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.