April 15, 16 & 17: Winding down, heading home

Today was our last day in Bethnal Green. It was drizzly. We were tired. So, we slowed everything down. Our day comprised, walking to the British Museum, a little potter and a cup of coffee, and walking back. This gave me time to enjoy the street art along our way. Much/most of London’s graffiti is just tagging and poorly drawn genitals, but from time to time there are striking images, real works of art. In a 5km stroll, a single route, we passed at least a dozen pieces that made me stand and stare à la William Henry Davies:

“What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.”

You can see many of them in this week’s album (London/UK Week 4 (APR 13 – 17)). My photos are mediocre, but the work is vibrant.

We spent this evening in Gareth’s kitchen – our au revoir (not “farewell”) dinner for this trip. It was bitter-sweet. It has been so nice to be just round the corner from him for a few weeks. We may be back in the autumn, so it may not be “see you” for very long, but, it is sad to think it will be a while until we share another supper. Looking at it another way, I feel very blessed to have people in London (and in my life generally) whom I really do want to spend time with again. Inshallah.

We moved to West London today, positioning ourselves for the trek to Heathrow tomorrow morning. The complications of my paperwork (2 passports, PR card, ESTA) meant we can’t check-in online, so we’ll make sure we are there early to work through all the documents with, what will, no doubt (based on experience), be, at least two check-in staff and their manager. I must admit to some apprehension: trying to enter the US, even just in transit, feels like an unnecessarily scary thing to do these days. I have all the right papers. I’m not political, or an activist. I am polite and humble before authority. But, I won’t sleep tonight with worrying. Such are the times.

We both made it onto the plane, through US Immigration, onto the other plane, through Canadian Immigration and home. Our bags also successfully navigated the journey.

Minneapolis airport was quiet: Maundy Thursday before a long weekend and neither the airport, nor our flight, was particularly busy. We had heard travel to the US was “down”, but this was really striking. There were 8 gates open for returning US Citizens. A single gate for visitors. I should recognise that there were actually only a dozen of us “visitors” in the queue. Perhaps TSA simply resourced appropriately. That alone is pretty shocking. Either they wanted to make visitor-processing miserable, or they knew no one was coming… You reap what you sow.

Reed met us at YYC, around 10pm local (around 6am to our body-clocks). He chauffeured us home, complete with emergency shopping for a much-needed midnight snack.