Every year I see these guys and every year they attract masses of smiling people and dancing kids. Globalization is tricky and it definitely has its downsides; but as a species, guys, when we get it right, the results are kind of great.
Category: Expat
“There is no Thanksgiving back in the old country where I come from. You know why? Because being thankful is a sin.”
― Craig Ferguson
― Craig Ferguson
It’s almost hilarious to write this up since we’re heading to the States in a week for our Christmas holiday, but ’tis what it is. Jeff is studying for his next round of exams (that guy is a champ…if you add in kindergarten, he’s been taking tests of some kind now for 24 years…) and my work gig has kept me busier than I’ve been in months. Which is saying something!
It’s an odd thing to dash from work to Thanksgiving dinner, but that’s what happened perforce. After my plans last year to eat at The Mayflower were scuppered by Jeff’s Christmas do, we finally made it this year. The Mayflower is a charming pub that crams in and absolutely revels in every stereotype you can imagine. Obviously it’s proud of its history and plays up the connection to the ship Mayflower (which was moored near the site of the pub in the 17th century before heading off to the New World, and whose captain lies buried in the vault of St Mary’s across the street), but it also indulges its connections to other maritime history in the area and general Britishness. The walls are covered in quotes about food and drink from literature, sailing paraphernalia covers the walls, and paintings and photos of Rotherhithe through the last centuries abound.
(It’s a bit silly how funny I found their wifi password.)
It was a very British way to celebrate the only real, genuine American holiday but we loved it. The place was full of Brits and expats celebrating the day, a few of my country were made patriotic by wine and at one point we were serenaded with an off key but heartfelt rendition of America the Beautiful, and the food (though miles short of home cooking) was surprisingly good.
“Be thankful for what you have; you’ll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you will never, ever have enough.”
-Oprah Winfrey
Happy Thanksgiving weekend, ducklings! Jeff and I finally made it to The Mayflower for Thanksgiving dinner, and it was about as charming a British pub as you could find anywhere. In less happy news, Black Friday has crossed the Atlantic in all its greedy glory. I like a deal as much as the next kid but I can’t say I like this development.
Of all the things for us to export culturally, it had to be this thing…
For my next gala event, I think I shall require tiaras. With bonus points for unusual ones.
Know your consumption, and it’s effects, I suppose.
One writer tells of their experience sending celebrities fan mail, and who wrote back. I wrote to President Clinton as a little girl and got a note back on White House stationary that was QUITE impressive at show and tell.
Interesting piece from Business Insider about the two traits found in successful relationships and why.
Our taxi drivers put those of any other metropolis to shame. I will fight anyone who says different.
Trigger warning, this story is about sexual brutality towards children. But it’s an important read to know what women and girls are up against in some corners of the world. And the last two sentences will get you right in the gut.
Simplistic, but more or less spot on, I think. (Can’t stop chortling over the, “Guys….”)
Step into a cookbook editor’s kitchen.
“A goose flies by a chart the Royal Geographic Society could not improve.”
― Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
Since work calls and my email list is truly daunting, you get what the internet loves of a busy Monday morning: animals.
So, as we’ve been recounting, a few weeks ago, itching to get out of the city for the first time since March, we hopped on a train up to my family’s old stomping grounds of Cambridge. We had a whole day of unexpected pleasant surprising, capping off with stumbling upon a fair on our way back to the station in the late afternoon. Alongside the usual food and festivities were a few tents or entertainments out of the ordinary.
You don’t run into this sort of thing everyday.
There were at least half a dozen birds of prey that could be viewed and even handled under careful supervision. Several owls and hawks were available and they were all striking!
Falconry has a long history in Britain, in fact the ruin of a royal hunting lodge is just up the street…
I’m sorry, was I saying something? Because I think my brain shorted out a bit at the cuteness…
“Time is an illusion.”
― Albert Einstein
Cambridge has a number of distinguished and distinguishing landmarks, most of which are medieval, early modern, or in some way dating from before the 20th century. The Corpus Clock, housed at the library of Corpus Cristi College, is unabashedly modern. Normally facing the street, for Open Days the wall was turned to allow library visitors to get an up close and personal look at and within it.
Invented and designed by Dr. John C. Taylor (who has an amazing collection of clocks which will also feature in tomorrow’s adventures), it is a strange and wonderful creation. The face is plated in pure gold and the design is a rippled effect, created by explosions within a vacuum. They symbolize the Big Bang, the impact of which set space and time into motion and exploded outward. At the top is a grasshopper-like creature that Dr. Taylor calls the “Chronophage,” meaning “time-eater” (which is apparently a pun since an 18th century horologist referred to a clock mechanism as a grasshopper).
It has no hands and tells time through concentric rings of lights to signify seconds, minutes, and hours. When the hour strikes, all the lights flash. And yet it is purposefully designed to appear irregular and sometimes be irregular; the pendulum appears to catch or the lights race and lag. The whole point is to be functional, but also show the somewhat threatening nature of time. The beast (which is apparently nicknamed both “Rosaline” and “Hopsy” by locals and students) swallows the seconds without ceasing, and if you look closely you may catch it blinking or moving its mouth unexpectedly. Time flies, it’s untrustworthy, it’s easily consumed or lost, and there’s no getting it back.
Pointing out the features of the gold plated exterior.
But look inside…
…and the almost science fiction quality is revealed!
I scrambled up another level in the library to get a less obstructed view because I found the clock unexpectedly delightful. I love seeing things cracked open and their inner workings revealed.
Budding videographer that I am (she laughed!), I snapped a short video of the clock’s function being presented. The speaker does a better job of explaining the lighting sequence than I could, plus you get to see the creature’s movement.
“Cambridge was a joy. Tediously. People reading books in a posh place. It was my fantasy. I loved it. I miss it still.”
– Zadie Smith
King’s College is the jewel in the Cambridge crown. It’s a glorious Early Modern architecture find with the imprint of the Tudors all over it, and the chief attraction is the chapel. The spires dominate the whole city and in good weather (which we had, because the weekend gods were kind) the composition just gleams.
When Mum was a student we could get into the chapel for free. So when I was on “study abroad,” and therefore dashing home on weekends with armfuls of friends in tow for home cooked meals and general Rodgers clan entertaining, we’d wander through it before trotting down to the Cam to be punted along the river by attractive male students in various degrees of shirtless-ness. Memories.
This visit was much more dignified. I adore the chapel for another reason: it’s choir. Come Christmas time, they dominate the both my iPod and Spotify and I wander around in a state of perpetual fuzzy holiday bliss.
That fan vaulted ceiling at one point was the wonder of Britain. Architecture nerd fact.
We took our time going over every nook and cranny of the chapel and I found many delightful elements I hadn’t noticed before.
Like the greyhound on the right, which looks like it’s judging us.
Afterwards we wandered down to the river a bit and circumnavigated the grounds. The weather has taken a sharp turn for the chilly this week but up until then, this summer and early fall have been absolutely glorious and the gardens have lasted much longer than usual.
“It’s hard to lead a cavalry charge if you think you look funny on a horse.”
― Adlai E. Stevenson II
Meandering past Horse Guards Parade in Westminster a couple of weeks ago, we got the unexpected pleasure of seeing the riders and horses put through their paces. The Household Cavalry are made of of some of the most prestigious regiments of the British Army due to the fact that they are members of the Queen’s personal guard. Their history goes back to the 17th century and their museum (housed in the Horse Guards building), which forms the traditional entrance to St. James’s Palace, is well worth seeing if you’re interested in British military history.
The first hint that something was going on was the sound of hooves on stone.
Inspection.
The other half of the guards regiment (the Life Guards are in Red, the Royal House Guards and and 1st Dragoon, also called the Blues and Royals, are in the blue. For obvious reasons).
Of course, the men are only half of the stars of the show.
I was really impressed to see the riders actually on guard while on horseback. Specifically that the horses were tolerating the hordes of tourists butting up against them to try and get pictures without kicking them straight in the head. I was waiting for some kind of equine disaster, but the training the horses get is impeccable.
“The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.”
― John Muir
I recently toured the Garden Museum, housed in a deconsecrated church that abuts Lambeth Palace (traditional home of the Archbishops of Canterbury), for a post over on The Thrifty Homesteader. Head on over for more about the history of the church–lots of interesting dead people–but there were some extra shots I wanted to include since I found the space and the garden delightful. It’s perfectly appropriate to me to find a museum of gardening housed in a church in Britain!
When I say abuts, I mean it!
A casual walk by the crypts to the front door.
With a cheerful greeting at the end!
The cafe in one of the church aisle–which, architecturally speaking, is not the central passageway up the center of the structure. Tea beneath the memorials!
Palm trees and cherubim, an atypical pairing.
I mention this in the other post, but all the plants were labeled with the year of their first written description, and often a quote from a British writer or person of note.
The real treat of the churchyard garden is the tomb of the Tradescant family, who were noted botanists and gardeners to the royal family. The family patriarch traveled widely to collect bulbs and seeds and his son continued the tradition in the New World. Both were early naturalists and predate Darwin by nearly 300 years, eventually they opened the family collection as the very first public museum in Britain. The sarcophagus is highly, highly unusual for the age when, in spite of the rise of science and humanism, death was still very much the realm of the spiritual and divine. And yet the symbolism of his tomb is not religious at all but shows the scope of his travels and scientific encounters, include ruins of the ancient world and exotic flora and fauna.The crocodile on the bottom left is fantastic!
Another side of the tomb with a somewhat more typical death symbol of medieval and renaissance Europe…and a hydra. Which is only strange until you learn that hydras were often symbols of botany in that even if you trimmed or cut off heads, they grow back.
“One afternoon, when I was four years old, my father came home, and he found me in the living room in front of a roaring fire, which made him very angry. Because we didn’t have a fireplace.”
―Victor Borge
A bit of a misadventure occurred last weekend when I managed (don’t ask) to burn my right hand over a good portion of the palm and fingertips on Saturday night. I’m no stranger to injury, my klutziness ensures that various bumps and bruises are never far off, but I’ve never been particularly badly burned before. Let’s just say I would not have been cut out for martyrdom, it hurt like a [censored].
After keeping it under cool water for twenty minutes while Jeff consulted the NHS and various hospital sites, we wrapped my fist in a wet towel and hopped on the Tube. Guy’s Hospital was only one stop away so we figured it would be a fairly painless enterprise (I say painless, but it should be noted that my nerves were well and truly freaking out at this point and long moments of tingly numbness would turn into even longer moments of eye-splitting throbs that made my whole arm shake, it was not fun). However when we arrived, the nurses informed us that we would have to go to the nearest Accident and Emergency center instead, which required another Tube ride to Westminster to walk across the bridge under the shadow of Big Ben to St. Thomas Hospital instead.
My language had deteriorated to dock worker level by this point, but after the wait to get checked in and sent to yet another area of the hospital, I didn’t feel particularly bad about the fact. The nurse who treated me first tried a silicone wrapping that made everything feel significantly worse before suggesting what she called, “Old fashioned treatments,” instead. Apparently the thing that causes the pain with burns is contact with air so the real trick is to cut off the connection. You learn something new every day! She covered my hand in an oily solution and taped a sterile, bright orange plastic bag around it and then asked a surprising question.
“Do you drink, my dear?”
“No,” I responded.
“I mean alcohol,” she said helpfully.
Note. Can we just take a moment to recognize that she seemed to interpret my “no” to mean anything BUT alcohol and felt the need to clarify? In Britain, water is optional, booze is not.
“Yes, I know. I don’t drink.”
“Oh!” she said, looking genuinely baffled. “Well, I would have suggested a glass or two of wine, but just stick with the paracetamols then.”
Clearly we were going very old school in our methods. A life’s ambition realized, kittens, I have been prescribed medicinal spirits. Someone bring me my fainting couch!
At the time it felt like it took forever, but it turns out I went from injury to (free!) treatment and was back out the hospital door in less than two hours. I was off most typing for a day and a half, but things are looking pretty good. Compliments of Jeff and his assorted merit badges.
“Be thine own palace, or the world’s thy jail.”
― John Donne
Jeff and I dedicate a substantial amount of our time off to going on “wanders” (some people verb nouns, we noun verbs) across the city. Quite often we’ll just pick an area to explore and set off down any street that looks interesting. We wend our way through tourist areas, obscure roads, hidden squares, and vast parks. It’s a lot of fun, but occasionally one of us is surprised.
A couple of weekends ago, as we ambled through Westminster, Jeff casually remarked that he had never really seen Buckingham Palace. I stopped short.
“What do you mean? It’s one of the main sites and you’ve lived here for two years now.”
He shrugged, “Just never got around to it.”
We happened to be crossing a wide, ornate lane at the moment and Jeff glanced up the tree lined road.
“What’s up this way?” he asked.
“Buckingham Palace,” I said dryly.
“How handy,” he replied and tugged me towards the residence.
Good find, love.
Nice pad.
Louis XIV is beyond not impressed.
St. James Park, just next door.
Small Dog Syndrome 