'Sup?

Well, here we are - Friday again and this time heading into another bank holiday week end. Rain expected - do not doubt it. Still, I cannot complain about my lazy Friday afternoon as London slowly shuts down and prepares to party up. The Mayfair pubs spill into the street and I side-step afternoon boozers who occupy my sidewalk. New York outlawed this liability way back when but here - despite 7,000 CCTVs in London - we still have our freedoms, damn it. Oddly for the week end, we have no plans excluding a few neighborhood friends for Monday holiday brunch. Swimming, football and performance class cancelled which means .. chores! Kids will most certainly be doing them. Oh, and Madeleine is getting a fish.

Last night we went to Yauatacha with Christine and Todd, American friends, who will sadly return to New York at summer's end (recently we celebrated their daughter's bot mitzvah). Todd was graduated two years before me at Brown though we met at an alumni thingy in London in '01 when he was training for the London marathon. He is now a partner and the COO of investment firm KKR while Christine a mover-and-shaker in the non-profit world Chairing Women-For-Women International UK, which provides assistance to women in war torn regions of the world. Todd and Christine wish to raise their four children in the US before they are .. British. Being an ex-pat seductive - how neat to be surrounded by interesting people from the US and everywhere and in a foreign country! - but it comes at a price: at some point, we fear, our lives between here and there. At Diane's wedding, I met the guy who opened Lehman Bros. European offices (RIP) who was in Paris with my Aunt and Uncle. He noted that following eight years he would have happily stayed in Paris forever but was called back to NY. Now, surrounded by family and friends, he is grateful to be home in Westchester county. An ex-pat, he says, never really belongs while giving up his heritage and roots. Another American friend, who has lived in London longer than us, once remarked that the transition permanent from seven years. He was very specific. Hmm. We still struggle with this conundrum though, for the last few years, we have given it a blessed rest.

"Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas any more."

--Dorothy in the 'Wizard of Oz"