.”
“Sharon Glickman is likely to be a very common name,” I pointed out. “At least in New York.”
“She looks strangely familiar too,” Diva insisted.
I leaned forward to see if I could hear anything. Nota was saying, “No, I’m not dating anybody right now....”
Lie number one. Diva and I rolled our eyes at each other.
Sharon was saying, “I think I weigh about 116 pounds.”
Lie number two. This was fun.
Now Sharon was saying, “I like to go to museums a lot. And I just finished reading War and Peace for the third time since Harvard...”
We looked at each other and we both shrugged. Hard to tell. Could be true, could be a baldfaced lie. And if she read it once, or saw the movie, who would know?
And furthermore, here is my advice to people who went to Harvard. Don’t slip it into your conversation heavy handedly. It does not make guys like you.
“....and I used to be a swimmer....” Sharon continued....”and I sometimes....”
“OH MY GOD!” screamed Diva, “YOU’RE SHARON GLICKMAN!”
“Uh, well yes, that’s my name,” came the startled voice of Nota’s date through the space between the seats.
“I told you she was Sharon Glickman,” said Nota irritably.
“FROM NEW ROCHELLE?” shrieked Diva.
“Why yes, how did you know that?” cried the young woman.
“You were a Badger. You almost made the Olympics, I am so excited to meet you!” shrilled Diva, ripping off her seatbelt and climbing over me into the aisle.
“Well, actually, I was an alternate, but then I broke my foot,” demurred Sharon.
“Nota, get up for a minute, you know I’m scared to stand up on airplanes,” Diva commanded.
Nota switched seats with her and I moved over to let him in our row.
“I can’t believe you let her do that to you,” I complained in an undertone.
“Oh chill, Della,” he smiled. “Its only for a minute.”
“You need to put your foot down, Nota. She just crashed your date,” I pointed out.
“Don’t worry, I’ll toss her out of there in a minute,” he said, self-assuredly.
Ha.
“What was your best time in the 500 freestyle?” Diva was grilling Sharon in front of us. “I mean the absolutely best time you ever got?”
I sighed. “Listen, Nota, relationships are tenuous in early dating situations,” I whispered. “Don’t let this woman think that you can be bullied by your friends.”
“What was your best time in the backstroke? 300, 500 and did you do any longer distance?” came from the front seat.
I nudged Nota. “And,” I added, “Don’t let this woman think you would let your friends bully her!”
“That that your best time?” Diva was yelling. “Your absolutely best time? Are you completely sure you didn’t ever get a better time than that?”
“I am beginning to catch your drift,” Nota said. “But it isn’t my job to protect Sharon from my friends. She is going to have to figure this out.”
“My daughter is a Badger,” Diva bragged. “I don’t know if she will even make it to Olympic tryouts but she beat you in the 500....”
“Oh really? That’s so neat. Tell me all about her,” came the enthusiastic voice of Sharon Glickman.
“I can’t believe this,” I groaned. “Diva just stole your date.”
“Yeah,” he admitted. “I guess she did. “Let’s get a drink.”
“Good idea,” I replied, signaling the flight attendant as Diva began to regale an equally enthusiastic Sharon with a shrill litany of recent Badger swim times compared to competitor teams.
“One good thing,” Nota said after a while, cradling his gin and tonic.
“What’s that?” I asked through the golden haze of my second Pinot Grigio.
“She isn’t worrying about the turbulence anymore,” he grinned.
London was cold and rainy and the SLAG meeting seemed to go on forever that year. We were still going to be stuck in an overcrowded, overheated room at University College for another day and a half, and everybody was getting cranky. We decided to break at 3PM. Nota wanted to go running in Regent’s Park before we left London, so I promised to go shopping for running shoes that afternoon, so that I could go with him. I sort of liked the idea of buying running shoes in London and wearing them home, even if they were bound to be overpriced.
“I know what,” said Diva. “We can go to Harrod’s. I’ve always wanted to go to Harrod’s.”
“Do you have any idea what Nikes are going to cost at Harrod’s?” I asked her.
“Come on, it will be worth it to see Harrod’s,” she said. “Besides, maybe we can find a cheaper store on the way.”
It was already 3:30 so we took the underground train, and, not surprisingly, there were no stores selling running shoes between Goodge Street and Knightsbridge in the London underground.
Harrods, Knightsbridge, London, England, United Kingdom Framed Art Poster Print by Adina Tovy, 25x31
Furniture by Harrods
Harrod’s was utterly amazing, though. We walked through the gourmet section first. Within a few seconds I was salivating deliriously over a sensory implosion of Stilton cheeses, Turkish figs, English scones, French bread, Indian chutneys, Swiss chocolates and….well you get the picture.
White Stilton with Fruit - Apricot (8 ounce) by igourmet.com
9in Cornucopia Centerpiece Decoration
A Platter of Figs and Other Recipes
Simply Scones: Quick and Easy Recipes for More than 70 Delicious Scones and Spreads
“Where are the bagels?” said Diva. “I want a bagel.”
We settled for a couple of muffins that cost us almost 10 pounds which, factoring in a variable exchange rate, would have been roughly 20 bucks.
“You are paying for this,” said Diva. “I can’t afford a ten buck muffin.”
“OK, OK,” I assured her. “Let’s not starve, its my treat.”
“Let’s look at handbags, next,” Diva said. “But just so you know, neither one of us can afford any of their purses.”
Chanel, Prada, Vuitton, Coach, Gucci, and only the very top of those lines, and the room where they keep this heady stuff is worth gawking at all by itself, as is the room next door with the gloves, perfumes, enamel pillboxes, crystal clocks, pearls, silk scarves....or was that in the third room? It was easy to develop sensory overload, the interior of Harrods is a Victorian masterpiece, with stamped tin ceilings here, carved moldings there, filigreed roses, spotless glass counters, original mahogany display cases and crown molding to hold up the crown molding. A person of any artistic sensitivities could go nuts in there.
AUTHENTIC COACH PARKER OP ART CLUTCH HANDBAG (Rosegold/Bronze)
Prada Black "Tessuto Pietre" Handbag
Cris Notti Green Kimono Tote
ARCADIA Italian Made Red Patent Leather Designer Handbag Purse
“This is the high end of all high ends,” Diva said appreciatively.
“I think I am going to faint,” I said.
“Hey, I know,” said Diva. “Let’s go find the shrine to Princess Di.”
The shrine is in the basement of Harrods. There was a little table right at the bottom of the ornate stairwell covered with a soft white shroud. A fountain was flowing around it and candles burned in front of two portraits, one of the beautiful, if not very bright Diana, and one of Dodi, her pouting, playboy boyfriend, who would have inherited Harrod’s if he had not died in a drunken haze during a car crash in Paris.
“I wonder what the Queen thinks of this.” I said.
“I don’t think the Queen shops here,” replied Diva.
“Yeah,” I said. “I guess she gets her ladies-in-waiting to come in for her.”
“Sure,” drawled Diva, “And you think the Queen really looks like she got her clothes at a high end store like this?”
“Good point,” I acknowledged. “But how can you call it a high end store when it has this tacky shrine to a Princess who was cheating on her husband, the future King of England, with a lazy, drunken playboy?”
The Princess Diana Collection
Diana: Last Days of a Princess (Full)
“Bite your tongue,” said Diva, “I identify with Princess Di.”
“You are soooooo much smarter than her.” I said loyally.
“Hey, look,” said Diva. “There’s the customer service department. What’s it doing in the basement?”
A young woman was sitting at the counter, reading a romance novel with Fabio on the front cover.
“Let’s ask her where the running shoes are,” I suggested.
We walked up to the counter and waited for a minute. She pretended not to see us, so we went back upstairs.
Eventually we made our way to the shoe department and I picked out a standard pair of Nikes that set me back more than a hundred pounds (200 bucks) about double what you could get them for at a suburban mall in the USA. But they were, I rationalized, a better bargain than the ten dollar muffins we bought or the 3,000 pound ($6,000) purses that we had been drooling over and had managed to forego.
We had tickets to the theatre with other SLAG members that evening, so it was almost time to go back to the hotel. “We better pee before we get back on the underground,” said Diva. “Where is the bathroom?”
“They call it a toilet here,” I said. “If you ask for the bathroom they will think you want to take a bath.”
“That’s stupid,” said Diva. There is a bathtub and a toilet together in our hotel room.
“Catering to the tourists,” I sniffed, enjoying my superior knowledge of cultural diversity. Even though I was not correct.
There was a line of ten or twenty people in front of the ladies room which was two floors up from the Princess Di shrine.
“Look at these English people waiting in this long line,” sniffed Diva. “Why don’t they just go cram into the bathroom and push each other around so they can get a toilet?”
“They like to wait in line,” I said, “they are very courteous people.”
“They are sheep,” said Diva, decidedly.
A large sign indicated that it would cost us 2 pounds to get in.
“Look,” Diva poked me. “Two pounds to pee. What is that in dollars?”
“That’s four bucks,” I said, appalled.
“That’s outrageous!” cried Diva. “Do we even have that kind of money?”
“I don’t think so,” I said, looking at the coins in my pocket. “50 pence is less than a pound, right?”
I had been paying for everything with a credit card.
“Four bucks,” Diva repeated, really taken aback. “That’s outrageous.
A fashionable young woman in front of us who was carrying four shopping bags turned around, ”You are absolutely right,” she said. “and I am surprised that the labor party allows it.”
“I must agree with you,” said an older lady behind us who was wearing one of those long, shapeless English tweed skirts and high boots. “Ever since the new management came in, Harrod’s has been going downhill, hasn't it?”
The fashionable young lady had reached the front of the line where a uniformed bathroom attendant was standing behind a small podium with a cashbox on top. The young lady started to hand over some coins.
But the attendant said, “Let’s have your receipts, then ducks. You seem to have quite a few purchases.”
After some juggling of the bags the young lady was able to produce three receipts. “Just as I thought,” said the attendant “you spend 214 pounds, so you may go in without paying.”
“Whew,” I said to Diva. “Good thing I bought those shoes.”
“And the twenty dollar muffins,” Diva reminded me. “Did we get the receipt for that?”
I handed over my receipts to the lady. “Sorry, ducks,” she said regretfully. “It will be two pounds each for you lot.”
“Why?” Diva squawked. “We spent a hundred twenty pounds here!”
“Look,” I said helpfully, opening my shopping bag. I bought Nikes at twice what they were worth. I think I should get to pee for free!”
“And don’t forget the ten dollar muffins,” sniffed Diva. “That’s about four times what they would go for in any normal place. After that, you expect us to pay two pounds to pee?”
“I’m afraid that is the rule,” said the attendant. “You see, the rules are right here on the sign.” She pointed to a sign on the wall of the bathroom that I had not noticed before.
LADIES’ TOILET UPGRADE was the title:
Due to our recent extensive renovation of the Ladies’s toilet, Harrods now requires all ladies pay 2 pounds for entry, unless excess of 200 pounds has already been spent in the store.
I hesitated. “Do you really think its worth two pounds to go in there?” I asked the attendant.
“Oh yes,” the attendant replied, “It is so much nicer than it used to be. They put curtains on the window, and they have cloth towlettes and some lovely lavender soap."
“Oh yeah?” said Diva. “What kind of toilet paper is in there?”
“Well….” said the lady. “I believe it is the usual paper. But I should say that not only do they have lavender soap, there is an array of lotions.”
“Is it the usual SOFT toilet paper or the usual hard European toilet paper?” asked Diva suspiciously. “Because I am not so sure I want to pay two pounds to pee if all you have is that hard toilet paper.”
“But it’s the rule,” said the lady uncertainly.
Suddenly I noticed that I really needed to use the toilet. It must have been a physiologic response to talking about it.
I emptied my pockets of coins and dumped them on the little podium. The leady helped me count it up and all we had was a little over two pounds, total. Apparently the big coins were worth even less than the little coins. “Well at least one of you can go in,” she said brightly.
Diva and I looked at each other loyally. All for one and one for all.
“Tell you what,” said Diva wheedlingly to the attendant. “How about one pound each each to pee? Since we paid half the money to get in for free. ”
Are you doing your arithmetic. Do you think Diva made a mistake? Thinking that half the money to get one person in would justify half price for two people? Trust me, she is brilliant at math. What a con!
The attendant just looked perplexed. She was not sharp enough even to fall for the con.
I looked over my shoulder. The other ladies were standing patiently behind us. If this was America we could have been lynched by now. But the English never complain about lines.
I mean queues. They call them queues. And I think they really like being in lines together, waiting for things. Just like the way my cats always get into bed with me, maybe the English line up and feel good about sharing the closeness, because maybe with all their daily forbearance that would be as close as they can get.
But how long could their patience possibly last?
“Give it up, Diva,” I sighed. “We’re just holding up the line....I mean queue. Here is my credit card.” I brandished it at the attendant.
“I am terribly sorry,” she replied worriedly, shrinking away from my card. “But we are not able to take credit cards at the toilet.”
“WHAT?” I yelped.
“Well, it is such a small charge, you see,” she hazarded meekly.
“Small charge?” Diva shrieked. “You call two pounds to pee a small charge? That’s four dollars!”
“How can you do a thing like this?” I asked, aghast. “How can you charge exhorbitant sums of money for a natural human function that nobody can go without and then refuse to take a credit card?”
“I am really suffering here,” Diva wailed. “I really need to use your toilet now, so can we cut the crap?”
“I think,” I said to Diva, that is exactly what they are NOT allowing us to do.”
“I really don’t know how to help you,” said the lady, who now seemed almost as upset as we were. “Perhaps you would like to visit the customer service department.”
“Good idea,” I retorted. “And we happen to know that the staff down there is available.”
I turned back to the other ladies in line and yelled angrily. “In case any of you don’t happen to have two pounds, the customer service department is right next to that tacky shrine to Princess Diana and her irresponsible playboy boyfriend. And they are definitely NOT BUSY down there!!!!”
But nobody followed us as we huffed away.
“Say, do you have to pay two pounds when you pee?” Diva called back to the attendant in a parting shot over her shoulder. “I’ll bet they let you go in there for free.”
“Well yes,” she called weakly after us as we headed for the stairs. “But they won’t let me use the special soap.”
“No wonder we had the American revolution,” Diva muttered as we descended to the basement. “This country is a fascist state.”
“I’ll bet she sneaks some of the soap when nobody’s in there,” I said, saluting as we passed the shrine to Princess Di. “I know I would.”
“So would I,” said Diva. “But we are not English sheep.”
The girl behind the counter did look up this time when we marched up to her counter, yelling our heads off.
“We need to register a formal complaint!” I shouted. “This is an outrage!”
“How can you call yourself a customer service department when you punish your customers who might have to pee before they finish their shopping!” cried Diva. "Who might stick around to spend the extra 100 pounds if they were not suffering so hard from an overloaded bladder?"
“Or those who don’t happen to think that your overpriced merchandise is worth 200 pounds, how about that?” I snapped.
“Let me get my supervisor,” the girl smiled at us gamely. And disappeared behind a door.
While we were waiting, we calmly discussed the situation.
“I know,” I said to Diva, “Let’s tell them if they don’t let us in the toilet, we will pee on the floor.”
“Huh,” said Diva. “I’m going to pee in Lady Di’s fountain.”
“Oh dear,” said a voice behind us, “What seems to be the problem?”
A friendly looking woman in a low end business suit and orthopedic oxfords was standing there.
“Well,” I explained, “I am stranger in this town, but I have traveled around the world and I have shopped in , Rome, Tangiers, Copenhagen….”
“….don’t forget New York,” Diva reminded me.
“Of course, and Chicago, San Francisco, Mexico City, Vancouver, Buenos Aires, Caracas, Athens, and....where we were for the Slack meeting last year, Diva? Oh yes, Lund! We have also shopped in Lund!”
“And lots of other places,” Diva said, if you want to go back a couple of years. “We were in Neiman Marcus in Dallas and we were in Givenchy in Paris….”
“True,” I agreed. “And never NEVER NEVER have I been in a store that took 120 pounds of my money and then had the unmitigated gall to require me to pay two pounds to pee.”
“Discusting,” Diva nodded vigorously.
“I quite understand,” murmured the woman, sympathetically.
“Furthermore,” I said, “When we agreed to abide by these ridiculous rules, only because we were under significant duress, or should I admit extremis, and being in immediate need of relief, we tried to use a credit card, because we did not have enough of those little coins...”
“....or any of that paper money with the Queen on it...” Diva added.
“Good point,” I nodded. “Now what do you think the Queen would think of this disgrace?”
“I’ll tell you what the Queen would think,” said Diva. “She would think that a store that begat a playboy who cuckolded the future King of England, should think twice about charging two pounds to the loyal populace to pee if they won’t even take a credit card! So that if anybody doesn’t have the cash they can just suffer! After buying things here!”
“And, so,” I explained, “we are waiting for that receptionist who used to be sitting at this counter to get her boss, so we can register a formal complaint.” I pointed at the still closed door.
“You know what?” said Diva. “I don’t think anybody is coming out.”
“I am the Manager of the Customer Service Department,” said the lady. “And I do so wish I could help you, but you must pay two pounds to go into the Ladies toilet.”
“Even if I don’t happen to have enough of the little coins?”
“Yes, and I am afraid there is nothing I can do about it.”
She gestured to us to step aside to make room for a family of four who had evidently come down the stairs to pay their respects to Di and Dodi.
“Can't you arrange for someone to take our credit cards?” Diva suggested.
“We don’t have a way to take your credit card at the toilet.”
“Hey, you can ring us up anywhere, we don’t mind.” Diva offered.
The pilgrimage family was standing a short distance away, paying more attention to us than to the shrine.
“How about the purse department?” I said helpfully. "They didn't look very busy, you can ring us up there!"
“That would be impossible. It would impair our ability to take inventory.”
Some more people were coming down the stairs and the first family stepped a little closer to us.
“Inventory? Oh come off it,” said Diva, you don’t have any purses up there for less than $3,000 pounds! It would be totally obvious on inventory day what was a purse and what was a pee.”
“I really am very sorry,” the lady insisted, beginning to look uncomfortable.
Or maybe beginning to realize who she was dealing with.
“So, let me get this straight,” I said. “Just so I can understand. You really think it’s OK for me to suffer, and I assure you I am really suffering, after I came to this store in good faith, expecting what you find in every department store around the world, that if I pay one hundred and twenty pounds...”
“....which is two hundred forty dollars,” Diva interjected.
The eavesdropping wife murmurred to her husband, “She spent a hundred and twenty pounds.....coo.”
“....exactly,” I said, including them in the discussion, “one hundred and twenty pounds, two hundred forty dollars and we even OFFERED to pay with a credit card for the outrageous toilet charges....”
“Those charges are not really outrageous,” the manager interrupted me defensively. “We have renovated the Ladies toilet extensively and we have provided an unlimited supply of luxury soaps and lotions.”
“Hey, what if we promise not to use the lotions?” Diva said.
“Or the soap,” I interjected.
“That’s not a good idea,” Diva cautioned, “we don’t want to be unsanitary if we have to come down here again to complain about the toilet paper.”
“But if we aren’t paying, I don’t think we should complain about the toilet paper,” I said graciously.
“What kind of toilet paper do you have in there anyway?” Diva asked the manager.
“I believe we are making a little bit of a scene here,” the lady answered. And, in fact, there were now nine or ten people who had paused to watch our scene.
She moved us gently, further away from the other people, who continued to watch at a distance.
“I am really very sorry,” she said even more soothingly, except that her voice was wavering. “I do wish that I could help you. But I have no authority to change these rules.”
“How can you do a thing like this?” I asked her, scandalized. “How can you live with yourself doing this to human beings? I just can’t understand it!”
“Please try to understand, then,” she said. “We used to have the wrong element coming in just to use the toilets, we were trying to eliminate this problem for our shoppers.”
“What’s the wrong element?” asked Diva suspiciously.
“Riff raff,” I explained. "Us."
“Oh,” said Diva. “Well, we may be riff raff but they were perfectly happy to let us pay 200 bucks for your shoes and ten bucks for the muffins."
The English people were gaping at us in wonderment. The manager looked close to tears.
“That’s true,” I said, “....and I’ll bet if the wrong element came in with two pounds, you would probably let them in the bathroom.”
“I am sorry,” said the lady. “Is there anything else I can help you with?”
“No,” I said, “I’d rather you help us with this problem first.”
“Listen, lady!” barked Diva loud enough for our slightly distant audience, which had grown to twenty people, to easily hear. “I don’t think you really get it. We are great human beings. In our real lives, when not shopping we are dedicated humanitarians. We only came to this store intending to shop. We weren’t even thinking about peeing when we came in here.”
“But now,” I picked it up, “After spending 120 pounds in your store, we are suffering from the vissisitudes of a natural, bodily function. Which is not our fault. Not at all. Do you know what would happen if we didn’t drink any water?”
“Our bodies are 70% water, did you even know that?” Diva cried.
The lady was shaking a little. She said something into a walkie talkie.
“That’s right!” I harangued her. “So we must drink water and we must pee! This is an imperative of nature. You should not be charging money to allow us to relieve ourselves in the first place. But if you insist on doing something that LOW CLASS, you ought to at least have the decency to take credit cards. Or at least let the riff raff in. Otherwise you are just being…..CRUEL.”
“AND OTHERWISE I AM JUST GOING TO PEE IN PRINCESS DIANA”S FOUNTAIN!” shreiked Diva.
A security quard came trotting down the stairs and approached us cautiously.
“Will you just leave quietly now?” the manager asked us softly.
“Yes, we will leave quietly,” I said sweetly. “Now that the gestapo has arrived.”
The security guard stopped a few feet away and looked musingly at the ceiling. The British cops are not threatening types, they are more like father figures. Quite laudable.
I took a few steps away, then I gave my best parting shot. “How can you live with yourself?” I asked. “How can you sleep at night treating people who spent money in your store the way you just treated us!”
There were tears in her eyes. I felt a little guilty. But not very guilty. A person is free to choose whether or not they want to work in a place that charges two pounds to pee.
Diva and I stalked angrily away with trembling sphincters. As we passed our audience several of them mumbled, “good show,” “quite right,” and “England didn’t used to be this way, please believe me.”
“We better get a taxi,” I groaned as we made our way up the stairs. “I don’t think I’m going to make it back all the way on the subway.”
“I’m not spending 20 pounds on a taxi,” huffed Diva. “That’s 40 dollars.
“But I really need a bathroom!” I wailed.
“Toilet,” she corrected me.
Retreating through the fantastically elegant upper rooms, it seemed ironic to pass under the sculpted molding, along the shining old floors, past the glittering counter of diamond tiaras in so much distress.
We were stopped by several more English people who had apparently heard various parts of our drama, and they congratulated us on our bravery and willingness to fight for what was right.
Of course none of them had stepped forward to back us up with the Harrod’s management.
“Sheep,” said Diva as we left the store in defeat.
“You can’t liberate a country that is willing to stand in a queue and pay four bucks to pee,” I sighed.
“We lost the battle.” Diva shook her head in discust. “After we pulled out all the stops, we lost.”
“ Sometimes, no matter how relentless you are, you just lose the battle,” I agreed dejectedly.
“But not until the cop came,” Diva pointed out, trying to lift my spirits.
Do you think this is the end of the story? How long have you been reading my blog? Would I leave you with no better moral from this cautionary tale than the uncomfortable image of Diva and Della about to enter the underground train station with bursting bladders?
Ever heard of losing the battle and winning the war?
It took me a number of trips to London before I could even bear to go back to Harrod’s. But as one matures, one learns to forgive. Or your memory dims. Anyway, things change.
I moved to Oklahoma, I got cancer, and, due to gross negligence on the part of two different physicians, my life was saved.
I underwent bilateral mastectomies. I had fake boobs put in for free (it’s the law).
I took a trip to Norway and gave a lecture and fell on my butt trying to learn to ski. On my way home, I stopped in Oslo to visit the Art Museum and saw some Picassos that have been hanging there for years and are in no Art book I had ever seen.
I went to Shanghai and got lost in a crowd of beggars wearing six inch heels.
I started dating again. I met a lot of very strange men and I met Frank and I met Will who both loved me and then dumped me. Then Frank dumped me again. Somehow the memory of how I suffered when I had to pee at Harrods gave way to memories of how I suffered when I had to pee during the CAT scan that proved I had no cancer in my liver. And I started to remember some other things about Harrod's. For example, how polite and understanding they all were while they were denying me access to the toilet, and how forbearing the cop was who had been summoned to boot us out of there. In New York, we probably would have been handcuffed and carried off in a squad car. I think, though, that they let prisoners pee whenever they want in the United States. I'm just saying....
Five years later I went to London with my daughter Lana and ex-husband Gary for Christmas. We had a great time, dining out, seeing theatre, and taking the tube all over the city to see the National Gallery and the British Museum and the World War II museum and the Victoria and Albert. One afternoon Lana asked me if I would go to Harrod’s with her.
“I’ve always wanted to go to that bathroom you couldn’t get into, Mom,” she said.
“Ah, Lana,” I reflected. “I believe you are a woman now. We will go back there and defeat them this time.”
“Do we have to cause another stink?” she said.
“No, no,” I replied graciously. “We don’t need to be unpleasant, I have four pounds right here in my hand. I will pay the four pounds and I will walk in like a grand duchess and walk out of there covered with luxury soaps and lotions."
“Uh, mom? Can’t we just sort of go in there and look at it?” she said.
“What and not pee?” I joked.
But then I relented. I try not to embarrass my children too often. “I will pay the money,” I said mollifyingly. “And I will behave just like a grand duchess.”
“Oh please don’t do that,” she said looking worried again. She has seen my grand duchess act a few times in her life.
“I mean like a nice lady,” I said. “A nice quiet, well behaved lady.”
“That’s better,” she said. “I’ve always wanted to see the inside of that bathroom.”
“Me too,” I admitted.
Harrods was heaven. The gourmet section was still bursting with heavenly aromas and THOSE CHEESES!!!! We bought some. The cheese was way overpriced, but we both got a lot of mileage from it by sticking our noses in the bag at regular intervals like glue sniffers.
The main rooms were set up just as I recalled them, but there were a myriad of details that I had forgotten, and it was mesmerizing to see the place again and feel the memories coming back. That store is one of the most beautiful places in the world. Unless you don’t like ornate Victoriana. But I do.
The room with the purses really floored my daughter. She inherited that from me.
After a few minutes of enraptured ogling, we recovered a little, and without even needing to formulate a precise plan, we strolled casually around the counters together, murmuring a fake conversation so we could each surreptitiously cop a feel of a 3,000 pound white satin clutch with an emerald clasp, a smooth red patent leather shoulder bag with shiny gold zippers and a suitcase sized coach bag.....and....and.....
“Oh, mom,” Laura sighed. “How could you have stayed away from here for so long, no matter what they did to you?”
“I was a stupid, grudging, misguided fool," I admitted, "....but now that I am back here, I see the error of my ways.”
“I’m afraid you wasted a lot of years,” she chided me. “and from now on you should promise yourself you will be coming to visit these purses every time you come to London.”
“That’s my girl,” I said approvingly, as we made our way to the next room. “Hey, you want another sniff of the cheese?”
We visited the shrine. The fountain was off. The white cloth was gone. There were no candles, but the pictures were still there.
“It used to have a fountain, you see,” I explained to her. “And candles. So back then it was REALLY tacky.”
“Well, I believe you mom,” she said. “But I have to be honest, it’s a little disappointing. It’s not even all that much in bad taste.”
“What are you talking about?” I screetched. That woman was cheating on the future King of England and her irresponsible playboy boyfriend killed her in a stupid blind drunken car crash!”
“Yeah, I see what you mean,” she said thoughtfully. “If she had any brains she wouldn’t have gotten into her irresponsible boyfriend’s limo with a drunk chauffer. She could have taken a cab to the airport, come back here, and gotten any purse she wanted.”
“Exactly,” I said, proud of way Lana’s mind works.
“But mom,” she said. “you go out with some pretty irresponsible men too, you know.”
“That’s true,” I said. “But I don’t ever let them drive.”
“Ready to checkout the bathroom?” Lana said wistfully, leading me to think she was really thinking about our broken family.
“I'm ready,” I said. “It’s two flights up from this spot.”
She took another look at the photographs of Di and Dodi. “It’s really very sad, you know,” she said.
On the way up the stairs, some Australian tourists wanted directions to the shrine, and Lana pointed back down the way we had come using her thumb with a cosmopolitan air.
There was no line in front of the bathroom.
“Oh, I guess the attendant stepped away,” I said. “Let’s wait a second.”
“Do you have the money?” Lana asked worriedly.
“Each of these coins is two pounds,” I said proudly whipping them out of a side pocket in my purse.
“What if the price went up?” she worried.
“Hell, sweetie, for you I’ll pay anything,” I assured her.
“It’s for you too, mom,” she said. “I think you really need some closure about this.”
“You might be right,” I agreed.
We waited a few minutes. I started tapping my foot.
“It’s OK if we use a little bit of the luxury soaps and lotions,” she assured me.
“I planned to.” I said firmly.
“Mom?” she said a few minutes later. “Do you think we could just peek inside. Maybe the attendant is in there.”
“Yeah, let’s do that,” I said. “They can’t get mad if nobody was here, and besides I have the money to pay if they find us in there.”
“We could leave the money on the counter,” she said.
“OK,then.” I replied. “We’re going in!”
It was just an old bathroom with faded chintz curtains on the soot stained windows,nondescript English toilet compartments with chain flushes and a bare vanity in front of a flat, modern mirror surrounded by cheap light fixtures.
“HUH?” I cried. “I can’t believe this.”
“Maybe it was different bathroom,” Lana suggested.
“It can’t be, it was two floors up from the shrine of Lady Di and Dodi, exactly on this landing!” I huffed.
Lana shrugged. "Well at least we got to see it. The mystery is over."
We both peed. That felt good.
We came out of our stalls and started washing our hands, using the plain white soap from the single glass dispenser and the automatic hot air driers. An attendant walked into the room, pushing a washtub with some mops in it.
“Hi,” I said. “We just came in because you weren’t out there.”
“Quite alright,” she said. “Good afternoon.”
“Do you want the two pounds now?” I asked.
She stared at me. Then she laughed. “You must have been here many years ago,” she said.
“I was here about five years ago. Yeah.” I said.
“I remember that time. They tried to charge two pounds for the use of the Ladies toilet.”
“I remember that time, too.” I said. “What happened?”
“Oh,” said the lady. “It was quite extraordinary. Apparently there were some American tourists who caused such a fuss that they stopped doing it.”
“About five years ago?” I said.
“Yes that would be about right,” the attendant replied.
“Thank you very much,” I said. “Have a nice day.”
I handed her the four pounds and we left.
“You see Lana, “ I said in my Grand Duchess voice, “Mother has changed British history forever. I have liberated the ladies toilet at the world famous Harrod’s Department store.”
“You had a little help from your friend Diva,” she reminded me.
“Well yes, of course,” I acknowledged with my most dulcet pretense of courteous noblesse oblige. ”Diva helped a little.”
There was a glint of pride in my daughters eyes. And that is worth half a million pounds to me. Which is a million bucks.
Kathy Smith workout
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