Expat Chronicles: Approaching Endgame in Jolly Old London, With a Limp

I now know what they mean by the phrase, “limping to the finish line.”

That accurately describes my life in London right now – limping to the finish line, both literally and figuratively. The finish line is about six weeks away, marking the end of our stay here after five-and-a-half years. We’re moving back to the States in late July, as mentioned in previous blogs.

The limping part? That’s courtesy of my left knee, which I fractured in a bicycle accident a little more than three months ago (which I also mentioned in previous blogs). I am back to doing most of what you can do with a left knee – walk, ride my bike, climb stairs. But it’s still stiff from some kind of muscle/ligament damage, so I don’t exactly strut like a runway model right now.

Figuratively, the limp impedes my ability to get around town and see all the sights one last time. I entertained visions of doing a nostalgic Magical Mystery Tour during the remaining weeks, visiting all the haunts I haunted during our years here. It’s kind of too bad that I can’t really pull it off easily.

Then again, maybe not.

Maybe I don’t really want to re-haunt all the old haunts. Maybe it’s for the best that I don’t. I’m old(er) now, and less energetic, and more or less content with our experience here. Maybe limping to the finish line is the best strategy.  

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Navigating London can be a headache in the best of circumstances – and it’s that much harder when you’re hobbling around on a less-than-healthy knee. We don’t own a car, so we depend on mass transit.

Right now, the mass transit situation in London teeters between godawful and goddamn. There’s been a series of transit strikes that disrupt the tube and train service. When the strikes don’t disrupt service, you can depend on the never-ending succession of maintenance and repair projects to do it.

The buses are better, but only by a little. Road construction projects are a constant presence in London, meaning the bus trip you thought might take a few minutes ends up taking 74 years.

My favorite modes of transportation these days are biking and walking. Biking I am now doing regularly again, but I don’t bike at night. I love to walk at night – especially this time of year, when the weather is pleasant – but it’s not so easy, what with the knee and all.

So, I mainly stick close to home when I venture out on weekends or at night, which isn’t often (Daddy’s Night Out comes once a week. Well, twice a week this week, because the first one was kind of f*****d up by our house closing saga across the Atlantic).

There are a few pubs close by I can get to easily enough. But I haven’t gone to any of the jazz clubs I used to frequent regularly, or any other parts of town that require hopping on a train or a bus. Those, I do miss.

Uber is too expensive, and really, half the time you don’t know whether the drivers will even show up.

Taxis? Again, too expensive.

So, I tend to stick close to home. I use my recovering knee as an excuse. But if I’m being honest, I might be tempted to hang close to home, anyway. I’m just about Londoned out, after more than half-a-decade here.

That’s not a knock against London. It’s an interesting, vibrant, and amazing city. But the freshness of it wore off a while ago, and no matter how amazing a city is, it eventually just becomes the same old place, day after day after day.

I went through this while living in New York City in the mid-2000s, though to a lesser degree. It’s really hard to experience all of NYC, no matter how long you live there. There are a million little unique neighborhoods scattered among the five boroughs that always seem to offer something new.

In contrast, London begins to look and feel the same no matter where you are. It all seems like London, from the old buildings and corner pubs to the sidewalks and green spaces. Every part of town is as London as the last one.

Well, okay, that’s not quite right. There is one part of town that seems wholly different from the rest of London: Canary Wharf, the shiny, modern financial district with the tall glass buildings and the 21^st century vibe. Many native Londoners look down on Canary Wharf – but many non-natives (like myself) see it as a refreshing change of pace.

We went to Canary Wharf last weekend to eat at a Mexican restaurant. We go there a lot as a family on weekends, but this was my first time there in three months, outside of knee clinic appointments.

I like the area. It’s like stepping into a different city, and a different decade. It’s not as crowded as the rest of London because the rest of London can live without Canary Wharf. Much of it is new and sparkling and charmingly neutral. It could be anywhere in the world – and sometimes you just want anywhere in the world.

My new favorite live music venue is in Canary Wharf, the Temple of Art and Music, which features jazz every Wednesday night. I will probably try to hit it a couple more times before we leave.

My former favorite jazz club, the legendary Ronnie Scott’s in Soho, is harder to get to from where we live. Plus, it’s kind of a drag going there sometimes – overcrowded and standing room only for most patrons, most of whom spend the whole show talking over the music (I mainly frequented Ronnie Scott’s Upstairs rather than the main club). Gone are the smaller, quieter crowds of the COVID days, when you could snag a comfortable seat right in front of the musicians.

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London can be an exhausting place. It’s like any massive metropolis. It wears you down in bits and pieces – the crowds, the noise, the helicopters screaming overhead, the construction projects here and there and there and here – constantly, always, with no letup.

I’ve lived in enough big cities to know that I’m getting too old for all this. And it happened quickly. As recently as a couple of years ago I had no problem bopping around London, going to crowded neighborhoods and sitting in crowded pubs, taking a crowded train halfway across town to the Wimbledon tennis championships, where I waited in long lines for the privilege of waiting in more long lines to see tennis from the side courts, which were the cheapest you could get but still cost a week’s worth of groceries.

I can’t imagine doing that now. I can’t imagine traveling more than three train stops away. I can barely imagine taking the tube one stop away.

In a couple weeks we will travel seven or eight tube stops to West Ham Stadium to see my beloved St. Louis Cardinals play the evil Chicago Cubs as part of London’s major league baseball series. Normally, I would be psyched. Right now I’m just thinking about the inconvenience my lazy ass will have to endure.

Certainly, age has something to do with this. Not in terms of the physical toll – I’m not that old, and I’m still in decent health and acceptable physical condition. It’s the mental toll of not knowing what surprises are in store for you. A tube line that suddenly shut down. Scaffolding going up two townhouses away, letting you know you are in for months of construction noise. This has been going on pretty much since we moved here.

The crowded trains, where you are literally standing ass-to-ass with a total stranger.

The crowded streets, where if you don’t take extra care, some Formula One-wannabe driver might just plow you over.

This is a younger man’s game. I’m not too proud to admit it.

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There isn’t much I wanted to do that we haven’t done since moving over here. We have visited 16 countries and more than 20 cities across Europe and North Africa. I’ve been to Wimbledon and the ATP Tennis Finals and a professional soccer match. We’ve seen most of London and quite a few other towns in southern England. The kids made good friends and went to good schools and got to see some of the world.

We had planned to go to Paris last week for the half-term school break, where I had hoped to go see the French Open tennis championships. But my injured knee complicated things. And then when I tried to buy tickets, they were all sold out. Buying them on the secondhand market sets you back a few hundred pounds. We’ve been putting a lot of money into buying a new home in the USA, so spending more on a Paris trip seemed unwise.

But then I thought about the long lines and packed trains and packed stadiums and huge crowds and… The weather has been spectacular in Paris. I know this, because I’ve been watching the French Open every day. Sunny skies, warm temperatures. Probably the perfect time to go to the French Open. Oh well. Some other time.

We are moving to a smallish town in the USA. It’s mostly residential, but there’s a cool little village nearby – many cool little villages nearby. Nice restaurants and cafes, bookstores aplenty, some comfortable hangs, lots of parks and green spaces, a single-family home with a decent sized yard and ridiculously large living spaces.

New York City is a short hop away if we need to immerse ourselves in an urban experience. Family and friends are not far compared with London. I’ll buy a spanking new barbecue to grill out, and we’ll start a vegetable garden.

Living in London has been a great experience, one we will always treasure. But It feels like time to move along, it surely does.

Note: I took the photo probably four or five years ago. It’s maybe the best photo I’ve ever taken, being a lousy photographer.