SOMEONE LEFT THE CAKE OUT IN THE RAIN

It’s my wife’s birthday and the party is happening at her parents’ home in the countryside. This is a beautiful place near the English Channel, with a flowery garden my in-laws work on every day, weather permitting.

Weather permitting. Crucial words.  I’ll get to that in a moment.

First, Kim’s parents greet me as they always do, with hugs and the words: “Are you all right?”

This is one of my favorite British-isms.

Brits don’t ask how you are - they ask if you’re all right, as if you’ve just dodged a disaster.

I’m guessing the question is left over from World War II, when German bombs were falling and Brits were pulling each other out of the rubble.

In that situation, you don’t ask a dust-covered survivor: “So, how’s it going?”

My in-laws actually did live through it. Betty Ashdown O’Mahony spent her childhood nights hiding in cellars during bombing raids, and one of Frank O’Mahony’s fondest memories happened one day when he was seven years old and he spotted a Nazi plane falling from the sky, trailing smoke.

“We were on our bicycles,” Frank recalls with a smile, “and we pedaled like mad to get to the wreck and grab some souvenirs. Later on the coppers came by and made us hand ‘em over.”

That was long ago, but even now, on Kim’s birthday, Betty and Frank are scanning the skies for another enemy - the weather.

It’s no joke. You need the guts of a Las Vegas gambler to plan an outdoor event in England because the weather is like a heavenly roulette wheel.

Clouds spin in and out of view. The sun shines, then vanishes faster than a pick-pocket. A rainstorm is always a heartbeat away. The TV weatherman has about as much credibility as a faith healer.

So, do we or don’t we set up outdoor tables for Kim’s party?
Yes we do, Frank proclaims!

Out we go, carrying tables and chairs for more than a dozen people. We set them up at the far end of the garden, under trees. It’s a beautiful sight. Kim’s daughter Catherine carries out a luscious chocolate cake.

We start singing “Happy birthday” and just as we reach “to you” someone yells: “I felt a drop!”

Sure enough, it’s raining. Now comes the classic British dilemma: Do we stay, or do we go?

Half the table wants to wait it out, insisting the sun is “trying to come out.” The other half is in favor of moving indoors.

I’m guessing that if the cake had a vote it would be in favor of moving. Chocolate icing is puddling up at the bottom of the plate, and the candles are sputtering in the rain.

But then, miracle of miracles, the rain stops and the sun comes out! Yes!

Except now, it’s bit chilly under those trees. We have to move after all, to a sunny part of the garden.

Off we go, bearing tables, chairs and that soggy cake to the other end of the lawn. We set it all up, and now we can enjoy ourselves!

Only, that sun is awfully strong, and the typical English pelt can’t take it.

That’s no joke. When God was dishing out pigmentation these people were last on line, right behind the Irish.  If a true-blue Brit goes to bed and dreams about a trip to the beach, he wakes up with a sunburn.

So a new tactic is devised - we’re going to need a couple of big umbrellas (excuse me, “brollies”) if we’re to sit out in this blazing sunshine!

We set up the brollies, which work fine, until a sudden wind picks up and blows them over, along with a crash of plates and glasses.

The solution? Hoist those tables and chairs and brollies, lads - we’re moving to the other side of the house, sheltered from the wind!

I’m dying to taste that chocolate cake, but my sudden career as a furniture mover is keeping me pretty busy.

You may be wondering - with such a schizophrenic sky, why the hell didn’t we just have the party indoors in the first place?

Because that’s would be admitting defeat, and Brits will not give in to the damn weather, any more than they gave in to those Nazi bombers.

Good for them, I say to myself, as at last I can sit down and dig into my wife’s birthday cake.

It’s really good.  Unusually moist, as you may have guessed.

(Next time: BORN TO RUN)

 www.charliecarillo.co   

IF IT'S TUESDAY, THIS MUST BE LONDON

When the plane lands in London the next morning I wonder if I’m in the wrong country. I’ve made this flight countless times and it’s always raining when we hit the runway.

But this time, the sun is so bright it’s almost blinding. My God, I wonder, did I get on the wrong plane in my stupor? Could I be in Bombay?

Then I reach the immigration desk, where almost all the customs agents are Indians.

What a relief! I’m in London, after all!

That’s something London has in common with New York City - many of the people doing actual work are from another country.

I breeze through Immigration (well, except for a warning to get extra pages added to my passport, which has been stamped a thousand times), grab my suitcases (which didn’t fall apart!) and find the taxi driver holding up a card with my name on it.

The driver is from Afghanistan. At this rate, the first true-blue Brit I’m going to encounter will be my wife.

Wrong again. It’s our chocolate labrador retriever, Bailey, bounding out of the house to greet me.  This dog is a Brit, through and through. We got him for Kim’s birthday six years ago and the puppy arrived with paperwork that traces the purity of his ancestry back to Queen Victoria’s time.

I don’t know anything about my own ancestry before those bumpy boat rides from Italy and Ireland to Ellis Island, circa 1900, but Kim doesn’t care about that.  When it comes to a husband, she’s happy with a mutt.

However it’s absolutely essential that her dog has the right bloodlines and a regal air, an air that’s somewhat diminished whenever I catch Bailey grooming his genitals.

Normally the pooch gives me the cold shoulder upon my arrival, my penance for all the time I spend away, but this time he slobbers all over me, as if he knows I’m here to stay.

I lug the suitcases inside and hug Kim for the first time since she’d left New York six weeks earlier. We have coffee and she urges me to take a nap.

I don’t want a nap. I want to take Bailey for a walk and get those airplane bubbles out of my blood, so that’s what I do.

The fresh air tastes wonderful. I’ve walked these streets countless times, and still I cannot get over the rich history of this little suburban village called Hampton.

“Ancient” has a whole other meaning over here. A building in New York from the 1800s is considered old. Here, it’s just a puppy.

The bells that ring on the hour come from a church right down the street, St. Mary’s - which was built more than 500 years ago.

And Hampton Court Palace, where Henry the Eighth romped with his wives when he wasn’t having them decapitated to avoid the annoyance of divorce, is just a short walk away through the wilderness of Bushy Park, where deer roam freely.

Bailey and I are heading for Bushy when we come to a little yellow house with a pair of white pillars and a blue ceramic plaque on its front wall.

“ALAN TURING, CODE BREAKER, LIVED HERE,” the plaque proclaims in bold white letters.

I stop to look at that plaque. Turing is the tragic genius immortalized in the movie “The Imitation Game,” the man who saved the free world by breaking the Nazi code in World War II. To top it off, his remarkable innovations provided the groundwork for the Internet.

How cool is that? The Internet!!!  A creation that ranks right up there with fire and the wheel, and the guy responsible for it lived right here! I’m looking through his front window, into the very room where he may have done his world-turning brainstorming!

“Isn’t that something, Bailey?” I ask the dog. Unimpressed, he hikes up his hind leg to take a shot on the low brick wall outside the Turing house.
    
There’s no interrupting the flow once Bailey starts. I have to wait for the baptism to end before tugging on the leash and hurrying away. Sorry about that, Alan.
 
No permanent harm done, though. Like I said, it rains a lot over here.

(Next time: Someone Left The Cake Out In The Rain)

 www.charliecarillo.co

THE BIG LEAP

I’m praying the wheels don’t come off my ridiculously overpacked suitcases as I drag them across the floor at JFK, thinking: What the hell am I doing?

I’d bought the suitcases for this daring mission a few days before from a vendor on West 14th Street, well aware that they might start falling apart by 13th Street. You’ve got to be suspicious of a store that has no doors.

The guy wanted $40 per bag. I offered him $75 for two. I didn’t really care about the extra five bucks, but this was going to be my last New York street bargaining battle for a while and I wanted to make the most of it.

The vendor makes a face at my offer, as if I’ve just told him his mother is ugly.

“Gimme eighty,” he says. “No tax.”

“Seventy-five,” I insist. His eyes narrow.

“Cash?”

“Sure.”

I hand him the cash. He gives me the bags. He checks the bills with one of those funky marking pens to make sure they’re not counterfeit. I examine the bags along the seams, trying to look like a luggage expert. It warms the heart to do business in a climate of such trust.

“I’m moving to London,” I tell him. He blinks at me and shrugs as he pockets the bills. That’s about the reaction I expected. God, I was going to miss this city.

I go home and pack everything I wear from the skin out into those bags, as well as the stuff my British wife Kim had left behind at our Greenwich Village apartment. They bulge as if they’re about to give birth and I know they’re both overweight, but at least the wheels are still rolling and the seams aren’t popping.

The airlines hit you hard when your bags are too heavy, and I’m ready to shell out for the extra freight, but I catch a break when the woman at the check-in desk waves them through.

I deserve a break. Uprooting your life takes a series of exhausting, suspenseful steps. Finding a tenant to sublet your place, and hoping the co-op board approves of the tenant. Canceling Con Ed and cable, and re-directing the mail. Storing stuff in your parents’ garage, and convincing your mother you won’t get killed looking the wrong way when crossing the street in London, where traffic rides on “the other side.”

And finally, telling your boss you won’t be returning for the new season.... That was my final step.

I’d been a producer for the TV show “Inside Edition” for more than fifteen years and my contract was up at the end of May. That’s when I sat down with the negotiator.

The first move is mine. It’s going to be the only move. Here goes nothing, I say to myself.

“I’m moving to London.”

His eyes widen. He can’t believe it. “Holy shit,” he says.

I understand his reaction. It’s a bold move, a half-crazy move for a longtime worker bee whose next birthday begins with a “6.”

But at this point in my life, it’s the only move. The kids are grown and gone. It’s just me, Kim and the dog. I’ve got to take my shot on the other side of the pond.

“Thing is,” I tell the negotiator, “I want to see what it’s like to live with my wife full-time, considering we’ve been married twelve years now.” That was it. Game over. I was taking my ball and going home.

Home to my wife. Imagine that. For the first time in years, all of my underwear is going to be in one drawer.

The negotiator shakes my hand. “What are you going to do over there?”

“Well, I’m writing a book, among other things.”

He wishes me luck. I finish out the week on the show, and just like that I’m out of that job and out of New York City, snoring away at 35,000 feet over the Atlantic as if I’d been drugged.

Phase one complete. I’m on my way, a New Yorker and an American of Italian-Irish descent aboard a Norwegian airline, heading for Great Britain.

We are the world, baby.

(Next time: If It’s Tuesday, This Must Be London)

www.charliecarillo.co