Breakfast in London

Going down to breakfast this morning, I realized how much I’d missed the British Press. Pouring a cup of coffee and tucking in to a Full English Breakfast (Eggs, Bacon, Sausage, Baked Beans, Mushrooms and – I skipped it- a fried tomato ) I also burrowed into the Daily Telegraph.

In just a few minutes, I got a snap shot of the British Economy and view of the world:

In hard times, skinny ties are back in.

The Queen is rolling out the Red Carpet for an “informal visit” with President Obama this month. (The President is flying into Standsted, rather than Heathrow- it seems our LAST President brought the whole airport to a stop when he flew into London in June…gumming up the works with “extravagant” demands.)

Gordon Brown returns to the UK after his visit to the United States. No one here is impressed, despite his calls for a “Global New Deal” from President Obama.

The Bank of England is getting out it’s paper and magic markers to draw some new money (which, in reality, may turn out to be even more worthless than I’ve made it sound.)

23 Percent of Britons are saving nothing…the fall in interest rates have made it almost useless to put money in the bank…as there is very little to get in return.

Russia just passed a law making it a criminal offence to criticize Joseph Stalin’s conduct of World War 2.

British commuter trains are slower now than they were before the war. (“The” war here is WW2.)

Men are suffering more stress than women in these hard times.

The Princess Royal visited the British outpost of Gibraltar – this made the Spanish angry (the lost the “rock” by treaty in 1713.), but the people of Gibraltar defended their right to a visit from their Sovereign and her family…Rip and Read says: Hear! Hear!

Living History- World War Two in London

Poor Blog-
It's been a very busy month and a half. I found myself in the United States for most of May- work was fun, but non-stop. Now my friend John is visiting the UK.

"It's funny," he said, "At home, World War 2 seems like history, I guess I never realized what a deep effect it had on London. Everywhere you go, there's a monument to the war."

His words were truer than he knew, because Yesterday, our travel through the city was punctuated by announcements that the District Line would be closed from 9:30 pm on as the Metropolitan Police dealt with yet another reminder of World War 2....

...an unexploded Nazi bomb.

which started ticking again when it was uncovered.


That's the kind of living history exhibit I could do without.


The Full Story is here.

Happy Birthday: Big Ben!

Here's a neat story- Big Ben, the bell inside Parliament's Saint Stephen's Tower, turns 150 this week!

I first remembering hearing the sound of Big Ben on an old Edward R. Murrow record, I Can Hear It Now, as it chimed on VE day in World War Two.

I had no idea, until I read this article, that Big Ben and the Liberty Bell were close cousins...but it seems appropriate, huh?

Happy Birthday, Old Friend.

Return From Paris

Bobbi and I went to Paris over the weekend...I'll blog about the trip soon, but in the meantime, Bobbi has turned our former wedding blog into a site for pictures of the trip.

You can find it at: http://bobbi-n-alex.blogspot.com/

bonne chance.

IT WILL MAKE YOU CRY: The American Embassy In London

There are many reminders in London that our two nations share a rich heritage, and enjoy an abiding friendship (however strained it may be from time to time). In front of the National Gallery is a small, but tasteful statue of George Washington, in Saint Paul's Cathedral, in the place of high honor behind the alter is the American Memorial Chapel, built by the people of the British nation as a gesture of thanks to those American service men who joined Britain in her fight against Nazi Germany, just off Parliament Square, a statue of Abraham Lincoln, erected at the behest of Queen Victoria, gazes across at the Mother of Parliaments. And, above the door at Westminster Abbey, you can see a statue of the Reverend Martin Luther King.

So given this deep nature of the friendship between the nations I was anxious to see the official expression of that good will, our American Embassy.

The American diplomatic mission to London has a long history. Benjamin Franklin served as a agent for the colonies, searching for a way to reconcile our differences with the Mother Country...our first Ambassador to the Court of Saint James (following the establishment of our Republic) was John Adams- named by some the "Atlas of Independence", and our second President.


The embassy is located in Grosvener Square, one of London's most fashionable addresses. I've been waiting to get a chance to go see it, expecting, perhaps a burst of pride when I came upon this little piece of home so far from home.

I expected a building worthy of the deep friendship between the Untied States and the United Kingdom. I expected a building worthy of the memory of Franklin and Adams. I expected to see a building that somehow called to mind the promise inscribed on Liberty's Tablet- give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free....I expected something elegant, because it's Grosvener Square after all, but something too that proclaimed a certain respectable pride in what it means to be an AMERICAN.

But as I approached the square, I felt the bottom fall from my heart. "Surely," I thought, "that cannot be it....please, tell me...that this is not the...." and then I rounded the corner and saw my little home state flag of Vermont; open, friendly, freedom loving Vermont, TRAPPED with all the other State flags behind a barricade.



The barricades are rather new... and of course we can blame that on 9/11...

But the building itself is...it is....well, in short, it is the ugliest building I have ever seen. It is a blight. A smear upon the landscape...if an architect had set out to confirm the worst stereotypes about America, he could not have done a better job. As a piece of propaganda, this building is an eloquent argument for the "other side" (whoever they may be at the moment.)


In short, it is a giant monolith- a huge concrete bunker (one could easily envision Hitler and Eva Braun huddled in the middle of it, waiting for the end). It has no face, but looks out upon the world with cold contempt (and, I think, a little fear- now reinforced by the barricades.) It is flat and without soul. Mechanical and Corporate. The windows recessed behind deep ribs of concrete... The perimeters are patrolled by men with automatic weapons.

I've never had a building make me want to cry before, and I've never in my life felt ashamed of my country. But the day I saw our Embassy in London was a very sad day....

After all, what does it say when Dwight Eisenhower- the liberator of Europe- is imprisoned behind a fence?

God Save England

I have always loved Great Britain from afar. Some of my favorite things are British: Sherlock Holmes, Sir Winston Churchill, Rumpole of the Bailey, Shakespeare, Dickens, Lewis Carrol, Wind in the Willows, James Herriot, and Parliamentary Democracy- just to name a few.

It was with a little trepidation that I found myself preparing to spend a year in England- what if, upon closer inspection, I didn't like the place as much in it's modern form and up close...?

Not to worry. I've found the United Kingdom just as likable close up as she was from a distance, perhaps even more so. This would not be a bad place to call home, in point of fact.

But there is one problem. I can't help but wonder if England has gone senile.

Out at Heathrow, the nation's largest airport, they've just finished building an entirely new terminal. Yesterday, it opened for business for the first time and...


pfffft.

It fizzled. According to a BBC article, severe foul ups on several levels caused multiple back ups that resulted in 34 flight cancellations and a lot of angry people sleeping on the floor of the new 4.3 billion pound terminal.

This is the type of thing that seems all too common here. Personal experiences with hidebound utility bureaucracies (websites that urge you to use the telephone, endlessly looped phone messages that send you back to the website), and repairs that have to be done over and over again because neither material or workmanship seems up to the task the first time, combine with news reports of a dental care system so slow that people are pulling their own teeth rather than waiting, the collapse of a Public Private Partnership which has left parts of London's Underground in financial shambles, and a national rail system that grinds to a halt in autumn because there are leaves on the tracks. All of the above experiences begin to leave the long term visitor wondering if it's time to put the country in a home for the aged.

Personally, I hope not. This is, in many ways, a great country and a fine place to live...but I'm going to keep hoping that they begin to find ways to get their act together....

Besides, it gives me something less personal to worry about when I'm tempted contemplate the idea of Obama and Clinton tearing each other to bits while John McCain sneaks into the back door of the White House....

Good Grief, Gordon Brown.


(London photo by S.Clem)

The Year of the Rat

Bobbi and I had a good time last Saturday. We met up with some of her friends from School, and went to watch the Chinese New Year's Parade in Central London.

Elementary, My Dear Watson: A Visit to 221b Baker Street

My friends Steve and Kate visited Bobbi and I over the Christmas season. We had a very fun, very full two weeks...but in the time since they have gone, I've had several reminders of things that we did not get to do. It is a reminder of the truth of Samuel Johnson's remark that: ...when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.

We did, however, take a detour to visit the exterior of "221b Baker Street", the residence of Sherlock Holmes. From the outside, the building is everything one could hope for, but Kate expressed a reluctance to go in. What if the recreation of Holmes and Watson's lodgings did not live up to the imagination? I understood how she felt. The Holmes stories live so vividly in the mind that it is difficult to believe that he and Watson are not as real as Victoria, their Queen.

Apparently, I am not the only one to think so. The museum at 221b Baker Street receives mail from all over the world addressed to the Consulting Detective. In addition, the Abbey Bank, it's former headquarters located at 221b Baker Street, has commissioned a bronze statue of Holmes which greets passengers as they emerge from the Baker Street Tube Stop. A circular blue heritage plauqe, that ubiquitous official marker of London's historical buildings, marks the address as Holmes' own.

And eventually, my curiosity got the better of me. Persuading my partner in crime, Dr. Bobbi, to accompany me, I set out for the fictional address...determined to see what I could see.

Frankly, the museum exceeds expectations. Every single detail feels correct. Watson's bowler and Holmes' deerstalker are on the hat rack by the door...gas lights illuminate the narrow wooden stairway, and the walls are chock full of authentic Victorian prints. The tables, too, are dusted, and here and there, delicate pieces of brick-a-brack, freshly cut flowers and lace doilies attest to the fact that the landlady, the good Mrs. Hudson, has had a hand in the decoration.

Kate may have a loyalty to the set designed for the Granada Television series starring Jeremy Brent, and much of my imagination of the scene stems from that and also the room inhabited by Rathbone and Bruce- but both sets draw inspiration from closely studied descriptions offered by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (or Dr. Watson, if you prefer)...and both are, in a way, validated by this recreation.

The famous sitting room is much smaller than it appears in the films. According to the stories, Holmes could leap from his bedroom to the window in one bound, and I suspect that the movies utilize a slightly bigger set because the of need to accommodate film crews and cameras in addition to the action. Other than it's small size, however, the sitting room is exactly what you expected.

Think of a piece of Holmesian memorabilia: the violin? It's there. The glass? Of course. The chemistry set? Present. A small syringe, ready for a dose of seven percent solution, hidden away in the desk? Look closely, you'll find it. The Persian Slipper full of tobacco is, of course, included. How about Queen Victoria's initials, shot into the wall by Holmes in a fit of boredom...yes, the bullet holes are there too, covered now by a glass case to prevent further damage to Mrs. Hudson's plaster.

There are also a few things you might not expect. Watson's room, for example, is filled with the tools and books of his medical trade. Dr. Bobbi was particularly impressed by bound copies of "The Lancet" from the 1890s. A few mementos of Watson's time in army are present as well. Mrs. Hudson's sitting room, while never, to my knowledge, depicted in the stories, is here. These extra details allow the visitor to feel as if they have transcended even Watson's descriptions.

Even if you are not a Holmes fan, a visit to the museum is a fascinating glimpse into Victorian life circa 1890. The furniture, the breakfast table, the bedding, the books, even the toiletries and chamber pots allow for a long glimpse into what truly is the Private Life of Sherlock Holmes.

An advantage to an extended stay such as ours allows the visitor to pick and choose the times when they shall go forth and explore, and, by going on a weekday morning, in the middle of January, we had the lodgings all to ourselves...we were even allowed, for a moment, to sit in the chairs by the fireside- just as if we were waiting for the great detective's return from his latest case.

Oh, yeah....and we got to try on the hats, too.

Muslim Women in Europe, Great Series on NPR

I just started listening on line to a series of stories that have been running on NPR, a look Islam in Europe through the eyes of European Muslim Women.

From Germany comes the story of a German Lawyer of Turkish Decent, Seyran Ates, who has chilling stories to tell:

In 2005, Seyran Ates was named Germany's woman of the year for her work in defense of Muslim women in immigrant communities.

While defending Muslim women for the last two decades, she's been insulted and threatened by her clients' husbands and relatives. She was always able to brush it off, until last year.

As she was about to enter a Berlin courtroom with a client filing for divorce, the husband assaulted the two women. The man called the lawyer a whore, shouting, "What ideas have you put in my wife's head?" Ates says.

None of the many onlookers offered to help the women.

Ates says that brazen incident in public, at a time when she sees increasing Islamization in Europe, convinced her she had to shut down her practice. As a single mother, she says, her life and that of her young daughter have priority.

Meanwhile, in the United Kingdom...
there has been a visible increase in women's use of the face-covering niqab over the past year. Many women here have discarded the long colorful scarves typical of their South Asian cultures and now shroud themselves in black.

Unapproachable and faceless, they shop at the outdoor stalls. Many non-Muslims see the total cover-up as a sign of growing separation. Many Muslim women say it's a political statement, a sign of their new-found identity.

At the same time, there are those who

[do] not single out the 2005 London terrorist attacks as an act of extremism.

"I mean, look at 7/7, how many people died in 7/7? You look at the amount of rape and gun killings, gun crime, twice as much, three times as more people they're being killed," she says. "These are all extremes; to me any violence is extreme."

The series is left listening to and pondering.

Steve and Kate's Christmas Visit: Dunnottar, Part 2

After making our detour to see the war memorial, we returned to the path leading to Dunnottar. I hadn't meant to wear my Inverness raincoat, and felt just a little bit too much like some kind of Scottish Groupie, but it was the only raincoat I'd brought, and, as always, I was impressed the design of the garment- and I kind of wish I could get away with wearing more often. (Bobbi thought my thermal head band made the look particularly fetching.)

Kate remarked that it was just not possible to take a bad picture as the sun rose over the cliffs and the ruins of the castle-
so we began to compete for the best "BBC shot" (Kate's term)- this is standard shot of a narrator standing in the kind of impossibly verdant craggy landscape that only public television can provide to Americans. I think Steve and Kate probably won this round. Meanwhile, Bobbi found a passage under the castle, and of course, our little spelunker had to go and check it out. By the time we got down there, Bobbi had passed under the foot of the mountain and come out on the other side...but I did get a pretty good shot of her standing in the mouth of the cave.
Emerging from the other side, we were also treated to some great "attacker" angle views of the castle- looking up at the battlements from the slope, it was quite easy to see why this fortress had withstood the assaults of Danish Vikings, Medieval Knights, and the Armies of Cromwell's English Republic during the English Civil war. I would not have wanted the job of scaling cliffs and walls, only to find a stronghold of angry Scots waiting at the top.
For the price of four pounds each, about eight bucks, we were able to spend as much time as we liked crawling around the ruins of this great keep. We took, of course, a ton of pictures. It was hard not to romanticize about the vanished occupants of the buildings, but at the same time- being there on a cold winter's day, it was sobering to think of what conditions might have been like here, surrounded by cold stone by the blustering sea. For the common people employed here, in particular, it must have been little better than living in a cave. We spent hours crawling around the castle- each of us going our own way, and exploring our own nooks and crawl spaces...happy when we met up with each other,exchanging observations and sharing what we'd seen, separating again to follow our own paths. Really, hard to find better vacation companions.

After about 3 hours, we finally posed for the obligatory group picture and then set out down the hill again...headed for the Ship's Inn- for a pint of stout, a plate of Steak and Guinness pie, and some of the best damn sticky toffee pudding the world has ever known.

Life is good.

Steve and Kate's Christmas Visit: Dunnottar, Part 1

Steve and Kate ( of Gourmet Knitting Disaster) and Bobbi and I have been waiting for their visit to the United Kingdom for almost a year- ever since we knew that Bobbi would be sent to London this year.

The visit has come and gone. We had a great time, but it's always a bit of a let down when something you've been waiting for a long time finally comes to pass. First it's imminent, then it's happing, and then, all too soon, it's over. Their trip was like that.

After they arrived, we boarded a train at King's Cross and began a day long trek to the Highlands of Scotland. With his family connection to Clan Keith, Steve had a hankering to see Castle Dunnottar. This magnificent ruined fortress played a role in William Wallace's revolt and withstood a siege by Republican forces in the English Civil War. The Castle was bombarded, but the Hounours of Scotland, that is to say, the crown jewels, were smuggled away from English hands.

The train trip was, in itself, a really amazing journey. Using his new Christmas camera, Steve experimented shooting photos of the English country side as we zipped through. (In fact, many of the photos in this post are his.) As we reached the north, the railway ran right along the shore line, leading to some really impressive views.


We spent the night at a wonderful little bed and breakfast, Beachgate House, in the seaside village of Stonehaven.

The grand thing about visiting Scotland just after Christmas is that, because it is so far north, getting up with the sun is not a difficult thing to do. It doesn't rise until after 8:00 am, even Bobbi and I can manage that. And so, just as the sun crested over the North Sea, we were already breakfasted and heading up the beach.
Gosh- it felt good. (And all before 10am!)


Our host treated us to a very robust breakfast of porridge, eggs, bacon, grilled tomatoes, fried mushrooms, toast, jam, coffee, juice and black pudding after which, we set out for the castle- just two miles up the coast.

Nothing really prepared me for Scotland's beauty- as Steve remarked, he had never really known what it meant to have one's breath taken away until he found he could not breath after saying: "wow", "wow", "wow", "wow" over and over.

The hike to the Castle runs along the high cliffs overlooking the rocky shores, and a little winter mud makes it interesting and slippery enough up there to feel as if you really are doing something slightly brave. Despite the fact that we were in the depths of winter, the grass was still quite green, and the hill sides were populated by rabbits.

About halfway to the Castle, we passed the town's memorial to the dead of the Great War. This amazing structure sits on the top of a rise overlooking the sea, and is visitable for quite some distance in every direction. It's setting and design evokes a vision of the mythical kingdoms of old. I am sure that this was done both as to effort to lend glory to the horrifying struggle and, perhaps, an effort to consign the recent pain to the realm of the past...how could they suspect, when they erected the memorial, that they would have to live through such a conflagration AGAIN in just a generation?


Perhaps it's just overly sentimental, but I found the experience of visiting Scotland to be an odd combination of the familiar and the exotic....the high areas reminded me of New England, the Cliffs over looking the North Sea were like nothing I'd ever seen before. But the odd thing is, it feels a little like home.

Next post: we reach the castle, and Alex continues to fall back upon hackneyed phrases and cliches in attempt to capture an amazing experience.