07 July, 2005

London Part III

I watched Sabrina during lunch today. Audrey Hepburn's character falls deeply in love with Paris, and waxes rhapsodic about the City of Lights. I never got it. I went to Paris at seventeen, when a girl should be ripe to fall in love with the romance of rivers and bridges and tree-lined avenues. After a brief stay in a cockroach-infested St. Denis hostlery, we moved on. And I finally fell in love.

With London.

Falling in love with London instead of Paris is like marrying the tech geek instead of living in bohemian squalor with the art major. What can I say? I'm a practical girl. But we practical girls know that the tech geek harbours rivers of passion untapped by most folk.

London is a temple to history and art, commerce and science, medicine and music. It was, for many decades, the center of the world empire. Its clocks set the beat of time for the world. Romans, plague, fire and Huns have taken stabs at this great place but it still stands. Dr. Johnson's dictionary was born here. The world's first blogger, Samuel Pepys lived here.

There is a network of London-lovers all over the world. We recognize each other by brief smiles whenever this movie is mentioned. We are the ones who shudder every time this place is misidentified as London Bridge. We are the ones who secretly harbour the desire to have been married here and to be buried here.

I'm sad today about the bombings, but I know that the two cities attacked today (London and Westminster–there I go again...) will stand as ever.

3 Comments:

At 2:46 PM, July 07, 2005, Anonymous Anonymous said...

London is fabulous ... as are tech geeks.

~ Lacy

 
At 6:58 PM, July 07, 2005, Anonymous Anonymous said...

True to my namesake, I am your twin. I fondly remember London for how much better it was than any other European city we visited. Though I didn't spend as much time there as you, I always have dreamed of returning, and I still do.

 
At 11:19 PM, July 07, 2005, Blogger Tiffany said...

Thanks for stopping by and leaving your wonderful comments. I've been reading your posts, too, courtesy of Nashville is Talking.

Your post today reminds me of "Love Actually", where Hugh Grant gives the speech about why the UK is such a great country. We as Americans owe our very history and identity to England, and I know that's one reason today's attacks hit so hard.

 

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