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When I arrived in London that November morning, the 2003 Bush & Blair protest was well underway. I quickly managed to get to my London Bridge hostel and drop off my backpack to join the march, already at Waterloo Bridge. There were tens of thousands of people and they were all chanting and carrying banners and signs. There were several amusing effigies and there was a palpable buzz in the atmosphere. Because I was on my own, I wanted to be sure to find others to march with for safety. I managed to find the Democrats Abroad banner and joined in with them. A young American girl of around 25 came up to me and said hello. She was from Boston. We chatted and I told her why I was there. She grabbed my arm and led me over to her British friends and introduced me. I marched with my new friends well into the evening, singing and carrying on.
That evening, when we were all exhausted and cold, we made our way into a pub in Covent Garden for a couple of pints. I had fallen in love with London by that point. It was such a stark contrast to the old world of Florence with its new steel and glass buildings and rapid metro system. But it was also interspersed with ancient buildings that captured your imagination and made you think of another world. It was a 21st century city with the most exciting mix of history and opportunity. Over a pint, I discovered that my new friends were all postgraduates studying at University College London. I had never before heard that British masters degrees were only 12 months long, and my mind drifted as I imagined myself as an international student in London.
As we parted ways, my new friends invited me to a party they were going to the next night. Having no other plans, I accepted. I spent the next day wandering around the city, soaking up the atmosphere and trying to occupy myself without spending too much money. I spent several hours in the many museums of London, which had free admission, seeing as much as I possibly could.
That evening, I agreed to meet my friends in South London at a junction called Elephant and Castle - which is a much less captivating place than the name suggests. I waited at the agreed bus stop for my friends, where we would all travel together on another bus to Greenwich for the party. When my friends arrived I noticed they had brought someone else with them. We were introduced. He had just moved to London that weekend and unpacking had prevented him from making it to the protest the day before. He was tall and very handsome and had a charismatic yet impudent nature about him. As we boarded the bus to Greenwich we started chatting. He was intrigued to meet a cute blonde American. I asked him what his hobbies were (surfing, skiing, mountain biking) and after I said they were mine too, I pretended to be an expert at all of them. We had the same taste in music and films. After that point in the evening, we didn’t take our eyes off each other.
Once we arrived at the bar in Greenwich where the party was, we had established a non verbal mutual interest in each other. Or in other words, we were seriously flirting. Due to a lack of English speaking television channels in my Italian apartment, I had been watching way too much Euro MTV. The music at the party was very ‘Euro trash’ and I insisted on dancing to the Darkness’s ‘I believe in a thing called love’. He begrudgingly obliged me and ended up having more fun than he thought he would have. When we collapsed onto a nearby bench after about an hour of dancing like fools, he slid close to me. He looked at me earnestly, and whispered in my ear “would it be alright to kiss you?” I was a total sucker for that smooth English charm, and I nodded.
And that was how Husband and I met. I tease Husband now and tell him that had he moved to London a day earlier, he could have met me at the protest. Then, when people ask us ‘how did you two meet’ we wouldn’t have to say on a bus in Elephant and Castle!
Our relationship struggled to get off the ground at first, due
