London, baby.
Since I’m a believer that less is more, I packed sleeveless shirts and spaghetti strapped tops, miniskirts and chiffon dresses, jeans, and a couple of sweaters as a concession to the possible coolness. I had every intention of making an impression. After all, it was spring in England, and the weather reports said it was "rather warm." I brought a trench coat too – I’ve wanted to wear one ever since I started reading Nancy Drew.
I did end up using it. Every minute of every freaking day in fact. I was pretty tempted to wear it to bed too. I slept with a tank top, a turtleneck sweater, a wooly cardigan, thick jogging pants, three blankets and two pairs of socks. No possibility of turning heads when you look like a misshapen sack of lumpy potatoes.
I stayed with the Filipino-Australian couple who also took in last year’s competitor. My first morning there, I sent Tito Ken charging down the stairs in his baby blue pajamas when I tripped the alarms. I guess he shot from sleep to wide awake in the space of a heartbeat. On a typical day though, I wake up at 7 a.m., go to the bathroom, and pad down the stairs to see if the kitchen door is open. If it’s closed, I go up as quietly as I can and read for about an hour. Then I go back down and check again. I don’t open any doors, I don’t even step on the floor, I just peek from the stairs. I might just send Tito Ken zooming down again.
Usually, Tito Ken is awake at the second try, with his newspaper and huge cup of tea (by huge I mean huge, it’s practically a soup bowl). He asks me if I want toast, I say "No, thank you" and smile sweetly. He proceeds to toast me bread anyway, oozing with butter. I smile sweetly again and gulp it down, counting the calories all the way.
We spend a comfortable two hours sipping our second cups of tea and reading. Tita Loline comes down in the middle of that and makes oatmeal and toast with orange marmalade, then she leaves with her paper, and I do the dishes. After bamboozling Tito Ken into letting me wash the dishes, I spend a happy hour and a half soaking dishes in suds. All my domestic housewife fantasies turn out to be true.
Then I go up, take a bath, do my laundry, make my bed (which takes forever, because I have two sheets and three blankets). Then I go down to lunch, sort of an eat-all-you-can-sandwich-self-service with a couple more cups of tea. I’m amazed my bladder can hold up.
I spend the rest of the day in my room and talk to myself in the mirror, (I have really long conversations with me, we practice my speech and my smile). I go back down for my tea, "help" with dinner (which pretty much meant perpetually asking "what are you doing now?") We talk about Bush and Blair and FPJ until we start yawning. After about a gallon of tea, we go to bed.
On the not-at-home days, we go out and have tea.
London, babeh.