Arrival in London

I don't know what it is about London that makes me want to blog ... probably just that I used to be so good at blogging when I lived here, but that was before the word "blog" even existed. 'Flew into London Heathrow Terminal 5 on Saturday morning at around 10:00 am. After waiting for my audio engineer and finding our driver, we got to the hotel, checked in, I washed up, and crashed on my bed for a quick nap. Steven, the owner of the recording studio here, picked us up from the hotel and took us to the studio so we could have a look. It's a pretty nice operation. Steven has started this business from scratch and has been building it up since 2002. Hence the name ... 2002 Studios.

Steven is very professional and helpful. He arranged the schedule with all the talents, and knows his technical stuff. I'm glad he's here.

After the quick preview of the studio, we went back to the hotel and I fell asleep again. Woke up, went to the store, got some groceries for Sunday (of course including a Cadbury Dairy Milk chocolate bar), ate, and fell asleep again.

Sunday, I woke up, had breakfast, prepared for church, and left the hotel for the metro. 'Walked into the metro, inserted my debit card into the metro ticket machine, and the machine swallowed my card. I couldn't get it out. The station attendants all tried to help me. They called an engineer and everything, but the engineer couldn't come right away, so we concluded that the card wasn't going anywhere, so I bought a day card to get into town. I was concerned that the debit card problem had caused a considerable delay that might make me miss sacrament meeting, but by the time I arrived at the Hyde Park chapel, a sign said that the Britania singles ward didn't start until 2:30. I was right on time!

I met several interesting people at the Britania ward: Ryan is English and is a facilities manager for a London office. Sergey is Russian, is from Latvia, and works in finance. Leif is Swedish, but is ethnically a quarter everything. He speaks American English very well and has family living in the states.

Anyway, back to Sacrament meeting. London has always had associations of Romance for me, so I decided to gird up my loins and sit next to a pretty girl, which I did. She wasn't very talkative ... mostly just kept her nose in her scriptures the whole time before the meeting started. Several minutes into the meeting, another young man came and sat between us and put his arm around her. "I knew it. She has a boyfriend."

As I sat there, Kristen Green walked in and sat a few rows in front of me. It was nice to see a childhood friend from the Oak Hills Stake. Kristen is getting a masters degree in London... That is, living in London while getting a masters. Her masters isn't in London.

After church, I walked the few blocks over to the Royal College of Music. I walked up the steps toward Royal Albert Hall and looked back at the college and a flood of memories came over me. I thought about the trumpet lesson that I had in that room over there, I thought of the concerts I had attended, and of Andy, and how friendly and personable of a teacher he was. That was such a magical time.

As I walked back toward the metro, I thought of how different I am now, socially, emotionally, professionally, personally and considered which changes were positive and which were negative. I think I've grown a lot since then, but there was something in my step, in my smile, in my naïveté, in my innocence, in my heart that was different. Of course, that thing was Katrina Feller. As much as I would like to not think of her, being in London kind of makes that impossible. Maybe this trip will be helpful for me ... you know, a little more closure.