Raindrops skid across one oval window, then the next. The speckled glass unveils the gray, dull backdrop that is London. The pilot is circling Heathrow; like vultures who have spotted their prey, so are other planes I faintly see through the fog. Within each one are hundreds of people just like me and unlike me. I imagine somewhere in row 42 is a not-so-sorrowful sinner on his way back from Amsterdam. In an aircraft somewhere behind me, a Pole traveling for work—the Pound is stronger than the Zloty, after all. I see AirFrance and think of the blissful and heartbroken souls returning from the City of Love. Hovering in the sky, waiting our turn to land, I also think how those souls ought to have taken the Eurostar.
The EU/UK Passport Holders veer left. All others—and there are many, many others—right. I take a left. A single-handed scan of my little red booklet and I am back in the land of tubes and shhhedules and “Look right”s and British colloquialisms. Brilliant. A single step on the escalator and I already know who is from here and who is not. Normally someone standing on the left-hand side of a moving staircase would leave me at the end of my rope but their ignorance is bliss and it was too early in the morning to rain on their wrong-sided parade. Besides, they would figure it out eventually.
I reach for my wallet and smile at the yellow plastic I now get to replace with the blue. I fill up my Oyster Card and head towards the London Underground, two suitcases and a backpack in hand. A black cab would have been iconic, but The Piccadilly Line was surely more authentic. And cheaper.
For a place with no (trash cans) bins, the (subway) underground is quite clean. As I step into the (train) tube, the voice-over on the speakers reminds me to (Stand Clear of the Closing Doors) Mind the Gap. For the next hour, suits of black, brown, gray, and blue push in and out of the crowded cars just as often as hairs of black, brown, gray, and blue do. The piercings and the tattoos, the blow drys and the buns, the converse and the stilettos, the music and the books, the sober and the hungover—all headed in one direction, just like the (vultures) planes approaching Heathrow.
The Northwest Exit of Kings Cross Station flashes neon lights as I pass through. Another escalator, all locals, no missteps. At the top, I see one umbrella, two umbrellas, three umbrellas open. I would take mine out but with my luggage, it isn’t much of an option. An oversized hood will have to do.
They say love is blind. I discover it to be true, though not in the way one would think. An overcast of gray, a heavenly spit in the face, a 15-minute walk home, and still, I push uphill with the lightest of hearts. This city has caught hold of my soul and even on its worst days, I find it to be perfect the way it is.