As a general rule, you won’t see too many people in the upscale London nightspots wearing jeans and sneakers.”–Fodor’s London

Fodor’s is an excellent guidebook.

That doesn’t mean I haven’t been laughing over it.

I love the quote above.  The idea of my going to any London nightspot, let alone not in jeans and sneakers, is surreal.

First, I must find a hotel.  According to Fodor’s, if it’s not next to Buckingham Palace, the neighborhoods are apparently (a) noisy (b) noisiest, (c) busy, noisy, and sketchy, (c) quiet as a tomb, (d) transitional and a bit dodgy, (e) near some of London’s dodgiest neighborhoods, (f) too quiet for some, (g) might be a flea pit, and (h) some distance from center.

I’ll go for the sketchy rather than the dodgy, or possibly the too-quiet-for-some.

Rather than hang out at nightspots, I must cram for my Dickens tour at night.  Finish The Pickwick Papers, reread all the other novels, skim the sketches, and peruse the biographies by Peter Ackroyd and Claire Tomalin.

And perhaps I’ll do a self-guided Dickens walking tour before the tour.

No, I’m joking.

But back to the guidebook:  I must never put down my purse in a restaurant.  AND I might want to disguise it as a shopping bag.

On the other hand, “London is a relatively safe city, though crime does happen…especially in built-up public project housing or tourist meccas.”

Below is a brief satire of a trip to London.  I do love Cornelia Otis Skinner and Emily Kimbrough’s humorous travel book, Our Hearts Were Young and Gay, and Emily Kimbrough’s Forty Plus and Fancy Free, so I’m taking a leaf out of their books to chronicle the trip I MIGHT take.
(DISCLAIMER:   I AM EXCITED ABOUT GOING TO LONDON AND NOT THIS CLUELESS.)

Day 1:  Take tube from airport to hotel.  If the tube station is 300 meters from the hotel, and a meter is 3.2808399 feet, is it times or divided by 80 or what?  If a 10 K race is 6 miles, then 200 meters is..?  Spend an hour walking around, ask directions, walk past the hotel, does it have a sign?, you don’t think you saw a sign,  you’ve been awake 30 hours, your laptop bag falls onto the sidewalk, and you still get to the hotel too early to check in.

ALTERNATIVE:  Take a hotel bus.  (Thank you, Fodor’s.)

Day 2:  Refuse to take your map out under any circumstances.  If a purse is dangerous, how dangerous will a map be? Instead, memorize your route before you leave the hotel.  Have the whole thing written in your notebook like a GPS. Walk, walk, walk.   Swallow the paper rather than divulge your sources…

ALTERNATIVE:  Take a BLACK cab (all the others are run by bandits) or the tube.

Day 3:  Get lost in the North Korean Socialist Realism Art gallery of the British Museum.  How did you get there?  Look at your map:  what’s that round thing in the middle with a fork and spoon?  You don’t Want to Go There.  Finally find the gallery you’re looking for and hope the placards are big enough to read…

ALTERNATIVE:  Ask the guard for directions.

Day 4:  Decide to go to the British Library and read about Emma Gifford Hardy, Thomas Hardy’s first wife.  (Must look up on the website and see if you can read there without getting a library card.)  You’ve always been sympathetic toward Emma, the model for so many of Hardy’s characters.    But you should  tour Hardy country first.  It’s 176.04 km. from London….  That’s 3.2808399 x or divided by  something.  No, that’s the wrong rule.

ALTERNATIVE:  Ask the hotel clerk.

Day 5:  Walk to used bookstores wondering if they’ll be snobbish.   In a very good used bookstore in Iowa, I couldn’t persuade the owner to part with a copy of Abdul Rahman Munif’s The Trench.  He said the first book in the trilogy was charming, but the second one wasn’t. I said I’d read the first and wanted the second.  Ended up buying it from Amazon. Will I go through such a fiasco in London?

ALTERNATIVE:  Remember that Fodor’s says, “American standards of customer service are rare in London…”  Wonder what those standards might be.

Day 6:  Decide to go to the Barfly:  “one of the finest in the capital, punk, indie guitar bands, and new metal rock attract a nonmainstream crowd.” No, I’m kidding.

ALTERNATIVE: No, I’m kidding.

No, I’m kidding.