just ran across this old photo. not under a bed or in a dusty album, but hanging, right there on the wall, unnoticed for so many years. i think of myself as a visual person, but sheesh. right under my nose.
yes, kids, we were once young. here, amy was two months pregnant with jordan. we had headed across the pond for one last hurrah. london, england. we stayed in a little b&b: macdonald's & devon hotel on argyle square, a few steps away from kings cross st. pancras underground station.
the trip comes back to mind now as a swirl of memories and lots of walking and many strange meet-ups — amy's college girlfriend jena was there, taking classes at a baylor-in-london program, as was our friend janelle (syler's best friend's wife!); my mom and a close family friend carol coincidentally also overlapped our time in london while they were visiting carol's daughter julie and her then-boyfriend (now husband) jamie, so we all hung out one day; our tour guide was one of amy's old boyfriends, a cinematographer d/p named koen. amy and i also took a train out to southend-on-sea to visit our friend debbie's parents and their prized koi. we even ran into gordon sumner, but that's another story.
days and days of taking it all in ... westminster, piccadilly circus, trafalgar square, buckingham, ah! portobello road, the tower of london -- ravens -- tower bridge ... as i recall my mom and i listened to a hauntingly beautiful requiem in st. paul's cathedral the same day that we all toured st. martin-in-the-fields.
halfway through the trip i traded my relatively long hair (shown in the photo, above) for an ultra-short, very trendy-at-the-time razor-cut caesar. it was the best hair cut i'd ever had, and i've never had better. odd confession: every time i ease myself into a barber's or stylist's chair, i can't help but compare the cut i'm about to get to that one day in the u.k.. -- in my mind, i throw down the gauntlet to each would-be cutter: who here can top that haircut?
no one.
i answer in my head before they've even started. they're cutting, but i'm not paying attention. i'm remembering the place, the stainless chair with black leather — i remember it having a le corbusier feel to it — the exposed brick wall of the london salon, the feminine/masculine smell of the oddly androgynous butch wax, the violent precision with which the stylist worked, the feel of the short haircut in the cold london streets, the crisp buzzed neck-hair brushing against my shirt collar and jacket — it all comes back, and when my attention returns to the half-awake stylist in front of me, i know i'll be disappointed with any haircut i receive.
a fortnight in london is just about right. you shed your american self long enough to be a sensitive interloper, glad to return to the comforts of home. for all the vacation scrapbooking and journaling amy and i have done, we've never taken the time to document london. i think sometime soon i'll go hunting for the rest of the photos.
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