On Sunday we met up with Livvy’s 3rd grade teacher Mrs. Cook in Covent Garden where we had lunch, and Justin bought some fake dog poo to prank Sandra with as Laura’s dog, Mr. Darcy, is constantly threatening to soil the carpet. We paid a brief visit to the British Museum and then spent the late afternoon having tea at David’s Auntie Diane’s flat with a dozen other smiling relatives. Monday we met up with Natasha for lunch, Sandra’s eldest daughter, but not before I paid a visit to the post office to ship my extra suitcase back home to California. Laura accompanied me to the Royal Mail office where we waited 20 minutes to be helped by an unsmiling fellow behind a bullet proof clear glass divider whose name badge said Gerry. I explained that I’d like to send my case to California and after confirming to Gerry that it was indeed in America, he told me that he didn’t think the Royal Mail took anything so large. I pushed on asking him if he might check and Gerry demanded to know “’’ow mooch dooz it weigh?” “I’m afraid I don’t know, but probably around 25 kilos,” I replied. Gerry insisted we weigh it on the teeny tiny counter scale as there was no other scale at the post office; obviously the English do not ship packages of any large volume but must drive their parcels to their intended destination I thought. Clearly the suitcase was too large to fit atop the small scale but Gerry kept insisting until finally the manager stepped out in his pink silk tie and helped me lift my bag onto the scale, which they refer to in the plural as "scales". It weighed 27 kilo and the manager told Gerry as much. “Are you ‘oldin’ it?” yelled Gerry at the manager. The manager insisted he was merely balancing it so that it would not fall. Gerry stared the manager down but the manager did not demure and so Gerry agreed to ship the case for me but warned that, “If it weigh (sic) thuhty keelloh and noh a ounce mower, we’eeel ship et bud ehf it weigh mower, we won’t and you’ll noh haf enny refund neithehhr.” I agreed feeling a small victory for the USA but trying hard not to show it. Laura and I slyly smiled at one another and just then Gerry dropped the bomb on us, we needed to have a large label with my shipping address affixed to the case. Laura smiled, “Can you please give us one of your lovely shipping labels and we can fill it out?” she inquired in her best Sloane Ranger accent. “No,” replied Gerry, “you’ll aff to go to Ryman (stationary/office supply shop) and get one yower selv.” At that moment, my cousin Fiona (Laura's aunt) just happened to enter the post office to see what all the commotion was about and saw us hunched over speaking into the breathing holes punctuating Gerry’s bullet proof divider. We decided to forego the trip to Ryman and instead made do with some ordinary size envelope labels that were next to Gerry’s desk which Laura had spied from our side of the bullet proof divider and sweetly asked for. We began marking the labels and affixing the multitude of self adhesive paper Royal Mail receipts Gerry proceeded to hand us, and just as quickly as we’d stick them on, they’d come peeling off the fabric of my case. Fiona suggested all manner of engineering methods for getting the receipts to stick but nothing seemed to help. Meanwhile Gerry was observing our pathetic progress from his no doubt air-conditioned side of the divider and refused to take any more customers so that the queue was now well out the door and onto the sidewalk. I have little doubt that in the ensuing 25 minutes I did as much to harm America’s reputation with the English as George W. Bush did during his 8 years in office. Fiona and Laura tried to help me while somehow still making it clear to all onlookers that I was the American cousin and that though they loved me, I was a slight embarrassment. In the end Gerry took pity on me and handed us a roll of sticky packing tape, a sharpie, a sheet of blank paper to make a label, and we managed to wrap the case with the necessary labels and stickers, wheel it into the shipping stall and leave with our heads hung very very low.
It was only 10 hours later after enjoying a delicious pre-theatre meal in ChinaTown with my cousins Ronnie and Fiona and then seeing Rowan Atkinson’s incredible performance as Fagin in Oliver the musical in Drury Lane with the kids and Laura and my younger cousin Alexandra, that I was able to laugh about the ordeal. A good night’s sleep and fond farewell early the next morning saw us leave London and head to Tel Aviv where David and my mother were meeting us for the next leg of the journey.
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