The First Degree

Yeah, it’s cold over here in Britain and, as usual, the locals aren’t used to it, the major infrastructures—highway, railway, water, electric—can’t cope with it and the heaters in our flat aren’t rugged enough for it.  In addition to that, I’m not very thrilled with it, either.

Usually, when cold comes to visit, it sneaks in during the night, nips at our startled ears and noses in the morning and then flits away before elevenses.  This time, however, it has come—uninvited and unexpected, I might add—for a protracted visit.  When I got up this morning my thermometer read one degree—one single, lonely degree—above zero (that’s minus 17 in local time).
 

You have to look carefully, but that is 1 degree. Fahrenheit.

Now, it’s bad enough that my old friend, NY Cold, has come to call and (not altogether unexpectedly) brought along his bastard cousins Snow and Ice, but it also had some other old and not-so-dearly missed acquaintances from the old country in tow: Itchy Skin and Static Electricity.

Cold arrived about 10 days ago, then Snow popped in last week and, since he hasn’t gone anywhere, Ice soon followed.  So I, along with the rest of southern Britain, dug through wardrobes for forgotten scarves, wooly hats and thick jumpers as we hunkered down and prepared to wait it out.  But then, a few days ago, I realized I was spending a significant portion of my day scratching at various (publically acceptable) parts of my body.  As it is too cold for fleas, I realized it was the dry, itchy skin that the lingering cold weather used to visit upon me back in NY.

Next, I discovered that, any time I ventured near a metallic object, an arc of electricity would leap from my fingertips with a sharp crack and flash of light, leaving my clothes smoking, my hair standing comically on end and everyone in the vicinity surprised at the inventive uses of profanity they had just heard.

The sitting room, thanks to the rising sun, is finally getting warm, but my wife has informed me that—Arctic conditions or no—we are going on our morning walk around the park.  I suppose I shouldn’t complain; I of all people should know how to deal with it, especially with the inborn survival instinct that I possess and the locals don’t seem to have, namely the quiet, rational voice in the back of your mind that—as you think you will go mad with the cold—whispers its soothing promise: “Someday, it will be spring.”
 

That's something you don't see everyday in Horsham park:
a Saturday morning with no one playing football (soccer).

So, me, my thick jumper, knitted scarf, wooly hat and inner belief that spring is just around the corner will be wandering through the park in a matter of minutes.

On the bright side, it will make our ritual cup of tea very welcome indeed when we stop for elevenses.

Trained

I am, apparently, some sort of criminal in training (there's a pun there, reach for it).  Any day now you will find my picture on the wall in all Southern railway stations under the heading “Ticket Thief!”  Happily, they cannot—due to lack of hardware—add “Shoot on sight” to that, but they might encourage their employees to “Blow Whistle and Shake Finger Menacingly” if they spot me hanging around the platforms.

Here's what happened:

I was returning from a client's site last Thursday on a “fast” train.  For the uninitiated, a “fast” train is one that doesn't stop at every pissant little burg between London and Brighton , touching only on the highlights, such as Croydon, Gatwick Airport, and Haywards Heath.  I was in a hurry because it was Thursday and on Thursdays I drive my wife to art class in Haywards Heath.  Now, my wife can drive, she just doesn't prefer to, so I have been driving her to art class on Thursday nights for the last five years, but if I couldn't be home by 6:30 I would be too late to take her and she would have to drive herself.

More to the point, I would not be able to drive her to art class, and then take myself to the pub down the road for a cigar and a pint and a curry and a convivial chat with the locals.  And that would be wrong.

And so, as the train pulled away from East Croydon station, I did some mental calculations and realized I was not, in fact, going to make it home on time.  The route I was on required me to disembark at Gatwick and find another train going to Horsham.  That could add half an hour or more to the trip.  And once I got to Horsham station, I still needed to get home.  So I came up with a fall-back plan.

I'm sure you've already noted the fact that the train I was on stopped at Haywards Heath, which was my ultimate destination.  Accordingly, I found a train guard and asked if I could purchase a ticket from Gatwick to Haywards Heath.  He said he would come by in a few minutes.  He never did.

When I got out at Haywards Heath with a ticket to Horsham, I was not worried at all.  Now, I know you can't travel to Canterbury with a ticket to Cambridge just because they start with the same letter, but in this case, I was travelling the same relative distance and in the same general direction: from Gatwick airport, the lines fork, and one tine goes to Horsham, the other to Haywards Heath.  I wasn't stealing a ticket, merely transferring the Gatwick to Horsham portion to the Haywards Heath line.

The lady manning the gate did not see it that way.
 

I showed her my ticket, and after we established that I was not at the correct station and I began to explain how I happened to end up there, she started giving me a proper bollocking.

This confused me.  I was wearing a shirt and tie, I was obviously a respectable middle-aged man travelling on business, not some saggy-drawered, skateboard-toting hoodie trying to jump the turnstile, yet she was verbally beating me like a red-headed step-child.  To what end, I wondered; I was already at the station, she could shout all night and it wouldn't change the ticket, or that fact that I had arrived holding it.  Was she planning to send me back to Gatwick?  For a while, it did appear so.

Eventually, I was released so I could go to the window and purchase a ticket from Gatwick to Haywards Heath.  I didn't bother asking for a refund for the unused portion of the ticket I was holding, I just bought the proper ticket—which is what I had wanted to do all along—and returned to the guardess.  She took it, and picked up where she had left off, launching into another bollocking.

This time I was really confused; not angry, or embarrassed, just confused.  I was now outside of the gate, where she had no power over me at all.  She wasn’t accomplishing anything; I had already properly paid for my ticket, so what was the tirade for?  I felt like putting my fingers in my ears and singing, “LA LA LA LA LA LA LA CAN'T HEAR YOU!”  Instead, I just walked away.

Now clearly, I had not followed the rules, but I openly acknowledged that fact and actively sought to put it right; I thought this—along with my status of “very obviously not a criminal”—would count for something.  I suppose this was her means of deriving job satisfaction—a sort of non-monetary perk—from an otherwise unexciting occupation.  Thing is, I probably satisfied her scolding craving for the evening and the next group of oiks who sauntered down the walkway with no tickets at all were likely released without comment and sent on their way with a hearty “Cheerio!”

Yeah, I didn’t think so, either.
  

Another random photo, this one to make you feel better

about the one I posted last time with the flowers in it.

Belated Birthdays

I had my Burns Night dinner last night: swede (that's rutabaga to you on the other side of the pond) mashed with butter and pepper, mashed potatoes with gravy, and oven-cooked haggis.  I like my haggis cooked rather than the more tradition method of boiling because baking it produces a nice, crispy exterior.  It also precludes the mess that a burst haggis occasions.
 

 
My Burns Night celebratory meal occurred on Saturday because on Wednesday, the real Burns Night, I was busy picking up donuts for my obligatory birthday treats so I could bring them to work on Thursday.

Now, Thursday wasn't actually my birthday, but I still had to pick up birthday treats for two reasons:

1. It is mandatory.  Over here, instead of your co-workers taking you out for a birthday drink, you are required (by Parliamentary decree, they tell me) to supply cakes, cookies and other assorted goodies for everyone in your office.  A strange custom, but who am I to argue with tradition?

2. Bringing them in on my actual birthday was out of the question because there are so many people with birthdays in early January that we have to stagger the dates.

It's an unfortunate coincidence that, in a work force as small as ours, so many people have birthdays in the first half of January.  It would be bad enough if this surfeit of birthdays happened in, say, August, but the opening weeks of the year are the absolute worst time for this to happen.

During December, every other day someone brings in a tin of chocolates or mince pies, and then after Christmas, the excess everyone is trying to get rid of ends up on various unoccupied desktops.  And we just about get through all of that before the birthday glut arrives, playing havoc with people foolish enough to have made resolutions concerning their weight or unhealthy diets.

It has gotten so bad that we are actually proposing to ask management to screen future employees and only offer positions to those who were born between May and September.

But this is the situation I am stuck with, so Burns Night found me checking Google for the location of the nearest Krispy Kreme Donut distributor.  I've written about Krispy Kreme before, about my love-hate relationship with them while I lived in the States, and how I was relived to put them behind me when I moved over here, and how horrified I was to find out they had followed me over.

I managed to make peace with the presence of Krispy Kreme; I found they are a bit like the Killer Bees—as long as you leave them alone, they won't harm you.  I even brought them in to the office as my birthday treat on occasion, making fellow Kreme-addicts out of a number of my colleagues.  And so, this year, I decided to bring some in again, as a special treat (and so I could get a much-needed fix).  The closest store the last time I had bought some was twenty miles away, but I thought I'd have a look to see if any had opened nearer.  One had.  And it was within walking distance.

This is a bad turn of events, indeed.  Not only is this outlet within walking distance, it is in the massive, 24-hour Tesco just across the roundabout in Broadbridge Heath.  So now I have to adjust myself to the fact that, any day of the week, any time of day or night, I am a twenty minute walk—or 3 minute drive—away from Krispy Kreme Donuts.

I'm not sure if my willpower can take the strain.

At least I was able to gorge myself enough on the ones I brought in to work to satisfy my Kreme Kraving, but just for the time being.  I'll soon be longing for another bite into that heavenly sugar-rush, I can already feel the stirrings, and I hear them, late at night, calling to me...

The first step, they tell me, is admitting you have a problem.
 

 
This photo has nothing to do with the post, but I wantedyou to see it to let you know that while you are still in thethroes of winter, spring is already arriving here.Jealous?

The Advantages of Marriage

My Tin Jubilee is in full swing now, in fact, it is rapidly coming to a close.  Ten years ago I was preparing to make myself homeless and jobless in order to fly 3,000 miles to another continent trusting the promise of a woman I had only known for six months that, once I got there, she would take me in.  I arrived in the UK on 1 March (she did take me in) and 28 days later, I married her.

So the 28^th of March, in addition to marking the official culmination of my Tin Jubilee Celebrations, is also my 10^th wedding anniversary which, among many other advantages and obligations (I think she might be expecting a card or something) means that, for the past decade, I have never had to worry about running out of milk.

This is strange because my wife doesn’t even drink milk, yet she always knows how much we have at any given time and, more importantly, whether or not we need to buy any.  We’ll often be out for a walk in the evening and my wife will say that we need to stop at the offie on the way home to pick up quart of milk.

(ASIDE: We do buy milk in quarts and pints here, even though it is illegal.  The EU has decreed that we MUST sell milk in metric units, so we have containers with volume labels reading “2.272 Liters,” but we still say, “half gallon” because it’s easier than saying we need 2.272 liters of milk.)

But liters or pints or gallons, she always knows.  And when I make note of the fact that we just bought a half gallon, she’ll say, “Yes, but you’re working from home for the next two days and you drink a lot of it, and we’re having a tuna bake for dinner tonight and that will use a pint so we’ll need an extra quart to get us through the week.”  And when I say that maybe we should get half a gallon, instead, she’ll say, “No, you’re travelling for work two days next week and we’re having dinner with my parents on Sunday night so we won’t use any then.”
   

I did a Google search for "Milk photos" and this came up, it's not my fault.

I find this amazing.  If you see me wandering around the town center and run up to me to ask, “How much milk is in your fridge right now?” I will not have any idea.  More telling, if you wanted to know when I was next having dinner at my in-laws, I wouldn’t be able to remember that, either.

This isn’t to say that, while I was single, I was always running out of milk, but my life was more ordered then—I didn’t travel for work, I never went to my in-laws for dinner and I therefore tended to use a set amount each week.  And if it started to smell a bit funny, I’d stop at the convenience store on the way home from work and pick up a quart.

Those days are behind me, however; for the past decade, I have not had to think about milk—how much we have on hand or how much we might use during the upcoming week—at all.

Admittedly, as marriage perks go, this is pretty far down on the list, but that doesn’t make it any less appreciated.

Once We Were Herftones

In the manuscript for Postcards From Ireland, I talk a bit about cigars because, as the opening line points out, Ultimately, it was all because of the cigars.  Without cigars, I would not have gone to Ireland, I would not have met the woman who would become my wife and I would not have moved to England.

Writing that story was an exercise in nostalgia, but not simply due to reliving how I found love among the leprechauns, it was also due to recalling those days when I was involved in the cigar culture.  Cigars are still apart of my life but, back then, they were a huge part; this blog (or, to be exact, the web log it grew out of) was originally a chronicle of my cigar-related adventures.  It was, believe it or not, a magical time.

I don’t go into that era very deeply in the book, because I didn’t think it would be of great interest to the average person, but it was nothing short of astounding.  My then girlfriend, who I now refer to as She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, used to dabble in cigars.  She and her college buddies used to go to a cabin in the Adirondacks and spend the weekend smoking cigars around the fire, so we revived the tradition and found it very satisfying.

After a time, we discovered a few people at work who were also cigar smokers, and then we started haunting newsgroups (for you youngsters, that was the precursor of Facebook and Twitter) and invited some of the local members to meet up with us.  We all got along like a house on fire (and judging by the smoke we produced, you would think the house really was on fire), so we began having regular meetings.

Incredibly, this same thing was happening simultaneously in other cities throughout the US and even in other countries.  Eventually, these individual groups began hosting cigar exchanges, where members of other cigar groups would come to the host city for a weekend of organized cigar-related events, including cigar dinners, visits to regional landmarks, raffles and tours of local cigar shops.

It was an enchanting time, the sort of thing that happens so spontaneously and so perfectly that you know you are involved in something special.  I don’t recall ever wishing it would go on forever, or worrying if it would end, we were just all caught up in the moment.

Our cigar group called itself The Herftones—being a combination of the music group The Nowtones and “herf” which is the cigar-world term for smoking cigars.  Our annual cigar event was called ASHCAN—Albany, Saratoga Herf Crawl and Nosh—and we even had a Long Island chapter where we went every summer for ASCHANOLI, or ASHCAN on Long Island.  The other city’s cigar crawls had equally tortured acronyms, such as HITS, the Buffalo chapter’s Herf In The Snow, and SALT, Syracuse’s herf event that I can’t recall the translation of.
 

At a Herf Event in Boston. Don't let the size of the group fool you; this is merely a fraction of the people who attended. Also, though this photo is 100% male, we had a surprising number of women in our ranks. The small suitcases many of us are carrying are called Herfdors, and they are filled with cigars.

This went on for years.  But the important thing (or the thing that is relevant to my new book) is that this activity was directly responsible for my going to Ireland (you’ll have to read the book to find out how), and going to Ireland was directly responsible for me moving to England.  No cigars, no England, and no Postcards From Across the Pond.

I left the US while the Herftones were still going strong, and in a way I am glad I did.  Shortly after I left, the no smoking regulations came into force, which made organizing cigar crawls much more difficult.  Eventually, they stopped, and then even the local get-togethers faded away.

Now, those of my herfing buddies who still continue to smoke cigars, are pretty much like me—solitary herfers who continue to enjoy a solitary cigar (“Thought in the early morning, comfort in time of woes, peace in the hush of twilight, balm ere my eyelids close”—this is what a cigar provides, as Kipling points out in his epic ode to cigars, The Betrothed) but rarely, if ever, do we meet up with other cigar aficionados for a proper herf.

But solitary as our herfing now is (what, I wonder, is the sound of one man herfing) we can, as we muse on the soft blue veil of the vapor, know that for one, brief, shining moment, we were Herftones.
 

We even had shirts made; the oval logo on the left breast reads, "Herftones"

Happy Birthday to Me

You’ve been waiting for it, and now it’s here!  No, not the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, or the official launch of the London Olympic Games hype, or the year of the Mayan Apocalypse—2012 is my Tin Jubilee Celebration, and I’m kicking it off today.

Today (or tomorrow, if you got here early, or last week, if you got here late), the 5^th of January 2012 marks the 10-year anniversary of Postcards From Across the Pond.  (We will, of course, celebrate other milestones throughout the year, such as my actual arrival in the UK; the blog was started when I was still in the US.)

Ten years is quite an age for a blog, and in that time, the blogging world has changed dramatically; well, first it was actually created, then it changed.  In the early days, I maintained Postcards on a website using HTML; it wasn’t until after the publication of the first book that I moved—at my publisher’s insistence—to a blog, and that didn’t happen until November 2008.

I suffered a brief and frightening flirtation with Wordpress during my early months, but scurried back to Blogger with my tail between my legs after only a few weeks.  In June of this past year, however, I made a second attempt and managed to establish a beachhead, and eventually a full-blown blog empire, in Wordpress.

Since publishing the first book and abandoning HTML, I have published a second Postcards book, and have recently completed the manuscript for the third—Postcards From Ireland, the final book of the Postcards Trilogy.  You’ll be hearing more about that in the coming weeks, but for now, I offer the very first post on the Postcards From Across the Pond web log (that’s what we called ‘em in those days, sonny).

I think this maiden post is remarkable for a variety of reasons: first, that I was able to locate it after all this time and, second, that three books actually resulted from what—to be kind—was a less than auspicious beginning.  But, of course, back in those days, having a website was still rare enough that, simply having one made you stand out; scintillating posts weren’t altogether necessary, as you will see:
 

The Original Postcards Logo

05 January 2002

Preparations:

This is, without a doubt, the most drastic undertaking of my entire life.  For all that, I think I have it fairly well under control.

There are so many variables and so many things to co-ordinate, not the least of which is disentangling myself from my civil service job where I have been working for the past quarter century.  After that much time, your life becomes so pervaded by the 'culture' of civil service you begin to take it all for granted.

The money isn't great, but it has always been comfortable, and lately it has been very good.  The job, for the most part, is at my convenience, thanks to liberal holiday, personal and sick leave.  I have, for my entire adult life, had excellent health benefits, a good dental plan, eye care and a host of other perks.

All of that is about to change in ways I cannot even imagine.

I have never been unemployed before, and the thought is frightening.  Not only will I have to find a new job, but I'll have to do it in a strange culture.

There is also the unsettling thought that this is all irrevocable.  Once I quit, once I move out of my apartment, once I get on that plane and head for the UK, there is no going back.  Well, I could go back, I suppose, but I'd have no job, no place to live and no money.

Does all this give me second thoughts?  No.  Pause for thought, yes, but not second thoughts.

Despite the problems in selling my car, getting rid of all my stuff, trying to wade through the red tape of immigration and tax laws and the daunting thought of having little money in a culture where the cost of living is much higher than it is here, I have the deep conviction that I am doing the right thing.

In my mind, I have only two choices; continue to live in America and finish out my life working at a cushy and undemanding job or accept the hardships inherent in such a move and build a life with a woman who is deeply in love with me and who I love dearly.  When looked at that way, the choice is obvious.

And so I spent the day sorting through my stuff and making multiple trips to the dumpster.  I arranged to sell my furniture and worked out a plan to get rid of my car.  I studied the tax laws and checked into my financial situation.  All in all, things don't look all that bad.  Not yet, at least.

Right now, everything still seems surreal and England seems very far away.  What I have to hang onto is the knowledge that, when I am there, I feel at home and happier than I can ever remember being.  For now, that's going to have to get me through.

Changing Views

This post should have been called “Changing the post because it’s already the 27th of December and I still haven’t replaced my Christmas-themed blog yet” but that was too long and, as luck would have it, the topic I pulled out of the “Blog Topics to Write About When You Can’t Think of Anything Else” jar happened to be the changes that have taken place in Ireland since my life-altering trip there ten years ago.

This is relevant because I needed to do something to get The Santa out of the first slot…, I mean, because I just recently completed another rewrite of Postcards From Ireland—the hilarious, must-read chronicle of a portentous trip to Ireland (that’s what I’m expecting my publisher to call it, anyway)—and as part of the writing, I spent a lot of time going over the photos I took on the trip as well as traveling to some of the locations via Google Maps ™ ©

I wasn’t able to travel to a lot of the location I had visited during that trip because, as you’ll see when you read the book (you are planning to buy the book, aren’t you?) I was lost—both physically and metaphorically—much of the time. However, I did manage to locate the Killarney Court Hotel and find my way into Killarney from there.
 

The Killarney Court Hotel

Killarney’s town center wasn’t drastically changed, and O’Connor’s pub was still where I remembered it to be, but the outskirts of Killarney have changed dramatically, and not for the better.

This is the view I had from my hotel window back in August 2001:
 

View in 2001

This is the same view (from the road) now:
 

View in 2011

I suppose I shouldn’t be disappointed, or surprised; progress happens whether we like it or not (mostly not) but to cover up that stunning view with a gas station and mini-mart is simply criminal. I suppose they could justify it by observing that stunning views are ten-a-penny in Ireland, but if you don’t start looking after them, you’ll soon find them all concreted over and sprouting Tesco Supermarkets, McDonald’s franchises and betting shops.
 

Ireland

And that would be shame.

The Season of The Long Nights

The end of December is rolling around again and that means it’s time to remind you how far north I am.

The answer is, quite far.

If you live in North America, unless you’re currently driving up the Trans-Labrador Highway on your way to Chimney Tickle, you’re not experiencing nights quite as long as we are these days.  And keep in mind, I’m in southern England; the people up in Inverness will have even more daylight shaved off of their 24-hour allotment.
 

For those of you who didn't pay attention in Earth Science

The good news—and the reason I’m reminding everyone of this—is that we’re just about over the hump.  The longest night is coming up and after that, it’s all sunshine and roses.

Well, after a few months, anyway.
 

This is what noon looks like right now; that’s as
high as the sun gets, and it sets quickly.

The Long Nights here in the north are what gave rise to a lot of our Christmas traditions, such as the Yule log, Wassailing (you have been out a-wassailing at least a couple of times this year, haven’t you?), holly wreaths, mistletoe, decorative lights, feasting and generally being as drunk as you can be at all times.

And it has also given rise to newer traditions, such as enduring a night of freezing cold for the off-chance of seeing a sunrise at Stonehenge (A clear day?  In Britain?  In the winter?  The odds are not good.).  This is becoming an increasingly popular activity among those who happen to own Druid robes and warm, woolen socks.  They claim to be re-enacting an ancient Druid tradition even though there is no real evidence that the ancient Druids did this or that the solstice at Stonehenge has any sort of significance.
 

Latter day muppets.

Still, it’s a great excuse to dress up, get drunk, party through the night and celebrate the dawn, which is, of course what it is all about; a sort of holding up of two fingers to the winter and welcoming in the spring.

And if, by some miracle, you actually get to see the sunrise, I expect it would be very pretty.
 

Sunrise at Stonehenge

Baaah! Not Humbug, Just Baaah!

A while back, The Council authorized a sculpture of some sheep to be erected in a busy roundabout on the A283 near the A27 bypass just outside of Shoreham to commemorate the founding, co-founding, current legal hold-up or latest petition in favor of The South Downs National Park.  Obviously, I haven’t been keeping up on The Park’s status as I should (I’m having a hard enough time keeping my eye on the EU) but suffice it to say the The South Downs National Park—according to Wikipedia—became fully operational on 1 April 2011 and covers an area of 628 sq miles in southern England.  There are a lot of people who are very happy about this and probably nearly as many who are not.

Settling the boundaries of The Park, of course, now allows B&Bs, Tea Shoppes and snobby Investment Bankers to advertize the fact that they are within the legitimate boundaries of an officially recognized area of outstanding natural beauty; these are the people who are in favor. It also means the lovely view of the downs the snooty banker enjoys can’t be flattened, paved over and adorned with several blocks of flats so unimaginatively ugly that they look like something out of the Borg School of Architecture.  Or, at least it’s not as easy as it used to be, which makes the developers—and people who hate snooty bankers—opposed to it.

(Aside:  It goes without saying that the development in question would have a sign hanging above it proudly proclaiming that 30% of the dark, cramped, shoddy flats would be “affordable.”  Now, I have addressed this before, but this is a different angle so don’t skip ahead—some of this material will be on the quiz.

If 30% of the flats are affordable, then by definition, 70% of them are beyond the fiscal range of the average buyer.  But, also by definition, there are more average people than above-average people, so who is buying 70% of the properties?  And where are the other 70% of the average people sleeping?  Under a bridge?

Okay, back to the sheep.)

It’s not unusual for councils to commission sculptures for roundabouts—there is a huge soccer ball in the roundabout just outside of Broadfield Stadium in Crawley, and in Dorking, on the intersection of the As 24 and 25, they have erected a giant cock.
 

The Dorking Cock - no, I am not making this up.

So the sheep should not have been a problem, except that some people thought they looked too real.  Apparently people were coming up to the roundabout and thinking, “Ohmigod!  There’s a flock of sheep loose on the A283.”  So the council, in their wisdom, attempted to ease people’s minds by painting the sheep green.  Then, of course (but you saw this coming, didn’t you) people drove up to the roundabout thinking, “Ohmigod!  There’s a flock of green sheep loose on the A283!”
 

The Green Sheep of Sussex

So instead of erecting a sign saying something like, “These sheep are NOT real!” they put yellow hazard barriers around them, so now people can’t see the sheep, but they can see the hazard barrier, which will make them think, “Ohmigod!  There’s an accident on the A283!  I’ll need to start rubbernecking and creating a traffic hazard!”

So now we have a sculpture, painted green and surrounded by hazard barriers for the safety of our commuters.

But that is not the reason I like Britain; the reason I like Britain is that, on the news, when they reported this story, the newscaster deadpanned:

“For those of you who live in an urban area, this is what a real sheep looks like.”
 

Actual Sheep

Really, you gotta love that.

Go here for the the rest of the story.

We Need A Little Christmas

Boy, don’t people just piss you off?  Is there no end to the things they will do seemingly just to get your blood to boil?  And I’m not talking about David Cameron, Obama, Newt or the morons running the EU, I’m talking about the “special” people – you know, those people to whom The Rules do not apply – who do things like move the bollards so they can drive through a pedestrian area full of Christmas shoppers.

The problem is, once you get into a rant about people like that, you’ll be there all day if you don’t stop; it’s like eating potato chips.  And that’s what I said to the lady at the till in the shop where I was making a Christmas purchase (in the interest of keeping it a surprise for my wife, I won’t mention what shop it was).  The woman agreed (shop keepers are generally agreeable when you are handing money over to them) and we decided it was best to just leave the special people alone and just let them go on being special; no sense letting them ruin your day.

By the way, the woman in the shop started it; I may be turning into a grumpy old man, but I had been feeling quite chipper—peace on earth, good will toward men and all that—when I entered the store.  Once she began, however, it wasn’t long before I picked up the refrain and starting singing from the same hymn sheet.

After our agreed cease-fire I left the shop feeling as chipper as when I had gone in, which is a good thing because it was such a lovely, sunny day and I was out Christmas shopping in a town where Christmas shopping is a delight.
 

The Market Place

Unlike in a lot of places—US or UK—where shopping involves fighting traffic on the way to the mall, vying for a parking space once you get to the mall and then contending with crowds as you make your way through the vast labyrinth from store to store to store, all I need to do is walk five minutes into town and I’m in a Christmas wonderland.

Although we have a mall, it is well hidden behind traditional shops and, inside, its halls are festively decked and some of the employees are encouraged to get into the spirit by dressing up.  Outside, the shops are likewise decorated and the Saturday market—throughout December—is complimented by a Sunday Christmas market.   And every Saturday at noon a band plays in the Carfax bandstand.
 

What a 101 Dalmatians theme has to do with Christmas,
I don't know. And what a green dragon has to do with
either Christmas or 101 Dalmatians, I don't know either.

The Carfax Bandstand

On days like today, when the sun is shining and it is agreeably warm, it is an absolute pleasure to wander among the stalls and peruse the wares in the shops.  It almost makes the startlingly long queue at the Post Office worth the hassle.

So despite Cameron and his ilk, and the moron bollard-mover, peace, tranquility and good will reigned.  At least until I get home and turned on the news.

A Tale of Two Thanksgivings

Excerpt from my second book, More Postcards From Across the Pond

Sorry I couldn't come up with anything original, but it's a busy day for me...

1968

I’m 13, and there’s no school, so I’m up early.  Not as early as my mom; no one ever gets up as early as my mom, but today she is up extra early, singing in the kitchen, rattling pots and pans.  She isn’t preparing a turkey—we have Thanksgiving dinner at my grandma’s house—but she is making pancakes for breakfast, pumpkin pies to bring to the dinner and sugar cookies for later.

Soon the whole family is up.  We have a big breakfast together, which is, in itself, unusual.  At ten o’clock, it’s time for the first tradition: gathering the ground pine for the Christmas wreath.

I take two brown paper bags and my little brother, Marc.  He’s nine now and old enough to be useful though still too young to be very interesting.  We walk down the dirt lane and then cut into the woods.  There is no snow yet, but the fields are frosty and the puddles in the marshy ground are thick with ice.  We amuse each other by smashing them; as much fun as breaking windows and with no undesirable side-effects.

I know where to hunt for the ground pine and sweep away the frosted leaves with a gloved hand to reveal the little tree-like evergreen shoots.  Together we pull up long strands, stuffing the bags full.

At home, my sister is on the phone with her boyfriend and the Macy’s Day parade is on the TV.  We watch it while wrapping the ground pine around a bent coat hanger, adding layer after layer while the big, balloons float by on the TV screen.  By the time the finale arrives—Santa in his sleigh heralding the official start of the Christmas season—the wreath is done.  My mother makes it more festive with some red ribbon and aerosol snow and hangs it on the front door.

Then we leave for grandma’s, the five of us kids stuffed into the backseat singing, “Over the river and through the woods, to grandmother’s house we go!”  After a while my mom joins in.  My dad stays silent.

Grandma’s kitchen is warm and redolent with the smell of turkey and fresh baked biscuits.  My uncles are there, with their wives and children and various boyfriends.  We horse around in the chicken coop and play hide and seek among the farm machinery until dinner is ready.

This is a special year, I’m promoted to the grown up table with my older sister, Melinda, while Marc, Matt and Michelle have to sit with their young cousins at the kiddie table.  Then the feast appears: stuffing, hot and moist, yams, mashed potatoes, gravy, green beans with slivers of almond, creamed corn, boiled carrots, cranberry sauce out of a can, biscuits and, as the main event, turkey, golden brown and steaming as my grandfather cuts into it.

After we’ve eaten so much we think we can’t take another bite, out come the pumpkin pies, mincemeat pies, ice cream, whipped cream and that strange concoction made out of marshmallows, Cool Whip, Jell-o and slivers of tangerine that I never see at any other time of the year but always look forward to.

And after the feast there is a long, languid afternoon that turns into evening with an impromptu dinner of, what else, turkey and stuffing and gravy and…

Much later, on the verge of sleep, my aunts, uncles and grandparents draw a reluctant end to their jovial conversations and we all trundle into the car and back home.

It’s late, and I’m stuffed but there is still time, and just enough room, to sample one of my mom’s sugar cookies.
 

Happy T-Day

2010

I’m (you do the math) and my cell phone, which doubles as a travel alarm clock, buzzes me awake.  I’m on yet another business trip and I wander around the tiny hotel room, checking my e-mails between showering and getting ready for the day.  I have toast for breakfast and head to the client’s offices.  It’s another long and grueling session; we don’t break for lunch.

Back at the hotel, I have the steak and kidney pie for dinner because there is nothing on the menu that remotely resembles turkey.  No one remarks that it is Thanksgiving; no one knows.

After dinner, I sit outside in the crisp night, watching the cars and the people go by, smoking a cigar and drinking a pint of ale.  It’s a lonely business, traveling for work.  But it’s not a bad sort of loneliness because I know it will soon be over and I will return home to my wife.

This isn’t where I thought I would be those many years ago, sitting by myself in a strange town thousands of miles from where I was born.  I miss the holiday, and I miss gathering with friends and family on this day that is special only to Americans.  But we go where life takes us, and even though I did not have a dinner of turkey, stuffing and cranberry sauce, I’m still grateful.  When you take away the feast and the fellowship, that’s what Thanksgiving is really all about, counting your blessings, and remembering that you have much to be thankful for.

And so, here on my own, I count them; they are many, and I am thankful for each and every one.
 

Eat Beef.

That Time of Year Again

Yes, it’s that time of year again.  With the Remembrance observances out of the way, we have a clear path to Christmas, and the market stalls, shops and mall decked their halls with such alacrity afterwards you would think they were being charged a penalty for each day their customers were bereft of holly wreaths, evergreen sprigs and winter landscapes etched on their display windows in aerosol snow.

Who knows; maybe they were.

But you see, without Thanksgiving to act as a speed bump (with Election Day and Pearl Harbor Day thrown in for good measure) there is nothing to stop Christmas from gaining terminal velocity right from the get-go.  I don’t mind so much; there are a lot of things to like about this time of year.

For one thing, it’s a lot cheerier, with festive lights and holiday tableaus all around, and Christmas carols are kind of a nice change from the standard piped in muzak (though eight to ten weeks of it does get to be a bit much).

My one regret lately has been the absence of Slade’s “Here it is, Merry Christmas,” which enjoyed such a popular run for a few years that everyone collectively agreed it should sit out a few games in the penalty box.  I think it’s done enough penance, however; it’s a trippy little song, very festive and something I think we could use at this point, but so far, nary a peep from Noddy and the boys.

Just in case you want to hear it. Again.

What continues to makes me very happy at this time of year is the appearance of turkey, bacon, stuffing and cranberry sauce sandwiches in the supermarkets, delis and petrol station forecourt mini-marts.  I absolutely love them, but I am glad they are not available at any other time of the year because they make this season so special.

Sad, I know, but in this economic climate you take your joy where you find it.

But I’m not concerned with any of that at this time; I’m still looking forward to Thanksgiving.  It sort of snuck up on me this year.  We were grocery shopping last night at it occurred to me that it would be the last shopping excursion for us prior to The Day, so we, rather belatedly, began the search for Thanksgiving dinner construction materials.  We didn’t find any, unless we wanted to purchase a 20-lb frozen turkey.

This hardly mattered for two reasons: first, we’re both working on Thanksgiving Day, and, second, our freezer is full so we’d never fit a turkey of any size into it this week.  And I suppose you could add a third one, being that we weren’t looking for a turkey, anyway; I wanted one of those pre-prepared, turkey/stuffing/gravy combos that I could heat up without going through a lot of fuss.  Thanksgiving is nice and all but it’s hardly worth all that trouble to make a holiday dinner for two, especially when one of you doesn’t really “get” it.

But I did need something for the meal, so today my wife and I took a tour of some of the other shops.  In Marks and Spencer we found a range of boxed turkey meals, from ones that could serve a dozen down to a dinner for two (no sign of a single-serving holiday dinner; how sad would that be?).  So we marked out what to buy, and now it is my duty to return to the store on Friday and buy the meal preparation materials for Saturday.

Of course you know that, when I return, they will be sold out of what I need.

If that should happen, however, I ought to at least be able to find a nice turkey, bacon, stuffing and cranberry sandwich.
 

The Perfect Holiday Dinner

Pyro-Economics

We had Bonfire Night (or Guy Fawkes Day) this past weekend (Remember, Remember...)  All you living in the US who don’t know what I’m talking about, go here and bone up on all things Guy; we’ll wait.

Okay, now that you have educated yourself, we aren’t actually going to discuss Guy Fawkes, bonfires or the significance of the 5^th of November at all; we’re going to talk about the state of the economy.  Your effort was not wasted, however: you have enriched your knowledge and expanded your world view—a commodity you cannot put a price on—so, give yourself a pat on the back.

And don’t worry if you know nothing about economics; neither do I.  As a prognosticator, I am remarkable only for my unwavering ability to be wrong (as I have mentioned before, I went with 8-track tapes, bought a Betamax and once wrote a memo to my boss telling him there was no future in Microsoft Windows), but I do know fireworks when I see them.

During my early years in Britain, I dubbed the weeks from the end of October into the New Year, “Fireworks Season,” as it contained Bonfire Night, Diwali, Christmas and New Year’s Eve, meaning there was a reason to set fireworks off on almost any given night.  And, by golly, they did.  It was amazing to sit out on the balcony and have the night lit up, accompanied by cracks and booms, as people randomly set fireworks off in their back yards.  Add to that the numerous official (and much larger, longer, noisier) fireworks and it seemed as if there was a display of some type going off every night.

Alas, that all came to an end a few years ago, when the bankers decided they needed our spare cash to pay for their bonuses, and then thought the government should take all the money they took from us and give it to them, as well.  After that, no one felt like celebrating much, and if they did, they had no money for fireworks.  It would have been a crime to throw money away on such frivolity while there was still a banker with a pool patio that needed re-grouting.  So the official fireworks, and the private parties, all came to a stop.  It was a dark time.

This year, however, I see some hope.  On Halloween, our town put on a festival that included an impressive fireworks display, and over this past weekend I was astounded anew at how much disposable income people seemed willing to literally send up in smoke.

Out on the balcony that night, it felt like I was in the middle of a battle—a really tame and wimpy sort of battle, but that’s the best analogy I can come up with.  The detonations were not timed or coordinated; instead explosions burst randomly from behind, to the left, the right, far in the distance, near at hand.  They filled the night sky with smoke and blazes of light and left the air heavy with the smell of gunpowder.  It was wonderful.

Now I can’t honestly say this display signifies the beginning of a lessening of the Big Squeeze, but I can’t deny that this is the first year I have seen so many fireworks—public and private—in a long time, and I know they aren’t cheap, so unless these people were using the grocery money for pyrotechnics, their personal economic situations must have improved to the point where they were at least able to save up some of their disposable cash and put it toward a bit of fun.

I like to think of it that way, rather than entertain the more likely scenario that they financed one last Hoorah! with the mortgage payment and will be out on the street next week.  Rest assured, the Banker will still get his pool patio re-grouted, which, after all is the important thing.
 

A Brave Beginning

My Favorite Things

The other day, as I was doing the dishes (or “the washing up” as they say here), I began cycling through my vast repertoire of songs, which is something I enjoy doing while up to my elbows in soapy water because it serves to occupy my time, entertain those neighbors foolish enough to leave their windows open and annoy my wife, who is in the sitting room trying to watch The One Show.  On this occasion, I delved deeper than usual and came up with that Austiro-Wehrmacht classic, “Edelweiss.”

I jest, of course; “Edelweiss” was written for the 1959 production of Rogers and Hammerstein’s The Sound of Music.  Its popularity, however, has led some to believe it is an authentic Austrian folk song.  Ronald Reagan reportedly had it played during the visit of an Austrian official, believing it to be their national anthem, but that’s hardly surprising.

(Note: Austria’s actual National Anthem is, “Land der Berge,” or “The Land of the Burgers,” a homage to their love of McDonalds, Wendy’s and Burger King.)

(Note #2: I was going to make a quip about the Horst Wessel song but a quick check of Wikipedia confirms that the lyrics and tune of that song are banned in Germany and Austria, and it is an actual crime to play it.  While you have to admire their apparent commitment to putting that part of their past behind them, the notion of banning a song probably seemed more doable prior to the advent of YouTube and iTunes.)

(Note #3: “Ol’ Man River” is not, in fact, a traditional Negro spiritual; Rogers and Hammerstein wrote that, too.)

(Note #4: Putting the # symbol before a number is meaningless over here; what we call “the pound sign” and use to designate a number, the Brits call “the hash key” and use for activating telephone menu options.)
 

Edelweiss

Now that we have all that cleared up, let’s get to the heart of the matter: the song, or more specifically, the lyrics.

As I sang the song, which I have done a myriad of times in the past, I noticed something I never have before: the rhyming scheme, while undeniably catchy, breaks the rules, making it, in my view, an illegal song.

Now, the basic rhyming sequence is AABCCB (A-del-VICE, A-del-Vice, la la la GREET ME, la la WHITE, la la BRIGHT, la la la MEET ME).  This works fine for the first verse, even though the similarity of VICE/VICE in and WHITE/BRIGHT in lines 1 & 2 and 4 & 5 might lead some believe the sequence is actually AABAAB, which could cause confusion when the second verse comes around if you are not paying full attention.

Having avoided that pitfall, let’s take a look at the second verse:

La la SNOW

La la GROW

La la la FOREVER

La la VICE

La la VICE

La la la FOREVER

Do you see what they did there?  They rhymed “forever” with “forever.”  That’s not technically a rhyme; it’s more of a repetition, which is fine if the words come one after the other, as in “A-del-VICE, A-del-VICE” but you can’t rhyme a word with itself at the end of lines 3 and 6 and think people won’t notice (OK, it took a while, but still…).  It’s just wrong!

This surprises me, because Dick and Oscar were generally quite professional; to let something like that slip by seems a bit sloppy.  Perhaps they were up against a tight deadline;

“Think!  Think!  We need that song now!  What rhymes with ‘Forever’?”

“You mean, besides ‘forever’?”

“Weather?  ‘Bring my homeland nice weather’?”

“How about, ‘Bless my homeland.  Whatever!’?”

“How about we just leave it?  Who’s going to care in fifty years?

“Believe me, some idiot will make an issue out of it sooner or later.”

Proud to be that idiot.