A funny thing happened to me today.  Let me tell you about it.

I had my last full day in London today.  I leave tomorrow on an 11:something flight, which means I must be on the westbound train to Paddington by a little after 8:00.  So, what to do for my last day?  I came here in part to have some business meetings, and I had finally managed to nail one down for midday.  In preparation I slept well, having gotten to bed early last night after the whole Sister Wendy Chow Mein disaster.

I started off the day with a prepared breakfast at DÃŽN, around the corner.  This was a Halal take on a “Full English Breakfast”, a normally repugnant affair made better here by an utter lack of sausage (English sausage is best avoided) and no pitiful fried tomato.  It was rather good.  I spoiled myself by requesting a croissant rather than toast (75p extra) and by getting to both read The Independent and watch the BBC with sound, the first time I have enjoyed that on this trip.

It was a good day to have all this news. Last night saw the worst storm of the season hit, with 80mph winds, huge waves fed by Spring tides, and some major upsets in both the FA Cup soccer matches and the 6 Nations rugby tourney.  There was lots of news.

I have an Oyster Card, a magical RFID device which I just wave over a turnstile to let me on any train or bus in the capital, charged up for a full month of travel in zones one and two (central London and the immediate outskirts) but I opted to walk down to my meeting.  The weather was very strange; sunny one moment and raining the next – or both at the same time.  I kept taking out my brolly and stowing it again.

I stopped in at La Frommagerie to get some mints, and generally just ambled slowly through the crowds down towards my meeting spot in Soho.  A rather nice stroll, and the perfect way to spend my last day — no galleries, no ticket booths, just a nice walk.

Soon I was sitting in a Soho coffee shop, and then, when it went well, in a very nice Indian restaurant just a block off of Piccadilly Circus.  What was to have been a 30 minute get acquainted session turned into 2½ hours of rollicking good discussion, which I won’t go into here.  But I made a good friend, let’s leave it at that.

After leaving the restaurant and parting ways, I was left wondering how to complete my day, still young at only 2:40 pm or so.  Soon I had my answer when in a bracing wind I realised I had left my scarf behind at the restaurant.  A walk back yielded no scarf, much to the consternation of my hosts.  They were beside themselves trying to find it (It is cold sir, you need scarf, no?).  I waved off their concern.  I was feeling pretty good about things, and that was a really cheap scarf I had bought down in Petticoat Lane.  I deserve better, and since my dinner companion paid for my meal and tea, I decided I had some money to spend on a scarf.  I leave tomorrow, and I have more pounds in my pocket than I need to see me through.  Off to Saville Row I went.

Okay, Saville Row is intimidating.  This is where “Bespoke Suits” rule.  These are custom made suits which cost around £2,500 each.  This is not the place to buy a scarf even if you are feeling flush.  Their idea of flush has at least a couple more 0’s tucked onto the right hand side of the price tag.  I went a block over to Regent street where I found a lovely cashmere number for the right price.  Quite posh all the same.

I could have just walked back up towards home, or a closer tube station, but I thought I would like one more turn around Piccadilly Circus.  I am glad I did.  As I emerged from Soho into the Circus I saw an American couple pouring over their map.  “Welcome to my London” I thought, and thought to help them find what they needed.  I stopped myself, though.  Piccadilly Circus is one of those places that is typically filled with either tourists or hucksters.  If you get directions here they are likely to be tainted in some way, and most guides will tell you as much.  I realised that as well intended, any advice I gave may well be treated with suspicion.  Besides, I had made this very same map inspection several times — they will figure it out, and having done so once, will be better set to do so again.

I walked on by, and then it struck me: My London.  “Welcome to My London” I had thought.  Suddenly I stopped in my tracks, which in the middle of the Circus is not advised, and realised that I’d had an epiphany: my unspoken comment “Welcome to my London” put me squarely in camp with Alexandra Styron and her sensation, reported in her essay (which preceded my trip here and which I wrote about in my preamble over a month ago).  “My London;” I’ve realised that I have a London, I have my London; my view of the place, my streets I know backward and forward, my own internal map of the place, of the layout, the tube, the neighbourhoods.  It is limited, my London, but it is mine.  My father had his and now I have mine.  Just like Ms Styron and her father, they are not the same, and now I understand the sense of disconnectedness that she expressed between her Brooklyn and her father’s Brooklyn.

In my preamble I saw a gulf between her experience and my own, I now see that was myopic.  I just hadn’t gone far enough down the line to understand.

I spent the next hour or two walking my London.  I navigated effortlessly to Covent Garden where I shopped the antique stands.  I strolled The Strand and found a place that would actually make me a Martini (no small feat here, believe me).  I finally ducked into Charing Cross station and caught the Bakerloo home.  The last time on this trip I will take that line, that trusty train which is so much a part of My London.

Early back home, I settled in to take care of some updates to the blog, a nice cold supper to polish off my last bits of grocery, packing my bags.  And a nice relaxed night with myself and my new found comfort in my original hometown.  Fluent? I don’t know yet.  Comfortable? Most certainly.

“My name is Aleck Bernstein and I am 46 years old. I was born in the borough of Stepney, London, England on June 19, 1922. My father, Harry, was a furrier, self employed, and some of my earliest recollections are of wandering through the workroom and seeing skins being stretched, cut and sewn. The workroom was situated on the 1st floor of the house in which we lived till l940. The house was a massive brick built 4 story row house. The house and most of its neighbours had been built in the late l9th century as residences for clipper ship captains.”

So begins an autobiographical folio my father wrote in 1969, when he was roughly my age, and it serves as my guide today as I leave the Whitechapel tube station and wander back in time.

First I need to navigate the present, and it is a very different one than my father ever knew. The district around Whitechapel, Stepney Green, Stepney, Bethnel Green and Mile End — in the East London borough of Tower Hamlets — is now mostly populated by immigrant families from the Near and Middle East. Going east from Whitechapel one sees Moroccan, Egyptian, Afghan, Pakistani, Indian, Bangladeshi, etc., almost like a map of that region shrunk down small and splayed over the Tower Hamlets, each ethnicity seems to have carved out a distinct area for themselves. I know it is not that cut and dry, but it appears so to an outsider, which I decidedly am.

A marketplace spills onto the pavement by the station in brightly coloured scarves and pashmina, vegetables and fruit, toys and appliances. Stalls are ill defined and the vendors are all touting their wares in so many tongues that it all blends together to my ears. Just a street market lullaby lolling the tots in prams to sleep while their mothers haggle over the goods.

I pass an ancient facade, an alms house for aged sailors and their widows and orphans, built in 1695. It stands in stark contrast to the market place I have just passed.

I spy a sign across the street which sums things up to me, “Halal Chinese Buffet Opening Soon” it declares:

Just past the restaurant I see a sign for Stepney Green Road, and that takes me closer backwards in time. I veer to the right.

I will not find my father’s birthplace here:

“In June, 1940 I returned to London having graduated from school, and it was while waiting to enter Medical School that the Battle of Britain air war started. Just before I was due to start school the house was badly damaged during a heavy night bombing attack concentrated on the London Docks. None of us were hurt but we had to be evacuated from the house and spent the remainder of the night in a shelter.”

They had survived by hiding under the basement stairway, escaping with a wheel barrow of their most important possessions, and never really lived in the house again. So I won’t find that house, but there are some survived the raids, and I can get a sense of what it looked like. Here’s one now:

The other thing I can do is explore his old haunts:

“I was the youngest of three brothers and indulged in the usual boyish pranks in my free time from school and Hebrew classes. As a boy, one of my favorite pastimes was to explore London. We lived on the outskirts of Chinatown and close to the London Docks. We were also not far from the Tower of London (within the boundaries of the borough) and The City. All of these, then, provided many sites to visit and explore, usually on foot.”

The City, the historic city limits of London defined by the old siege walls, is today’s financial district, and I have already been there to shop on Petticoat Lane and such. The Tower of London I have already seen. That leaves the docks (that Chinatown being long gone, subsumed into Whitechaple). Off I go, then, to the docks.

My experience of the docks is necessarily limited to those I can explore in today’s security context, which means the very public docks at Limehouse. Here are views from Narrow Street, a tow way along the banks of the Limehouse Cut and northern embankment of the river Thames. This is all posh shops and diners now, but is still a working tow way (see sign):

The Limehouse basin is now a hot district for condo style development, which spreads all the way down the Isle of Dogs to Canary Wharf. Quite a change from even a decade ago. Here are some of those developments:

After taking a few snaps of the visage of St. Elmo atop Our Lady Immaculate Catholic church I am ready to take my leave of this cathartic venture and traipse off towards Mile End station.

This is where the stumbling part comes in. I am doing a frightfully poor job of finding my way to the station. My handy pocket maps don’t cover this area, it not being “Central London” after all, so I read maps at bus stops and try to figure it all out. I take far longer than I should but this is some sort of penance, I am sure, and I soldier on and I do persevere and I have gotten home!

So, did I find my father? Of course not. I knew I wouldn’t, and that was hardly the point any more. I know where he is, all I was looking for was to get a sense of where he was. What was his world like, what were the things and places that shaped him into who he was and that, in a generational trickle down, had helped to shape me. Did I find that? I think I may have, but I will not know for a while. I found my stubbornness, I got that from him, when I insisted that I would find my way home. I found my inquisitiveness as I explored his old sites of exploration. I found my sentimentality, not from him, as a shell of a building could bring a tear to my eye or a simple view of the Thames could transport me back over seventy years to when he gazed across that same expanse and dreamt the dreams that would one day culminate in…me.

See there, I have found me, which is really why I am here. All of the rest is just trappings and excuse. I have come here to find myself and I am beginning to feel that for the first time in a long long time I am hard on the track for that.

When I look at a well trimmed rosebush I will see my father. When I recall Ohm’s Law, which he taught me over the phone over three decades ago, I will recall his patience. When I hear a light and lilting English accent I will hear him. He is with me always, and now I have been to at least part of his London.

There, I have written what I must for the night. I have reports on tonight’s theatre which will wait for morning. Today started with an earthquake which I didn’t even feel, and it ends with a recognition that one can be moved and shaken up from within as well, perhaps more profoundly even. That’s a quake I most certainly felt.

Here I am in London, Marylebone, to be precise, 191-a Gloucester Place, NW1, to be really precise. So, if anyone from the UK reads this (and don’t think I don’t know you do), you know where to find me.

This is a basement, or cellar, apartment which is really rather cozy, I imagine a realtor would say. It is about 2 metres by 5, or 7 ft x 15. with a little extra space for the loo and the closet. This includes a working kitchen. There are two windows into a sort of air shaft cum sunken patio, also accessible by a door. I’ll shoot some interior photos tomorrow in the light.

But, I kind of like the place, so far at least… It is kind of like living in shambles on the doorstep of luxury, tho. Right outside are multi-million pound town houses and the like. Regent’s park is just a block or so away, with botanical gardens, ponds and streams, and a zoo.

Here are some initial observations, in no particular order…

**Right after arriving here, I dumped my stuff at the flat and set out to explore my neighbourhood a bit. I saw a cute little yellow convertible car with a bumper sticker which really took me by surprise. I snapped this shot quick as I could, but you’ll have to take my word for it when I tell you that’s n “Obama08” sticker on the boot!

** When I first visited New York City many years ago I came away with one clear impression: There are a lot of pay phones and they are all in use. That is no longer the case in NYC, cell phones have pretty much obsoleted the pay phone.

When I first visited London, just seven short years ago, I had a similar impression about pay phones: There are a lot of pay phones, and they are all plastered with adverts for phone-sex and the like. The phone booths were well past pornographic. They still are. They aren’t in use nearly as much as they were in 2000, but they are still there with all of their little pornographic ads. I suspect that they are only really kept there to hold those little advert cards.

** Amy Winehouse is everywhere! Well, not Amy herself, but her look. I have seen women and girls from all ages and walks of life with either Miss Winehouse’s trademark mascara, hair or both. I walked by Marleybone School as it let out for the afternoon, and saw all sort of high school age girl with the mascara. I saw the look in other parts of town, as well.

** Other noticeable fashion trends: Colored tights with short shorts or very short skirts; little black dresses are everywhere, and on a Tuesday afternoon; I was worried how I would look in my mismatched jacket and trousers — no worry there, it’s a prevalent look on the streets here.

** Milwaukee has a high level of disregard for public accommodations (think sidewalks, etc.) whenever construction is going on. Parts of the East Side right now require a pedestrian walking just a few blocks along Prospect Avenue to cross the street several times, dodging various construction projects. Many larger cities, such a Chicago or New York have a lot more construction going on at any one time, but they tend to require the builder to protect or temporarily re-route the public right of way during construction.

London goes a step further. Most scaffolding is, upon erection, draped with tarpaulin. Along with the tarpaulin (see the photo of construction next door to Madame Taussad’s) are signs apologizing to the city for the eyesore. These signs are of almost sarcastic earnestness, “Please accept our firmest apology for the works. We are trying to make London better to look at in the process…” and the like.

I recently read a piece by Alexandra Styron in The New Yorker magazine. In it she wrote beautiful remembrances of her father, and of her relationship with him. I was struck as I read the piece with how she seems to, I don’t know, define her father… No, not define him, but identify him, associate him, with places. Brooklyn, in this story, is hers, but it is also his, and it is his ties to it, so documented in “Sophie’s Choice,” which becomes a sort of talisman for her. She doesn’t read that book until he is almost dead. She doesn’t go to find his Brooklyn until he has passed. I got the impression that going to his Brooklyn, the Parade Grounds, was, for her, like sneaking into his room or going through his dresser. It was something that she was expected to do, she would even have been forgiven, but she seems to feel she is trespassing in a way.

I do not identify my father with a place, not really. I thought I did. I thought that England was his place, but I now see that it isn’t. My drive to go to England, I realize, is an attempt to find him. But he isn’t there. When I went there, to North Harrow, several years ago, it was my mother I found, that was her house. They only lived there for a few years and yet even in his own country it was she who I identify with that home. When I was younger I didn’t ever get the sense that the house, my mother’s house on Hackett, was his. It was hers, even when he was living. Even there, just now, I wrote “my mother’s house” not “my parent’s house.” He lived in that house as long as he lived anywhere in his life, but it wasn’t really his place. What I expect to find in England of him I do not know. Perhaps I will find myself.

I must tell you a story. This is the story of the day my father died. The story starts a short time before that day, however, in the Summer of 1976; the Bicentennial, an election year. I was thirteen years old, had begun to experiment with electronics and my brother Steve had been playing guitar for a few years. I suggested that we turn the old playroom in the basement, a room my younger brother and sister didn’t use, into a studio. I could explore my new interest in audio equipment while my brother learned about recording. We browbeat dad into letting us give it a try.

The first order of business was to clean the place out. We older kids had long since abandoned that space and it had started to fill with my mother’s “finds.” We hauled many of those up to the verge to be picked up by the garbage men. There were old toys as well, which we had to box up for posterity. We had made pretty good work of it when we heard the sound. It was a sound which each of us, in our own way, will always remember. There was a crash, some footfalls, and then a moan. The moan sounded like a cat growling, preparing for a fight. It still rings in my ears as I type this. I will never forget that moan.

The crash was mom dropping the dishes she was washing. The footfalls were her running out of the kitchen into the back yard. The moan was her collapsing to her knees next to dad’s crumpled figure on the driveway. She had heard him fall and ran to his side.

Steve and I were in the basement when we heard the moan. I made some lame joke about the cats and we let it go. Then it came again, louder, and we thought we’d best go investigate. Upon cresting the landing of the basement stairs and bursting into the yard, we knew something was terribly wrong. “What’s wrong?” we called to mom as she knelt next to dad’s prone body. “Call an ambulance, your father’s collapsed.” she replied, sobbing. Barely got the words out. Resumed her attempts at mouth to mouth.

The next is a blur. I was the one who ran inside, picked up the phone, dialed “O” for Operator as you see in all of the old movies and TV shows. “I need an ambulance!” I cried into the phone. “You need the Fire Department” I was told, “I can connect you,” said an obviously worried operator. There was a click and then some buzzing. When there was no more sound for a moment or two, I hung up and dialed the Fire Department direct. “I need an ambulance right away” I shouted into the phone. I gave the man the address and told him that my father had collapsed and my mother was giving him mouth to mouth. He told me to keep an eye out, someone would be there soon.

I went into the back yard, onto the driveway, and there mom was fretfully ministering to dad. I cannot convey, in words, the level of fright and angst that gripped us all at that point. Myself, my mother and Stephen were all there. Sarah, Sandy and Joe were inside and ignorant of the goings on. Dad had been loading up the VW minibus with heavy under-felting (for laying under carpet) which mom had garbage picked. This was just some of the stuff which was going in the big purge which our basement studio project had engendered. We’ll come back to this…

The ambulance was long in coming. I went out to the front; mom was frantic and I just wanted to make her calm down. I watched as an ambulance drove by, to the end of the block. I was waving my arms and jumping up and down in the street. I was about to go back inside to call again when the ambulance came back around. I waved them down, “It’s my father, he’s back here” and I took them back to the back of the driveway where he still lay still and mom leaned over him, trying, still, to revive him.

My typing has now slowed from allegro to andante … this is the hard part.

They all bent over him for a while, and then loaded him onto the gurney and parceled him off in the ambulance with mom riding along in the back. We kids milled about; I’m sure a neighbor lady must have come to see after us, though I cannot say so for sure. I remember feeling proud that I had called the ambulance, but ashamed that something had obviously gone wrong that they drove past us at first. This is a doubt that will haunt me forever. I have no idea what my brother Steve was doing this whole time. He was there as surely as I was, but just where I cannot say.

45 minutes later mom returned. We all gathered around her in the living room, she sat on her foot stool with Sandy, 5, on her knee and Joe, 8, standing next to her, and said “Children, you no longer have a father…” Her voice trailed off, and with it my childhood.

I’ve written before of the rest of that day. I will not dwell again, here, upon that. I will, however, revisit the under-felting which was still in the driveway, right were it was when dad collapsed. A week or two later Steve and I loaded it into the minibus and he carted it away to the dump. I hated my mother, then, for having foraged it. I hated her for having, in my eyes at least, caused dad’s death by her relentless frugality.

I do not know when, or if, I ever forgave her for that. When I held her hand as she laid dying, that last long day in hospice, I thought of that day in the driveway. I thought of that wail of hers, that moan that broke Stephen and I out of our revere and up the stairs to find that last, lasting vision of our father. And I thought of that under-felt, that damn under-felt, and how it ruined our family.

I was thinking about this as I finished Ms Styron’s piece and I realized that my father was a man of time, or times, and not of place. I think of him in a series of disjoint era; childhood, the war years, America and finally memory. My mother, though, is a series of places; her army-brat upbringing which she herself defined as a chain of abodes with an anchor in West Lafayette, then Bloomington, Madison, England, the house on Hackett, and finally her bench in Lake Park.

It is only her that I have a place to visit, at that bench of hers in the park. My father’s ashes are in my dining room as I type this, but I do not find him there, in that box. He is long gone, and has no place. Just a time, my past, where I can always go as long as my memory holds up, and find at least a part of him. Or inside, in my heart, where that strong and resolute man chided me to be my best, and showed pride when I achieved it and loving regret when I did not. It is a shame that is all I carry of him – strength, resolve, pride, regret. I wish I had more.