My Diesel Madelaine

Sitting at a red light and a truck pulled up beside me.

Driving with windows down, as per usual, the fumes wafted over and I was instantly transported to Shaftesbury Avenue just off Picadilly Circus approaching the Chinese restaurant that offered glossy red sweet and sour pork from the second floor (or as they called it, the first floor) overlooking Leicester Square some 30 odd years ago. That was the aroma off the great red double-decker Routemaster buses of the '70s when I lived in Queen's Gate SW7.

There were around 40 of us, students and professors together, in a five story stone townhouse, with an English cook who believed devoutly in lard which she applied by the kilo and whose fried eggs never touched the pan but circulated in the oily currents until pronounced done leading us all to confine ourselves to Corn Flakes for breakfast; three maids, two Spanish and one cute Australian nicknamed "Rabbit" who went out with me a couple of times before she was sent away for fraternizing; and Mrs. Yardley, the housekeeper, who enjoyed the occasional sweet vermouth and had previously served for "Mr. Hitchkock" (yes, that Mr. Hitchkock) out in Essex during the war, where she saw one of the first V-1s impact in a field nearby as she rode her bicycle back from market, and whom, upon sufficient application of the aforesaid sweet vermouth, she described as "a very quiet man. Strange. But very quiet."

Our classes, at the Commonwealth Club, formerly the Empire Club, renamed in a fit of political correctness never accepted by its older members enjoying their cucumber sandwiches with the crusts cut off and grumbling aloud just what the hell all these Americans were doing wandering around loose, were limited to three and a half days a week leaving the rest of the time for our own explorations, including excursions through Hyde Park on a bright fall day up to Speakers' Corner with a fellow student in a wheelchair and whose name I have forgotten to be regaled by political lunatics and religious fanatics, and trips to some little lane out near where the Crystal Palace used to be which was the location of three restaurants, all within sight of each other and all named some variation on the theme of "Pot." There were the Hot Pot, the Golden Pot and the Golden Hot Pot, the first being our favorite, not so much for the good, cheap food (although it was both, in an Italian theme) but for the waitress who came to our table of five without pad or pencil, proceeded to take our orders, served another table and returned with our meals, all correct, which she placed, also correctly, without once asking who got what. We were duly impressed.

The light changed and the truck drove off taking its diesel fumes with it. I came home.

It's different now. The last time I was in London the city seemed darker and grimier, although that may have been the effect of twilight and drizzle and early spring instead of bright high autumn. But the streets seemed even narrower, the buildings are taller, the Commonwealth Club is gone and Picadilly Circus isn't even a circus anymore, the formerly encircling streets having receded on the east side leaving Eros stuck out on a pedestrian peninsula. And we couldn't find the old house, although we may have been on the wrong side of the street. And the rent-a-Morgan dealership in the mews was long gone.

Still. I really want to go back again. Diesel hits just aren't enough.