Falling for London

by Sean Mallen

  We were now two months into our time together in London and few things were going right.

  Top of the list of irritants was our apartment. Isabella had taken to calling our London pied-à-terre Fuckland Buckland. The bed we slept in was awful, squeaking with a cheap mattress — not a good thing for someone with a bad back. My assiduous cleaning of the flat did little to relieve its unrelenting grimness. And finances were already tight.

  “I think you need to ask for more money,” said Isabella. A request I knew was futile.

  I had unsuccessfully settled my wife and daughter in a new country, taken them from our renovated, roomy home with a backyard and a lifestyle where we could pay the bills, save a bit, and take the occasional vacation in the south, and plopped them into a dumpy, expensive flat, where we were about to go into the hole and where we knew nobody.

  Now, to add to the hilarity, I was about to go on my first road trip.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I first stepped onto Greek territory during my big backpacking trip in 1984. After an all-night ferry from Italy, I landed exhausted on the island of Corfu and promptly made the mistake of downing a gleaming carafe of tap water at a restaurant: so refreshing, so profoundly dumb.

  Within hours my guts were grumbling. Fearing an explosion, I rushed to a pharmacy in search of anti-diarrhea medication. Too late. On the way back to the hostel, my ass cut loose a stream of sludge into my shorts. Corfu was where I learned the true meaning of incontinence and never again risked foreign tap water.

  In all, I spent a month in Greece, where the messy-pants debut was followed up with many days of wonderment, joy, and inspiring sights: the Parthenon, and the crystal blue waters, the exquisite beaches, and the glorious breasts of the Swedish sunbathers. It all gladdened the heart of a young Canadian lad.

  Aside from the Acropolis, Athens left me cold — it seemed dirty, loud, and unfriendly.

  But twenty years later, it won me over when I returned to cover the Summer Olympics. The city had been made over, much of it at the last minute, and now was gorgeous, sophisticated, and welcoming. The Parthenon, illuminated against the cloudless night sky, was surely one of the finest, most timeless sights the world could offer.

  The Olympics were such a point of cultural pride for the Greeks. On closing night, I was in a bar where volunteers were dancing, singing, and crying. I wrote that there could be no better place in the world to be on that night.

  One day near the end of the games, I spotted the leader of the Greek opposition party, George Papandreou, walking through the press area. Knowing he’d studied for a time in Toronto, I approached him and asked for an interview, to which he readily agreed. Opposition leaders are so much easier to get in front of the camera.

  Already there was talk that this small nation had overreached with the games, spent far too much on a party that it could not afford. I asked him whether it was a bad idea. No Greek politician with any ambition would ever admit in those heady days that it had all been a big mistake. And he did not: “I believe for Athens it has been a worthy investment. For Greece it has been a worthy investment, and we will be able to benefit not only psychologically, but financially also,” he said with fervent and certain patriotism.

  By the fall of 2011, Papandreou was prime minister, presiding over a country that could no longer pay its bills, where years of huge deficits had grown the national debt to an unsustainable level. Tax evasion by the rich was rampant.

  Foreign lenders, led by the Germans, were bailing out Greece with multibillion euro loans, demanding huge cuts in government spending in return. The land of Plato, Pericles, and Melina Mercouri was being spanked for years of overspending and underbudgeting. Greek bonds were downgraded so many times they were valued at somewhere between gum wrappers and toilet paper.

  Civil servants were being fired by the thousands, government services slashed. There were strikes, shortages, and riots in the centre of Athens. This ancient nation was now teetering and bankruptcy loomed, as did a withdrawal from the eurozone with consequences that could be calamitous for the world economy.

  In late October, eurozone leaders agreed, teeth grinding, to put up another €130 billion in bailout money and to force lenders to agree to slash the debt. In return, Greece had to cut even deeper. They sent Papandreou home to pass it through Parliament, only to see him decide out of nowhere to call a national referendum on the package, which was sure to lose and blow up all their hard work and concessions.

  This Greek drama was now drawing me back to Athens, even as I was struggling to keep my family life together in London.

  As a trip to Greece loomed, the new Canadian High Commissioner to the U.K., former B.C. premier Gordon Campbell, invited the local Canadian press corps to join him for lunch at his official residence on Grosvenor Square. These kinds of invitations are one of the perks of a foreign correspondent gig. We were all Canadians far from home, stationed in one of the world’s great cities, so it made sense for us all to gather for a convivial sharing of our good fortune.

  In the pre-lunch conversations, a couple of the correspondents with far more experience in exotic locations shared stories from the road. The best was about flying with a rinky-dink airline in some desperately poor part of the world. It seemed that the pilot and co-pilot chose to leave the aircraft on auto so that they could both depart the cockpit at the same time to take a nap in first class — only to discover that they had locked themselves out. Almost certainly apocryphal, but a great yarn.

  I had nothing to match that one, and chose not to share my story of filling my pants in Corfu.

  Lunch was an elegant, three-course affair with formal service and fine Canadian wine. All very civilized — a taste of the higher levels of diplomatic life.

  On the taxi ride back to the office shortly afterward, my phone buzzed with an email from Vancouver: Book a flight to Athens. Almost simultaneously there was a note from Isabella: “I’m really sad.”

  My stomach contracted. I called her on my cellphone from the hallway of the office.

  “How long are you going for?” she asked in a flat voice.

  “No idea. A few days, I guess.”

  “Great. We just got here and there’s so much weighing on us and now you’re leaving Julia and me alone.”

  It was true. She never wanted to come to London, never asked for the lifestyle of the spouse of a foreign correspondent.

  Now utterly distracted, I stumbled into the office to write my story for the day and to prepare for departure the following morning.

  It was a doubly weird week because the British clocks had gone back an hour, while in North America the switch to standard time was still a week away. It meant a disorienting four hours difference with Toronto instead of the usual five. I checked and double-checked Global National’s airtime in Toronto — 6:30 p.m. Eastern. This was important because I would need to do a rare live hit into the show and had to hop a taxi down to a studio on the south bank of the Thames, about forty minutes away.

  I left in time to get there at least forty-five minutes early for my 10:30 BST hit. At 9:25 p.m., in a taxi, my phone rang with Vancouver on the line.

  “We can’t see you in the chair,” she said.

  “Uh … I’m not on the air for more than an hour,” I said with a touch of dread.

  “Sean, our first show goes to the east coast at 6:30 Atlantic Time, 5:30 Eastern.”

  My breathing grew short and I felt the blood rushing to my head. If, sitting at her desk in Vancouver, she had a window into my cab rushing through the darkness of London she would see a sweating, blushing, and shamed dope.

  Luckily for me, she laughed. Loudly.

  “He’s not going to make it,” she shouted to someone.

  “Ahhhhhhhh,” I gurgled. “I am so sorry. That will never never never happen again.”

  I was in plenty of time for my hit for Toronto and did one more at 11:30 p.m. before heading back to the flat to pack, tiptoeing in after midnight.

  I
sabella was asleep on the lower bunk in Julia’s room.

  I went into the kitchen to discover that Isabella had actually taken the time to make a lovely supper, which I’d missed — my plate now sitting in the fridge. I washed the dishes, cleaned up the kitchen, and headed into bed where I found Isabella now awake, sitting up and looking at her computer.

  She was grim and cold, angry and tearful.

  “I never wanted this,” she said wearily. “I’m doing my best — for Julia, and for you — but I’m so sad. I hope this will get easier.”

  She turned over on her side, back to me. The bed rocked and squeaked.

  “This fucking bed.”

  “Please don’t give up,” I pleaded.

  “I have nothing to do, no friends. Do not even try to touch me,” she said, getting up and running weeping out of the room.

  Exhausted, drained, and out of ideas, I fell asleep.

  I woke up before the alarm, despite my fatigue and only sleeping a few hours. Isabella had returned to the bed in the night and was asleep beside me. As the alarm went off I gently suggested that she could go into the shower first because she needed to take Julia to school and my flight was not until noon.

  After a sleepless and stressful night, she managed to drag herself out of bed and make her way into the bathroom. Equally fatigued, I went into Julia’s room to wake her.

  “I DON’T WANNA GO TO SCHOOL!” she wailed.

  I was now being pounded from both sides, but I could not complain — my wife would just respond that I had asked for it. Getting them both out the door was like pushing a boulder up a hill, but finally they left, only a few minutes late.

  I threw together my suitcase and headed for Heathrow. My first big trip in a trouble zone and I was facing full-on discontent and rebellion at home. My own little Eurocrisis.

  Upon boarding the jet, an email arrived from Isabella, advising me that she had ordered a £1,200 bed.

  “I have to have this for my back. Global is going to pay for it. If I have to live in London, at least we can have a comfortable bed.”

  Almost simultaneously an email arrived from Stu. (Dan was on holiday and Stu was flying to Athens from Prague to be my cameraman-editor.) The BBC was reporting that Prime Minister Papandreou was about to resign and call for a coalition government.

  Both Greece and my family were in debt, angry, chaotic, and facing disaster.

  I turned off my phone for takeoff.

  It was dark in Athens when I landed. When my iPhone came to life, it buzzed with the latest news that Papandreou was now backing off the referendum but would be facing a confidence vote in Parliament the next day in which his government could fall and create a whole different kind of mess — elections would delay the delivery of the latest bailout money. Democracy in the nation that invented the word could force it into bankruptcy.

  Anxious to do some reporting as soon as possible, I started quizzing the taxi driver en route downtown.

  He had little English, but was able to say, “Little guys hurt … rich get all.”

  Eager to demonstrate my mythical mastery of social media, I pulled out my phone to shoot a vlog — turning the camera on my face in an invariably unflattering framing to expound on all I had learned in my thirty minutes in Greece, travelling from the airport to the centre, panning from time to time outside the cab to capture blurry shots of lights passing by.

  I reflected on my memories of the Olympics and of George Papandreou’s wistfully optimistic comment from 2004. I also quoted from my six-word interview with my unilingual taxi driver. My insightful coverage of the Greek economic crisis was underway.

  I only had to press send to fire it off to the online team back home. A miracle.

  We were booked into the Hotel Grande Bretagne right on Syntagma Square, in the heart of everything — opposite the Parliament and right where all the riots had been happening. Hotel management told us we could shoot from our balcony — unless there was trouble, in which case everyone would be ordered inside with windows closed and blinds drawn. For some reason they believed that standing with a TV camera and a light above mobs of rioters might be problematic.

  The centre was blocked off to traffic, so I got out and walked the last few blocks. There were cops in riot gear everywhere and the streets were teeming with activity, but no sign of trouble.

  Stu had already arrived. We were close to deadline and had already decided we would just try to speak to a couple of people in the square to get a flavour of the feelings in play, shoot an ad-libbed stand-up describing what we were seeing, and quickly edit them together to send back in time for the first edition of Global National.

  Back home, shooting “streeters” in Toronto was one of my least-favourite tasks. Panhandling for clips, I used to call it — an often-humiliating exercise where middle-aged guys in suits (i.e., me) approach wary pedestrians with a smile and a question and are often brushed off like a pest. A wise cameraman once told me that if your story cannot stand without streeters you do not have a story. But that does not stop us.

  Typically, they are more of a production device than a journalistic exercise — clips and sound are inserted that help keep up the pace of your story and are a nod to the notion that you are taking the pulse of the average guy, rather than just putting up a bunch of talking heads. By “talking heads” I mean smart people who may have actually given some thought and research to the subject at hand and know what they are talking about. Far better, in the eyes of many news directors and consultants, to stick a microphone in the face of the first person who will stop and face the camera and deliver something that resembles a comment in ten seconds or less.

  But that was Toronto. Now I was a Foreign Correspondent™. Now it was true journalism because I was taking the pulse of the Greek nation in the midst of a crisis.

  At the east end of the square, opposite the Parliament buildings, we found a likely candidate. He was perhaps thirty, tall, lean, unshaven, with the remnants of a cigarette butt in his fingers — staring impassively at the commotion around him, exuding disdain. A Greek intellectual, I surmised.

  “Do you speak English?” I asked earnestly.

  He gave us a long look before nodding and agreeing to talk.

  “What do you think of George Papandreou?”

  “Ah. Our prime minister who speaks perfect English. A fine product of the international elite,” he said, oozing contempt.

  We spoke to a couple of other people, but his comment was the most telling.

  Streeters gathered, stand-up shot, Stu edited our little report on his laptop, sent it out via the magic of FTP to Vancouver, and our job for the night was done.

  The next day would see the confidence vote late in the evening, right around airtime back home. We would build the back half of the story in advance, searching for voices beyond the average guy in the street. Instead, it would be the average merchant on the street.

  Stu and I hiked down Mitropoleos Street, off Syntagma, and came upon a tiny jeweller’s shop owned by the Makriadis brothers, George and John. George was sitting on a high stool, unshaven, elbow on the display case, huge belly hanging over his belt. He was both weary and angry. Their shop had been frequently shut down because of the troubles on the square, and even when it was open, the tourists were not coming. Tear gas, riots, and political turmoil tended to mask the many charms of Athens for visitors.

  What did he think of the people running his country?

  “You can take them all and use them for dog food.”

  He was most upset about the damage to Greece’s reputation.

  “You must tell the people in Canada that Greeks are not lazy. We’re hard-working,” George said, wagging a finger. “Think of the Greeks you know in Canada — they all work hard.”

  Interview done, John brought out some of their hand-made jewellery. They were anxious to do a deal if they could and invited me to come back and pick up something for the wife. Under the circumstances, I was not sure a present from my Greek
trip would go over very well.

  Contacts from back home put me in touch with Constantine Katsigiannis, an elegant, honey-voiced lawyer who was president of the Hellenic-Canadian Chamber of Commerce. He welcomed us into his wood-panelled office, offering coffee and a high-level analysis.

  Katsigiannis shared the jeweller’s view that Greek work habits were being unfairly maligned, citing statistics that showed they were diligent. “The problem is a bloated civil service that we cannot afford,” he said. “And to a lesser extent tax avoidance.”

  Not paying taxes was an unofficial national sport in Greece, with estimates of up to €30 billion uncollected every year. Avoidance had deep cultural roots in history. During the centuries of Ottoman occupation, denying the Turkish taxman his due was a statement of patriotic resistance.

  The practice persisted after independence. The Globe and Mail reported a few months before my arrival that rich folks in the tonier parts of Athens feared the sight of helicopters overheard, wondering if they were investigators for the revenue department taking pictures of backyard pools at the homes of Greeks whose declared income was suspiciously low to afford such luxuries. Naturally, the ones most successful at dodging the taxman were the wealthiest and best connected.

  I wondered about the extravagance of the 2004 Olympics and if they were the first step on the road to disaster. Katsigiannis’s answer was nuanced.

  “I don’t think so. They showed off Greece at its best,” he said. “But the facilities were wasted and mismanaged — never used properly.”

  Neither the jeweller nor the lawyer was optimistic, no matter what happened with the current government.

  “We are doomed to continue in a very, very hard situation,” said George Makriadis.

  “It’s a big question here, how long this will last — and how low the economy will go,” added Katsigiannis.

  Their interviews were to be the back half of my story that night. The top, to be delivered live, would be the result of the confidence motion. If Papandreou’s government fell, Greece could be defaulting within days.