Family Business

For today’s blog post, I would like to assume the collective perspective of my father, my mother and my brother, who arrived today at Heathrow Airport to visit me.

After nearly thirty hours of travel, we finally landed at Heathrow Airport. We made it. All of us were eager to see Kevin’s devilishly handsome face and musculature, so we hurried to get our bags from the baggage claim and rushed out to the terminal lobby, where, he had promised us only days before, he would be waiting expectantly, holding three pints of London Pride and fervently cooking up some bangers’n’mash on the airport radiator. Emerging from the baggage claim into the main terminal, we each sniffed the air for bangers, but our noses detected none. We gazed across the terminal and our eyes did not alight upon the object of our affection, that mountain of a man, that pristine specimen of unfettered testosterone, that reincarnation of Adonis, Achilles and Hercules all rolled into one, with a pinch of Zeus and a few thunderbolts thrown in for good measure. The symbol of all that is good and right in this fair world, Kevin, was not there.

Two hours later, we three had almost given up hope. We were drawing straws to see which of us would sacrifice their arm to satisfy the crippling hunger of the other two members of our familial party when we spotted Kevin walking in the door, looking…well-rested.

For the sake of clarity, and because my family’s story just gets weirder, I will resume my own (Orphic) voice at this point of the story. Yes, I screwed up. Badly. I had promised to meet my family at the airport promptly at 7 AM this morning. This meant I would be getting out of bed at 5 AM in order to allow enough time for showering, eating and traveling. Long-story-short, I completely slept through my alarm. I didn’t hear a peep of it. This could have something to do with the fact that I was wearing earplugs, and they were happily fulfilling their primary purpose (specifically, to keep me from hearing anything which might wake me up), but we won’t talk about that because that would make this long-story-short into a long-story-slightly-shorter-than-it-would-have-been-had-the-whole,-purportedly-‘long’-story-been-told-in-the-first-place. And nobody likes those. Suffice it to say I failed my family in their time of need.

ANYWAY, I did eventually pick them up at the airport and we traveled back into London on the tube. It was a loooong tube ride. I took them to their hotel in Stratford, which is conveniently located just down the road from my university in Mile End, and they went to sleep. They’re so much more peaceful when they’re asleep.

Tonight I took my parents and brother to this Indian restaurant called New Tayyabs. I had heard this restaurant was one of the top ten restaurants in London, and that the other nine would cost about 150 pounds for a decent meal, while this one cost only about 10 pounds. I was eager to try it, so I led my family on a wild goose chase which eventually led us directly to the restaurant. It was a loud place, but other than that it was very good. And fast! We must have eaten and left in forty-five minutes. We had our food within twenty minutes of sitting down. My family (minus Matthew, because he's not in London right now) enjoyed their food too, I think. Overall, it was a great place to eat.

Ahhhhhhh….I only wrote this because I’m procrastinating about my essay….Need more material….Need more entertaining experiences….Or made-up stories….Either will do….