"We arrived the morning of June 7. it was a Friday, and we got into the city of London at around ten or ten thirty. We arrived by train, and it was quite a sight for me seeing those solid brick Victorian buildings everywhere with humongous chimneys. Then we got a cab to the hotel. Since Jeff already knew London and was himself an experienced traveller, I was content to let him take the lead. We were in the hotel King Henry the Eighth, a middlebrow establishment in an old Regency building almost flanking the famous Hyde Park. It was pissing rain, so our first duty after checking into our room was to get ourselves umbrellas. we were going straight from there to the Champion, a gay pub in Notting Hill. Jeff wanted to stay there and drink for the whole day and I was exhausted from jetlag and lack of sleep, so I simply returned to our room where I fell promptly asleep.
"On my way back to the hotel, I did take some time to wander through Hyde Park, which for me was a very magical experience, definitely enhanced by sleep deprivation. It's quite expansive, all finely manicured lawn and bit spreading trees, but, being a bird freak myself, it was also seeing the blackbirds and wood pigeons and other birds that simply are never seen in Canada, that immediately connected me to every great work of English literature I had ever read in my life. Now I was seeing the magic of those pages come to life for me.
"But I did drag my tired and sorry ass back to the hotel, and promptly fell into a deep sleep on top of my bed. The next thing I knew, It was already night and Jeffrey had just brought in a stranger, an arrogant Parisian French guy (aren´t they all') he had picked up in the pub, possibly in the hopes I would be gone somewhere so those two could have a nice friendly shag together.
"Faking civility, the arrogant Parisian asked me what I was doing in London, and with what must have been a most wicked little grin appearing on my face, I replied, 'Well, for one thing, wondering what the hell you're doing here in my hotel room...'
He wanted to know if all Canadians were this rude, and I replied, only when we are woken out of a sound sleep...
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