...and so I am back in Toronto, still downtown as I crashed last night, predictably, as I had been up since 4am BST and when I went to bed I think I had been up for...a long time. The flight was 8 hours long but the movies were good, especially Take the Lead which made me want to take dance lessons so I could dance with my man...

Okay, London!

Unlike last time, it was cooler (in temperature), familiar and yet not - I saw both old haunts and new lovable ones and felt a real attachment to the city and its grayish green winding river - it's just as big as ever but not nearly as threatening and alien as before; I think this is due to my already having been, but also to the obvious fact that when you are in love with someone, the roughnesses and frustrations of the city simply do not matter as much. An illustration:

Bank Holiday Sunday - we go from Camden to Clapham expecting to find a grocery store (Sainsbury's) open but no, they just closed - so we have no choice but to go to a corner store for our bagels and pasta sauce. It seems unpromising at first - much more a place to get a bottle of wine (yes, imagine!) or R White's Lemonade (Marcello's favorite soft drink which I hope is available here, somewhere) than food. The pasta sauces were unpromising but then I saw the pesto and asked him if he liked it and he said yes (how I would like to go back to that awful passport control woman and tell her that he isn't a liar and that he also loves pesto - she seems like the kind of person who is like the queen and avoids anything with garlic...but I digress)...and not only were there bagels but sesame bagels, my favorite, and so dinner (and breakfast, for that matter)were saved...who knows what would have happened if he was alone, or I was; but I know it would not have been the same. Together we can overcome holiday closings, bus drivers that don't care for their passengers (hey, it's not like the passengers pay their salaries), indifferent or snobby people, the Bad Italian Restaurant Syndrome, wherein after a certain hour they are the only places left to eat, for some inexplicable reason...

...after our Resonance show we went out euphoric into the night to find nothing but these Bad Italian places were open, by which I mean not just Pizza Express but also Pizza Hut and Subway (oh, if you want your Subway London's got 'em, and if you are lucky an easyInternet place is attached), plus individual & yet still Bad places too...so we were forced, fated, to go to the Marks & Spencer at Victoria Station to get their oven-friendly meals and yes it's good and yes it was a good walk but how frustrating, nevertheless...and the same thing happened in Brighton, though at least there the foods were Italian and Chinese...

And now a list of things I miss, starting of course with my fiance. I didn't cry until the plane was going down the tarmac, in queue to take off; I wanted to really break down but you can't do that on a plane, especially now, so I cried quietly and was okay by the time I could look out the window and there was London and I blessed it and him and all the places we went...

...and I was fine, the whole time, until I got through Pearson and then waited for the bus downtown, crying and then crying on the bus again, quietly thankful that there was no music and that it was a short ride. Then as I was facing rush hour I decided to walk and walk from the Royal York to here and felt as if I was in a clever duplication of a place I knew, but not the place I knew, at the same time. The Church Lady muttering about how people should repent bugged me so I lost her and veered over to the Eaton Center, which seems so loud and new and shiny compared to London, finally here, where I could really cry with joy and let my guard down, at last...so no, there was no delayed reaction for me, what has happened is too big, too important, and so much of me is with him now that the part that isn't is not going to sit by quietly and be repressed or ignored...

...I also miss R White's Lemonade, Streatham, sitting in front on the top of a double decker bus, being on air at Resonance (radio is fun!), listening to Tim Westwood, the quiet of Oxford after the clamor of London, the smell of sea air and rocks and jade waves of a rising tide in Brighton; Marine Ices ice cream, all flavors; this painting at the National Gallery, which is my official favorite painting there; Keats' house, a quiet and just-right place to read and write and be in love; and all shops we visited, from the massive HMV on Oxford Street to the potluck charity ones, where sometimes things jumped out at us (not literally, you know what I mean) and with astonishing regularity, we would find things for each other; sheep, cows, horses and the cat that lives next door to where Plath has her plaque (yes, I took a photo of it)(the plaque I mean, not the cat)...

...yes, I do miss just about everything, and in some cases I have pictures. All of it is a part of me now, most strongly, and I look back to it in a roundabout way to look forward, to our new life.