continued from part 3
The second chapter of our trip was marked by our moving into a friend's home, and getting to experience what it was like to live on the fringes of London, and more importantly, as a genuine Londoner. If that even is a legitimate word.
... I'm writing at Aunty Yl's dining table, eating a peach and watching furtively to see if another squirrel will run atop of the fence in classic storybook style, like the one I saw in the morning. Aunty Yl has a darling of a dollhouse. I half expect everything to be labeled 'Bathroom', 'Bedroom,' or a huge human hand to appear and rearrange the furniture by sticking an immense finger in through the window.
We watched BBC news on TV, admired giant English roses of fantastic hues and a view of lovely storybookish houses nestled densely together, complete with Tudor latticed windows, door knockers, and brick chimneys. Visited the neighbourhood Tesco, which shouted 'LAND OF PLENTY' to my amazed eyes. Saw sleek pet cats roaming freely, high-tec garbage collectors, classic red postboxes (I mailed postcards back home feeling like I had done something magnificent) and the mail getting popped through the door slot by the postman. It's all been most, most satisfying. The cream on the cake is the patterned wallpaper and the red chequered tablecloth--yes, actually and truly a red chequered tablecloth--on which I'm writing....
It was a quiet morning I thoroughly enjoyed over good English tea, Tunnocks caramel biscuits. (I'm sold--I could have eaten a whole pack if I had sat there any longer) and more peaches. Struggled manfully on a Chinese postcard to send to my grandparents--blood, sweat, tears, and Google translate--and then took a break to list down all the wonderful first's I'd experienced in the past few days so far:
-my first real European squirrel, outside St Paul's. It wasn't the fat red lynx eared Squirrel Nutkin ones I'd hoped to see, but large and gray-brown, with a tail that looked like it had been permanently frosted with icing sugar.
-blue jay. It was huge. I actually mistook it for a crow until I saw how blue it was.
-lavender, growing wild by the sidewalk.
-raspberry lemonade, over which I got sentimental and tried to keep the can until it got dented by reality.
-seagulls.
-dishwashing the western way--in boiling hot water with rubber gloves, without rinsing the soap off (the Asian in me shudders.) I'm afraid I found it very exciting to wash dishes with the threat of scalding the skin off your hands always in the background.
-bought Chinese takeaway and made friends with the shop owners. Chinese sounded strange and brittle in that different environment, but the spark of affinity was there none the less, like the smell of fried rice and noodles.
In my two down days (one by choice, which I revelled in, the other by compulsion because of a sore throat, which I chafed against; we're complicated creatures) what hit me most was the quietness of suburban London life. Everyone stayed inside, or seemed to be hiding away inside, with great determination; I felt, if not like the lone survivor after the zombie apocalypse, then like a tropical animal brought over in the midst of winter when all the local animals were hibernating. I didn't realize how much I loved the stimulation of Singapore HDB life, where your windows are never too far away from your neighbours, when you can tell if the boy next door is surfing Facebook on his laptop, when you can see someone cleaning their windows, airing shoes, watering plants, feeding cats if you look out far enough. Where you can people watch, in other terms, though that presumably means you can be watched in return.
Like hermits and prisoners of age untold, I found an ant and fed it to a huge spider in the garden. There were so many cobwebs, in every possible corner. I finally understand why book characters made such a big fuss about cobwebs and why spiders are such a big thing in this part of the world.
...One marmalade cat, prosperous and dignified, sitting at the window besides a doll and toy is all the sign of life there is outside. To be exact, signs of life are everywhere--mowed lawns, clotheslines, teapots, lace curtains, satellite dishes--but no life. Bleak; despite all the homey personal signs of it.
Now he's washing his face. He looked at me once and I waved my arms, happy to find another living thing looking from a window, and he looked away with a disgusted expression. Later he changed to another, further window, probably thinking I can't see him.
Alive all alone, except for a marmalade cat that doesn't like me. Any longer of this stagnant environment and I will begin to believe Londoners don't like being alive, it's an unpleasant fact they gloss over with dignity, exactly the way the marmalade cat glosses over me...
to be continued in part 5