London blitz

I am watching some gianormous science talk in a huge hall with 300 colleagues and this girl about five crawls into my lab.

"Hi," she says. "I'm Rebecca."  Before I know it I've got this girl curled around my little grey cat who has also shown up entirely out of context, and the cat is purring and the girl is warm and sleepy and it's like I have Instant Family in my lap, just add water.

It's nice.  Nicer than I thought.  I feel the start of tears and try to focus on whatever the hell Generic Signaling Pathway, Statistially Significant Bar Graph, Clever Analogy, Neat Tie In To Medicine that had my attention before but it's impossible.  I'm already imagining christmases and birthdays, random walks to the park, firsts - first bike, first day of school, first serious conversation.

Then my cat leaves and I feel uncomfortable.  This child is a stranger and what if people wonder where I got her from?  For that matter, where DID she come from?  I shift the way I do when I want to get a snack and my cat is seated on my lap.  And this girl reacts just the same way, sliding effortlessly, thoughtlessly from my lap, and wanders off.

Except she is not a cat.  She is a five year old girl.  This doesn't hit me right away which is shameful.  Later I think of this as some kind of karma for what happens next.

I am thirsty. I get up to leave.  The hall is packed.  My seat is taken instantly, no going back.  There are people standing in every aisle, some still on their commuter bikes complete with helmet.

I snake my way through the crowd to a very public water fountain.  Dozens of people idly watch me try to control the powerful jet of water that arcs up from the fountain and lands fifteen feet away in a hole on the manicured lawn of the lecture hall.  I drink and drink, feeling no relief from my thirst.  Eventually I stop because I am so exposed and wonder what people are thinking as they watch.

The talk must be over because people have begun streaming from the many entrances.  Which coincides with the first siren, a long wailing like an air raid.  We are in London, and that is in fact exactly what it is.  People stop, puzzled, milling, and actually look up as if to catch a glimpse of German bombers.

The evident power of cultural memory makes me smile; to a person every member of this crowd is too young to have been in a single bona fide air raid. 

Vignettes...

... from my first full night's sleep in a month.

I am sitting on a dirty cement stoop in front of a 15 storey apartment building.  The 30-something guy I met half an hour ago on the bus is whispering his life philosophy to me.   He's wearing a greasy used-to-be-white wool cap over his curly ginger hair; his cheeks are scruffy and weathered.

The late afternoon sun slinks into evening; the sky deepens endlessly.  A series of ever-more inebriated women walks past us up the wide shallow stairs, asking, or slurring, if this is the party for Cecilia, and we say yes.  We should know; we walked her here.

It's dark.  We've wandered deeper into the neighbourhood, on a sidewalk that winds illogically between grimy residential high-rises.  A man jumps out from the shadow cast by one of the infrequent trees backlit by even-more infrequent streetlamps.  My heart skips a beat then double times as he comes at us half-running.  Then opens his arms and hugs my companion.  They exchange loud incompehensible pleasanteries; he leaves.

I'm weeding my friend's garden.  I pull a up giant thistle out and find its roots embedded in the body of a decaying rat.  I gag.  Take a shovel and dig it out.  It's just as visceral and disgusting an experience as you imagine.

On the bus in Liverpool, a woman of impressive girth and height stands, gripping the overhead sling in one hand, the her six year old daughter's upper arm with the other, and argues loudly about motherhood with her sister.  I settle the dispute with Ring Pops.  We listen to the daughter's walkman without headphones, and sing along to Brittney.

Street corner.  Kirk Douglass passes me.  He's wearing a tan raincoat, nice shoes.  We say hi.

It must be the red wine

First work anxiety dream in Europe!   

I was attending a series of talks by grad students and upon arriving discovered no one had organized the pizza lunch.  I grabbed the phone to call Zeek's pizza and discovered we were in a room on the other side of campus not serviced by the pizza delivery.   The department head (an actually super-competent female PI in reality) said I should just run out and grab it from the north Capital Hill location.  I raised my voice a tiny amount and explained how that would take well over 45 minutes after I’d walked to my car, driven there and back, in traffic.  She shrugged and said then we’ll just drop it.  No, I insisted.  I will just miss the talks.   

Halfway to my car I got lost in the health sciences building (this could really happen actually) and had to ask a burgundy-scrubs-clad group of medical students which direction was west.  

I finally emerged from the building and found myself on the wrong side of campus, still half a mile from the car park.  I glanced at the program to estimate whether I'd get back in time for any of the talks and realized that the names were all of second year postdoctoral fellows and my name was listed halfway down the itinerary as a presenter.  

 I began to panic, mapping out how to get to my lab, grab computer and memory stick, write the talk, while driving to the pizza parlor and back.   

I opened my eyes in my friend’s guest room in Bordeaux, two hours into my post-french-lunch siesta, simultaneously relieved to not be delinquent and disappointed that I had not found a better solution to my dilemma than the cheater of waking up.

Werewolves of Paris (well, actually Bordeaux)

First anxiety dream of the European trip. 

Zombies who were werewolves, a classroom full of children, headmaster who didn’t believe in my imminent apocalyptic vision, mass slaughter, lots of running from menacing half-dead dog human hybrids.  The usual holiday slumber party.