I’ve spent a fair amount of time in London – but the only time I lived there was a brief stint at the end of 1998. I showed up at the invitation of my friend Danny, who had been my assistant and rowdy drinking companion while working on John Sayles film LIMBO in Juneau, Alaska. I went to the UK on a whim and without any planning – my adventures were many – I was captured and enslaved by a gang of Irish Gypsies as I hitched along the motorway near Rugby – they forced me to break up pavement and concrete for about a week before I made a daring escape – but that is another story. I illegally rode the rails all the way to Scotland, met a beautiful girl in Drumnadrochit along the shores of the Loch Ness, and visited the ancestral home of my grandmother’s clan on the Isle of Skye – the McCleod Castle – where I left one of her scarves as a memento and took some flowers from the garden which I dried in my journal. But none of that is what I’m writing about right now.
When I got back to London, I was even more out of money than I had been when I arrived. Danny and I quickly drank away the rest of my reserves and he allowed me to move into his parents house with him – they were surprised, but also agreed. His mother, finding out I was a writer hired me as a casting assistant. She was a powerful redheaded woman who usually had a phone to each ear. She had me read scripts and scour through casting books to find the actors who fit the parts. I got to work on Angela’s Ashes and several other films in this way, but without getting anywhere near the set. She took me to prestigious lunches and tried to introduce me to the right people. At the famous Groucho Club, Jude Law and I began doing shots and it ended with him passing out and me getting kicked out!
It was an amazing period to be in London – a few notable concerts were Billy Bragg and Depeche Mode (the Singles Tour). I was too young and stupid to realize the access I was being granted to the rich, famous, wealthy, and powerful. Ultimately, I wasted the opportunities that were shoved at me.
Still, it was a fun and exciting time – but I was drinking far too much and not saving anything. A few friends I’d made in the exhilarating worlds of London cinema, publishing, art, and music began fucking around with heroin and that was always the place where I’d drawn the line – I was fine with the underground bar scene and pretty much everything else – but needles going into arms was in my red zone – and honestly, if you weren’t a full part of the party, nobody wanted to party with you. It was time for me to leave.
Instead of heading to France and across Europe, I opted to go back to Bellingham, back to radio, back to the life I’d left behind. I hadn’t yet learned that you can never go back. I did alright back in Bellingham, but as I wrote before -eventually, I needed to leave so I went to the nearest major metropolitan area. I landed in Seattle.
London, England
London is the largest city in England and the United Kingdom. It is one of the most important cities in the world. It has a population of about 9 million people. It is a center of fashion, literature, film, art, food, and much much more. There’s not much that can be said about London that hasn’t been said elsewhere. I spent the night sleeping on a bench in Regent’s Park one night and was woke up in the morning by a flock of ducks. I used to spend a good deal of time in the British Museum and exploring the rare book shops nearby. The Tate Modern is a must go-to and the scary haunted Tower Bridge experience under the Tower Bridge is a hair raising experience. The weather isn’t fantastic most of the time, but you don’t need to be outside in London – there is an abundance of indoor activities. Also, we’re humans so we can dress for any weather. At the time, London still had a terrible reputation for both the food and the weather. I was there at the height of the ‘Essex Girl’ phenomenon – which despite the negatives that time has heaped upon her – was something that I am very glad I did not miss.
