London 2024 Day 1: Things Fall Apart

Teddy bear tree, Newark International Airport

25 December 2024

I’m writing this blog post from an old iPad that, until now, has never left the handlebars of my indoor training bike. The iPad is bluetoothed to a cheap keyboard that doesn’t have a track pad and often misses the letters I type. The photos in this and subsequent posts from our London trip are unedited. Many of them came from my iPhone 12 because transferring photos from my Canon PowerShot involved sending them to my phone, where they joined my phone’s photos backed up to iCloud. From there, they were all downloaded to the iPad, labeled, and moved back to iCloud in new folders. Uploading them to Blogger was another adventure, because, no matter how many I uploaded at once, they’d appear here in seemingly random order. This required a lot of cutting and pasting. Long story short, I spent way too much time figuring out how iPads work and getting several operating systems to play nice with each other, and not enough time writing about the trip. But I saved weight in my backpack, so, win?

The events in this post took place on December 13 and 14, 2024.

There was a staging area in the terminal for Christmas decorations. We were at Newark airport to board a plane for London for the first time in five years. 

In booking the flight, Jack traded a later takeoff for comfort. We paid for something called “Premium Economy” seats, avoiding extra charges for our bags and getting real legroom. The flight was scheduled to leave at 6:45 p.m. With the 5-hour time difference, we’d be arriving at 6:30 a.m. London time. There would be no way I’d be able to convince my body to fall asleep before even 10:00, which would be 3:00, which would give me 3 hours of sleep. My first day in London was going to suck.

After we boarded and settled in, a garbled announcement came through from the pilot at the same time that we got texts informing us that our fight would be delayed until 9:00. Well, at least I’d have a chance at 2 more hours of sleep. We ended up taking off a bit after 8:00.

After all the early flight hubbub was over — the announcements, the salty meal, the brushing of teeth — I decided to try to sleep. To do this, I needed to take out my hearing aids and put earplugs in. My hearing aids are tiny. They slide into my ears on a silicone sleeve. These sleeves come in various sizes. My left canal is narrower than my right one. My audiologist had given my smaller sleeves to try. These sleeves were half the size of the ones I’d been using. They were much more comfortable in my left ear. I decided to switch to the tiny one on the right side too. These sleeves are detachable, but taking them off requires more force than one would think is safe for such little hearing aids. I removed the left aid and then the right. When the right one came out, it was missing the sleeve. The jolt of adrenaline was exactly what I did not need at this moment.

I nudged Jack. “Can you see anything in my ear? It’ll be deep.”

“I can’t see anything.” No surprise. We were on a plane, the reading lights far over our heads and dim. I tried reaching in with my pinky, but my nail wasn’t very long. All I did was irritate my ear canal. 

“We’ll try when we get to the hotel.” Jack was not enthusiastic about digging blindly in my ear canal. “Then we’ll find an audiologist,” I suggested.

The screen in front of my seat showed that we were flying over Nova Scotia. I zoomed in, looking for the Cabot Trail.

I tried to sleep, but I didn’t want to put an ear plug fully into my right ear. Airplanes are loud. Even for me. I put it in sideways.

The cabin lights went out for the night.

Through the headrest I could hear the engine breathing. 

Maybe I slept. 

The cabin lights came on. The screen showed that we were an hour and a half away from landing. Breakfast was served. I felt nauseated and waved it off.

I noticed that Jack had his reading glasses in his shirt pocket. The frame had come apart, again. He said, “What are the odds you have an eyeglass repair kit with you?”

“One hundred percent,” I said.

I put my hearing aids in. The right one slid in, but its edges were sharp and I was worried it would fall out. I pushed it farther in and kept checking to make sure it was secure. The amplification was tinny but at least I could hear.

I needed a pool of coffee to swim in. Over that and oatmeal at the terminal’s Cafe Nero, I fixed Jack’s glasses.

We had a long walk from Heathrow’s terminal 2 to the Heathrow Express train to Paddington station. We figured we’d dragged ourselves and our bags a mile, sometimes with the help of moving walkways.

Rather than fight the rush-hour crowds, we took a taxi to the hotel. Jack had found a good deal on Hotwire or one of those services, where one picks a neighborhood (Bloomsbury) and a hotel rating (he likes 4 stars at least), and one is given a cheap price but not the hotel’s name. By reading the descriptions on several of these services at once, Jack has been able to take an educated guess about which hotel we’ll wind up at. When he agreed to this one, he agreed to The Standard, a refurbished former city government building directly across from the Saint Pancras rail station, one of London’s prettiest buildings.

Our room, on the second floor (third in American), faced the station, which was not only a great view, but also convenient, because there was no clock in the room.

There was an optometrist/audiologist in the Brunswick Center, a short walk away. They were open on Saturdays. Jack wanted to take a shower first. I wanted to get this thing out of my ear.

Being Saturday, there was no audiologist in the shop. The clerk suggested we go to the NHS clinic two doors down. There, I was refused, because I was not an NHS patient. We were told we’d need to go to the hospital’s Accident and Emergency department, “A&E,” as they say here.

University College London’s hospital was a short walk west of our hotel. So we turned north again. “I don’t have a book a with me,” I said. I was exhausted, anxious, and cranky now. I figured we could be there for hours. What a way to start our vacation. “You have your phone,” Jack said. “Not enough,” I answered. 

“Get a book then,” he said, because we were passing Judd Books. Normally, Jack will peruse every shelf, but we wanted to get on our way as soon as possible. He pointed to a collection, Best American Short Stories 2022. Whatever. It was discounted. It was there. I paid for it and we headed to A&E.

At the reception desk, I dug out my insurance cards, primary and secondary. I already knew I was covered for international trips. “I don’t need those,” the clerk smiled. “Just photo ID.” I didn’t have my passport with me, but my driver’s license was good enough. I filled out a form that asked me for my address, where we were staying, and the reason I was here. That last part was fun.

They gave me a plastic wristband.

Soon, I was summoned to see the triage nurse. She looked in. “I see it,” she said. If she hadn’t, it was either gone or too deep in. That she saw the thing was a relief. She said I’d be seen within half an hour.

Half an hour later, my name was called again. Jack had to stay in the waiting room while I went back. It took the doctor longer to find the scissor-handled tweezers and an otoscope than it did for her to pull it out without even needing the extra light from the otoscope. She handed the tiny sleeve to me. “Is it whole?” she asked. Sometimes, she explained, the non-silicone ones break apart.  “It’s whole” I said. She checked my ear again anyway.

I’d already changed sleeves on both hearing aids while I was waiting. I put them in. My right ear felt so much better. I hadn’t realized how irritating the stuck sleeve and the sharp aid had been. 

“Okay,” she said. “You’re all set.”

I stood up. “How much do I owe you?” I asked.

“Nothing,” she said. “We don’t charge for emergencies.”

I took a second to process this. Then I said, “You guys rock. Y’know how much this would cost in the US?”

She gave me a look.

I thanked her and we left to go find a pub lunch somewhere. I took the wristband off and turned it into a bookmark.

We did our best to stay vertical for the rest of the day. Sunset was at 3:52, which did not help at all. We found bookstores for Jack and English candy for me. 

We had an afternoon snack at Gaia, which used to be La Bella Roma when we were last here five years ago, in the Before Times. We were across from the British Museum, but it was too late to go in now. I’m pretty sure I fell asleep several times for a second or two.

We walked towards Covent Garden instead. Google Maps indicated there were two candy stalls within. As we got closer, though, the crowd was so thick that we decided to turn around.

This wasn’t our first time in London near Christmas. I don’t remember seeing clusters of hot-pink, three-wheeled carriages blasting bad Christmas music (there is no other kind) to lure a certain kind of tourist in.

I don’t remember crowds like this at Covent Garden either. Leinster Square, sure, but even those crowds weren’t this thick. 

These days, I let Jack to all the dinner planning. He has set certain standards, which includes a decent wine list. He pecked around on his phone, grumbling, until he found something suitable near the hotel.

On our way to the restaurant, we were approaching St Pancras from the west. Behind the spire were clouds. It looked looming and eerie. The best I could do, zooming in with my iPhone, didn’t capture what we saw. I would have needed a tripod and a long exposure.

We turned down a side street. I looked back at the clock tower.

During dinner, I found myself micronapping again.

My right ear was very sore. 

We were in bed by 9:00 p.m.

I slept for 12 hours. 

The next day, the zipper on my coat fell apart. I threaded it with dental floss, then deconstructed an earring to use the hook as a connection between the zipper and the pull (the pull eventually fell off too, leaving just the wire hook). 

Also the next day, United contacted Jack to tell him he’d left his Kindle on the plane. For a fee, they’d deliver it to the hotel. 

A lot of the places Jack and I wanted to get to no longer existed.

We were off to a good start.