Since I moved to England, many people jokingly ask, "So have you seen the queen?" I can now answer "yes" to that question. It's important to note that "seen" can be defined in a few ways. It could mean that I was invited to a reception where the queen was in attendance. It could mean that I was part of a crowd lining the streets to view the royal wave.
It was neither of those.
We recently hosted our first visitors from the U.S., which gave us a chance to visit London together for the first time since we moved here. While walking from Buckingham Palace to the Houses of Parliament, John noticed the blue lights of a police escort and said, "someone's coming around this corner." Behind two police motorcycles, and in front of another police car was a nondescript black auto that was not a Bentley. We glimpsed the profile of a woman wearing a yellow hat and dress and we said, "hey, that's the queen!" Then she was gone.
We hoped for a brush with royalty of a different kind later as we walked through Leicester Square. Spying a red carpet, and having heard that morning on the radio that George Clooney would be in town for the BFI film festival, I assumed the best. Seeing George Clooney after glimpsing the queen would make for a pretty good day. I approached a couple that waited with the gathering crowd -- still only two deep -- and asked, "Who's everyone waiting for?" They both shrugged, said "I don't know," and laughed.The next person I asked also didn't know.
Still, they waited.
We were encouraged by the fact that the marquee over the cinema showed that "Real Steel" was playing so maybe, we thought, it was Hugh Jackman. Finally we found someone who knew the person he was waiting for. Roughly 2.5 hours from then, Michael Fassbender was expected. And well, he certainly looks nice, but not worth standing on the pavement in the cold for more than two hours. For that matter, is George Clooney?
