PowerPoint of No Return

As a public service, I present this handy guide to navigating Microsoft PowerPoint's UCU (Utter Contempt for the User) interface. Here are some common commands and what they do:

Paste--When used with copied or cut text, changes all fonts, point sizes, and text colors to those that the user has never used anywhere ever. When used on copied or cut graphics, randomly changes the size and position to only the most undesirable.

Paste Special--The PowerPoint equivalent of a slot machine. Randomly changes text characteristics to ones that have never been specified by anyone anywhere ever. Las Vegas oddsmakers have put the odds that the pasted text style will in some way resemble that which the user specified to be 5 quadrillion to 1 against.

View Master--Lets you format all the slide title and bullet styles, background images, etc., that will be ignored when creating slides.

Save As--Lets you save your presentation in any of a variety of file formats that will be unreadable by any other program.

Format > Font--Lets you spend a great deal of time selecting all the type specifications that will then be ignored.

Format > Bullets and Numbering--Applies bullets or numbers to slide text in a manner that in no way reflects user intention.

Tools > AutoCorrect Options--Turns ordinal numbers to superscripts, URLs to hot links, and other thoroughly undesirable text "corrections." Turning this feature off requires the sacrificing of a goat at the exact moment of the vernal equinox.

Insert > Text Box--Creates a frame in which text can be typed, and then placed only at random, unwanted locations on a slide.

View Show--An easy way of seeing all the things in your presentation that you will need to fix.

Help--Contains an online link to the American Psychiatric Association Web site.

Mime Type Not Found

Marcel Marceau has quietly passed away.

Marcel Marceau, who revived the art of mime and brought poetry to silence, has died, his former assistant said Sunday. He was 84.

I could make a very tasteless joke about an invisible box, but I don't think I will.

Trivia buffs and fans of ironic humor take note: in Mel Brooks' Silent Movie, the only actor that speaks is...Marcel Marceau.

Ugh?

Well, check that last post. Today's news brought word of quite the upset indeed:

SU Beats No. 18 Louisville

Andrew Robinson threw for a career-high 423 yards and four touchdowns as Syracuse stunned No. 18 Louisville 38-35 on Saturday.

Taj Smith caught four passes for 173 yards and two touchdowns for the Orange as Syracuse ended Louisville's 20-game home winning streak by dominating the listless Cardinals.

I guess I was a bit too quick to write them off!

I should also add that since this is only Andrew Robinson's fourth game ever, phrases like "career-high" are a bit meaningless.

Ugh

Now I really need to go to grad school, just to find a new college football team to support. We went out to Syracuse last weekend for a game. Never again:

The University of Illinois cranked up more heat on embattled Syracuse coach Greg Robinson, his staff and his team by rushing for 378 yards in a 41-20 rout of the Orange before 34,188 at the Carrier Dome on Saturday.

SU is now 0-3. It is entirely possible that they could not have a win all season; Illinois is probably the "worst" team they'll play all season. We were going to go to the Rutgers game...I doubt we could bear the humilation of that.

Despite the "official" attendance (32,000+) there was no way even half that number in the Dome. Local hotels and businesses that depend on sports fans coming out to games are starting to hurt; we went to Chuck's (the near-campus bar that was a hangout back in the day--their cheddar fries are just as good as they ever were) and it was pretty dead. Usually the place is packed on game day.

I heard also that the scalpers are having a bad season, too, although I am decidedly less sympathetic.

Oh, well...college basketball season is coming...

Water, Water Everywhere

A couple weekends ago, I drove down to Corning, as Ken and I were planning to head south and tour a Civil War battlefield. Alas, I had to go to Chicago the following Monday for Graph Expo (curse this vile "working" nonsense!) so we only had time to do something closer to home. So what did we decide? Niagara Falls, which I have vague recollections of having visited when I was a kid.

The drawback to this being a spur-of-the-moment trip is that we made hotel reservations on the Canadian side the day we left--but I had neglected to bring my passport with me. How strict would they be? We stopped at the visitor's center on the American side and "Dotty" was, true to her name, fairly clueless (odd that that question had never come up before). We checked with the hotel, and they said that a passport wasn't necessary, and, in fact, we picked up one of those guidebooks which explicitly stated that a passport was not necessary--my question, of course, was, "Is this a legally-binding instrument?"

As it turned out, the guy at Customs gave me grief and an attempted guilt trip, but it was essentially no problem. Odd thing about the Canadian side--Ken christened it "Nutsville" as it was more reminiscent of the Vegas strip, with casinos, Ripley's Believe It Or Not, The Guinness Book of World records Museum, lots of flashing lights and loud noises and generally psychotic behavior. The American side was a beacon of quiet dignity in comparison.

After a weekend there, we pretty much had enough of falling water. We did the Maid of the Mist (hmm...that sounds odd), the Cave of the Winds, and the Journey Behind the Falls. We stood on the American side, we stood on the Canadian side, and we pretty much saw the Falls from every conceiveable angle. I think it's safe to say, I don't need to see Niagara Falls again for a very long time.

Getting back into the U.S. was a lot easier than getting into Canada (oddly), and I suppose it's fortunate that I decided against trying to use the souvenir Maid of the Mist photo as a photo ID (I would probably end up in Gitmo).

Here Comes the Humvee

The latest video from They Might Be Giants (in Boston on October 19th!)--"The Shadow Government." Enjoy!

Anarchy in the UK: Part 8: Homeward Bound

Alas, Saturday morning I had to prepare to head back home. I can always tell the extent to which I enjoy a vacation by how much I am not looking forward to returning. And here’s the killer part: Saturday was the first beautiful, sunny day in London since I got there. Doh!

Steven drove me to Heathrow (taking another scenic route through London since there is no easy way to get from the East End to Heathrow), well in time for me to catch a 2:30 plane. Check in and security were actually much brisker than I was expecting and I thus had two hours to kill. I wandered through a few W.H. Smith’s (I had this urge to buy a Dickens novel, but they had none, strangely). I ambled over to a Harrod’s and bought some souvenirs, and still had a few pounds left. I found a pub (it was after noon), and had a couple pints of liquid courage.

The flight back was just as uneventful as the one over, although I fortunately had an aisle seat this time (although the guy in the middle seat was a member of a species that evolved into just elbows, as he was writing something in a notebook for the entire seven hours and kept jabbing me in the chest with his elbow. I did some reading, actually slept a bit, and then watched the movie Hot Fuzz (by the makers of Shaun of the Dead), which I liked a lot. I also became obsessed with the little readout that tracks where the plane is.

After circling Newark for 15 minutes (traffic was backed up, apparently), I began humming an appropriate Fountains of Wayne song:

Seatbacks and traytables up
Stow your newspapers and cups
We’re about to touch down
Midwestern town through the haze
Customs a massive expanse
And I’m digging into my pants
Is this Oklahoma
I remember this place
Trade one town for another
Delayed, now why did we bother
An X on the calendar square
New city, same stuff
Seatbacks and traytables up
Seatbacks and traytables up

We landed at about 6:00 p.m., and immigration and customs were actually quite brisk. It was the baggage claim that took rather a long time. Another Fountains of Wayne song came to mind:

Michael and Heather at the baggage claim
Tired of playing the waiting game
Every bag has got a different name
Michael and Heather may never get home again

Michael and Heather at the lost and found
Looking for luggage that's soft and brown
“Sir, I’m so sorry, it's just not around”
Michael and Heather are glad to be on the ground
...

I caught the ironically named AirTrain, a monorail that goes from the terminal to the New Jersey Transit station. I had just missed a Penn Station-bound train, and, it being Saturday night, it was quite a long wait until the next one. And, man, was it hot and humid—I was used to cool British weather. I had tickets for a 9:45 train back to Albany, but had hoped to make the 7:45 one. Nothing doing, alas. Arriving at Penn Station, I decided to have dinner at Houlihan’s (I had time) and finally the train was ready for boarding. And was I tired (still on British time, it was basically 2 a.m. as far as I was concerned). I really just wanted to go home but, Amtrak being Amtrak, we sat in the station for 45 minutes while, as the announcement put it, the conductor was upstairs “filling out some paperwork.” Oy. I had been pretty mellow throughout my travels, but I was getting decidedly cranky at this stage.

I ultimately got to Albany about 1:30 a.m. (6:30 a.m. to me) and drove back home. I collapsed almost immediately and slept in much the next day, although I did hunker down and spend an hour or so going through the 1200 e-mail messages I had (99% spam). Despite this article from the WSJ, I have to say, I enjoyed very much the fact that I was incommunicado for a week. (My mobile didn’t work overseas—heck, it barely works here. And I didn’t feel like trying to hook up my computer to Steven’s network.)

Were there things I wish I had done in England? Of course; I didn’t make it to The Village (a five-hour train ride—one way—requiring a pricey overnight stay, really, and more advance planning than I am into these days). I did want to get down to Stonehenge (I was told it was overrated) and/or the White Cliffs of Dover. And I would loved to have walked the zebra crossing on Abbey Road (but I forgot where it was).

At any rate, a great trip, many thanks to my gracious hosts (and to Audrey for popping by to make sure my house was still standing while I was away), and I hope to get back over there sometime next year.

Anarchy in the UK: Part 7: Tower of Power

Towers of London
When they had built you
Did you watch over the men who fell?
Towers of London
when they had built you
Victoria's gem found in somebody’s hell

Amy had Friday off, so this was her turn to take me around. First off, a trip to a caf for a fry-up, or a traditional English breakfast. We walked the mile or so to Bethnal Green (happily it was not raining), only to find that the caf that Amy had in mind was closed. Doh! So we found one that was probably just as good. And what a meal—bacon, eggs, sausage, chips, and beans (no Spam, thankfully). Over the course of the week, I was used to the very small-ish portions they serve in Britain, compared to the supersized portions they serve in American restaurants (which could explain why the British are a comparatively svelte people, from what I have noticed). But this fry-up was immense; I’m glad we had walked there.

After breakfast, our next stop was the Tower of London, one of the things I had been looking forward to all week.
Amy loves the Tower and was a font of information—she admitted that the official guided tours tended to propagate myths and untruths (so says she).

Oh, but first, she had to send a text message to her cleaning woman.
While we’re waiting, some more of XTC’s “Towers of London”:

Pavements of gold leading to the underground
Grenadier Guardsmen walking pretty ladies around
Fog is the sweat of the never never navvies who pound
Spikes in the rails to their very own heaven

OK, so we bought tickets (£15—yikes; talk about torture...) and entered. We walked past Traitor’s Gate—the water entrance to the Tower, so-called because a number of prisoners accused of treason (such as Queen Anne Boleyn and Sir Thomas More) passed through it.
The oldest parts of the Tower date back to 1066, not long after William the Conqueror’s victory at Hastings. Even then. London was the heart of the country he had just conquered, so he immediately went there and had himself crowned at Westminster Abbey on Christmas Day 1066. He then set about building a fortress to control, as it was put at the time, “the numerous and hostile inhabitants” of the city (one of the drawbacks to being a Conqueror, I should think).

The White Tower is one of the original structures. It has been worked on over the years; the turreted roofs were added in the 16th century, the window and door surrounds were added at various times in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. The wooden staircase was built in 1973.

The original purpose of the White Tower (the original “Tower of London”) was defensive, residential, and ceremonial. A beautifully preserved chapel (the Chapel of St. John the Evangelist) shows off the original and intact Romanesque architecture of the Normans.
The White Tower wasn’t completed until about 1090 or so, under William Rufus, son of William I and his successor as King of England. The first major expansions of the Tower were undertaken in the 12th century by Henry I (younger brother of and successor to William Rufus) and Henry II.
In the 12th century, King Richard the Lionheart enclosed the White Tower with a wall and had a moat dug around it. Odd as it may seem, the moat was not successful (though it doesn’t seem like a tough concept to grasp) until Henry III used a Dutch moat-building technique in the 13th century. (In the 19th century, the moat was filled in, for the very sensible reason that for centuries it had been, um, where the Tower’s loos--called “garderobes”--emptied.

The Tower complex was more or less completed (and is the layout that survives) by Edward I in the early 14th century. Needless to say, the Tower has been noodled with endlessly ever since, particularly by the Tudors and the Victorians.

There had at one time been a royal menagerie at the Tower, but all that remain are the ravens, which have lived at the Tower for centuries (not the same ravens, of course). John Flamsteed, the Royal Astronomer (remember him?) apparently complained to Charles II about the ravens and their getting in the way of his observatory. Charles instead had the observatory moved the Greenwich. No one messes with the ravens. As story goes, Charles was apprised of an old legend that has it that if the ravens ever leave the Tower of London, the Monarchy and the entire Kingdom would fall. So the ravens stay to this day; there are eight of them, and their wings are clipped to prevent them from flying away, no one taking any chances with the legend, apparently.
We repeated variations on this legend over the course of thwe day--"when the pigeons leave the courtyard, the Monarchy will fall"; "when the tourists get out of the lavatory, the Monarchy will fall..." etc.

Anyway, the Tower remained a royal residence until the time of Oliver Cromwell, who demolished the old palatial buildings. Bloody Puritans.
The most popular story about the Tower concerns the Two Princes. That is, toward the end of the Wars of the Roses (the battle between the houses of York and Lancaster for the throne of England), Edward IV (of York) recaptured the crown. Henry VI (Lancaster) briefly overthrew Edward, but in 1471, Edward was back and Henry was dispatched. The spot where Henry VI died is commemorated in the Wakefield Tower. It was said, probably incorrectly, that Henry got a dagger up the strap by the Duke of Gloucester, the future Richard III. Yeah, this is all really confusing, so let’s all thank Henry Tudor for putting an end to the whole business.

Anyway, when Edward IV died in 1483, he was succeeded by 12-year-old Edward V. The Duke of Gloucester, who was Edward IV’s brother, stepped in and decided to become “Protector” and had Edward V confined in the Tower with his younger brother Richard (part of the problem is they’ve all got the same bloody names). Gloucester then declared himself King Richard III and for the details of that I recommend reading the play. As we all know, in 1485, Richard III, after pledging his kingdom for a horse, was killed at the Battle of Bosworth by Henry Tudor (not Edmund Blackadder), descendent of Edward III. Henry took the throne as Henry VII and established the Tudor dynasty.

As for the Two Princes (Edward V and Richard), no one is entirely certain what happened to them. They were last seen alive in 1483 and were murdered at some point after that. The bodies were hidden away and not found until 1674, when a 12th-century forebuilding on the White Tower was demolished and the “bones of two striplings” were uncovered. The central question is, who ordered them murdered? Richard III (Edward V laid claim to the throne)? Or Henry VII after he took power (Edward V laid claim to the throne).

In one of the exhibits, you can vote as to whether it was Richard or Henry that did them in; my vote was for Richard (even though I accidentally pushed the wrong button).

Many other people were imprisoned in the Tower over the years, and many were executed, including Anne Boleyn, who was tried for treason and went to the chopping block. One particular execution was Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury, and the daughter of George Plantagenet. As the story goes, she was tried and convicted of treason, and on the morning of May 27, 1541, she was scheduled for the block. She refused to confess to treason, but nonetheless was taken from her cell to the chopping block. There were about 150 witnesses, and by some accounts, Margaret, who was 67 years old, frail, and ill, was dragged to the block, but refused to put her head on it. The executioner’s first blow hit her shoulder rather than her neck and she was able to leap from the block and run away, pursued by the executioner. She had to be struck eleven times before she died. So much for death with dignity...

Other prisoners were kept in various rooms, and with little else to occupy them, carved graffiti on the walls, which is quite striking.
Sir Walter Raleigh was also a prisoner in the Tower, convicted of being involved in a lot against the life of King James I. Despite being held in the “Bloody Tower,” he actually had a rather nice room and it was here that he wrote his History of the World (later made into a movie by Mel Brooks).
Thomas More was also a prisoner there until his own execution.

During World War II, Rudolf Hess was help prisoner in the Tower for four days, and the last prisoners of the Tower were the Kray brothers, held for a couple of days in 1952 for failing to report for national service. (That would be the least of their indisrcetions...).

But...what about torture?

Despite the Tower’s reputation, there really wasn’t much actual torturing done there, although there was a major exhibit on the topic. (Oddly, on one of the walkways is a large, person-sized plushie bear in a Beefeater outfit, whom I thus dubbed “Bloody, the Torture Bear.”) Anyway, we walked up a stairway and saw, off in the distance, lurid crimson lighting, a sure bet that something cool was there.
There were really only three basic devices used for torture at the Tower: the rack (no, not the one used in the Monty Python Spanish Inquisition sketch), the scavenger’s daughter (sort of the reverse of the rack, a compression device), and the manacles (sorry, no comfy chair). All told, less than 100 people were ever tortured at the Tower, and for the majority of them, I suspect the gift shop was more to blame (the Tower has four gift shops, all of which have different items in them, which makes it difficult to buy cheesy souvenirs you’ve seen at one shop and then can’t find at another). Oh, and the lemonade we bought, which tasted of onions—onionade?

Anyway, while we wait in line at the gift shop, the but the crypt, here is the last verse of “Towers of London”:

Bridges of muscles spanning so long and high Merchants from Stepney walking pretty ladies by Rain is the tears of the never never navvies who cry For the bridge that doesn’t go In the direction of Dublin

Speaking of bridges, the Tower also gives you a good view of the Tower Bridge (often mistakenly called London Bridge, which is another wholly unremarkable bridgerfurther down the Thames), which I think is very cool looking.
We spent a good four or five hours at the Tower and about 3:00 headed go the Tube to head to a pub that Amy had always wanted to go to: Blackfriars Pub, which was a very good pub indeed. Only very slightly peckish (despite all the walking, the immense breakfast was still with us), we had a couple pints and split an order of nachos, which were quite respectable.

By the time we were done it was getting on to about 5:30, so we headed back to Hackney to pick up the chillun. Rather than take the bus (Bella screams when she’s on the bus), we walked back about two miles from the nursery to the house. The kiddies went almost straight to bed, and I think we all pretty much passed on in our various chairs not long after.

And, sadly, I had to fly back home the next day....

Anarchy in the UK: Part 6: Grate Expectations

Thursday did not begin well. I had felt a cold coming on all week, but waking up Thursday, my sinuses were definitely a congestion zone*. Feeling a bit ropey, I got a bit of late start, leaving the house at about 10:30. I was on my own again, and again had a vague list of items—the Aquarium, the National Gallery, the Tate, etc. It wasn’t raining when I left, which was good, as my umbrella was in several pieces. I should have bought a new one but decided, as the Irish say, to risk it for a biscuit.

Walking to the Tube, I felt a bit better, leading me to wonder if the congestion was more the result of an allergy to S&A’s cat than anything viral. I emerged from the Tube on Whitehall and sought coffee in a caf next door to the Red Lion pub. (If it’s not one liquid it’s another, innit?) As I walked out and headed over into St. James Park, the skies opened, and it began raining. Great. I knew I should have bought a brolly.

There was a caf in the park, so I sought shelter and more coffee. For the next hour, the rain kept stopping and starting. By the time I got to Buckingham Palace (for reasons that elude me), it was bucketing down. By this time, I was cold, wet, and the thick throng of tourists was making me cranky, so I turned around and headed back toward Piccadilly to look for a place to buy an umbrella, and perhaps find a place to grab something to eat and dry off.

I ended up on Charing Cross Road and ducked into a pub called the Princess of Wales. The barmaid explained in an impenetrable Scottish brogue that most of the beer was off, so I had a hard cider and ordered lunch. I had fortunately brought a guidebook (Rough Guide) Steven loaned me, which was better than mine (Lonely Planet). I spent an hour reading it and drying off, and decided that I would do better avoiding the hardcore touristy things and seeking out instead more offbeat (and potentially less crowded) sights. As I was reading about all the various London neighborhoods, I couldn’t help but have Robyn Hitchcock’s “Trams of Old London” running through my head.

Trams of old London
Taking my baby into the past, and it’s
Trams of old London blow my mind

Ludgate, Fenchurch, Highgate Hill
Rolling slowly up there still
Waterloo and Clerkenwell
Out to Aldgate East as well.
On a clear night you can see
Where the rails used to be
Oh, it seems like ancient myth
They once ran to Hammersmith

Through Electric Avenue
Brixton down in southwest too, uh-huh
Teddington and Kennington
Twickenham and Paddington
In the blitz they never closed
Though they blew up half the roads
Oh it hurts me just to see 'em
Going dead in a museum

Fed and reasonably dry, I had a plan, headed over to the Tube and went up to Russell Square. By the time I got out of the Tube, the rain had stopped. So I made my way over to 48 Doughty Street and the Charles Dickens Museum.
This house is where Charles Dickens lived from 1837 to 1839—not a long stay, but it is the only surviving one of the several places Dickens had lived.
It houses the largest and most important collection of Dickensiana. I decided to spend the two quid for the audio tour. It was in this house that Dickens finished Pickwick Papers, his first major work and the one that launched his career as a writer. He also wrote Oliver Twist there, his first “real” novel, followed by Nicholas Nickleby. He had moved there shortly after his marriage to Catherine, and by 1839, their third child was born (jeepers, it was a busy period, wannit?) and the Dickenses began searching for larger quarters, moving to Regents Park in 1839.

Naturally, I was curious if they had anything on Edmund Wells:

Bookshop Customer: Can you help me with "David Coperfield"?
Bookshop Proprietor: Ah, yes, Dickens.
C: No....
P: (pause) I beg your pardon?
C: No, Edmund Wells.
P: I... *think* you'll find Charles Dickens wrote "David Copperfield", sir....
C: No, no, Dickens wrote "David Copperfield" with *two* Ps. This is "David Coperfield" with *one* P by Edmund Wells.
P: "David Coperfield" with one P?
C: Yes, I should have said.
P: Yes, well in that case we don't have it.
C: (peering over counter) Funny, you've got a lot of books here....
P: (slightly perturbed) Yes, we do, but we don't have "David Coperfield" with one P by Edmund Wells.
...
C: Oh...how 'bout "Grate Expectations"?
P: Yes, well we have that....
C: That's "G-R-A-T-E Expectations," also by Edmund Wells.
P: (pause) Yes, well in that case we don't have it. We don't have anything by Edmund Wells, actually: he's not very popular.
C: Not "Knickerless Knickleby"? That's K-N-I-C-K-E-R-L-E-S-S.
P: (taciturn) No.
C: "Khristmas Karol" with a K?
P: (really quite perturbed) No....
C: Er, how about "A Sale of Two Titties"?
P: DEFINITELY NOT.
C: (moving towards door) Sorry to trouble you....
P: Not at all....
...
C: I wonder if you might have a copy of "Rarnaby Budge"?
P: No, as I say, we're right out of Edmund Wells!
C: No, not Edmund Wells - Charles Dikkens.
P: (pause - eagerly) Charles Dickens??
C: Yes.
P: (excitedly) You mean "Barnaby Rudge"!
C: No, "Rarnaby Budge" by Charles Dikkens. That's Dikkens with two Ks, the well-known Dutch author.
P: (slight pause) No, well we don't have "Rarnaby Budge" by Charles Dikkens with two Ks, the well-known Dutch author, and perhaps to save time I should add that we don't have "Karnaby Fudge" by Darles Chickens, or "Farmer of Sludge" by Marles Pickens, or even "Stickwick Stapers" by Farles Wickens with four M's and a silent Q!!!!! Why don't you try W. H. Smith's?
C: I did. They sent me here.
P: DID they.

Just about all of Dickens’ novels were published in serial form; that is, in installments. His original contract was to produce a certain number of pages, and he kept overwriting—I know the feeling! Since this was before typewriters, Dickens wrote everything by hand—his original manuscripts show some crossouts and changes, but he was remarkable at generating a good first draft. And if you’ve seen the length of his books, his printers must have felt good about their job security—this was the day before automated typesetting, when all type was set letter by letter. I get the sense that someone was right about to smash Dickens over the head with a typecase.

I spent about an hour and a half at the Dickens House and was feeling increasingly guilty about the fact that I have actually read precious little Dickens, a fact which I vowed to do something about once I got home (and so far I have kept my vow...). After a visit to the crypt, I was off.

It was threatening rain again, so as I walked down Southampton Row, I found a cheesy souvenir store and ducked inside to pick up some cheesy souvenirs—and an umbrella! This was fortunate, since as soon as I stepped outside, the skies opened. While searching for my next item, I got a bit lost in Holborn and ended up on Chancery Lane, in the neighbourhood where all the solicitors (i.e., lawyers) are. The architecture there is all rather beautiful, and I was happy to be lost there.

Finally, I came upon what I had been looking for: an odd little place called Sir John Soane’s Museum. Soane was an architect, born in 1753, and was, um...a bit of a nut. He was a noted architect and had caught the eye of King George III (also a bit of a nut). Soane traveled the world and acquired and thus filled his house with a phenomenal amount of stuff: Greek and Roman antiquities, clocks, sculptures, an impressive collection of Hogarth paintings—everywhere you turn in the house, there is a massive amount of stuff. Impressively, he had a crypt in the basement of his house. And I don’t mean that euphemistically; it was an actual crypt, and contained the sarcophagus of Egyptian Pharaoh Seti I. I have always wanted to have a crypt in my basement, and it’s good to know I am not alone in this desire. The Soan Museum rivals the British Museum (well, not really) for the sheer breadth of the collection, even if it is all rather daft. Still, it's pretty cool. I have always been fascinated by insanity.

By the time I was done, it was about 5:00, and I was feeling rather done in, so popped into a nearby pub. Killing time to avoid the Tube at the height of rush hour, I then took a stroll through Soho. Some things you should know:

• I did not see a werewolf with a Chinese menu in his hand walking through the streets of Soho in the rain;
• I did not meet Lola in a club down in old Soho, where they drink champagne and it tastes just like Coca-Cola (c-o-l-a, cola);
• and I did not wake up in a Soho doorway, a policeman did not know my name, nor did he say “You can go sleep at home tonight if you can get up and walk away.”

Cliffs Notes are available upon request.

I did check out a few bookstores, then decided to head back to Hackney. While waiting at the bus stop, Steven, Amy, and the chillun showed up, so we headed home en masse. That night, we got Pakistani takeaway which was phenomenally good.

One more day...


*In London, in an attempt to control traffic, they impose a “congestion fee” if you drive into the so-called “Congestion Zone.” You pay this fee online the day you plan to travel. How does anyone know if you’ve paid it? Closed-circuit TV cameras photograph your licence tag, and optical character readers scan the tags and compare them to a database of who has paid. If you have not paid, you are invoiced. (Other traffic violations are also handled in this way.) I am led to understand that scofflaws will be caught. It is all rather Orwellian....

Anarchy in the UK: Part 5: Pigs on the Wing

Steven had to go back to work on Wednesday; for the record, he works for Lehman Brothers—first in New York, then had transferred to the London office—where he has been since getting his MBA from the University of Rhode Island some 16 years ago. Amy was also at work and the kiddies were in nursery, so I had the day to myself. I drew up a vague list of things to do, but knew that I would likely not adhere to it. So I left the house about 9:30 a.m. and happily remembered how to get the bus to the Tube. My first stop: the Natural History Museum.

I took the Tube to South Kensington and alit to street level. Now, I have to admit (and both Amy and Steven, even after eight years, will back me up on this) London is a very difficult city in which to get one’s navigational bearings. At least in New York, you can emerge from the subway, find the Empire State Building, and pretty much figure out which way is south and/or west. In London, it’s difficult to do that, even with the maps that are posted on many streetcorners. So it took some aimless wandering around Kensington before I stumbled upon Natural History Museum.

It was 10:30 a.m., a scant half-hour after the museum opened, so my hope was that the crowds would be yet to throng. How wrong I was. There was a 15-minute queue to get in, but it was worth it. Initially, I was Jonesing for some coffee, so found a cafe and snarfed some down, then went once more unto the breach. The Natural History Museum is a beautiful building inside and out.
In the center of the main lobby is a dinosaur skeleton, but the crowds kept me from getting close enough to figure out what it was (plus, I have to say, dinosaurs kind of bore me).
Like most natural history museums, this one tends to favor mammals and dinosaurs while giving marine invertebrates short shrift. Still, there was a giant squid hanging from trhe ceiling, so how bad could it be?
There were some cool mammals and, of course, a Komodo dragon:
After spending about an hour or so there (and being horribly disappointed by the gift shop), I went back out and wanted to go to the Science Museum next door, but the queue was two blocks long. Uh, no. I had neglected to bring a map, but remembered that Hyde Park was due north, so I headed towards it. The weather was starting to turn evil, and very quickly turned into a November day, which was unfortunate as it was only August. Still, I wandered through Kensington Gardens to the Albert Memorial, which overlooks the Royal Albert Hall.

How many holes does it take to fill the Albert Hall?
I then wandered through Hyde Park toward Speaker’s Corner (“I go to Speaker’s Corner, I’m thunderstruck/They got free speech, tourists, police in trucks/Two men say they’re Jesus, one of them must be wrong...”—Dire Straits). Speaker’s Corner is a “free speech zone” in the northeast corner of Hyde Park where people are allowed to speak publicly, so long as the speeches do not break the law or use bad language (in New York, all speeches would be required to use bad language). It being an increasingly hideous day weatherwise, Speaker’s Corner was fairly abandoned when I went through.

I emerged from Hyde Park at Marble Arch, and was trying to head southeast. It was about noon or noon-thirty, and I was eager to hunt down lunch and/or a pub, preferably both. I entered the subway at Marble Arch; “subways” in London do not refer to trains, but rather underground public walkways that provide the easiest ways of getting across roundabouts and circuses. Maps tell you what “exit” will get you to what corner. I was trying to get to Oxford Street and head east and thought I had the right exit, but I had an incredibly difficult time figuring out which way was east. I went a few blocks in one direction, it seemed wrong, then turned around and tried another direction, which then also seemed wrong. It was really quite frustrating!

So I changed plans and decided to follow Hyde Park south and ended up lost in Knightsbridge (“The pretty things of Knightsbridge/Lying for a Minister of Site/are a far cry from the nod and wink/Here at Traitor’s Gate...” —Elvis Costello). Knightsbridge was way too posh for me, and I was trying to find Soho which was more my speed, but, lacking a map, I only had the vaguest idea of where I was going.

I ended up in Green Park and stumbled by complete accident on Buckingham Palace. I noted it, snapped the obligatory picture, and moved on (quite frankly, the Royal Family bores me).
I saw a sign that pointed in the direction of Trafalgar Square and I knew once I got there I could find Piccadilly/Leicester Square/Soho, etc. There was a very very long walk from Buckingham Palace to anything resembling civilization (i.e., shops, restaurants, etc.). By this time, it was getting nippy, my umbrella was starting to fall apart, and my feet were starting to hurt.

I found Trafalgar Square and then ended up in Piccadilly Circus (“The Piccadilly palare was just silly slang/Between me and the boys in my gang...” —Morrissey). I kept my eyes open for someplace to eat, ended up in Leicester Square (“Bright city woman walking down Leicester Square everyday” —Jethro Tull), and found a small pub on a side street. There weren’t any tables open at first, so I stood at the bar and had a couple of pints, and finally a table opened up and I ordered a fish and chips (with mushy peas, which I quite like) and another pint. A lovely pub, and I was proud that I had finally memorized which coins were which, as squinting to make out the denominations was making me look too much like a tourist.

After lunch, I ambled back toward Trafalgar and decided to visit the National Portrait Gallery, which was interesting to trace British History back through portraits of famous personages, most of whom I had never heard of.

I spent an hour or so there, had to visit the crypt, then went back out to Trafalgar Square, where the crowds were increasing. I toyed with the idea of hitting the National Gallery, but it was about 4:00 by this point. There were a couple of things I yet wanted to see, so I headed out...and for about a half hour, no matter which road I took, I always seemed to end up back at Trafalgar Square. I have no idea how that kept happening!

I headed down Whitehall and, to keep my aching feet from getting too bad, decided to stop in at a pub every so often. For medicinal purposes, of course. I stopped at one across from the houses of Parliament called the Red Lion, had a pint and read the paper, then set out again. I walked past Big Ben just as it chimed 5:00. I will say that I find the Houses of Parliament to be a really cool building.
I knew I should probably be heading back to Hackney for dinner before too long, but there was one place I did want to go..., though I knew how to get there but didn’t know how far it was. I walked past the Houses of Parliament to the Thames Walk and walked along the river. Near Pimlico Gardens, I found a pub called the William IV and stopped in for a pint and a visit to the crypt, then set out again.

And then, about 5:45, found what I was looking for. After all, what self-respecting Pink Floyd fan could visit London without checking out the Battersea Power Station, located just south of the Thames.
I wasn’t really expecting to see a pig flying above it, but a few more pints and I just may....

Aside from being featured on a classic album cover, the Battersea station was actually the first in a series of large coal-fired electrical generating facilities set up in Britain as part of the power distribution system that was being introduced in the 1920s and 1930s. At the time, there were howls of protest about the proposed construction of the station, given the lack of aesthetic palatability of power stations. In a word, it promised to be an eyesore.

However, the London Power Company addressed this complaint by having the station designed by architect and industrial designer Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, who by the by, is also famous for having designed the iconic red telephone box, Liverpool Cathedral, and another power station, Bankside, which is now the Tate Modern art gallery. Construction began in 1929 and was finished a decade later. The original power station had a single long hall with a chimney at either end, but between 1953 and 1955, an identical second station was built alongside the original, which resulted in the current four-chimney layout. And, actually, the Battersea Power Station has since become one of London’s most famous landmarks and is generally loved—especially by fanatical Pink Floyd fans.

The station is no longer functioning—the first part of the facility was shut down in 1975, and the second part in 1983. In 1980 the station was declared a heritage site, and there have even been plans to turn it into a theme park, but that never quite happened. The property has changed ownership several times, and from what I have been able to glean, the fate of the station remains unclear—especially as the chimneys have been declared structurally unsound.
Anyway, I was actually not the only one interested in the station; as I was walking along the Thames snapping pictures of it, a couple some yards in front of me were doing the same. Perhaps we all could have joined in a chorus of “Pigs on the Wing.”

By this time, it was getting on 6:00, and I thought I remembered from an Underground map that there was a Tube station in Battersea Park, so I walked across the Chelsea Bridge to attempt to find it. No such luck, so I walked back over the river and ended up in Chelsea (“They call her Natasha when she looks like Elsie/I don’t want to go to Chelsea...” —Elvis Costello). Somehow, I ended up in Sloane Square (“Hairdresser on fire/All around Sloane Square/And you’re far too busy to see me” —Morrissey). I popped in to one last pub for a pint/foot rest/visit to the crypt, the grabbed the Tube and headed back to Hackney. As I was waiting for the bus at Bow Road, my umbrella literally fell apart (an Indian kid standing next to me was amused, as was I). Naturally, right after I alighted the bus, the skies opened, and by the time I had walked the block to Amy and Steven’s house, I was quite moist.

But it had been a good day. To be continued...

Highway to Hill*

Steven and Amy's son Godwin is rather fixated on the song "Happy Birthday." He will fashion his Stickle Bricks into an ersatz cake and then sing "Happy Birthday" to everyone in the room in turn. In my case, last week, he was a tad early...
*That is, Patty and Mildred Hill, who wrote the song "Happy Birthday." Which begs the question: it took two people to write that?

Playground in a Petri Dish

Sorry, folks, I have not had time today to write Part 5 of "Anarchy in the UK." In the mean time (as it were), enjoy the brand new (and very cool) video from Andrew Bird--"Imitosis," actually my favorite track from Armchair Apocrypha.

Anarchy in the UK: Part 4: Forever Afternoon (Tuesday?)

After walking under the Thames, we ended up in Trafalgar Square, pretty much the gathering place in London, watched over by Nelson’s Column, a monument built between 1840 and 1843 to commemorate Admiral Horatio Nelson's victory over Napoleon at the 1805 Battle of Trafalgar. It's good that the site of the victory shared its name with a square in London. Quite fortuitous, that. Anyway, the 18-foot statue of Nelson is perched atop a 151-foot granite column. Unlike Eros in Piccadilly Circus, Nelson is not nude, for which I think we can all be grateful.
Trafalgar Square is also the home to the National Gallery and, around the corner, the National Portrait Gallery. Whenever there are rallies, celebrations, or other events in London, Trafalgar Square is usually where they take place. The architecture is all rather grand, although the marble statue of pregnant English artist Alison Lapper (who actually was born without arms and with truncated legs--a congenital disorder called phocomelia) sculpted by Marc Quin is a bit out of place, at least in my opinion.
We passed quickly through Trafalgar and walked down Whitehall, past the Horse Guards Palace. This is one of the places where the immobile Palace Guards stand and are taunted and photographed by tourists. The guards are not supposed to move or react, but I can only imagine what they are fantasizing about doing to the tourists, and how best to dispose of the bodies.
We also passed the Banqueting House, perhaps most noted for the fact that it was there in 1649 that King Charles I was beheaded (I’ve been to banquets like that).

We drifted past the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben. (By the way, “Big Ben” is the name of the bell housed within the clock tower, not the tower or the clock itself.) In fact, Big Ben is officially called the “Great Bell.” The 16-ton bell was cast on April 10, 1856, in Stockton-on-Tees by Warner's of Cripplegate. Why “Big Ben”? Two theories; one is that the commissioner of works, Sir Benjamin Hall, was responsible for ordering the bell. the other is that it may have been named after heavyweight boxer Benjamin Caunt.
One of Steven’s favorite “museums” is the Cabinet War Rooms. This is basically an underground warren (under what is now the HM Treasury) where Churchill and his ministers set up military headquarters during World War II. The rooms were constructed in 1938, and featured a steel-reinforced roof. The winding network of rooms are well-preserved and give an excellent idea of how claustrophobic it would have been down there. (However, the portion that is preserved and open to the public is only s small fraction of what was a much larger—three-acre—facility that housed a staff of up to 528 people. Facilities included a canteen, hospital, shooting range, and dormitories.) In fact, the signage informs us, it was not an ideal place to spend large amounts of time and the dark, dank, and insects drove many of the people to emerge at night and sleep above ground—even during the London Blitz. Churchill himself only spent three nights down there. Still, the war rooms remained operational throughout the war and the day after VJ Day, the lights were switched off and everyone left everything just as it had been. I expect the mannequins of military personnel were added some time later.

There is also a Churchill Museum, which was just about to close when we got to it.

By this time it was after 5:00, and we had to head back to Hackney to pick up the kiddies. We made it home just in time for dinner.

And thus ended Tuesday.

Anarchy in the UK: Part 3: In the Mean Time

Steven’s wife, Amy Miller (a friend of mine from my St. Martin’s Press days circa. 1990–1991—it was I who introduced her to Steven, an old college buddy), is a curator at London’s National Maritime Museum. Last month, she had been beavering away on a special exhibit of her own creation called “Sailor Chic,” a look at British naval couture and the adoption of it by civilian society (she has a Masters in the Decorative Arts and did a stint at the Embroiderers’ Guild in Hampton Court Palace, so she knows of what she speaks). Tuesday morning, she had to go in early as she was being interviewed by BBC Radio about the exhibit; Steven and I listened to the interview, then set off to visit the Maritime Museum and check it out.

The National Maritime Museum is located just south of the Thames in Greenwich and is part of the Royal Observatory (about which more shortly). Beginning with a painting of a young Prince Albert in a sailor suit, the exhibit traced the evolution of British military garb over the years, and how naval fashion insinuated itself in pop culture, from subtle sailor-garb-influenced pants and tops, to New Romantic Adam Ant’s sailor jacket as seen in the video for “Goody Two Shoes.” Also part of the exhibit was the extent to which the adoption of military fashion was a subversive act—underground filmmakers sporting naval jackets, etc. And let’s not forget (try as we might) the adoption of naval chic by certain elements of the gay community (yes, part of the video presentation included the Village People’s “In the Navy”—fitting, I suppose, but no less upsetting).

Anyway, it was an interesting exhibit, which I say not entirely because Amy is a friend of mine. I naturally bought her book; you can buy it here.
The rest of the museum is also interesting; they had the jacket that Nelson was shot in, complete with bullet hole (they don’t like when you point out that it looks like it’s only a moth hole). There is also a large painting of the death of Nelson, and I thought I had discovered an inconsistency. The jacket has the bullet hole on the left shoulder, but in the painting, Nelson’s attendants had a cloth over his right shoulder. I thought, “Aha! A conspiracy! Can anyone explain this discrepancy?” I had thoughts of writing a bestseller like The Da Vinci Code—Maybe The Nelson Coat, or something. When I confronted Amy, she pointed out that in the painting, the cloth was not to stanch the bleeding from the bullet wound, but to hide the fact that Nelson’s right arm had been shot off. Oh. Well, so much for fame and fortune. But, then again, The Da Vinci Code was based on flimsier evidence, so maybe I still had something, though I’m not exactly sure what.

After getting lost in the Maritime Museum, Steven and I walked up to the Royal Observatory...actually, what I had been really looking forward to.

There are many significant things about the Royal Observatory, not the least of which is that it is the locale of the Prime Meridian (0 degrees longitude) and, of course, of Greenwich Mean Time.
The Royal Observatory was begun in 1674, initially as a way to solve the so-called “Longitude Problem.” That is, as readers of Dava Sobel’s excellent book Longitude know, the biggest problem facing sailors in the 17th century was how to figure out exactly where they were when out in the open sea. Sure, finding one’s latitude north or south of the equator was easy enough, but without a corresponding east/west coordinate, that left a lot of ocean that a ship could potentially be in. If England was going to be a naval powerhouse (or, perhaps more importantly, an overseas trader) the problem had to be resolved. Thus, King Charles II arranged to found an Observatory to solve the problem, and astronomer John Flamsteed was appointed as the first Astronomer Royal. Indeed, the Flamsteed House—designed by our old friend Christopher Wren (though on a decidedly smaller scale than St. Paul’s) is the original portion of the Observatory.

Interesting thing about Flamsteed. He was such a perfectionist; he had compiled an extensive star catalog but was loath to publish it until he noodled with it some more. Unfortunately, his friend Edmund Halley got his hands on them and published Flamsteed’s work, albeit anonymously. Flamsteed, needless to say, was furious (and was as hot as Halley’s Comet, perhaps you could say) and bought up every copy he could get his hands on and burned the lot of them.

Anyway, despite all the efforts of the Royal Observatory, the problem of longitude was actually solved by a humble clockmaker named John Harrison, who after several tries managed to build a reliable clock that could be carried on ships. This way, by knowing what time it was back in Greenwich and knowing how the stars should look at a given time, and knowing your latitude at sea, you can work out your longitude.

Anyway, there’s a lot more to the story than that, and this is a simple travelblog....
Because I am n geeky where n is a large, positive integer, I was thrilled to stand astride the prime meridian—although I did have to keep resetting my watch. There have actually been several prime meridians over the years, and the Observatory grounds are littered with the remains of meridians past.
Greenwich is also the world’s timekeeper. Originally, the “official Greenwich” time was indicated by placing a large ball on the roof of the observatory and its daily drop at 1:00 p.m. G.M.T. was used by navigators on the River Thames to calibrate their marine chronometers. As the need to distribute the time more widely became necessary, an Observatory assistant, John Belville, set his pocket watch—which he called Arnold (don’t ask)—to GMT and then set out into the City to distribute the time more or less door to door. Happily, the advent of the telegraph soon led to a way to transmit the correct time via electrical impulses.
The Observatory has a vast collection of exhibits related to time and timekeeping. I could go on, but I simply don’t have the time.

John Flamsteed was the first Astronomer Royal, and was succeeded by his “friend” Edmund Halley. Here’s a good trivia question: who is the current Astronomer Royal? Lord Rees of Ludlow, who has occupied the position since 1995.

There is, as it turns out, a difference between the “Royal Observatory, Greenwich” and the “Royal Greenwich Observatory.” In the 1920s and 30s, thanks to the construction of new electrical power stations and the growing light and air pollution in London, it was becoming more and more difficult for astronomers to see much from the Observatory, so gradually the “RGO” was moved to Herstmonceaux Castle out in Sussex. It has moved about since and even I have not been able to keep track of it. Perhaps if I knew its longitude...

After spending some time wandering about the Flamsteed House, it was lunch time, so Steven and I walked down to the River to the Trafalgar Pub—another excellent pub. After lunch, we walked along the Thames to a tunnel through which you can walk underneath the Thames from Greenwich to Millwall Park. At the north end of the tunnel, there is a very strange hexagonal, wood-paneled elevator that takes you up to street level. Very weird.

We were then off to Whitehall and the Cabinet War Rooms. To be continued...

Anarchy in the UK: Part 2: Wren and Stimpy

After wandering through Dr. Johnson’s House, we walked back out, past James Boswell’s House. Boswell is famous for little more than writing the biography of Johnson, although I get him confused with Bosley from Charlie's Angels. Corrected, I then mused on the relationship between Boswell and Johnson, given that their houses were so close together and they seemed rather inseparable. (Actually, it’s more likely that Boswell was more of a literary hanger-on.) Anyway, we walked back to Ludgate Hill and over to St. Paul’s Cathedral, the Christopher Wren-designed edifice that rivals only St. Peter’s in Rome. Actually, St. Paul’s is the fifth cathedral (the first having dated to C.E. 604) to have stood in that spot; its predecessor was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666.

We immediately headed down to the basement crypt, as that’s where the lavatories were (leading me to coin the euphemism for the week: “gotta go to the crypt”). The crypt also features the delightfully named Crypt Cafe, and, more seriously, monuments to more than 300 British military heroes, including Wellington (who was able to develop Beef Wellington before the French could perfect the Napoleon—see Love and Death) and Horatio Nelson. And, needless to say, Christopher Wren’s memorial is down there, as well it should be.

We then headed up many many stairs to the Whispering Gallery, a circular walkway around the base of one of the cathedral domes. It is so-called because it is said that if you whisper to the wall, the sound will carry clear across to the opposite side. I was dubious, and with luck some of my comments did not carry. Up more steps is the Stone Gallery, a parapet around the outside of the dome that affords a wonderful view of London. Up a further 520 spiral steps (not for the weak of lung) is the Golden Gallery—which provides an even better view. There is one spot on the staircase that has a very low overhang; there is a sign that reads “Mind your head.” I was amused by the sign, stopped to take a picture of it, then smashed my head anyway. Doh!
One more trip to the crypt, and we were on our way. We walked back down Ludgate Hill, which turns into Fleet Street (no sign of the Demon Barber, although from my experience, the “demon barber” has decidedly relocated to the States, the Wilton Mall to be exact...). We turned a corner and walked past the Old Bailey, aka the Central Criminal Court. We stopped in The Viaduct Pub across the street for a pint (Steven chose it from the "Why a duck?" routine in the Marx Brothers film The Cocoanuts--don't ask). I had learned my lesson about “light” beer but I was also in for a new lesson: you don’t tip bartenders in London. Not that I minded, I just don’t like to be thought of as a cheap bastard.

Anyway, we then grabbed a city bus to Piccadilly Circus (with thoughts of the Jethro Tull song, “Mother Goose”: “And a foreign student said to me/Was it really true/There are elephants and lions, too/In Piccadilly Circus”). There are many “circuses” in London—the name simply comes from the Latin word circus, or “circle,” and refers to any circular open space at a street junction. As for “Piccadilly,” the name dates back to 1626 and comes from Pickadilly Hall, a house belonging to Robert Baker, a tailor famous for selling piccadills, a type of collar.

Anyway, Piccadilly Circus today is festooned with neon billboards and signage and is rather like Times Square, though still not yet Disney-fied. One notable point of interest is the Shaftesbury Monument Memorial Fountain, built in 1892-1893 to commemorate Victorian politician and philanthropist Lord Shaftesbury. The fountain is topped by Alfred Gilbert's statue, variously called “The Angel of Christian Charity” or, more popularly (though erroneously), "Eros" (after the Greek God of Love). Actually, the statue was supposed to represent Eros' twin Anteros (everyone gets twins confused...). The statue was the first in the world to be cast in aluminum (or, in Britain, “aluminium”) and is nude, which caused a bit of a stir at the time of its erection, but the public quickly warmed to it, apparently.
Piccadilly is also home to several bookstores—including Foyle’s, which is a London institution (and rightly so). (When Steven and I lived in New York City contemporaneously, we used to like to visit bookstores and we got to do this again.) We then walked over to Leicester Square, famous...well, I’m not sure why it’s famous, but it is where all the movie cinemas are and where London premieres tend to take place. It's really not all that exciting, except as a place to people-watch, although it is pretty much the gateway to Soho, named, not for being “South of Houston” as in New York, but for the hunting call (“Soho!”) used during 17th-century fox hunts. I also found Wardour Street, which, according to a song by The Jam, had an A bomb in it.

By this time, it was getting on 5:00 and Steven had to pick up his car (which was in for inspection) before the car place closed at half five, so we cut short our perambulations for the day. I decided not to take photographs of the VW dealership.

And thus ends Monday. To be continued...

Anarchy in the UK: Part 1: Automobiles, Trains, and Planes

Ever since I was a wee one, and caught a bout of Anglophilia at an early age, I have wanted to visit England. For many years, a variety of circumstances have thwarted my attempts at journeying across the pond—first a lack of cross-pond-journeying funds, and then a crippling fear of flying. Both issues having been resolved (more or less), I was finally able to head overseas last week, not only to visit London for the first time ever, but also to see a couple of my oldest and dearest friends, expatriate Americans who moved to London in 1999.

And I finally realized what I had been missing all these years—London is a great city! I loved it! Sure, the weather is really depressing, which could explain why there is an average of three pubs for every person, but that aside, I felt more at home there than in any American city I had ever visited...or even lived in.

The voyage itself was a combination of planes, trains, and automobiles. I left Saratoga at 10:30 a.m. on Friday to drive to the Albany-Rensselaer train station, to catch a noon train to Penn Station. (Lead us not into Penn Station...) This would give me four hours to make a 6:30 p.m. flight out of Newark. Too much time, I originally thought, but the only other option would give me two hours’ lead time—but knowing Amtrak as I do, I opted for the biggest time gap I could.
And, as it turned out, it was the right decision. For some reason (the weather was perfect), all the trains were late out of Albany, and the noon train didn’t leave until about 12:45, and then crept down the track. A girl on a tricycle on an adjacent road was moving faster than the train. I should have asked her for a ride.

Fortunately, I got in about 3:30 and caught a New Jersey Transit train to Newark Airport. The most time-consuming part was finding the British Airways realm, which was unlabeled, and two different airport workers told me two different things. Finally, I found it in a sub-basement, with a very lengthy and sluggish moving line for check in. I had time, so I accepted the reality and waited my turn.

Security was about what it had been on the Atlanta trip, although three people examined my passport—and it was only later waiting at the gate that I discovered the legend that said “Passport not valid until signed” which I had neglected to heed. No one caught that; gotta love that security.

The flight was a tad late taking off, as there were massive thunderstorms moving through Newark. But, being a veteran of Amtrak, 45 minutes late is nothing.

Anyway, the flight to Heathrow was actually quite pleasant, despite the fact that I was wedged into a middle seat (the flight was completely full). British Airways is a rather nice airline—friendly, polite flight crews, captains who keep everyone apprised of what is going on, the food was quite good, and there was no extra charge for beer, which is always a plus in my book.

I landed about 7:30 Saturday morning, London time, after having slept only fitfully on the plane. For some reason, our arrival took the airport staff completely by surprise (heck, it’s not like a planeload of people dropped in unannounced; I had known about the flight since I bought tickets back in June) and they had no gate available, so we parked elsewhere and took a bus to the terminal.

Passport Control took about 45 minutes to get through, as many many people were arriving. Which I guess worked out, because by the time I was done with that the baggage had all been unloaded and my suitcase was awaiting me.

I found an American Express kiosk and exchanged my low-value Bush Bucks for British pounds--$100 became £44. Ugh.

Anyway, as I was humming the line from a Monty Python song, “I’m so worried about the baggage retrieval system they have at Heathrow,” my friend Steven met me outside the gate and was nice enough to buy me some coffee at a Starbucks (god, they’re everywhere). We then took the scenic route—there being no other route, really—from Heathrow to his house in the London borough of Hackney (causing me to recall the Robyn Hitchcock lyric, from “Point it at Gran,” “When Princess Anne’s 82 and living in a one-room flat in Hackney...”). There, his wife Amy was waiting with their two children—three-year-old Godwin and one-year-old Sibella. Godwin and I bonded almost immediately.

That afternoon, we went down to Borough Market south of the River Thames to do some shopping. Basically, Borough Market is an immense (and immensely crowded) farmer’s market, with stalls of fresh vegetables, meats (they even offer butchery workshops—the Jack the Ripper jokes were fairly obvious, I suppose), and, to my delight, an immense variety of beers and ales. We stopped for lunch and I got some authentic (and very good) British fish and chips.

The next day (Sunday), I was happily over my jet lag, and we bundled up the kiddies and headed out to the British Museum which, it being Sunday, was very crowded, but not unbearably so, except around the mummies and the Rosetta Stone. Amy, herself being a museum curator with a photographic memory, was better to have along than a proper tour guide, and she explained many many things, especially the story of the discovery and deciphering of the Rosetta Stone.

The Rosetta Stone was discovered in 1799 in the Nile Delta in a village called Rashid (called “Rosetta” by Europeans). It was found by members of the Napoleonic expedition to Egypt—say what you will about Napoleon, but he was dedicated to science and history and made it a point to investigate scientifically those regions he planned to conquer. Sporting of him, really. As we all know, the Rosetta Stone bears three sets of inscriptions—one in Greek, one in demotic Egyptian (the “official” written language of ancient Egypt), and one in hieroglyphics. Greek, everyone knew, but the other two...not so much. At the time, Egyptology was a nascent study, and no one knew how to decipher either its demotic language or hieroglyphics (even today, no one is sure how to pronounce “falcon” or “three wavy lines”). Scholars spent years trying to decipher the Rosetta Stone, but it was Jean Francois Champollion who finally did it, identifying certain proper names (like “Ptolemy”) and going from there.

So what does the Rosetta Stone actually say? Basically, it is a copy of a decree commemorating the first anniversary of Ptolemy V’s coronation. Yes, disappointingly, the Rosetta Stone is little more than an ancient press release.

There are many many other cool things in the British Museum; the Mesopotamian relics are interesting, and the Greek and Roman antiquities are especially cool. Amy made mention of one drinking bowl that bore a sort of “surgeon general’s warning” concerning alcoholic overindulgence—inside the cup was an illustration of someone vomiting. I don’t know how effective it was. Phallus worship was big in Greece and Rome and they had one rather elaborate phallus wind chime—and the caption card literally said (I am not making this up) “This chime would be placed in the yard and could be heard tinkling in the wind.” A remarkable antiquity indeed.

There are also the Portland vases, important because it was one of these that inspired John Keats to write “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” However, my repeating of the old joke “What’s a Greek Urn? A buck and a quarter an hour” almost led my hosts to smash a Portland vase over my head.

We grabbed lunch at the British Museum cafe and told Godwin that he could get Mummy Meat. He seemed enthused by this...

Alas, Amy said the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus was very cool, but was closed when we were there (I wonder if you can rent it out for parties?).

The day was drawing to a close, and that night we had Indian take away—excellent!
Steven was kind enough to take Monday and Tuesday off to escort me around. We got a somewhat late-ish start on Monday and took the Underground to the original City of London. The London Underground uses fare cards known as Oyster Cards, so-called because they fold out in a vinyl wallet like a bivalve—gotta love it. (It is also because, with it, the world—or, at the very least, the city—is your oyster.) It was here that I was introduced to the whole “Mind the Gap” business—which is basically a neverending announcement to be careful of the gap between the Tube train and the platform. Incidentally, I am impressed with the Tube; it is logically run, seems fairly reliable (some lines have their problems, I’m told), and is pretty easy to figure out. People tend to be polite and courteous, even at rush hour, and moving about is done in quite an orderly fashion. The stations and trains are very clean and the seats are actually upholstered; vandalism does not appear to be a problem. (These seats would last five seconds in NYC.) Sure, nothing is air conditioned (few things in Britain are, for the simple reason that 99% of the year there is no need for it), but you can open the windows and get a nice breeze.

Anyway, Steven and I had lunch at a very old pub near St. Paul’s called Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, which I loved, although I did learn one very important lesson: “Light” beer in Britain means “non-alcoholic.” I won’t make that mistake again!

Here is Steven in front of the pub:
The pub was around the corner from Samuel Johnson’s house, which we wandered over to and toured. Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) was a poet, essayist, biographer, lexicographer, and a literary critic. He was also well known for his aphorisms, but one of his lasting claims to fame is that he compiled the very first English dictionary, and they had several copies (reproductions, natch) on display. I was reminded, of course, of the episode of Black Adder the Third, featuring Dr. Johnson and this classic exchange:

Dr. Johnson: Here it is, sir: the very cornerstone of English scholarship. This book, sir, contains every word in our beloved language.
...
Edmund: Every single one, sir?

Dr. Johnson: (confidently) Every single word, sir!

Edmund: (to Prince) Oh, well, in that case, sir, I hope you will not object if I also offer the Doctor my most enthusiastic contrafribularities.

Dr. Johnson: What?

Edmund: 'Contrafribularites', sir? It is a common word down our way...

Dr. Johnson: Damn! (writes in the book)

Edmund: Oh, I'm sorry, sir. I'm anispeptic, frasmotic, even compunctuous to have caused you such pericombobulation.

Dr. Johnson: What? What? WHAT?

Prince George: What are you on about, Blackadder? This is all beginning to sound a bit like dago talk to me.

Edmund: I'm sorry, sir. I merely wished to congratulate the Doctor on not having left out a single word. (J sneers) Shall I fetch the tea, Your Highness?

Prince George: Yes, yes! And get that damned fire up here, will you?

Edmund: Certainly, sir. I shall return interfrastically. (exits) (J writes some more)

And of course, as it turned out, he dictionary omitted the word "sausage."

We're just getting started. To be continued....