A Saturday Nightmare in London

A tale of lost contact lenses and tardy buses

I lost my left contact lens a few days ago, and have been making do with just the right lens, which is calibrated for reading, rather than distance. Alternatively, I wear a pair of glasses in which I feel a dork, and with which I don’t see very well because I’ve got kerataconus — a bulging cornea — against which glasses essentially gasp, “WTF?” I’ve been making do with just my right lens.

This past Saturday night I wasn’t doing at all well.

I was expected at a little bookshop in London’s West End at 17.00 to sign my new David Bowie book. (Forgive me, I really like expressing the time the Euroway.) I am obsessively punctual (“Punctuality is the courtesy of kings.” — Pete Castle), but of course the buses in southwest London conspired to make me late. It took me over an hour to get from my home to Richmond Station, the westernmost stop on the District Line, which I intended to ride into town. It should have taken 22 minutes.

I had earlier in the day written down the directions to the bookshop. I was loathe to find my way there the cool modern technological way, with Google Maps, because there’s been a phone-snatching epidemic in London lately. I managed to get lost looking for Charing Cross Road. I was already 15 minutes late for the book signing by the time I approached the first of about a dozen people to solicit directions. Eleven of them weren’t local, and couldn’t help.

I couldn’t see. I had to get my phone out. I am never late for anything. It was getting later by the minute. It was literally like a nightmare. I finally found the pedestrian alley I sought, Cecil Court. Such relief!

Such short-lived relief. I knew the number and name of the place I sought: Tender Books, 22 Cecil Court, and dashed back and forth twice trying to find it, but the British resent having to put numbers on their front doors, and the only one I found was 27.I was late, and getting later. I couldn’t see. I dashed back and forth again, to no avail. I went into another bookseller, Watkiins Books, and asked the nice man at the till if he could direct me to Tender Books.

“Sorry, mate. Never heard of it.” It wasn’t getting earlier.

I phoned home and asked Mrs. Mendelsohn (she prefers the original, legal spelling) to use Google Maps street view to help me find the place. Several businesses had changed hands or renamed themselves since Google’s last visit, so the landmarks she suggested were no longer there, and I couldn’t see, and it was getting later and later, and it was freezing, and I couldn’t see, and it felt like a nightmare, and…

I found it. I burst in gasping and discombobulated and unable to see and late, with the posh dark blue velvet blazer I’d brought in a TJ Maxx carry-bag to swap for my heavy winter coat. As I looked around a little frantically for somewhere to take a few deep breaths and change, my little book’s publisher spotted me and loudly proclaimed, “He’s here! John Mendelssohn, everybody!” Whereupon the 25-or-so attendees turned eagerly toward me and applauded, and I didn’t die of embarrassment, but don’t ask me how.

Over the course of the brief (it ended at 19.00) evening, I signed maybe half a dozen books, had a few pleasant conversations, one with a Swedish woman who denied ever having been a member of either ABBA or the Swedish bikini team, and another with a small, pretty woman with a foreign accent who I dared imagine was coming on to me (make of you will of her taking my hand so she could admire the turquoise ring I wear even though I dislike it because it was my dad’s).

Of the five book-buyers who’d requested my signature, none said anything about my signature, as no one had the other night at the ultra-chic Century Club event.

In my youth, people had always marveled at my nearly perfect cursive penmanship. Two comments invariably followed one another. First: “God, what beautiful handwriting.” Then: “It looks like a girl’s.” Which got me to jettison cursive at around 15. I revived it only for the book signings, thinking that my signature might look very distinct from your workaday author scrawl, and amaze and delight all who beheld it.

Just keep breaking my heart, life.