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| Charlie in Front of his Secondary School, Stoke Newington School |
The drive was nice—I felt as
I would back home, leaving university after the term’s end by car, all to
return home. But with a twist: the cars going past were on the right side of
the road and the road was not I-80 East—it was London Road. Charlie and I both
fell asleep and woke up in Hackney, the northern part of London he and his family
lives in. The exotic element to his neighbourhood were the orthodox Jews, clad
in formal black attire and tall, cylindrical, black hats, walking the streets.
It was Saturday, the Sabbath, and Jews cannot drive or do any work on the
Sabbath.
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| FILM 'LIBRARY' |
We parked near the house and brought my three bags and the
boxes of Charlie’s things into the first London house I had ever set foot in.
It was nice. There were technically six different heights to the house, the
basement, the kitchen, three steps (not literally but relatively) up to the
living room and the foyer, ten steps up to Charlie’s brother’s former room and
a bathroom, ten steps up to Charlie’s room, his parents’ room, and another
bathroom, and another ten steps to the office room (or as I’d like to call it,
the film library!). His dad greeted me and soon after all the luggage was
indoors, Charlie gave me the tour of the house. The film library on the top
floor was the highlight: DVDs upon DVDs stacked from floor to ceiling and
apparently there were other stacks behind the ones I saw. Charlie denies this as
a film ‘library’ but I have no better word to describe it. It was incredible. And
justified. Charlie’s dad and mom are both film critics, receiving movies in the
mail quite frequently. Charlie’s room was fun too. On one wall he held pictures
of stops in his area, another had pins and buttons, and above his bed was a
bookshelf—he had the Harry Potter books but with covers more appropriate to the
children’s books that they are than the American book covers (more mysterious,
darker, etc.).
At his suggestion, we set off to roam his neighbourhood on
bikes. We passed through a park and memories of biking through Amsterdam and
Rome streamed through me. Now, a third city, London, is another I’ve biked in
abroad. There is always a nice liberating feeling to biking in a new place; the
excitement of new scenery blends in with the thrill of the wind and the speed
of the pedal. Charlie showed me his secondary (middle and high school) and
primary (elementary) schools, along with the row of shops and restaurants near
the park. I got a picture of me in front of Spence’s Bakery. We made it back
much the way we had come and arrived back at his house just in time for dinner,
Indian take-away. Plates in one hand, beer in the other, we sat on the couch
and watched the latter half of the American movie ‘Bad Teacher’. It dawned on
me in a new light how the British know so much of American culture and
terminology. The mainstay of modern cinema comes from Hollywood and the American
idiosyncrasies manifest on screen.
After the movie, Charlie and I headed up and hung out for a bit
before calling it a night. I felt so glad that I could spend my last night at a
friend’s house instead of in the cold, stiff chairs of Heathrow Airport in the
dead hours of night. That had been my original plan too. I owed it to Charlie
that I had a bed to sleep in, a dinner that night that wasn’t a cold airport
sandwich, and a glimpse into living in London.
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