Henny whisked me off with her dad to Greenwich (“It’s the Extended Asian Family lah,” she said.) yesterday, Greenwich of the Mean Time, even though when she first mentioned it on the phone my immediate thought was: “Connecticut?”

There is a catamaran—a birthday catamaran!—that takes you up—down?—the Thames, well, east along the Thames, in any case, under the jolly Tower Bridge—you can say all you want about its gruesome history, and blood running down the stones, but today it is a jolly bridge, there is no other word for it, held up as it is by bright blue girders, and crossed to and fro by toy-like double-deckers in primary
red—

under the Tower Bridge and eastward, along the winding waterway lined with the solid industrial beauty of oldtime wharves, all those stores of rice and coffee and tea from back in the day now million-dollar lofts of Mies van der Rohe Barcelona chairs, Eames cabinets, Aalto glassware.



Not an hour out of London, a funny feeling of movie-set simulation. A great old tea clipper to greet you at the pier. Windows of curious curios. The regal curves and lines of the Old Royal Naval College, and its wide central paths. And the past—save the Starbucks by the old Gipsy Moth pub—the past seeped in and in, and became real in a way that hushed us but for the pebbled ground crunching beneath our feet. We looked up, to see Time holding Truth up to the light, to see Thames as a god.



What is an unexpected discovery in Greenwich is that such a post as ASTRONOMER ROYAL exists. We want to be the Astronomer Royal, Henny and me, even though, with no more than three-quarters of an “A”-level Physics course under our belts, we would fail so deeply, so deeply and hilariously, really, so—wait for it—so astronomically. Our pronouncements would have to begin: “Okay. So. Okay, y’know light years, right?” We would keep having to take moments to consider the wild trippy fantastical reality of the stars and the galaxies, time and space and the great beyond. We wouldn’t be able to stop ourselves saying: “Astronomical! That’s astronomical!” Meanwhile, we’d show up late to work every day ’cause we’d have trouble reading the twenty-four-hour clock. This is a true story: me and Henny standing by the massive galvanomagnetic clock outside the Royal Observatory, just outside the courtyard where the red line designates zero degrees east-west, where the latitudes are marked so you see Hanoi and Havana on the same plane—me and Henny comparing the Royal Observatory’s galvanomagnetic clock to the time on our mobile phones, saying: “But it’s off! It’s HOURS off!”



Down the hill and to the left, we followed the walking tour map CC sent me to the thick glass panes and deep green storefront at Number Forty-five Greenwich Church Street: Goddards Pie House, where I passed on the daily jellied eels (I passed on the stewed eels, too) (also the pie, mash and eels) and headed straight for a hot Cornish pastie, mash and beans on the side, and gravy over the lot. We had our designs on a rhubarb crumble and custard, but a certain sensibility and tightening trousers reined us in.



Back in London, though, there was time—there is always time—for tea and jam doughnuts. Some hours after it’d all begun, we were standing in a red doorway, unable to say good-bye.

And what with the texts and e-mails and calls and cards from Bangkok and Brooklyn; Singapore and Sydney; New York, New York—this must be what it’s like to be a little bit a rockstar.