Monday, 3-18-96
9:56 PM London
3:56 PM E-Town
4:56 PM H.H.I.
Gramma Dee’s 80th birthday today! How exciting for her to be alive & happy & healthy today… Knowing what a full & wonderful life she has had! ☺︎
I just talked w/ she & Grampa Jack! They are such loves… Grampa is having a hard time w/ his health & isn’t having the best of luck either. He fell on the pavement at Shoney’s last week & got a black eye, bless his heart… When he got on the phone I said, “Hey lucky! How are ya?!” He was so excited to hear my voice & when some of their friends arrived seemed so proud when he told them who was on the phone & where I was calling from! Paul, Adam, & Nick even sang “Happy B-day to Gramma!” ☺︎
Suzie & the boys had been over w/ Anne Marie & Bob to bring balloons & cake! How fun for Gramma! They are so thoughtful like that…
Gramma said my b-day card for her had arrived before I called too! I said we must be psychic! They had received the family name coats of arms I had sent them of: Barnes, Hunt, & Morrison. They both really found them interesting!
Gramma said she hoped I could make it to H.H.I. to visit this summer & I second the emotion… She even offered to finance it! How cool would that be?!
Other events of the past 24 hours… I went to check e-mail yesterday (Sunday) before church & had great messages from Dad & Basil! Both fun & thoughtful…
Church was nice, no huge spiritual awakenings. But it was Mothering Sunday (Mother’s Day) here & there was a Mum & her 2 cute kids there wearing “live shamrock” corsages that were amusing!
After church I came home & met Paul, Lori, Nick & a friend of Nick’s from home — NY (Larry, I believe is his name). We went to “St. James Tavern” at Piccadilly Circus for a pint (or 1/2 pint in my case) of Guinness in honor of St. Paddy’s Day! That was fun & after we stopped for a snack from a vendor on the street.
On our way to the tube — much to my surprise — I ran into Amelia Harris & Molly O’Malley (two friends, rather more like acquaintances, from High School)! How random is that?! Seeing them here brings a whole new meaning to the expression “it’s a small world!” Turns out they are studying in Sevilla, Spain & invited me to stay w/ them if Ruth & I go there! They were in London w/ Karen O’Connor (who it turns out is studying in Ely — where I just visited on the ISA Excursion on Sat.) & Dan O’Neill! But I guess Karen & Dan (they are together) had gone back to their hostel already… I was really sorry to have missed seeing them, especially Dan. But was still shocked & excited to have seen Amelia & Molly!
This morning I got a card from Susannah Varnes! Though this is the first time I have heard from her while I have been over here — I appreciated her taking the time to write just the same.
It was great to have news of her life at college & how her semester is going… She was home (in E-town) for Spring Break & inherited the Varnes family mini-van, which she was excited about & as a result got to drive back to school!
While home she picked up the card, she sent, which had a picture of the Evanston Art Center & Gross Point Lighthouse on the front! On the inside w/ her message, she wrote that it was to remind me “there’s no place like home…” How sweet is that?
International Business class was rather long… and half the class was out due to travels, I mean being sick (as Hugh Peters would say in response to the new Birkbeck/ISA attendance policy that they are trying hopelessly to enforce…)!
I did e-mail for a short time after class & received messages from Mom, Dad, Meg, & a bunch of K-Lists one’s Gwen had fwded from Chambana. Mom’s was full of a great account of her weekend at her teachers’ conference in in Springfield! Dad’s was amusing & clever as usual… Meg’s was full of excitement & details of her short, but sweet, 12 hour layover here on Wed.! I can’t wait to see, & spend some quality time w/ her… ☺︎
Then I went to Lloyd’s bank & cashed some of the Roth’s generous gift of traveler’s checks! ☺︎ at 1:30 PM I met Lori at “The Marlborough Arms” pub for lunch! We bumped into Nick & Larry and ate our meals out front of the pub at a picnic table, for it was a beautiful & not too chilly day! We had the pub’s specialty of doorstep sandwiches… very yummy & filling! We got our “London’s Famous Pubs” card stamped & then went to 2 more pubs where Lori & I each got a 1/2 pint of beer at each pub and our cards stamped! ☺︎
We were very full & slightly buzzing when we boarded the Central Line tube to Bond St. to find the Vidal Sassoon Academy where we were to get our hairs cut at 3 PM)!
We had exited the station & were heading up an escalator through the attached shopping center when I heard a male voice call my name! I was a bit discombobulated when I saw who was saying it… Dan O’Neill! How’s that for a wish come true?! I had written to M&D earlier that I was glad to have run into Molly & Amelia, but wished it had been Dan!
He was waiting to meet up w/ Karen, Molly & Amelia when he said he spotted me coming up the escalator!
It was so great to see him & as Lori will attest to… he seemed equally glad to see me! We talked for awhile about what we were both up to! He said he would be returning to Echo this summer & be doing some adventure trips… I told him of my job at Camp Algonquin!
He looked really great too! He had the Ross haircut from “Friends” that I like so much & well… to this day I’ll always wonder about that summer at Echo, when we were in like 7th grade, when he liked me & I was too oblivious to see it… Okay, that was at least 8 yrs. ago!!! Hello, here I go again daydreaming about every guy I have ever remotely considered liking cuz I am single & enjoy the fantasies… since at the moment I have no romantic realities!
Anyway, I still can’t believe we ran into each other here! Small world it surely is… hmmm… kinda makes me even more curious about The Celestine Prophecy‘s truths?! ☺︎ Coincidences… I don’t think so!
Okay, so after we said farewell to Dan, & passed him waiting for the gals a few more times before we found the Vidal Sassoon Academy, we began our adventures in trade school haircuts…
We arrived at the Academy, checked in, were assessed, & then handed red-credit card like-tickets. We were told to go 2 doors down & then down some stairs…
We did so & found ourselves in a room full of students, of Vidal Sassoon, cutting many heads of hair w/ one instructor checking their work! We were assigned to students & the 2 hour haircuts began…
My hair cutter was a cute bloke from Tokyo who spoke little English! I must say, though it took forever, he did a super job on my hair! I have a whole new look now — sort of a bob, just above chin length, w/ long layers!
Though I am still getting over losing all my long hair — I love it & have gotten so many raves since back here at Pembridge from my housemates! (very nice for my ego, which has been in slight need of a boost! ☺︎)
After Lori & I both emerged w/ our new dos, we hit 3 more pubs & then were awarded our much coveted & long awaited “I Visited London’s Famous Pubs” t-shirts! ☺︎ Yea!!! ☺︎ We rock… ☺︎
Which brings me to this evening in which I am taking notes for my architecture essay on the style of Robert Adam… Fun, fun! ☺︎
Cheers!
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Note from Present Day Kathy: This was a long one!
After 13 + years of blogging, I feel like I have really honed my writing skills. Granted, neither journaling, nor even blogging, requires perfect grammar and such. However, I still cringe a bit when I read the way I wrote at times back then. With a few exceptions, I try not to edit my journal entries when I transcribe them here, in part to see/reflect on how far I have come in that way.
It’s bittersweet to read this entry about my maternal Grandma Dee’s 80th Birthday, as she died a month before her 84th birthday 4 years later and this February was the 20th anniversary of her death. It’s surreal to try to digest how much time has passed and that her daughter/my mother will turn 78 in September. I love getting to revisit these moments, when I was able to call them from London for her milestone birthday and how proud my Grandpa Jack was when their friends arrived, to tell them who they were talking with and where I was calling from.
Since when I got home from my semester abroad I was somewhat tired of journaling regularly and rarely did so during that summer of 1996. I did visit my Grandma Dee & Grandpa Jack not long after I returned home, which was really nice, before I started working at Camp Algonquin again that summer. I don’t recall if Grandma Dee financed my trip, but I do know I came back from my time abroad, as frugal as I’d tried to be, in debt/owing my parents money, so unless they paid for my trip or she did, I doubt I would’ve be able to go.
It was fun to reflect on how my friends and I celebrated St. Patrick’s Day in London, including drinking Guiness, which I wasn’t big fan of then. I am still not a big stout drinker, but appreciate that I was trying to go with an authentic Irish beer. I think this picture of me came from one of my friends, that I was with that day, as in my photo albums it looks different (the date stamp) then the ones from my rolls of film. The date says March 18th, however I am pretty sure it was taken on the 17th.
I also enjoyed reading about how (not her real name) Lori and I were visiting a bunch of London’s Famous Pubs to earn our t-shirts, as well as the yummy “doorstep sandwiches” we ate for lunch, which I may have to try to track down whenever our family is able to reschedule our trip to the UK in 2021 or later. That will depend on how things play out with this global pandemic that has simmered down here in Illinois, because of the responsible leadership we have in our governor and the mayor of Chicago, however is still very much a disaster in many other states across the nation and may flare up more again here in the future.
It was also really cool to remember running into my friends/acquaintances from home, which happened a few times throughout my semester abroad (with other friends), which always blew my mind. I found the part where I talked about how I was once again “daydreaming about every guy I have ever remotely considered liking cuz I am single & enjoy the fantasies… since at the moment I have no romantic realities!” especially amusing, as well as my pop culture reference to the Ross from “Friends” haircut he had at the time.
Finally, it was so interesting to revisit the experience we had getting our haircuts at the Vidal Sassoon Academy trade school! It was definitely the longest time I ever spent at a salon getting my hair done, at least before the years in my mid-20s and 30s when I started getting highlights and eventually coloring my hair, before embracing my natural grey in my 40s. And it funny to reflect on how I went from long to short, as over the past 24 years I’ve continued to get bored easily with my hairstyles and often grow it out and chop it, including getting two pixie cuts (the first in 2016 and again last summer/in 2019) since I turned 40!
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Reminder: Unless I’ve been given permission to use people’s actual names, in most cases I’ve removed or replaced the names of the real people who were part of my journey/experience there, in effort to protect and respect their identities/privacy in my London Semester Journal entries. I will also not share details that I think and feel are too personal for anyone I interacted with, my loved ones, and me.
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Here’s the back story of My London Semester Journals from 1996, including what prompted me to revisit and decide to share them here in 2018. And here’s a list a list of the entries, which I will update as I share them.
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