Ben Crowder

Sunday, 2.22.09

I’m a big fan of the Sabbath. After six days of working away on my day job and the various projects that keep me busy, I’m more than happy to take a break. Sure, sightseeing technically isn’t “work,” but it feels the same to me, to be honest. (Moment of confession: I prefer real work to sightseeing. The superficiality of touristy stuff bugs me. With this trip I wanted to avoid that as much as possible and make it real — doing things the way Londoners do them, spending as little time sightseeing as possible and as much time just living there, albeit for a short stretch of time — but alas, I chomped on the bait of “It’s your first time in England, you’ve got to see everything you can possibly cram in.” But there were a few moments of goodness scattered throughout my stay.)

After getting another small complimentary breakfast from the hostel, I went out to Fitzroy Square (just outside the door of the hostel) and sat on a bench to breathe in the after-rain air and enjoy some peaceful time reading Mosiah 18. Ah, bliss. I’m at least a little OCD — if you haven’t noticed already :P — and tend to spend my life buzzing around trying to do everything, getting involved in a bazillion projects, so I absolutely cherish these little pockets of peace when I can just be still and know that the Lord is God.

Sitting there on the bench, I realized how much I love the gospel — and how I’ve been taking it for granted. I mean, I live in the heart of Latter-day Saint land, surrounded by so many Mormons that it’s rare to see people who aren’t LDS. Shared values like that make a huge difference in the feel of a community, one you can’t really grasp until you see it. For the last few months I’d been thinking I might move to the east coast or even to London, but when I got out there into the wide blue yonder, I realized just how much I love Utah. My desire to live elsewhere went splat. (Does that mean I’ll always live in Utah? Probably not. But I really, really like it here.)

In the middle of my bench-musings, this woman/man (I wasn’t sure which and still have no idea) with a buzzed haircut and a suit walked up to me and asked if I wanted to get a cup of tea with them. (Here’s where I’m really glad for the shift in using plural pronouns to refer to gender-indefinite singular nouns. :P) “I’m sorry, I don’t drink tea,” I said. They looked nice and harmless enough, but not all the way there mentally. “Well,” the person said, “I just saw you sitting out here in the cold and thought you might want to get something.” Like I said, nice enough. I explained that I was actually only out here for a few minutes longer, since I was waiting to be able to switch rooms at the hostel a stone’s throw behind us.

The mystery-gender person left and I went back to the hostel and moved rooms, from 201C to 218 (just down the hall — I was kind of hoping to get moved to the third floor so I wouldn’t have to take the stairs every time I had to go to the bathroom, but the second floor was nice, and I was mainly just glad I wasn’t on the sixth floor). The new room was a lot smaller, naturally, but having that privacy made a world of difference. It came with a sink and mirror, a desk, some bookshelves (mmm :)), the same kind of not-very-soft bed, and a window opening into the courtyard of the hostel — a much more boring view than I had in the dorm room, sadly. Since the light above the sink didn’t work, I ended up using my sewing kit mirror and window-light to shave.

It was close to lunchtime by then, so I pulled out my bag of groceries from Sainsbury’s and ate my meager fare. I can’t actually remember what the food was (hey, it was a month ago :)), but I do remember wishing I’d planned better and gotten something worth eating. Oh well. I could just pretend I was fasting and then it didn’t even matter. ;)

Sitting alone at the desk there in my room, I realized that I hadn’t really talked with anyone on the trip so far, other than buying tickets and food from people — and, sort of to my surprise, this social silence was killing me. I mean, I love having alone time, so I’d figured that I’d handle eleven days by myself just fine. Not so. The other half of me — the half that loves chatting with people and would do so all day if it would pay the bills — was in this comatose agony, thousands of miles away from anyone I knew. If I hadn’t had Twitter and email to give me at least some kind of contact, I probably would have withdrawn into a shell and died. ;)

Anyway, I knew I could have gone out of my way to talk to Londoners, but I didn’t, and nobody went out of their way to talk to me. As a result, other than on Tuesday when (as you’ll soon read) I was in Cambridge with my friend, I had only two semi-meaningful conversations with people — one with the Scottish guy on the plane ride in, and one with the usher at Wicked on Thursday. I don’t know, maybe I was expecting it to be like Thailand, where everyone talks to you because that’s just what people do there. Well, it’s not like Thailand, and Londoners generally leave people alone. (Granted, in a large city like that you almost have to be somewhat distant or it’s overwhelming.)

After lunch I set off for the LDS Hyde Park chapel, where the Britannia Ward (young single adults) meets. I knew where it was, but when I got off the Tube at South Kensington station, there was this pedestrian subway thing and several different paths to take, and I couldn’t tell which I was supposed to follow. Luckily I spotted a girl in a dress who looked like she was Mormon. Figuring she was probably going to the same place I was, I started following her. (In a very non-stalkerly way, of course. :)) Well, she didn’t go to the same place, but she went in the right direction and I ended up finding it after all. As for church, I have to say that Mormon singles wards seem to be the same wherever you are in the world. And that’s a good thing by me. :)

Returning to the hostel for dinner, I was finally pleasantly surprised to find real Indian food — lamb biryani with some kind of a shell, bread, and hot rice pudding. (By watching the other people in the hostel I figured out that you put the shell over the rice so it softens the shell. Brilliant.) So apparently it’s only lunch and dinner that’s the real stuff; the rest of the time you get microscopic helpings.

I spent pretty much the rest of the day writing, then went to bed early, because Sunday is a day of rest. :)