Julia's Arrived!

How much I miss you all. How very much I miss my Julia! 

On Friday she arrived in London. A day in Canterbury and dinner in Folkestone on the English Channel. Today, Sunday, we head to Turin, Italy and then to Vernazza in the Cinque Terre on the Mediterranean for the rest of the week. Hopefully we will get out of London before the severe storm Jude hits late on Sunday. 

No rain yet, but certainly another perfect day. 

Walk in the Woods

Enjoyed a Saturday in the woods. Another perfect day with rain. 

The Unfolding Countryside

Brompton Dock is a self-serve bicycle hire that uses folding bikes stored in dedicated lockers at several train stations throughout England (www.bromptondock.co.uk). Join, reserve, unfold, and ride!

 

 

My Brompton folded . . .

. . . and thirty seconds later!

I made it across town, remembered to stay on the left, and easily found the dedicated trails and national bicycle routes. The ride on this three-speed was surprisingly stable, comfortable, and fast.

Best of all, the bicycle opened up the countryside for me. I captured this photo of the Stour river only 2.5 miles from Canterbury--and only 100 yards from a pub!

Yes, a little rain this morning, adding to another perfect day.

"I just fell in love with her right there."

If you ever find yourself missing those you love, might I suggest. . .

Oh Sweet Lorraine:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDi4hBWsvkY

At Last:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhRTUbv5J_Q

There are others, to be sure.

Day 30 of 90

After four weeks and a few days, things I am beginning to no longer notice:

Crisps are chips.

Chips are fries.

Biscuits are cookies.

Cookies aren't sweet.

Four skinless chicken breasts, 6 £ (about $9.50).

Baked beans, tomatoes, and mushrooms for breakfast.

British accents.

German, French, and Italian tourists.

No one makes eye contact.

No decaf anything.

Coca Cola made with real sugar.

Opening hours end (stores close) at 6 pm.

Fresh bread.

Recognizable ingredients (no additives) in processed food.

“Bits" or "pieces” for “stuff” or “things.”

"Bits and pieces" for underwear.

Earrings, facial piercings, brightly-colored neon hair, and visible tattoos, especially full “tattoo sleeves” on men and women of all ages.

When someone asks for my name, they mean my last name.

Open liquor and public intoxication.

Dogs off leashes; kids on.

Strollers used for kids up to and seemingly older than 5 years old.

People using canes and one-arm crutches.

Pockets full of change: 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50 pence, and 1 and 2 £ coins.

Bills get larger with denomination. A 50 £ note is about 8 x 5 inches.

Distances and speed are marked in miles; everything else is in metric.

24 hour clock.

CCTV (security cameras) everywhere. Everywhere.

Cask Ale served at room temperature. A pint is about a beer and half. Two pints is more than plenty.

Rolled cigarettes.

Litter, especially empty beer and wine bottles.

Buskers.

ALDI pound for cart, not a quarter.

Very little local news and almost no local interest stories.

Few to no commercials, and little to no violence on the telly.

Adult language, nudity after 9 pm on the telly.

Discussion of Scottish independence.

Dressing in layers.

Tile roofs.

No screens on windows.

No long “a” vowel sounds. Rochester is pronounced, raw-chester.

Southampton is one word and is not the same as my neighborhood, South Hampton, but is pronounced, Suv-empton. The “th” becomes “v” and the “am” becomes “em.”Heathrow airport is pronounced Heave-row.

Canterbury is pronounced, Can-eh-bree.

Lester Square is spelled Leicester.

No waitresses. Food ordered at the bar or counter.

Being asked if I have a gun.

“Cheers” for thank you.

Roman ruins.

People knowing I am an American before I speak.

Rain.

My New Best Mate

So about 1:30 last night I hear someone knocking, then banging on my door. Upstairs, having been sound asleep for a few hours, I wait to make sure I am not still dreaming. More banging, then I hear what seems to be the door opening. "Security?" I think, my heart slow to catch up to the adrenaline that just shot through my body. I am living in campus housing, so security has come in unannounced a few times to check a silent alarm, to replace batteries in smoke detectors, etc. But then the lights go on, the stair lights—which are on a motion detector. Oh, shit.

I head down stairs as quickly as I can, not even thinking about what I might encounter. There, standing, in my living room, wobbling a bit, looking as scared as I was, to be sure, is a drunk, 5' 6"", 150 pound, college kid with short dark hair and dark eyes. He sees me and keeps repeating, “Sorry, mate, wrong house. Sorry, mate, wrong house. Sorry, mate, . . . .”  “It’s okay, mate,” I say and I shake his hand. Why, I don’t know, but there I am at 1:30 in the morning trying to show this intruder the door as politely as I can. His eyes are glazed, he’s swaying, and he reeks of liquor. When I open the door to let him out, I can hear that my neighbors a few doors to the south are hosting a party. I walk him out onto the sidewalk and point him in that direction. “Down there,” I say.

Back inside, I double check that I lock the door, and go back upstairs to my room. Two minutes later I hear him pounding at my neighbor’s door, my neighbour to the north. He’s gone the wrong way. Only now, he’s pissed. He’s kicking the door, and yelling. “Open the f’ing door, mate. C’mon Jimmy G, it’s me. Open the f’ing door. Damn it, Jimmy, open the bloody door.” My neighbors name is Pat, by the way.

I opened my upstairs window and yell down to him, “James doesn’t live there. You are at the wrong house. Go the other way.” He’s clearly not getting any of it. Like he did at mine, he tries the door handle but finds, unlike at mine, that he can’t open it. He continues pounding and kicking the door. I can hear Pat’s voice yelling back at him through the door. Luckily, Pat’s door has a window in it, so I know he can tell what is going on and that he isn’t going to open it. I go back to bed.

Four minutes later, and my new mate apparently finds the party he was looking for because I can hear him with two or three others out in the street on the cellphone ordering pizza—as loudly as you can when you are drunk and hungry and in college and it’s a Monday and you are 18.

About three hours later I fell back asleep. This morning I checked with security and found that I might not have been setting the dead bolt correctly on my door. I also put campus police on speed dial. Lesson learned and one new drunk mate gained.

It wasn’t raining last night, but it was a perfect night.

 

Getting Around with Stevie Ray Vaughn

I haven’t ventured onto a bicycle yet because I was again, just earlier today, almost hit by a car when I was walking across the street: I looked the wrong way. I am pretty sure pedestrians do not have the right away at small streets or driveways, and certainly not when crossing outside of the zebra crossings.

Streets are narrow; shoulders nonexistent. Cars a plenty; congestion problematic. SUV's here as uncommon as a Fiat 500 at home; Fiat 500's as common here as an SUV at home.

For the most part, street names, if posted, are incorporated into the buildings on the intersections and not consistently on signs. Also, Hill Ave is not the same as Hill Lane, Hill Road, Hill Way, or Hill Street. Ask for directions to Hill Lane, which the magic app on your phone insists is directly under your feet, when you mean Hill Street, and locals seem to not be able to help you close the gap: “Sorry, mate. Never heard of Hill Lane.”  

At least in the older parts of town, house numbers are also not synchronized to the opposite side of the street. So, from an intersection, walking on the left side of the street I was up to 120 Hill Street, but the residence across the street was only number 75 Hill Street. Odds and evens are consistently on their own side of the street, but numbers seem to increase based on the number of structures on their side of the street from the last intersection. I imagine the fire department just knows these things.

Expressways, or carriageways, mostly follow the original roads laid out by the Romans. When travelling by bus, one’s view of the countryside is mostly blocked by hedgerows and trees. There are no billboards or advertisements on the expressways, and exits are free of competing gas stations. Rail lines, especially the high speed ones, are in trenches so a cross wind won't make them unstable.

In town, there are no red light cameras because there are no red lights. Since most intersections are roundabouts there are few to no stop lights anywhere. With this, since there is no intersection, per se, drivers aren’t sitting at intersections and therefore don’t have the time to get distracted by their phones. There is also less pollution from idling cars. Congestion and delays, sure, but seemingly caused by volume and not inattentive drivers.

Stop lights are used, however, to stop vehicle traffic for pedestrians. At these crossings, they use the yellow light between green to red, like we do, but they also include the yellow when going from red to green, as if to say, get ready, because it is going green. Traffic, it seems, gets off more quickly.

So, while there are no red light cameras because there are no red lights, there are speed cameras nearly everywhere on the expressways. Motorists tend to obey the speed limit. Motor cycles can also white line between slowly  moving traffic. Expressways, however, have little to no shoulder, so any accident blocks traffic. Variable speed limits seem to be more common than at home. 

Finally, no matter, the continent or traffic system, as we found out when returing from our last field trip, when stuck in a long queue, a little Stevie Ray Vaughn is “well good.”

 

 

The White Cliffs of Dover and Vera Lynne’s Hope

A few weeks ago (I can hardly believe I have been here for four weeks already!) I took the city bus to Dover, about 14 miles south of Canterbury. The cliffs are protected by the National Trust, think National Park, and are free unless you arrive by car (not a bad idea). The sky cleared enough that I could see France some 22 miles across the Channel. It is no wonder these have inspired so many artists. At the cliffs, I was fortunate to become absorbed for a few hours in the majesty of a hovering kestrel and the knowledge that I was merely enjoying a place that marked epochs without regard for my presence.

From the cliffs just north of Dover and its port to Calasis, I walked down a well-worn path into town, which like most ports cities in England, was terribly bombed during the Second World War, and then back up other hills to Dover Castle. Most invasions—those successful, Normans, Saxons, and those unsuccessful, Napoleon, Germany—have targeted Dover, so the castle and its tunnel fortifications hold an active history of conflict that easily magnifies the sobriety of our Gettysburg or Arlington.

 

 

In addition to the castle, whose keep was built 1181, the site contains thousands of meters of tunnels, including an underground WWII hospital. These tunnels ushered the 300,000 British and French soldiers that were rescued during the Dunkirk Evacuation in June 1940, many of whom would later go on to retake Normandy four years later. While there was no photography allowed in the tunnels, the tour recreated a scenario using flickering lights, sounds, and odors, in which we followed a wounded pilot into surgery. I was the youngest in my tour group by about 30 years, and the only American. When finished, our guide asked what we thought of the experience: an elderly British gentleman said the air was neither stagnate nor damp enough. A second, even older, added that it would have smelled of rotting flesh. With that, we exited quietly to the sound of Vera Lynn’s “There’ll be Bluebirds over the White Cliffs of Dover.”

 

I then made my way back down into town and unto what turned out to be a most hopeful end to an unexpected history lesson: a city bus full of teenagers making their way home from school.

 

And, while it didn't rain, it was a perfect day.

Distance

There is a separateness that comes with being this far away from home. A sadness, really, made more aware to me this evening by a quietly embracing fog that is breaching the Roman wall that surrounds the town centre. Somehow I know this fog as my own as it follows me into my empty flat.

This morning I learned that my Uncle Carl passed away earlier in the week. He was always good to me and my siblings, my family. Immediately I recall and miss his humor.

Tonight I will open my windows and invite the fog into this space, trusting that it extends as a mourning blanket to my Aunt, my cousin, and the rest of my family gathering in Lockport.

May his soul and the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.

British Humor

Before I left for Canterbury, a friend of mine back home asked me to see if I could find any Brits with a sense of humor. Most, he found, weren't very funny. Most, I find, neither make eye contact nor smile at strangers, but sit down and have a pint, or ask for help, and they are more than patient and hospitable. As far as jokes, one I've heard from a few people:

An American is admiring a Brit's lawn. "How do you get it to look so good?" asks the American. The Brit says, "Well, it's quite easy. You till the soil, plant the seed, watch the rain fall on it, and then wait 300 years!" So maybe not that funny, but it's an encouraging start.

The other bit they find funny is my response when asked what I studied at university. To say, simply English seems a bit ambitious here, so I say, American Literature, to which they respond: "A short course, i'n't, mate?"

One final note about language. The students seem to be very similar to our students. I overheard a conversation between two women who discovered that a boy had lied to them. "He's well dodgy that one," which I think roughly translates to "He's very sketch" in American English, or simply "He's a liar" if you remember when velcro was a crazy new addition to the original Skechers.