Memorial Marathon

The days from the 18th to the 27th of April are a bit of a blur, having been spent predominantly in a fog of illness (ok, it was just a cold, but it was a bad cold) and Jetlag. The marathon started with an early morning trip to Gatwick to catch an AirTransat flight to Toronto. Now, AirTransat may be cheap, but this comes at the expense of a considerable amount of comfort. Its like being crammed into a sardine can (as Doug puts it) for 7 hours and fifteen minutes. It wasn't all bad, though. Our route took us over Labrador, into the gulf of Saint Lawrence and the sky was clear the whole way. It was gorgeous and, best of all, with my trusty GPS, I knew exactly what I was looking at. Every lake and every little town. The North American base map was quite detailed.

WARNING: This post is in the form "The next day we...". It conveys the complex logistics of this trip, but is probably also boring.

Landed at about 3 in the afternoon, was once again struck by the relative efficiency of Canadian airports and met my sister, her friend Marilyn and my new nephew Ben(!!) about an hour later. He seemed to have liked his flight. Very smiley. Together we headed up to my (paternal) grandparents for dinner. Oh, and on the way I ended a dark and disturbing six months drought by getting a Timmies. Marie and Anne (inlaws - mother and sister) joined us for dinner and then took me back to their place to 'sleep' and pick up the car. I say 'sleep' because I was jetlagged and, despite the fact that when my head hit the pillow I had been up for 23hours straight, I only managed about 4 hours. Not helpful to the immune system which, at this point was starting to lose the battle.

From the inlaws, I drove back to my Grandparents to pick up my sister and we were off to my mom's place in Ottawa. Because we were meeting a friend of Hannah's in Peterborough, we took the much slower Hwy 7 way. Between the break in Peterborough and 'feed stops' for Ben, we managed to make it to Ottawa in about 8 hours. There we had an open house for Hannah's Ottawa friends. I managed to eat a bit and even managed about an hour of chatting before the hallucinations and the (I think very wise) decision to got to bed. It's important to mention that, on the phone that evening, Jane suggested that I should take some meds to keep the cold from preventing me from sleeping. I decided to tough it out.

The next day I felt like bag (Jim Brokenshire, 2001). If you're wondering what that means, imagine a bag. A big, crap filled bag. I took some aspirin and caffeine (in the form of a strong coffee) and was in short order bright eyed and bushy tailed enough to help get the van. We had to rent a van to drive down to the memorial because my mom was bringing a big (and it turns out very heavy), antique desk back with us. We were prepared for a long Haul - Ben isn't one of those babies that it automatically knocked out in the car. And he can't get enough of the breast at the moment. So getting most of the way down took about 10 hrs.

The next day was the memorial. We made it to Kendall in good time for the service, which went off without a hitch. There were plenty of relatives that I hadn't seen in a very long time. We figure there were about 200 people there, and all were able to reminisce about Maga either publicly or privately. The main themes seemed to be music (my grandparents were the first family of chamber music in Belmont), nursing (Maga was a registered nurse and organized home care for the elderly and shut-ins after my grandpa died) and girl scouts (before I knew her, Maga was heavily involved in Girl Scouts of America). Chamber music was played, rounds and madrigals were sung and speeches were made. I had been responsible for the printed program , and that seemed to be a big hit, though we didn't have quite enough of them on account of the unexpectedly large crowd.

That night, Hannah stayed at Kendal with a ride to Phillidelphia the next day to catch a flight home. My mom and I went to stay with some cousins (second once removed, I think) in Princeton, NJ. These guys were extremely fun, interesting, and they have seemingly uncovered the fountain of youth. The 'matriarch' was Aunt Ada Mae, who is 93, but doesn't look a day over 70 and sharp as a whip. She was the source of many a story about my Grandparents in their early lives and during the war. Her three sons were there: George (a writer for Bloombergs turned corporate headhunter) was our co-host (along with his wife Susan), Frank and Sam (who I think is the eldest, but it's hard to tell since they are all over sixty and look under 40... seriously). Her Daughter, Ada?, was also there. This was the one time in the entire trip that I slept in the same place for two nights straight.

The next day, we loaded up the van with stuff being passed on to my mom including the aforementioned giant, heavy desk. We hung around a bit (marking the first time we hadn't been running around like mad) and spending the next day traveling back to Ottawa. After that, there was the simple matter of getting the big huge (and have I mentioned freakishly heavy?) desk up two narrow awkward flights of stairs at my mom's. This was managed, with Julian's (mom's roomate's son) help, and I only threw my back out once! I was consoled with a birthday dinner with my favorite birthday menu, teriaki chicken, sower kraut and noodles. For those of you who have not yet experienced this taste combination, I tell you, you have not lived.

That evening I bid adieu to my mom and Ottawa and went to visit Mira and Nick in Kingston. To make a long story short, a good time was had by all and goodies were exchanged (Mira and I share a birthday) including chocolate. Then back to the inlaws on the 25th (actually my birthday) after a very pleasant brunch at Cora's. After a second birthday dinner at Sweet and Spicy, and having received more goodies, I hopped back on the plane for the long ride home... and T - 1 month till we're back in North America for good!

Scotland

This past week-end, Jane and I made our final 'big trip' in the UK. We took advantage of the April 4 day weekend (Brits are big on Easter - they get both Friday and Monday) and started out early on Friday. Along for the ride was our new super cool GPS (a Garmin eTrex Legend) which we got on eBay. We're pretty happy with it - it's the cheapest mapping GPS around and we got it for 75 British Pounds (GBP) with full maps of Europe included. The drive up from Northampton is about 6 hours straight, but we were a mite leisurely so it took us 7.5 hours. On the drive we saw a high speed car chase on the M6 in Birmingham. Thankfully we were on the other side of the highway away from the sports car, 10 police cars and helicopter!

We stayed at a cheap motel outside Glasgow with train access to the city (well, there were two stations, one 1.6 miles away and the other 4 miles... we ended up walking to the latter because a. we like to walk and b. the closer station was a tiny thing without ticket services which means you don't know the schedule and you have to buy on the train).

After finding the hotel and getting our room, we immediately got back in the car and headed for Loch Lomond, which is a fairly large (by UK standards) lake about .5hrs north of Glasgow. It was pretty. We walked around a bit. But since it was pretty late, we were quick to investigate the local pub. We ended up sitting be side a youngish couple and chatted with them. Well, the guy anyways - the girl, who was Croatian, said nothing. Which was a shame because all the guy wanted to do was blather on about how Scotland would - and should - separate from Britain. He made some mostly nonsensical argument about having more members in the EU if they were their own country. Admittedly, it was a bit interesting to hear an Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) supporter say his (lengthy) piece, but Jane noticed that the guy on the other side of us - a rather older fellow - was starting to strain from the effort of not jumping in. A short while after the SNP guy left, the other guy let 'er rip and we got to hear the other (much more compelling) argument. One of the reasons this new guy was more compelling was that he had shown good sense by living in Canada (BC, to be exact) for about 30 years. Quite the coincidence! Even better, he was quite an active member of the NDP and had very passionate memories of hearing Mr. Greatest Canadian himself, Tommy Douglas, speak. He had many an interesting tale to tell. We chatted with him and his wife for must have been 2 or 3 hours.

The next day was Edinburgh day. Firstly, I should say that the weather was absolutely perfect that day, so this may contribute somewhat to my belief that Edinburgh is one of the prettiest cities I have ever seen. My first thought is that is looked rather like old Quebec City except with even higher hills and a bigger, non-hotelized castle. Now, something very important happened in Edinburgh, but first let me just say that we did most of the usual touristy things. The city is very well set up for tourists. Most of the major attractions (including the local Starbucks) can be accessed from the pretty main street which is pedestrianized and in places has a view of the ocean (North Sea). At the top of the hill is Edinburgh castle, which has at it's gates the very statue of William Wallace that inspired Braveheart. Strangely, the statue is wearing British style chainmail and looks nothing like Mel Gibson. So I guess there was some poetic license taken with the statue. There's a fair bit to do in the castle - museums and stuff. Here's an interesting bit of trivia: When the 'Honors of Scotland' (basically the Scottish Crown Jewels plus the 'Stone of Destiny' which is a very old stone that Scottish kings used to sit on) were hidden from the Germans in WWII four people were told where they were kept: King George VI, the Kings 'Remembrencer', the Secretary of State for Scotland and The Governor General of Canada. Other stuff we saw were the Walter Scott memorial, the Roman Park Hill and the New Scottish Parliament.




But here's the really important thing that happened: We discovered a restaurant that is tied for #1 on Derek's international list of Phad Thai!!! And since Satay on the Road has changed ownership and now makes crappy Phad Thai, it effectively has the title to itself. It was truly outstanding. So if you go there, find the Thai restaurant that is off of Cockburn street. You won't be dissapointed.



That night we did something a little dumb to get home. We walked from the '4 miles away' train station instead of taking a cab. The first part of the walk was fine - along a major street in a Glasgowian suburb called 'Motherwell'. The second part, however, is along a not so widely used, dark street that separates a huge park/lake and a few sortof poor-ish neighbourhoods. And what do poor-ish, somewhat drunk and angry youth gangs from Motherwell do on a Saturday night? Why they pop down to the lake to harass cars and, in the rare event that they can find them, people walking by. So they swarmed us a bit. Maybe ten of them between the ages of 12 and 15 I would say. Not good, but it could have been a lot worse. They tried the whole hoodlum 'play nice then suddenly turn on them' trick, but that only works if the mark falls for the 'playing nice' bit and tries to ingratiate himself. Which I did not. In any case, to make a long story short, they eventually gave up and contented themselves with kicking rocks at us as we walked away.

Since this is probably seeming like a novel to you at this point, it may come as some relief that Glasgow, in contrast to Edinburgh is quite unremarkable. Oh, there's a shopping district and a cathedral (which has a cool hilltop graveyard called 'the Necropolis') but thats about it. Glasgow is an industrial city, with an industrial history and doesn't have much time for tourists. It does apparently have quite an artistic community, which we did see some evidence of, but I suspect we really didn't know where to look. In any case, we went to Starbucks, visited the shopping area and the Cathedral/Necropolis, walked along the river and headed back to the Hotel for a 'Carvery' Easter dinner.


Monday was mostly about the drive home, but on the way we finally got to Hadrian's wall, which was built by the Romans in about 60AD to protect themselves from the Scotts and the Picts. I've been wanting to see the wall again since we got here. And, well, it's quite a wall. Not very tall anymore, but you can see how thick it was. And to think that it ran (still runs, really) from coast to coast.




Next up, I'm headed home for a week to attend my Grandma's memorial. No time for visits, sadly - I'm going to be on the road for 5 of the 9 days I'm there (and in the US for 3) - but when I get back here it'll be T minus one month before our big huge Europe trip and T minus two months until we're back for good!

Sarah's Visit

Since we've been here, we've managed to have quite a few visitors. In fact, we figure that someone from the homestead has been over here to hang out with us at least every two months. This includes virtually every member of our immediate families (many of them twice) and a couple friends. Least week it was our friend Sarah's turn. We're always happy to have guests; on top of the excellent company, it gives us an excuse to show off all of our favorite UK places and 'things to do'. Of which we have built up a considerable repertoire. Given that we only had a week, some of these activities were out of range, but I think we still achieved our primary aim of running Sarah ragged. The very day she arrived, we told her to forget about the jet lag and took her out to the bustling Northampton town center, exposing her to number of pleasant Northampton standbys including the Market and Cafe Nero. She did pretty well that night, managing to stay up pretty late whilst playing Sequence (sortof a card-based 'connect four').

Sunday, we left early for Avebury, a UNESCO world heritage site, which we were told has a stone circle many times the size of Stonehenge. It's a pretty neat place, actually. The stone circle (circles, actually) is indeed very large if not quite as dramatic as the Stonehenge. The national trust has taken over the entire village of Avebury (which consists of maybe ten English cottages and a pub) as a historical property. We did what most people do there: Walk around the stones and the village. We also stopped in to see Silbury hill, a nearby barrow that is about twenty times bigger than any other. No one really knows what purpose the hill served. No skeletons were found, though it is likely there were some there initially. Lots of roman artifacts were recovered from the site, so clearly the hill was reoccupied by successive peoples. After Avebury, we headed over to Oxford for a trip. We took a tour guided by a rather strange and bitter man (though he did know a fair bit of stuff) and then climbed the tower of Saint Mary the Virgin Church, which had some pretty nice views. Oh, and we went to Starbucks. This will be a recurring theme.

On Monday, Jane and Sarah accompanied me on my commute and spent the day in Cambridge. The highlight for me was being able to make use of my student card to get us into King's college chapel, which in addition to being very huge, has an excellent museum that includes things like Henry the VI's will and an infographic on the War of the Roses. While I was at work, Jane and Sarah walked around down by the river and went to Satrbucks.

Tuesday I was on my own again - Sarah and Jane went to the university of Warwick so that they could get some work done. No Starbucks, but I am informed that lates were had nonethless in the cafeteria. I believe it was that evening that Sarah's eyes were opened to the beauty that is Firefly.

Wednesday we took Sarah for a whirlwind tour of London. Of course the first thing we did was to feed our Starbucks addition at the well-placed Embankment location. We went on the eye (Jane and I for the second time), saw various sights (Big Ben, Westminster abbey, Covent Garden, China Town etc.), went to dinner and even saw a west end play. The dinner is an important point because I got to eat Garfunkle's Lamb Shank with Mint Sauce. I am aware that this sounds disgusting, but believe me, it is exactly the opposite of that. The play was a one man show called 'Under the Lintel' starring Richard Schiff of 'The West Wing' fame. It was quite good, I thought, but not brilliant. Interestingly, the subject matter centered on subjects that we had had very deep philosophical discussions about just the night before. Having a Catholic, a Baptist and an Atheist under one roof is bound to lead to some after dinner philosophy! That night, there was more Firefly!

By Thursday, we were starting to wind down. Sarah was ushered (by me) over to Kenilworth castle where we took (part of) the audio tour before going to pick up Jane at Warwick. After that it was to Stratford so that Sarah could be exposed to the Bard. We had a very historical lunch at a very historical pub called the Windmill. They could trace their owners back to the mid 1700's. Try doing that in Canada! Then Jane and Sarah went to the Shakespeare museum whilst I walked around eating fudge (I had already been in). Then, so as to be original, we went to Starbucks, walked the Avon a bit and left. That evening we watched... can you guess? Firefly :-)

And on Friday, rather exhausted, I imagine, and coming down from a prolonged Starbucks sugar/caffeine high, Sarah caught the plane back home.

And I think I'll just leave of with this, which I was unfortunate enough to spot in Oxford:

Totally unrelated things

This past week, we had a visit from Jane's friend from Trent, Sarah G. A good time was had by all - more on that in a subsequent post. But during her visit, something came up that jogged my memory a bit. And it was just jogged again by probably the worst line ever written for a TV show. Allow me to explain:

The dialog in question, goes like this. Names have been changed because I can't remember the actual ones...

Mike: 'That's our job, Neal, to kill deamons'
Neal: ' No, Mike, our job is to fight evil'

Now there are two actors in the universe who can pull that second line off and they are Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellar. Neither of which, I can assure you are playing Neal. The sheer awfulness of these lines got me thinking, in a thankful sort of way, that when I was in Arts York we focussed on the classics. Like Ibsen. Ibsen's most famous play, 'A Doll's House' is probably my favorite. To say this play was controversial is an understatement. The original German lead refused to play the part unless the ending was changed (which Ibsen eventually did, though no one uses this altered ending anymore as it completely destroys the point of the play). The first time it was performed in Ibsen's native land of Norway, there was a riot.
Why did this play cause a riot? Well, people will say that it is because of the truly scathing criticism of the victorian conception of marriage, an ideal that was very deeply held. But a riot? No. In my opinion, that is not enough to do it. The trick is how the criticism is made. And it's very clever: In the first act, the audience is exposed to what appears to be a completely normal 'well mannered' play. Not much seems to be happening, but it's all quite pleasant. The doctor (Rank) clearly has a crush on the female lead (Nora), but the rules of propriety are generally followed and Nora appears the embodiment of the perfect, devoted wife for her husband (Torvald). The audience recognizes and and are deeply comforted this well written affirmation of their conception of marriage and love.
Then in the second act, this conception is systematically exposed as a complete sham. It becomes increasingly clear that Nora and Torvald (especially Torvald) play at being in love, but in fact barely know each other. The anger the audience feels at being faced with a very smart critique of a dearly held view is amplified 100-fold by the feeling of betrayal that comes from their having been sucked in to the first act. And Voila. A riot. 'A Doll's House' was lauded by some feminists as an effective argument for women's rights. But as Ibsen himself said, it wasn't.It's a human rights play. The 'play acting' nature of the victorian marriage is shown to be just as damaging to Torvald as it was for Nora, since neither of them get to know each other as people.

This effect was reproduced to a degree in modern times in another of my favorite plays: 'Oleana' by David Mammet (though, to my knowledge, no one rioted). In this case, the play is about a student who goes to see a university prof about a course that she is having trouble with. In the first act, they have what appears to be a normal conversation, he tries to help her out and she goes away perhaps unsatisfied but none the worse for wear. In the second act, she comes back, but this time from a position of strength - she makes references to having found her 'group' - and begins to expose the weird power dynamic that you didn't notice in the first act, but was nonetheless clearly there.

Anyways, I think I've rambled quite enough. :-)

Eurotrip!

We have pretty much two and a half months left of our time in the UK. We're going to finish up at the end of May, and then use our remaining vacation time to take a three week trip around Europe before heading home for good. In order to be proper backpackers, the first thing we need is, well, backpacks. And the other day at market, we saw a deal that was too good to pass up. Millets (an outdoor outfitter store) was having a clearance. After much ado (the place was a madhouse - Brits are ferocious bargain hunters) we bought two 'Karrimor' bags, a 'Universal' for me and a 'Wildcat' for Jane, for a total of 75BPS. Not too shabby. At first it was mainly the price that we were happy about. I had thought that I was making some compromises. For example, the frame was internal, so I thought it was probably plastic and not metal (for a big pack like this one, 75L, I wanted metal). And we weren't sure that Jane's had a real frame at all (although the back seemed pretty stiff). Turns out that mine had an internal metal frame and Jane's had a plastic/pressed cardboard frame (which is sufficient for her size pack, 65L). My pack also has a handy 'zip off' day pack and front access (Jane's unfortunately, does not).

We have also started booking hotels and figuring out train schedules for our trip. Even with the internet at our command, this is not an easy thing to do. The plan is (roughly) as follows:

1. Fly to Nice
2. 1 full day in Nice, spend next day getting to Barcelona (along the south coast of France. Should be a very pretty train ride)
3. Barcelona for 2 days, take night train to Paris
4. Paris for one day (we've already been there), take train to Amsterdam
5. 1.5 days in Amsterdam, then to Berlin
6. 1.5 days in Berlin, then to Prague
7. 1.5 days in Prague, then to Saltzburgh
8. 1.5 days in Saltzburgh, then to Interlacken
9. 1.5 days in Interlacken, then to Venice
10. 1.5 days in Venice, then to Florence
11. 1.5 days in florence, then to Rome
12. 3 days in Rome, fly back to Canada on the 23rd.

Thus far we have: Arranged our flights to Nice and from Rome, Booked accomodation for the Italy portion of the trip (for which Jane's parents will be joining us) and booked accomodation up to Paris. I should point out that doing all of this on a budget is not easy. It turns out, for example, that the cheapest way to stay in Italy is to rent 'tourist apartments' from local owners (who act through agencies, usually). These agencies are a little dubious and we worry about exposing to them our credit card number, but there's really little choice. So far, they've actually been quite good, if a little hard to get in touch with. But I am concerned that everything will go as planned when we get there. Our Europe-competent cell phones will be indispensable tools, I think.
Anyhow, more on this in the future, and expect us to force you, 'clockwork orange style', to look at the hundreds of thousands of pictures that this trip is likely to produce :-)

We Made it to Wales! Hay on Wye

It was getting towards the end of February and Jane and I were a tad bored. Our usual Saturday routine of heading down to the high street/market and getting a coffee at Nero had lost it's shine and we were ready to do something! So we decided to take a bit of a road trip. The problem is, though, that we have effectively run out of places to go that are nearby. Part of the problem is that we have explored Northamptonshire quite well over the year-or-so that we've been here, but the other part of the problem is that we are in the Midlands. This is an area known in the UK for it's lack of natural beauty and general 'boringness' (though there are exceptions, Kenilworth in particular). Seriously, they even have a movie parody called 'Once Upon a Time in the Midlands' whose title is funny to brits precisely because of this cultural understanding of midlands boringness. In any case, the upshot is, if we want to go somewhere interesting, we have to drive. Alot. And this has greatly reduced our road trip frequency.

One possible target for our trip presented itself immediately. We had heard through Jane's work friends, and this was confirmed by conversations with Mira's Nick, that there was a mythical town in Wales called Hay-on-Wye where they only have book shops. In the village of Hay, everyone is so obsessed with books that people read instead of eating. They read until their eyes are sore, they read until they can read no more. They read their quintogles, they read their bindoggles, they read their pooktables, bimbayzles and grayzels... Bad Dr. Seuss imitations aside, this we had to see for ourselves. So we set off and drove straight there!

Well, actually we didn't drive straight there because, you know, this is england and we were committing the cardinal sin of heading west instead of towards London. Driving in any direction that is not towards (or away from) London in the UK is like sailing upwind. You kindof have to make a zigzag up and down pattern. So a trip that should have taken about 1.5 hrs took twice that. Still, we made it with no more serious an injury than slight cramped legs. Which we quickly worked off with a walk along the Wye, which is a pretty an relatively large river.

Hay itself is actually very small, and yes, there is a strange concentration of book stores, although there were also some restaurants and a very, very tempting old map store. The center of the village also has a late Norman castle, which is rather derelict and also rather more like a manor house. It now contains... wait for it... a book store! Jane and I spent a few hours wandering around the village, stopping in a few book shops and even buying some books (me 'The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldrich' by Phillip K. Dick and Jane... can't remember). We were sorely tempted in the map store when we found an 1650 'original' map of Northampton that included a number of recognisable streets (in particular, Gold street which is now home to cheap 'Biway' type stores). But we eventually managed to resist making the 60 pound investment. Can't say I don't regret it a bit, but we'll be glad of the extra cash when we are on our Eurotrip! (more on that later).


On the way back we took a circuitous route in the hopes of seeing some of the Welsh countryside. We weren't disappointed. Our route took us through Brecon Beacons national park and this (left) is what we saw. Hills covered in low clouds. I don't think this picture does it justice, but suffice it to say that it was almost as pretty as Ireland... Almost. Our trip back was a little longer than our trip to, but we made it back in time for a late supper at home. Not too shabby, but it made me wish that we had taken a bit more time to explore the Welsh countryside. Can't see that I'll be going back there anytime soon, more's the pity.

Bif's Birth!

My pardon, noble readers for the extended delay between this and the last post. I beg your pardon, partly because I wished to leave the last post up for as long as possible but also because I had absolutely nothing interesting to write about. Oh I could have blathered on about any number of things, I assure you, but I spare you this by blathering to myself on my exceptionally long commute. In any case, something exciting happened a few days ago (the 19th) that was easily of sufficient magnitude to get me blogging: Biff was Born!

For those of you scratching your heads, Bif is the fetal name of my new nephew, Benjamin! He weighed in at a little under 8.5 pounds, had a full head of hair and all fingers and toes. My brave sister was forced to deliver without the usual calming sea of Novocaine and opiates due to an exceptionally quick labor which lasted a grand total of 3.5hrs! Ben was in a bit of a hurry! In fact, things were so hectic that one might almost forgive K for getting his new son's name wrong! That's right. Jane and I found out about the birth as we were going to bed and uncovered a message each on our cellphones. We were ecstatic to hear from K that little Sebastian had been born and quickly phoned the H & K residence to offer our warmest congratulations at the birth of Sebastian. The next day there was an email from my mom - 'Re: Benjamin not Sebastian'. The theory is that Karl's (understandably) addled brain was already making plans for his little boy based on his middle name: Johan. Yes... those musical types among you have probably already made the connection - Johan Sebastian Bach.

In any case, we have high hopes for Ben too, him being the product of two such extraordinary people. I have little doubt that my sister H and husband K will make really excellent parents. That kid will grow up in an environment enriched with learning and music! Here's to H, K and Ben! Here's a couple pictures: