I started this blog in November 2003. Actually, tomorrow is the seven year anniversary of when I started blogging and it started with a terrible post about fake London fog. Terrible, stilted writing that has eventually softened into something closer to how I talk in real life.
The winter I lived in London was the winter that Love, Actually came out. A quintessential Christmas movie that I didn’t see until this summer. I don’t know that I went to the theater in London when I went there, it was expensive and there were other things to do. Like hide in my flat and watch TV. Write letters home. Be homesick. Run fire drills.
Then I finally bought a copy this summer and watched it five times in one week. Now that the holiday season is upon us, I might have watched it three times this week. And I might have watched it twice in one night to listen to the commentary.
Love Actually’s soundtrack is my soundtrack to London. The songs all charted that winter and were the songs I heard over and over on repeat in the lobby. It perfectly covers the insanity of the Christmas season in London. The song charts and countdowns. The office parties (oh, the office parties). The budding romance with the Prime Minister.
And I love the crisp story telling. Compact stories that overlap. Beginning, middle, end. It could have been seven shorts in a row, instead it is seven shorts woven together. I appreciate that all the relationships don’t work out and appreciate those that do. Even the silly magic of “going to Wisconsin” for Colin is wonderful. The airport scenes at the Heathrow arrivals hall where nobody met me or dropped me off, but a cabbie.
Unknown to me, that Christmas was also the last before I started to seriously consider Judaism. Far from home, I sent packages and waited for care packages. I celebrated Christmas with a Columbian family, one of the housekeepers for our residence hall, at their home.
It is amazing to think how much has happened since I first put keyboard to blog seven years ago. How much I have documented here and how much I kept off the blog. Soon this blog will be erased, as Blog City is closing their doors in 2011. I don’t know what I’ll do with the archives or if I’ll start a new personal blog.
I’m rambling, time to go get more coffee and finish my real work….
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