by Sean Mallen
He feared the prospect of a Muslim Brotherhood victory.
“Maybe it’ll be better than people expect, but, yes, I worry.”
I wondered why they still spent so much time in Egypt, given the risks for Copts and their substantial roots in the much safer Toronto. They never really explained it; it seemed that they just truly loved Cairo.
It was a good story, and our final one in Egypt. I had already suggested to Vancouver that this would be a good time to pull out, given that the elections would be carrying on for weeks and the street violence had ebbed.
There was also the impetus to go back home to London and my increasingly impatient wife. The reality of her professional sacrifice was hitting home, as her links to her previous, much-loved job were starting to wither. She wrote in an email that night: “I’ll never make 80k again. You get a career upgrade and I lose mine.”
I had no good answer. There was none. The trailing spouse typically gets the shit end of the deal.
We had reservations on a Tuesday morning EgyptAir flight. The hotel concierge booked us a car to the airport, assuring us that the fare would be 196 Egyptian pounds. But when the driver dropped us off, he insisted the actual charge was 350.
“One last shakedown,” I muttered to Dan — but decided to pay up anyway.
When I asked for a receipt, the cabbie pulled a scrap of paper from the floor of his car and scribbled something in Arabic, with no number. I thought our numerical digits were Arabic. But never mind. I suspected that he wrote something like “Your father was a goat and go fuck yourself, sucker.” I wrote 350 beside and stuffed it in my wallet. Good enough for our expense report.
Although I had already bought Julia a scarf in the market, I reasoned that a more traditional touristy gift might go over better. In an airport shop there was a small stuffed camel, likely made in China. Turned out that she loved it and the scarf went unused.
As we walked to the plane, wrapping up a personal career high point, Dan observed, “Well, I guess we really didn’t need to come.”
He reasoned that the worst of the violence was over by the time we arrived. But for me the sights, sounds, and memories of our few days in Cairo remain evergreen to this day. The Foreign Correspondent gig came to me late in life and would be relatively brief, but reporting from Cairo, riots or not, was a highlight.
Chapter Seventeen
Foreign Correspondentry, Tahrir Square, the pyramids, and the Nile gave way to middle-class parenthood upon return to London. Julia’s Christmas show at the Royal School was Born in a Barn. I noted that, although she was retaining her Canadian accent, when she sang the title song it was “Bohn in a Bahn.”
The performance was at the beginning of the school day, which allowed me and Isabella and dozens of other parents to jam into the Royal’s tiny gymnasium, brandishing our smartphones to record the performance. We had a two-camera shoot, as Isabella also brought our fancy new Nikon.
When Julia auditioned she was desperate to play the wisecracking cockerel who had plenty of dialogue. Instead, she was left tearful after being handed the role of the dog, which only had two lines. But she was a trouper, with strong performance instincts, delivering both lines with gusto. Julia also did a bit of onstage directing, strong-willed as she is, whispering in the ear of the less-focused girl beside her with some reminders of where to go and when.
With Ms. Eisele playing the piano and the six-year-old voices raised in plummy received pronunciation accents, it was ineffably cute.
Performance over and congratulations heaped on the performers, I insisted that Isabella and I have a lunch date, our first grown-up time alone since she moved to London. I had taken the day off for the occasion. Off we went on the Tube south and east to the Tate Modern.
You have to love a city that envisions how a disused former power plant would make a wonderful home for modern art. Even in the bleakness of early December, the evenly planted grove of trees at the north of the building presented an elegant face to the river. I took her over to the west entrance, so that she could have a look at the giant turbine room — a massive open space that dramatically announces itself through its emptiness.
Lunch first at Tate’s restaurant, which was terrific — Isabella lapped up the remaining celeriac sauce from my roast chicken wrapped in pancetta.
There was a Gerhard Richter exhibition. Philistine that I am, I had never heard of him, but his work was enthralling — some abstracts slashed by vertical and horizontal lines, and some realistic works, where he somehow managed to make them look like out-of-focus photos.
“How does he do that?” she kept asking.
Isabella loved it, and I loved that she loved it — we needed more London successes.
Having found some joy through singing and sewing, Isabella now proposed to call upon her cinematic skills for a video series starring our brilliant daughter. So, we packed up our new Nikon and tripod and headed for Southwark on a clear, chill Saturday morning. The idea was to create a video of Julia scootering in London. As I have mentioned, scooters were the favoured mode of transport among children of her age. We had no particular buyer for such a video, but it would be undoubtedly charming.
Outside London Bridge underground station we had her pose in front of the sign and scooter past it a couple of times. We were already in trouble, as I could not seem to manually adjust the iris. The camera manual had been read some months before, but little seemed to stick in my mind.
The ultimate goal was Southwark, which offers panoramic views of the Thames and Tower Bridge. We set up in front of London’s City Hall, a building nicknamed the Onion that resembles a bicycle helmet and which former mayor Ken Livingstone called a glass testicle. We would have Julia zip around the open space to be as cute and picturesque as possible.
But then neither of us could figure out a way of properly mounting the camera on the expensive tripod that we had purchased. Finally, I managed to awkwardly jam the two together so I could shoot with a semblance of steadiness.
Julia was only marginally interested in the whole exercise.
“Sweetie, can you sing ‘London Bridge Is Falling Down’ as you scooter past?” I pleaded.
“Daddy, that’s not London Bridge, that’s TOWER Bridge,” she responded, maddeningly, with the facts on her side.
After much cajoling, threatening, and negotiating, we managed to get her to do a few small laps around the courtyard in front of the Glass Testicle, neither of us confident that any of it had proper focus, exposure, or composition.
With Julia on the edge of tears, Isabella did not want to push any further.
“It’s okay, sweetie,” she said, hugging her. “We’ll try another time.”
But this moment of failure was succeeded by a triumph. Weeks earlier, she had reserved tickets for a Family Carol Sing at St. Martin-in-the-Fields. We hauled the mysterious camera and uncooperative tripod on the Tube up to Charing Cross station and then the short walk to the northeast corner of Trafalgar Square.
By the time we arrived, the pews were mainly full, with no reserved seats. Miraculously, there was room in the front row and we jammed in with a close-up view of the London Choir — passionate amateurs.
It was, dear reader, thrilling — for me at least.
Julia was bored and laid her head on Isabella’s lap but for the singalong portions I joined in lustily and tunelessly. My wife stared at me with open mouth and perplexed amusement. I never did this at home, but, hell, we were in London singing old English Christmas songs in a famed church that had been standing on that spot since medieval days. What could be better? The video debacle was forgotten and as we walked out of St. Martin, I could have flown back to Fuckland Buckland.
The first Christmas of my London posting was chocked full of logistical complications. Decembers were already busy for us, given Julia’s birthday on the 15th. Now, given that we would be going home for the holidays, we were faced both with multiple birthday parties and multiple Santa visits.
Add
ed to the fun: Isabella was now determined to hunt for a new flat. I said nothing about it because, much as I understood her dislike for Buckland, I knew that finding anything better in the same general area would likely involve spending considerably more money.
She found a place on Upper Park Road that she was convinced would be a big upgrade. It was a two-bedroom, south-facing flat, smaller than our current place but much better cared for with a superior layout. It was also about £140 more per week. She had already checked it out herself and now took Julia and me to see it.
I did my best to keep a straight face but inside my stomach was knotted as I contemplated moving a mere six months after getting into Buckland. I would have to take apart Julia’s bed with the million pieces, pack everything up, and likely have to eat at least a couple of weeks of Buckland rent, even as our monthly payments jumped by close to a thousand dollars.
“I like it and I think we should take it,” she said.
“Okay,” I replied, uncertain if the quaver in my voice was noticeable.
I had noted the lack of storage space and how I would now face a much longer walk to the gym, but otherwise was as mute and neutral as I could manage.
“I’m going to make an offer,” she said as we walked to the bus. “£600 per week.”
“Okay. Well … I want you to be happy.” Which was true.
Back at Buckland, she had a sleepless night and in the morning advised me that she had sent an email in the wee hours to the estate agent, declining to make an offer.
“You said there’s not enough storage space and the owner probably would not want to wait two months for us to move in so that we could give the required notice to our Buckland landlord.”
“Okay. But remember: I never said no to it” — a response given in the spirit of Pontius Pilate.
“You did say no,” she said. “But now I’ve sent the email, so it’s done.”
But over the next few days she continued to regret her decision: “I’ll never find another place as good. He was ready to accept us because I told him we were a nice couple from Canada who would take good care of it.” The Canada card.
Having second thoughts, she wrote another email to the agent, who responded that there appeared to be an offer on the property. So that was that. But Upper Park Road would linger in our minds in the months ahead.
We had decided to do a partial Christmas celebration in London, which sent Julia and me on an expedition to Oxford Street to find a present for Isabella.
The holidays are a magical time in this part of town, with extravagant displays of Christmas lights hung over Regent Street. It is a magnet for shoppers year-round, but on the second Saturday in December it is a madhouse.
When we emerged from the Bond Street station, we found Oxford Street crammed. It is so busy at this time of year that they close the street to cars — but pedestrians still fill it from wall to wall.
“Hold my hand, sweetie,” I said, clutching her tightly so that we would not become separated as we made our way into the mob.
At least we knew what we were in search of: Isabella had advised that she would appreciate earrings, so we fought our way into the John Lewis department store and headed for the jewellery department. No salesperson could fail to be charmed by a six-year-old girl with her dad hunting for a Christmas present for Mom, so service was quick and friendly.
One of my wife’s many salutary qualities is a dislike for gaudy, expensive jewellery, which meant that in short order we were able to find something both tasteful and not the equivalent of a month’s rent.
Our main mission complete, my daughter the power shopper asked if we could go into Hamleys toy store around the corner. I was skeptical, but said we could at least look. As I expected, throngs of stressed parents with squalling kids were lined up outside, so I managed to dissuade her.
Still, despite the crowds, the fond memory lingers of taking my daughter Christmas shopping on Oxford Street. I recommend it for any sentimental parent.
Our mini-celebration in London came on the Sunday morning, when we gathered around the fake fireplace in Fuckland Buckland to open Christmas stockings. Isabella’s earrings were only a partial success, as it seemed the metal irritated her earlobes. But she was careful to only tell Julia how much she liked them.
Drinking deeply of the English Christmas spirit, we then headed off on the Tube to the southern reaches of the great city, to Wimbledon, where we had tickets to that loud, brassy, and slapstick English tradition, the pantomime.
The show was Dick Whittington and His Cat, as London a tale as you could find. But really, all pantos have pretty much the same template: two pallid young lovers, overshadowed by a cast of overplayed stereotypes delivering broad, bawdy comedy, with old-time song and dance and endless smartassed asides to the audience. The headliner is typically the Dame — a guy in drag.
Whittington had none other than Dame Edna Everage topping the bill as the Fairy that Saved London. There was a subsidiary Dame: Sarah, the rotund cook who continually bragged, “My dumplings are the talk of the town.”
Sarah’s lover was played by a little person (it seems dwarves are also often part of the usual script), which made for a plethora of sight gags as he sidled up to his towering girlfriend.
Coincidentally, the dwarf issue led to some bad press for a Snow White panto playing elsewhere in London. The producers hired kids instead of adult little people (children being cheaper), and dubbed in their voices. Their innovation brought outrage from dwarf actors who naturally objected to being denied work.
Also part of the panto template is a touch of technological razzle-dazzle. Whittington had a 3-D film to portray an unlikely scene with the protagonists exploring an underwater shipwreck. Julia dropped her 3-D glasses at the crucial moment and chose to snatch Isabella’s from her face, leading to a mother-daughter staredown.
At the end of the Whittington story, the panto carried on: one of the supporting characters, a comedian named Kev Orkian, took over the stage to read out some birthday wishes. This was a Daddy fail on my part to not know about it, given that Julia’s was only a couple of days away. He called three kids up to act as foils for a wisecracking improv routine: “Who did you like best?” et cetera.
As I turned to Julia to apologize for not submitting her name, she clutched my shoulder, stuck her face in mine, and with wide, desperate eyes whispered, “I’ve got to pee!”
As we were in the middle of the audience, unable to get out, it made for an excruciating last few minutes of the panto. Just as Kev appeared ready to wrap up, he came up with another routine — even as my daughter’s fingers dug ever deeper into my bicep.
When finally he said good night, she jumped over several people and edged past others to make a frantic and thankfully successful run for the can.
Although London does get chilly, it is not at all winter in the Canadian frame of reference. The average temperature in December is a relatively mild seven degrees Celsius. But the Brits find ways to synthesize the experience of the season, much as they might savour the flavours of Greece or Egypt by hauling in archeological artifacts to put on display in museums.
Witness the skating rinks that pop up in spectacular and historic locales throughout the city, even if no ice cube would last long in the mild English weather without artificial support. You could skate in the moat of the Tower of London, at Hampton Court, and in front of the Natural History Museum. It all happens in the month leading up to Christmas and ends early in the new year — so popular that one must book a specific time of arrival for an hour’s worth of skating.
We opted for the stately strip of ice set up in the courtyard of Somerset House. Having grown up with backyard rinks or battered old barns of arenas in small-town Ontario, it was a grand experience to lace up the blades in the quadrangle of an eighteenth-century neoclassical public building overlooking the north bank of the Thames, previously home to the Royal Society, the Society of Antiquaries, and HM Revenue and Customs.
; As mentioned earlier, my skating skills are at best rudimentary. But as I saw Londoners spasmodically propelling themselves around the ice, ankles turned in, arms waving, faces contorted in fearful concentration, I felt confident that I would be the Wayne Gretzky of Somerset House.
So it was with brio that I stepped onto the ice in my rented blades, ready to show the English what a true Canadian boy can do. I pushed off with equal parts bravado and incompetence, launching immediately into a double-windmill impression as my feet threatened to split off in anatomically impossible directions. But the moment of panic was brief. I caught my balance, and gently, tentatively started to glide around the rink, rising to my usual level of mediocrity but avoiding mishap.
As my confidence grew, it was clear that I was in fact one of the more able practitioners. Faint praise. A Londoner in his forties caught our eye. For some reason, he was wearing a trench coat, a choice more appropriate for a stroll through Regent’s Park on a misty day. It was already covered in water stains and bits of snow — remnants from what must have been several spills. We glided by as he was preparing to step back out onto the rink for another go.
“He’s going to hurt himself,” said Isabella as she observed his precarious form.
Sure enough, after one or two tentative steps, both feet flew upward in front, his arms clutched for a handhold but found only air, his damp trench coat fluttered up into his face and his ass slammed to the artificially frozen surface, his head stopping only a millimetre away from what would have been a grievous concussion.
“Urgahhh!” he groaned impressively.
Although thoroughly battered, he was not conceding. After about an eight count, he crawled over to the boards, dragged himself back to his feet, face contorted like a stroke victim, and doggedly pulled himself around the rink, wisely holding onto the boards the whole way.
As he did so, my respect grew. It appeared that he was there with his wife and daughter, who was of a similar age to my little girl. They made their way over to him to ensure he had not suffered any permanent damage and they continued as a family to stumble around the rink, determined to not be defeated by the hazards of this unfamiliar and unnatural activity.
