by Jacob Sager Weinstein
As a youthful man of Acton, I once had a crazy dream:
I would act out every verb that lurks in London’s naming scheme.
“I’ll succeed in my ambition,” I declared, “or go to heck.
I’ll start Notting every Hill, and I’ll start Tooting every Bec.”
I went Barking, then went Wapping. I went Pudding, even, too.
Then I took a break by Downing several pints, and then I flew
back into the fray again, and started Belling Ham,
and Charing Cross, and Faring Dom, and let me tell you, ma’am,
Calming Ton’s not easy, and Canning Town is tough,
and when time came to Hammer Smith, it started getting rough.
Doubts began to Crowder round me. Was I a Wiseman?
Some Hercules in Noblefield? Or just some Effingham?
Whatman, on hearing of my deeds, would not add grains of salt in?
But I had Lefevre. It was too late now for Halton.
My Bridewell tried to warn me: I was on a Primrose Walk,
Wychwood End in madness. I dismissed it as Mere talk.
I went Dalling, Darling, Dorking, even harder than before.
Goring? Loring? Moring? I did all of them, and Moor.
I grew Gaunt and I grew Weekley, and I heard my wife declare
she could not Wedmore foolishly; she left me, then and there.
I was Humboldt; she Mentmore to me than gold. My wet tears flowed.
I had left Bird-In-Hand Passage to walk down Bird-in-Bush Road.
A weaker man would turn to Pott and smoke his pain away,
but I sought out no Herbal Place. I shunned Bob Marley Way.
Instead, I kept on Stokenchurch, and Epping with a will,
And that was fifty years ago, and I am Epping still.
What first I thought would make for an amusing Amblecote
turned out to be a Moody Road on which I, wraith-like, float.
I can sense the Thyme is coming, when at last I shall be dead,
and I’ll have a Plaistow succor Mysore feet, and Aitken head.
So do not Morna moment when the Reapers Close my fate;
I have found that Welcome Court that leads to Angell Town Estate.

December 11, 2002
To understand why 50,000 badges that say “Wake me up at…” are being distributed to commuters at Liverpool Street Station, you must first understand one of the key facts of British life. In England, as in Japan, is assumed that you will behave with a certain propriety at all times, except when you are drunk. It is also assumed you will be drunk often. Lauren and I have grown used to being the loudest people on any subway, and the quietest people in any pub.
In fact, an American friend of ours recently told me that, as she was leaving a party Lauren and I gave, her British boyfriend turned to her and asked if I was an alcoholic. He could think of no other explanation for the fact that I did not have a single drink the entire evening.
And even in this society, where not drinking alcohol is considered a warning sign of alcoholism, Christmas is acknowledged as a time of excess. Hangover cures appear in newspapers and magazines as frequently as gift-buying guides. The Sunday Observer, Time Out London, The Times–if it’s published in London, it has probably weighed in on the issue. One year, three days before Christmas, London’s Museum of Science opened an entire exhibit devoted to the hangover.
But the most frequent provider of relief to the inebriated Londoner has got to be the Evening Standard, which, for an evening paper, seems almost obsessively concerned with the morning after. One day, the editors recommend Hamlyn’s Pocket-Sized Guide To Hangover Cures, which in turn recommends a blended concoction of broccoli, apples, spinach, ice, and various vitamins. On another day, the paper publishes a helpful survey of commercially available remedies, ranging from a crystallized ginger for 99 pence to a ?40 kit from Harvey Nichols containing herb tea, shower gel, and “a combination of milk thistle, camomile, and willow that helps cleanse the liver and calm the stomach.”
Next week, it’s time for a survey of treatments from around the world, including the “pickled sheep’s eye in tomato juice” that residents of Outer Mongolia drink the day after a binge, and the “paste of ground swallow’s beak and myrrh” downed by South Africans before the drinking starts.
Seven days later, concerned that they have not done enough to soothe their readers bleary eyes, the Standard consults no fewer than 13 different experts on the subject. Each offers their own recommendation, ranging from the doctor who advises you to “drink water” to the acupuncturist who suggests,?? “Take some aloe vera juice, yoghurt or green tea to cool the liver down. If you have bloodshot eyes after a night drinking, it’s often due to the liver overheating. Another way to tell is by examining your tongue – if it is bright red then your organs are too hot. However, if it is pale then it hasn’t overheated, but you may need to take some ginger to stimulate digestion.”
Such advice becomes even more salient as the year winds to a close, thanks largely to the office Christmas party–which, in the absence of public executions, has become England’s most dread tradition. Of course, it is not required that you show up, drink far more than you intended, and say or do embarrassing things to, with, or near your coworkers. But unless you are lucky enough to be a recovering alcoholic, it is certainly expected.
And when the evening is over, and you are too smashed to stay awake through the entire train ride home, you will be grateful to have received one of those 50,000 badges that says “Wake me up at…” Assuming, that is, that you filled in your stop name when you were still sober enough to write.

Today, we are scheduled to pick up the keys for our new flat. We are moving to Holland Park, which, we have been told, is one of the priciest and most exclusive addresses in the city. Our new home is within two blocks of Richard Branson’s primary residence and Bill Gates’ vacation getaway. Ironically, we chose this particular flat because it offered the best value for our rental dollar of any place we saw.
The explanation is fairly simple. Across London, multi-story Victorian single-family townhomes have been generally converted into apartment buildings. On our new block, however, they’ve been mostly left intact; our block of flats is one of the few exceptions. The Richard Bransons and Bill Gates looking for multi-million-dollar, perfectly preserved homes know to look here, driving home prices up, but young couples looking for flats tend to look elsewhere, driving flat prices down.
Or, at least, down for London. For any one of the rental payments we will be making each week to our estate agents, we could pay a month’s mortgage on a mansion in Pittsburgh.
In any case, before I receive the keys, I will have to sign off on an inspection of the apartment. With past apartments, I’ve been too easy-going on sign in, and we’ve ended up having to clean our places top-to-bottom before unpacking our belongings. This time, it’s going to be different. No matter how much pressure the estate agents put on me, I’m not accepting the keys until the place is in perfect condition. It will be a fight, I know, but after moving ten times in two years, we don’t want to have to work to make our home acceptable.
I show up at the flat at the appointed time to meet Larry, the independent inventory agent, who has been hired to make a written record of the state of our flat on move-in. He’s sitting at the kitchen table taking notes, and he invites me to take off my coat and sit down. “A lady is coming from the estate agents,” he explains, “and I’d like her to arrive before I begin.”
I take off my coat, and sit down, steeling myself for any criticisms I will have to make, mentally rehearsing the words, “This is unacceptable.” I may not need to use them, but it’s better to be prepared.
Jenny from the estate agent’s office soon arrives. We shake hands, and Larry takes a deep breath. “I asked you to come,” he tells her, “Because I wanted you to see the sort of things I’m expected to work with. This flat is filthy. It’s completely unacceptable. Look at this.” He runs his finger over the counter, then holds it up to show a thin layer of dust. “And this.” He opens the wall cabinets, revealing stains. “And look at this.” He pulls open a drawer, and pulls out a poorly cleaned fork. “I’m not inventorying this junk.” He throws the fork back into the drawer, petulantly. “There was supposed to be new silverware. This is an insult to me, and to this man here. Let me show you something.” He takes us to the window; on the ledge outside is a flowerpot, with cigarette butts stubbed out in the dirt. “This is supposed to be the most exclusive neighborhood in London. Do you think this man wants to open his window in Holland Park, and see cigarette butts?”
“No, no, this is completely unacceptable-” Jennie starts to say, but Larry is just getting started.
“I want the people who were supposed to clean this flat to come back, and I want them to kneel on the floor–even if we have to put a gun to their heads to get them to do it–and I want to tell them, take your tongue out of your mouth, and run it over these surfaces, and pick up the dirt and taste that delicious lemon scent–”
“Yes, yes,” Jennie says, “We get the idea–”
But Larry is not to be stopped. “–so they can know that some people do their job with duty and with honor and with pride.” He whisks us to the bathroom. “Look at this! They’ve dumped dirt in the toilet! The cleaning people were leaving as I arrived, and one of them asked me to flush the toilet as he was on his way out. I nearly picked him up by the scruff of his neck and cast him down the stairs. Come into the bedroom for a moment.”
We follow him there, and he turns to me, and says, “Kneel down for a moment.” I am afraid that if I do so, he will next insist that I take my tongue out of my mouth and clean the floor, but he kneels down before I can protest. “Come on, join me for a moment.” I kneel down beside him, and he points under the radiator, where a dust bunny lurks. ” When those cleaners come back, I want you to insist that they kneel down with you, and see that dust there, and explain to you exactly why they left it there.” I promise him I will do just that.

In pre-Roman times, Spitalfields was a graveyard. Since then, it has held a hospital; a fair ground; and an artillary yard. Since 1682, the area has been primarily known for its market, which has steadily grown over the centuries. As we discover when we arrive there this morning, Spitalfields Market is now a large, glass-enclosed space the size of a large city block, with stalls selling handicrafts, antiques, and food.?
Lauren and I split up, since she wants to look at the jewelry and clothes, and I want to inspect the Japanese import booth for instructions written in humorously inept English. I don’t find any, but as I wander, another stall catches my eye. It’s displaying a bumpersticker with the simple, straightforward message, “Cooked Food Is Poison.” I make a beeline for it, trying to look like the kind of person who would derive an entirely un-ironic pleasure out of such a sticker.
There is a woman squatting next to the booth with what looks like some sort of giant, hollowed-out gourd clutched between her legs, but I am not quite sure whether she is part of the booth or, metaphorically as well as literally, a squatter. I therefore avoid eye contact with her and focus on the contents of the stall. Unfortunately, raw food advocates don’t seem to focus on the more pleasant raw foods, such as grapes or cookie dough. Instead, they are selling items like “un-cookies,” which look very much like raw hamburgers would look if cows had the same color and texture as carrots.
But I have not come to this booth for the food; I have come for the crackpot science, and it does not disappoint. First, I pick up a brochure on the health benefits of drinking urine. For example, “Even though urine contains toxins, it is not harmful to the body it comes from regardless of its condition. Whatever was in the blood cannot be that toxic, or the person would have been dead.” Well, that’s certainly good enough for me! Nothing says Good Eatin’ like a fluid that is not toxic enough to kill the person it came from. Plus, urine is “anti-bacterial, anti-fungal, anti-viral, anti-cancer, anti-convulsive, anti-spasmodic, and anti-tuberculin, among other things.”
I am intrigued by the question of what those other things could possibly be, but the urine-drinking pamphlet is not the main course in my pseudoscience buffet. It is, if you will, a mere palate cleanser. No, the centerpiece of the Cooked Food Is Poison booth is an article explaining the dangers of cooking your food before eating it. As the article observes, it has long been recognized that cancer patients benefit from a raw food diet, but applying heat to foods destroys enzymes and other miraculous substances. (Putting two and two together, I realize that, if you want to cure cancer, you must not heat your urine before drinking it.)
There is also a pamphlet from Hempseed Organics, printed on tree-free hemp paper, offering recipes for hemp butter and hemp marzipan, and concluding “It is taught that Buddha subsisted on one hempseed a day during a six year aesthetic period, prior to revealing the four noble truths and the eigth-fold path to enlightenment.” (The pamphlet also notes, “Hempseed contain no THC or other psychoactive chemicals,” lest you somehow conclude that a group of urine-drinking, cooked-food-avoiding hemp chefs is in anyway associated with the counter-culture.)
So engrossed am I in my reading that I fail to notice I have moved closer to the Squatting Gourd Woman. She interrupts my reverie by asking, “Have you tried some?”
I look down, and am relieved to see that she is merely offering me a spoonful of the pulpy inside of the gourd. “It’s durian fruit,” she says. Durian fruit looks like the inside of the spittoon in a compulsive paper-chewer’s home, but free food is free food, and I accept the spoonful. It tastes pleasantly sweet, and I enjoy the taste for several seconds, until it is replaced by one of the most unpleasant aftertastes I have ever aftertasted. Suffice it to say that I now understand why drinking your own urine seems like a viable alternative.
Hoping that eating lunch will help me lose the taste, I track down Lauren. It turns out that, while I’ve focused like a laser on the one booth that will let me learn the wonders of uncooked urine, Lauren has been browsing the many stalls of fine handicrafts looking for gifts for friends and family members. What an odd person I’ve married.

Most phone booths in London seem to be papered over with little business cards, each of which features the image of a naked or nearly-naked woman, a phone number, and some unsubtle come-on. But today I saw a particularly disturbing example. It featured a woman in a tight leather outfit, leering at a man who was chained uncomfortably to the wall, with the words (and I quote exactly here) “You’re pain is my pleasure.” I was horrified. What sort of deviant would display, in full view of passing children and other impressionables, a sign that confuses “you’re” with “your”? Is there no shame left in this world? I was tempted to get out my pen and blot out the apostrophe and the extra ‘e’, thereby rendering the phone booth once again suitable for public viewing.
But then a thought occurred to me. Perhaps London is such an extraordinarily literate city that a professional dominatrix can torture her clients just by misusing the English language in their presence. Certainly, if I was the type who wanted others to cause me pain, I would have gotten my money’s worth just by reading the business card.

It’s our first morning in our short-term let, a one-bedroom flat in a converted Victorian townhouse halfway between Notting Hill Gate and Bayswater.
We took our landlady somewhat by surprise by offering to move in so quickly, and, as a result, the apartment is missing certain luxuries, like curtains on the windows and the shower. But we are happy just to have some place to put our belongings for the next six weeks. And thanks to the bright sunlight pouring in through the uncurtained windows, I wake up refreshed, and in sync with the time zone. I turn on the hot water heater, and head for the shower.
But novice that I am in the world of hot-water heaters, I do not realize until I feel the bracingly cold water flowing out of the faucet that I should probably have turned the heater on an hour ago. Still, a cold shower will still be refreshing. In the absence of a shower curtain, I want to be careful not to get water on the brand new hardwood floors, so I angle the shower head towards the wall and turn it on.
A few drops of cold water dribble vaguely out.
With a little experimentation, I discover the shower head will function if I pull it off the wall and hold it at about waist level. The problem, of course, is that half of my body occurs above waist level. I manage to wash myself off by performing an elaborate series of bends and twists, made more complex by the fact that I must keep the shower head safely pointed away from that new hardwood floor at all times.
When it’s done, I feel strangely exhilarated, much as I gather Lauren does after one of her yoga classes. But perhaps that pleasant tingling of my skin is just a side effect of the cold water.
As Lauren heads into the bathroom, I warn her about the great lengths to which she will have to go. Ten minutes later, when she emerges from the shower, she tells me her solution: fill up the bathtub, sit comfortably down in it, and use the shower head to wash yourself off. Now that she mentions it, I have seen that very thing done in old movies, from the period in which science had discovered indoor plumbing and sound, but hadn’t yet gotten around to water pressure and color. I believe the proper procedure is to sing loudly and off-key while you scrub yourself with a loofah, until a group of mischievous neighborhood waifs burst in through the door in search of their dog, who turns out to have been hidden under the soap bubbles all along.?

We arrive into London Heathrow sleepless and jetlagged. Because we are carrying six large suitcases, as well as two large boxes that clearly contain a Macintosh tower computer and a monitor, we are stopped by a customs officer when we walk through the “Nothing to Declare” hallway.
Looking over our assemblage of baggage, he looks at me and asks how long we’ll be in London. Lauren answers, “Two years.” Still looking at me, he asks, “And what will you be doing?” Lauren tells him she’ll be working in London. Still looking at me, he asks what the computer is for. I tell him I’m a writer.
I have one problem. Last month, Lauren spent a week in London scouting out apartments. One of the flats she looked at was located over a pawn shop. When I told this to my co-worker Jim, he adopted a lower-class British accent to demonstrate the words he imagined I’d hear floating through my window, all day and night: “How mooch for the bahnjo, guv’nah?” Why, exactly, a Londoner was looking for a banjo in a pawnshop was never clear, but the way Jim said it was so funny that it became a refrain, repeated by my co-workers every time the subject of my impending trans-Atlantic move arose.
Now, standing at customs, the problem is that the officer has exactly the same accent Jim was imitating. I try to suppress the image of him asking “How mooch for the bahnjo, guv’nah?” but my reserve of willpower has been drained by exhaustion. I cannot help reflect that it is, after all, in the nature of the job of Customs Inspector to inquire after the price of things. Surely, in all his years on the job, some passenger must have brought a banjo into the country. If the man asks me, “How mooch was the computah, guv’nah” I am going to lose it completely.
And I don’t have a moment to compose myself, because he directs all his questions at me, although Lauren is answering most of them. Evidentally, he has never seen a trailing husband. (“Trailing husband” has always sounded to me like something that must be removed through lengthy surgery under general anesthesia. In fact, it simply means that my wife’s job is the driving force behind our relocation, and I am following her.)
Fortunately, we make it through customs without loss of property or straight face, and catch a cab into the city. Our first glimpse of fabled London traffic is not as bad as I had feared; it seems to take about 45 minutes to get into the City. Even crammed among our possessions in the cab, it is not a bad ride. When traffic is slow, the cabby chats through the window with the drivers of other cabs. I wonder if they know each other, or if there is just a universal brotherhood of London cabbies.
Later that day, as we enter the Notting Hill Gate real estate office where Lauren has made an appointment, we have awoken somewhat. We shake hands with Jean-Pierre, who, despite his name, is clearly British. I would like to ask him about his name, but I am afraid it is some sort of mortal insult to ask an Englishman if he has French blood in him.
We climb into Jean-Pierre’s car, and take off, and immediately, all the cues I have been learning since childhood begin working against me. As far as my gut knows, the only time you have cars speeding towards you on the right side of the street is when you are driving the wrong way down a one way street. Plus, in England, you don’t have to park in the direction of traffic, so many of the parked cars on our left are facing towards us as well. And my gut is further alarmed by the fact that I am sitting in the driver’s seat but do not have a steering wheel, an accelerator, or, most alarmingly of all, brakes. Add in my lack of sleep over the past 24 hours, and you have the very definition of a nightmare ride.
I’m glad we won’t be owning a car here.