The Ghost of Alfie's Antiques
Gregory Huff was not an ordinary ghost. He didn’t haunt the premises that he’d known and loved when he was alive. In fact, he was far from home. But home had never been that important to Gregory. What was important to him were the things he filled it with, and what a better place to find those things than Alfie’s Antique Market. Gregory was a collector of the finer things. He didn’t fancy the company of others, never started a family or cared to, and paid those around him to do his “dirty” work for him. He barely left his secluded home, 40 miles outside of the city walls of London. Gregory also didn’t trust a soul. After knowingly jimmying his parents out of everything they had before they passed, Gregory was well aware what people were capable of doing, as well as the extent they’d go to acquire a fortune. He had everything from fine silvers, to gold thrones. Gregory acquired ivory tusks, gems and jewels, taxidermy exotic animals, trinkets, goblets, furs of all kinds. He truly had everything in the world, everything but time. Because on one gloomy afternoon, Greg met his unfortunate demise. Gregory died at the ripe age of 46 back in the late 1700s, all alone in his home, not to be found for months. Gregory was rotund, an elephant couldn’t shift the man. He once boasted of eating 24 pheasants. He would have gotten to 25 if the incompetent beater hadn’t gotten in the way of his shot. If not for the buttery coin that launched itself down his gullet, it wouldn’t have been much longer until his heart popped. As Gregory sat in his study that stormy day, he attempted to authenticate what he believed to be a solid gold coin, utilizing the classic technique he’d been using for years. Unfortunately, his greasy, buttered up sausage fingers were coated in the excess oils of his second breakfast of the day. With one quick slip, the coin lodged itself into his throat and that was where Gregory Huff’s story ended on this earth. However, this was not the end of Gregory Huff in a different kind of world. His spirit lingered in his abandoned home for years as he watched his worldly possessions be carted off and sold to various vendors, families, collectors, and so on. He wanted to follow his goods, as those were the only thing he truly cared about, both dead and alive. However, Gregory was tied to the manor that he once used to fill with his collectables. He was stuck there sulking for centuries before the mansion was demolished. It was at this time that Gregory was finally freed from the shackles of his history and began to explore the world outside of what used to be his personal prison. As he roamed the streets of London, Gregory found a particular little shop that he couldn’t help but feel drawn to. It was known was Alfie’s, a small antique market that consisted of four floors filled with endless artifacts of the past and vintage goods, some which Gregory used to have in his very own home. In a way, it seemed as though Gregory found a new home for himself, a home that was very much his in regards to what it was filled with. Gregory has been at Alfie’s ever since, wandering down the aisles of fine things, taking his own inventory of his past possessions, and basking in his “riches”. He felt a deep resentment toward customers who came in and tried to buy his things, and turned into quite a petty trickster. When he wasn’t walking around or taking his inventory, Gregory would run around the shop and knock the finest of things off their shelves in hopes of being able to hide them in the nooks and crannies of the shop corridor. The silver spoons that “accidentally” fall onto the floor in front of shoppers who browse through the vendors selections, or the slight jolt of a chair that may rest in a corner are not coincidental, nor are the creation of someone's imagination. These little things are the remnants of the ghost of Gregory Huff, always present, always watching, and always keeping an eye on his not so buried treasures.
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The bass player at the Portobello Market is a tall, thin man, the perfect embodiment of the word “grizzled.” He’s wearing a mustard-yellow knit beanie that matches the color of his thick eyebrows and wiry hair. He’s got a red bandana peeking out from the breast pocket of his denim jacket and his fingerless gloves, one black and one gray, are fraying at the edges. His jeans are cuffed over faded black combat boots.
His bass looks just as worn as his appearance. It’s an old plywood upright with all of the varnish stripped off, giving it a rough, streaked surface. The edges have a mosaic pattern from where the wood has chipped and been glued back on. There’s a golden bell hanging from a red ribbon tied around the scroll of the bass. I’m sitting a few feet in front of him, out in the street, trying to get a good picture. His face is absolutely amazing, contorting with the words that he’s singing, more expression rendered in his black eyes than most people can display with their whole bodies. He’s walking a mean bassline and singing songs that I don’t recognize the lyrics to, his breath freezing in the air in front of him. I only played upright bass for a short amount of time, only around a year, and I played classical, but it’s still enough for me to be able to recognize how hard it must be to play in this temperature. I snap pictures until a car honks at me and I scramble out of the street. I drop a five pound note into his hat as I leave and he effortlessly switches to singing a romantic ballad. When I come back a few minutes later he’s gone, the area where he was standing swallowed by a throng of people waiting for a break in traffic. Later that night I can’t find any songs that match the lyrics he was singing. Even on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, I still feel connected to home. Out in Trafalgar Square, not only were there people from all over the world speaking so many different languages, but there was a man drawing the different flags of the world. Every so often, people would step up and without saying a word, place a coin on their country's flag. The man in turn would not say anything back, but go on with his drawings, a huge smile lighting his face.
All along the path outside of the National Portrait Gallery, there are performers and artists drawing in chalk. It was almost as if the creativity and art inside of the museum leaked out onto the sidewalk outside. Moulin Rouge
I’ll start this by saying I’ve never even kissed a girl or boy, but my friends and I passed a sex show in Amsterdam and said, “When in Rome.” So, we walked passed a window prostitute negotiating with three men, saying she had two friends. I got money out of the atm, which is probably mostly used for getting money for the working women. We paid, they didn’t check our IDs, and walked in. As I was waiting for friend in the bathroom, a woman came out covering herself with a jacket. I saw her nipple, which, now that I think of it, was the first boob I’ve seen in person. I mentioned this was my first time seeing it people have sex in person to my friends, who then asked when I would have ever seen people having sex before, so then I felt weird for even mentioning it. I guess it was my first time seeing a vagina too. Also the first time seeing a woman put a marker in her vagina then have a fat guy lie down. She wrote “Moulin Rouge rocks [whatever Dutch company brought 20 employees]” on his stomach. (On the train ride back we saw the same guy and said hello and he said hey and pulled up his shirt.) Her penmanship was better than my handwriting. I saw the sadder side of sex. The next pair was a bit old, the guy looking like an out of shape Dave Batista and never took off his sunglasses. Poor dude couldn’t get hard. But the show went on, I think everybody felt the awkwardness in the room as they tried to fuck to a remix of “All of me” by John Legend. When the next lady got naked, I thought I say something glowing there. I asked my friend if it was glowing, but she didn’t respond. Then the lady pulled part of it out, revealing a very thin ribbon. She whipped the crowd with it, hitting my shoulder. I was still in shock from the sex shop I went to earlier, so I barely noticed. Then she had a man from the Dutch company come on stage and start pulling it out as she danced around him. His face looked like a mixture of the guy from ‘The Scream’ by Edvard Munch and the dude in ‘American Gothic’ by Grant Wood. He pulled for such a long time and the string changed from green to red to blue to purple before it finally ended. Then she had to ravel it all up like she was a child that just made a mess. So yeah, never kissed or held hands with anyone, but I’ve seen some shit. Thought from Greenwich Park
London has an interesting atmosphere. It’s a feeling right under the surface that just isn’t around much in America. It might be because it’s old, and the kind of old that is still around. I’ve seen pubs, like the Ten Bells pub, that have been around since 19th century that are still there and still functioning like always. The people have history, they are history. This culture and ways of life have been around greatly unchanged for hundreds of years. And those energies of millions of people and billions of events that have existed on this same stretch of stone are a great part of what makes up the mood of the city. The feeling of London is so distinct. C. S. Lewis captured it so well in the Chronicles of Narnia which I read so many times when I was young. I can imagine Digory and Polly climbing around in their old townhouses that are still here for me to see, and looking out onto the street where the horse and buggy and now replaced with automobiles, but it is the same street, the same city, and the same energy that they knew as home. Here, in a little tree grove in Greenwich Park, it is easy to stop and think about these things. The rain is soft and misty, and little birds jump about, not minding much that we’ve invaded their home. Even here, away from the streets and buildings of London, are trees that have existed and a park people have visited for years and years and years. Here people have grown up and lived among old things, so they don’t feel so distant from those who came before. There’s security in that, knowing that you are just a piece of something that has lasted long before you and will continue to last. It’s comforting to know you are a part of that. I Saw Myself in a Window
There were some times in London when I felt so much like myself. Not in a good way. I let myself half-believe that London was a better place, that "London me" was a better me. She would walk up and down Tottenham Court Road with her head held high. I would like to say that it was London that made me make all those mistakes. That night at The Roxy. That night I got too drunk and got to be a little too much. All those days and nights I went off on my own. “Oh, that? That was just ‘London me.’ That wasn’t actually me. That’s not me.” I think all of that might have been me. "London me" was just me. Less miserable when drinking, but still miserable. Coming back to the room at night, wiping off my makeup, taking my medication. I was never so drunk as to not be aware of the thick plastic capsules, 225 mg may cause drowsiness take with food; of my shitty posture, which my sister and I both got from our father; of my eyebrows I had anxiously picked at through all of middle school, their very landscape thinned and uneven. Wiping off my makeup. Less miserable when drinking, but still miserable. I am embarrassed at how much I cried in those three weeks, embarrassed by how many people saw. Knocking on the door, “Is everything okay?” For days after, “How are you feeling?” I feel so much like myself. There was a moment when I was sitting at the bookstore window, looking out at the early January evening - it might've been the second or third book of the trip at rest in my lap. Often I take myself back to that window, make sure in my mind that the light is fading outside. There were people and tall buildings and the bright halos of cars and bicycles. There was a hatch on the window that kept it locked. It was warm inside. "Why should being myself be such an awful thing? Don't be such a depressing bitch." I caught my reflection in the window, an image superimposed over the city. I didn't like what I saw. Scavenger Hunt Fail
Today we were supposed to have a scavenger hunt that ultimately led to the retrieving and then making of our family dinner part 2. That didn’t work out. Chopan and his wife planned the night before to make up a TEN STOP scavenger hunt that would bring us to almost all the different markets, museums, bookstores, and areas that we had visited up until that point. In retrospect, this was a great idea. Who doesn't love scavenger hunts? We also got split up into 4 different groups, 1 of which actually made it to the end. About halfway through this damned scavenger hunt, people started dropping like flies. My group lost a head around the 3rd stop at Neal’s Yard, where we ran into Saunder aggressively shaking in the cold and yelling at us for being 45 minutes behind the group before us. That made us in second place and I honestly could’ve have been happier. The next stop was easy to figure out and I led our last teammates to Alfies Antiques where we once again climbed up those confusing stairs and met Chopan at the top. This was the funny part, seeing Chopan was a relief and the look on his face said it all, after he hung up with the work phone at that rooftop cafe he turned to our group and told us to get a cup of coffee and sit because the hunt was over and we’re ordering pizza. That night, gathered at the Eckerd house, everyone was sitting around watching Monty Python while my primary group of friends gathered in the office and awaited food. As I began to down my chosen bottle for that night I reflected on some of the more protruding moments of the day such as walking through Hyde Park and having my foot start acting up again, thus triggering two of my teammates to take advantage and make us fall behind, instead of keeping up with the leader. The scavenger hunt brought out people’s true characters that day, it’s always fun to see how people act when put under pressure. I also remembered on the way back from Alfie when the third group finally caught up to us, Nick was craving some bananas and ended up buying and then eating 7 slightly green ones by the time we had reached the tube. Simply amazing that kid. Welcome
On my first day in London I had been sleep-deprived and jetlagged beyond belief. Yet, nothing stopped me from craving a pint/beer at the nearest pub/bar. I got my first taste of the pub culture in London at College Arms, no more than two blocks away from the hotel. The friends I had invited to accompany me decided to go rest, but that didn't stop me from making new ones. Within minutes (as I've been proven to), I was immersed in full on sports chatter with the staff. The manager, Danny, was particularly interesting to talk to. I'd actually end up going back to visit her several times just to say hi and have a smoke. Anyway, after discussing who would win the Premier League for at least a half hour with some locals, six girls from school meandered in. And then we got to talking...each with different drinks, from apple juice to whiskey. It fascinated me that I was in full acceptance of a trip for a drink alone, and then ended up around so many people, so quickly. "When one door closes...another door opens." I thought about these couple hours many times as winter-term commenced, and doing so aloud me to respect and accept people more than ever before. |
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