why yes, london IS calling me. funny you should ask, joe strummer

A very wise friend of mine has often said that she works to travel. Monday morning as I booked my flight to London for a trip over the New Year, I thought about how lucky I am now to be able to say the same thing.

It's going to be a whirlwind trip, just six days of traveling with about five full days' worth of time actually in London. But that means a few things - first, that I'll be making it to London in the calendar year of 2009, thus meeting the requirement I set for myself to never go a year without being in England, and second, that those five days will be absolutely packed to the gills with people and places I love.

I have this dream where one day I make enough money to have a home in the states and one in England. And I'm using the word dream here for a reason, because chances are it'll be just that, a dream, forever. Unless of course I can finally realize the ultimate compromise and marry an English guy so that we can both capitalize on visa-related benefits, live transcontinentally and be painfully fabulous forever until we die. The end.

Until that day (never) arrives, though, I will have to make do with the occasional mad, six-day trip to a time zone six hours removed and be thankful for the resilience of my young body and its ability to bounce back from jet lag. This time around I'll be arriving back from London at 11 p.m. on a Monday night and heading in to work at 8 a.m. the next day. It's going to be rough, but it's not like I haven't powered through before.

When I came back to London after my Christmas break in 2008, I landed about four hours before I had a voice lesson with my performance professor. I had to trek from Gatwick in south London up to Kingsbury to drop off my suitcases and get my school stuff and then trek even farther out to Brunel, just in time for my 1 o'clock session. And not just to sit and take notes. To sing. Alone. Notes that are high. On about two hours of plane sleep.

And in the middle of the lesson, sight reading Billie Holliday's "Them There Eyes," my phone started going off. My American phone.

It was the alarm that I'd had set during my time at home, telling me it was time to wake up! Because it was 8 a.m.! Well, it was 8 a.m. somewhere. I turned it off, laughed and went back to the piano.

If I can sight read jazz notation on no sleep, surely I can manage to hang out and catch up on no sleep. Plus, booze ALWAYS helps! Right?

Right?


cheers,
elizabeth