On Day 31 we went on a tour of Parliament, but the British government persisted in their dastardly plot to conceal all the cool buildings by refusing photography inside. Anyway, the tour guide was very nice, and Parliament is insane inside. You can get an idea of the decoration inside by looking up a picture of the State Throne on Google. Queen Elizabeth sits there at every State Opening of Parliament, dressed in her Imperial robes and wearing the Imperial Crown, and reads out the Queen's Speech outlining the agenda for the upcoming parliamentary session. She doesn't write this speech, of course; it's written by the Prime Minister, who gets to sit and listen to her read it. The Queen also has to be totally impartial, and isn't allowed to vote. Ever. On anything. So I suppose the monarchy does sacrifice something, although I question whether the right to vote is that much of a sacrifice compared to the insane income and lands they're given. Also, there's currently a wonderful scandal going on right now where it turned out that the monarchy has requested funding out of a fund for low-income housing in order to pay the energy bills for Buckingham Palace.
The State Opening has some interesting bits to it; for example, the monarch sends her representative in the Houses of Parliament, known as Black Rod (because he carries one), to call the House of Commons into the House of Lords for the reading of the speech. Black Rod marches across Parliament to the doors of the House of Commons, only for the doors to be slammed in his face. So instead, he must bang on the wooden doors with his black rod (leaving some terrible scars we got to gawk at) until the Speaker bids him enter. Then, and only then, may a representative of the monarchy enter the House of Commons. This represents the supremacy of the common people over the monarch, and is such a big deal that when George IV wanted to see the House of Commons being rebuilt after a German bomb blew it up in the Blitz, they hid the fact that he'd entered the House of Commons for over ten years.
There is one part of Parliament you are allowed to take pictures of, and that's Westminster Hall. Pictures of that will go up tomorrow when I get back from Salisbury. The Hall is the only bit of the original Westminster Palace, built by William Rufus (son of William the Conqueror) to serve as a banqueting hall. This hall is huge, you must understand: at least four hundred feet from end to end. But when William Rufus was presented with the finished product and asked if he approved, the king sniffed, "It's not even fit to serve as my bedchamber."
What a wonderful man.
Westminster Hall is also where many trials were held before the Courts of Justice were built. For example, Charles I (the only British king to be executed by his own subjects) was tried and sentenced there, along with several of Henry IV's ill-fated wives. After Parliament, I took the Tube back on my own via Westminster Station, which is a wonderful example of Brutalist architecture. The sides of the station have been hollowed out into the rock itself and left uncovered, and the escalators are only covered by a thin sheet of metal over the bottom mechanisms. It's a very totalitarian feeling, and the silent masses lining up and emotionless voices providing status updates on the Tube only add to it.
And on Day 32, the rains came. This wasn't just any rain; this was a constant, cold drizzle that drummed on your head in an unceasing rhythm until it seemed like it was about to drive you mad. And we, lucky, lucky souls that we are, got to stand out in the yard of the Globe Theater for three-and-a-half hours watching Henry IV Part Two. I wore a shirt, a jacket, a pea-coat, a scarf, and a raincoat (which is huge on me, but conveniently fits over my pea-coat), and still ended the play drenched and freezing to the bone. The hood on the raincoat didn't do much to keep the water out of the inside, so I resorted to wrapping my scarf around my head until I looked like a Russian babushka in order to keep the water off my hearing aids. But the play was wonderful, the actors talented (and all the girls sighed over the actor playing Hal once more), and the hot chocolate I bought at an exorbitant price from the theater bracing. The wind off the Thames was also bracing, but in an entirely different and much more negative fashion. Shivering, we all trooped to St. Paul's Station with Dr. King and took the Tube to our respective flats. Incidentally, our flats are now so cold that I sleep in pajama pants, T-shirt, socks, and a sweater. Anything less and I shiver the whole night and wake up without any real rest at all.
Day 33 hasn't been tremendously interesting. About the only exciting thing is that we had to all watch Helen Mirren in The Queen for our British Life and Culture class, and got about halfway through the movie before the ancient DVD player provided by the building we have our classes in gave up the ghost entirely. I have a fair bit of homework due next week: an explication of Hotspur's monologue in Henry IV Part Two and an outline of my final paper for British Life and Culture with all the sources picked out, so I'll be spending Sunday in the library. The rest of the group went out to a pub, but as I've got a lingering cough and have been feeling run-down, I opted out of the excursion entirely. It's not as if we don't have time for pubs later. So now I am lying on our terrible ACORN couch (because everything ACORN is terrible) typing this post and listening to the Rolling Stones.
Next week should be quite exciting. Monday night I'm seeing War Horse at the National Theater, which is the story of a boy who follows his conscripted horse into the battlefields of World War One. The horses are enormous ridable puppets, so I think it'll be interesting; Tuesday night Kate, Erin, and I are going to see Wicked; and Thursday Erin, Nick, Chase and I fly to Rome to start our fall break. I'm going to Dublin over break too, which should be a lot of fun. Also, we are going to be going to a football (or soccer) game as a class while we're here, as well as going on another trip as a group, the destination yet to be determined.
Tomorrow we depart for Stonehenge and Salisbury at 8:30 in the morning, so I'll end this here.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Monday, September 27, 2010
Day 30
It's after 11:30 here and I'm tired, so I'm just going to put up my Hampton Court pictures and some commentary, and I'll do a better description of the trip tomorrow.
These were demonstration pies baked in Henry VIII's kitchens. Surprisingly, for the Tudors, pies were more of a food delivery system than a food in their own right. When presented with a pie, a medieval or Tudor person would peel off the top crust, eat the filling, and then throw the pastry away: making the pie dough, in effect, a Styrofoam box.
Oooh, the ghosts of Henry VIII and one of his footmen wandering the halls. In actuality, bad historical re-enactors. I think I'd rather have encountered the ghosts.
William II's Chamber of the Guards was decorated with incredible amounts of weaponry, all laid out in intricate patterns like a form of wallpaper. It helped to establish both his own military might, as William was a soldier before anything else, and his wealth, by buying so many expensive weapons and using them for decoration.
For Rachel: you remember the story about Catherine Howard's ghost running screaming down the hallways? This is the hallway her ghost is said to haunt. Also in this hallway, which was part of Henry VIII's apartments, were paintings. One, commissioned and owned by the King himself, shows the four authors of the Gospels stoning the Pope to death in gory detail: obviously not much love lost between Catholics and Protestants at the time.
And this is the roof of Henry VIII's grand hall, where he held all of his banquets, masques, and other lavish events. The King was very fond of masquerades, but threw fits if anybody acted as though they knew it was him. So even though there was only one person the well-dressed, obese man with the leg sore could be, the courtiers were required to act astounded when the hero of the masque's story inevitably turned out to be the King. Henry was also not fond of appearing weak, and so when he had to attend a dance wearing slippers because of an injury to his foot, all of the other courtiers came in slippers as well.
As Mel Brooks says, "It's good to be the king."
These were demonstration pies baked in Henry VIII's kitchens. Surprisingly, for the Tudors, pies were more of a food delivery system than a food in their own right. When presented with a pie, a medieval or Tudor person would peel off the top crust, eat the filling, and then throw the pastry away: making the pie dough, in effect, a Styrofoam box.
Oooh, the ghosts of Henry VIII and one of his footmen wandering the halls. In actuality, bad historical re-enactors. I think I'd rather have encountered the ghosts.
William II's Chamber of the Guards was decorated with incredible amounts of weaponry, all laid out in intricate patterns like a form of wallpaper. It helped to establish both his own military might, as William was a soldier before anything else, and his wealth, by buying so many expensive weapons and using them for decoration.
For Rachel: you remember the story about Catherine Howard's ghost running screaming down the hallways? This is the hallway her ghost is said to haunt. Also in this hallway, which was part of Henry VIII's apartments, were paintings. One, commissioned and owned by the King himself, shows the four authors of the Gospels stoning the Pope to death in gory detail: obviously not much love lost between Catholics and Protestants at the time.
And this is the roof of Henry VIII's grand hall, where he held all of his banquets, masques, and other lavish events. The King was very fond of masquerades, but threw fits if anybody acted as though they knew it was him. So even though there was only one person the well-dressed, obese man with the leg sore could be, the courtiers were required to act astounded when the hero of the masque's story inevitably turned out to be the King. Henry was also not fond of appearing weak, and so when he had to attend a dance wearing slippers because of an injury to his foot, all of the other courtiers came in slippers as well.As Mel Brooks says, "It's good to be the king."
Day 28
Sunday was a boring day; I woke up feeling tired and generally 'meh', and stayed that way throughout the day. My mood wasn't helped by the weather, which was the stereotypical English weather: cold, rainy, and dreary. So my day consisted of lounging around, doing homework and browsing the Internet until 6:30 rolled around.
This was the ghost-hunting hour, and the weather was perfect for hunting spirits. A group called Walk London, sponsored by the Transportation for London Bureau, was offering free guided walks throughout the weekend to encourage Londoners to walk and relieve the congestion of the Tube and roadways. I had elected to go on the 'Haunted London' tour.
Unfortunately it ended up being more a 'random historical facts' about the City than a ghost tour, but as it was free, I couldn't really complain. The City is the financial district of London, a square mile borough that is defined by the limits of the old Roman city of Londinium, and tonight we had it all to ourselves. The only signs of life were passing cars; we saw no other pedestrians in our two-hour walk. The strange thing about London, being as it is a huge cosmopolitan city, is that everything closes early: the pubs close at midnight, the stores at nine, and on Sunday? Good luck finding anything open past eight. It's very odd, but at least it lent the City a sort of post-apocalyptic feel. The guide at one point went off on a huge tangent about Harry Potter and led us to the market which they used as the set for Diagon Alley. I, having stopped reading after the fifth book, was insuf So anyway, pictures and commentary below. Also, I'm not skilled in photographing anything at night, and it was raining, so any supposed 'ghostly orbs' you may see are just raindrops.
This is the Monument to the Great Fire of London in 1666. It burned 30,000 homes, gutted the City, and yet only six deaths were officially recorded. For a long time, Londoners believed that French agents had started the fire, even though it was known to have started in one of the King's bakeries, and so an inscription condemning the French and detailing the fire itself was cut into one side of the column. Later, when the English and French were in one of their periodic times of amity, the English realized the French-hating segment was still there and so erased it, leaving a large gap in the inscription to this day. As for ghosts, a young woman named Jenny Cooper killed herself by jumping from the top of the Monument and is said to haunt Fish Street Hill to this day.
London Bridge. There's no real story about this bridge, beyond the fact that the original, massive bridge which had buildings up to seven stories high on it during medieval times is now sitting in a lake in Arizona; I just thought the lights were pretty.
That's Tower Bridge, which sadly isn't as old as it looks: merely Victorian. In the 1920s, a policeman was walking across the walkway, which is barely visible at the top and allows pedestrians to cross the river even when the bridge is up to allow ships to pass through. Supposedly, all around him he saw hundreds of black figures climbing the railings of the walkway and hurling themselves into space, but heard no splashes below: the ghosts of suicides reenacting their last decision. As the witness was a policeman, his story is lent a bit more credibility. Also in the 1950s, a bus was crossing the bridge when it started to lift. The driver, realizing he was beginning to slide backwards, floored it and jumped the gap, saving all of his passengers' lives.
The older sections of the Guildhall, where Lady Jane Grey was tried and sentenced to execution by Mary I. Today it is the headquarters for the city council of London. There have been buildings on this spot since Roman times; when the city excavated around the Guildhall to add new offices on, they found the remains of a Roman amphitheater, which explained why there had been reports of ghostly Roman gladiators and legionaries walking about for decades. After the Romans, the site of the current Guildhall housed a building erected by the Anglo-Saxons for the purpose of collecting taxes.
Where we ended our tour: beneath the shadow of St. Paul's massive dome.
This was the ghost-hunting hour, and the weather was perfect for hunting spirits. A group called Walk London, sponsored by the Transportation for London Bureau, was offering free guided walks throughout the weekend to encourage Londoners to walk and relieve the congestion of the Tube and roadways. I had elected to go on the 'Haunted London' tour.
Unfortunately it ended up being more a 'random historical facts' about the City than a ghost tour, but as it was free, I couldn't really complain. The City is the financial district of London, a square mile borough that is defined by the limits of the old Roman city of Londinium, and tonight we had it all to ourselves. The only signs of life were passing cars; we saw no other pedestrians in our two-hour walk. The strange thing about London, being as it is a huge cosmopolitan city, is that everything closes early: the pubs close at midnight, the stores at nine, and on Sunday? Good luck finding anything open past eight. It's very odd, but at least it lent the City a sort of post-apocalyptic feel. The guide at one point went off on a huge tangent about Harry Potter and led us to the market which they used as the set for Diagon Alley. I, having stopped reading after the fifth book, was insuf So anyway, pictures and commentary below. Also, I'm not skilled in photographing anything at night, and it was raining, so any supposed 'ghostly orbs' you may see are just raindrops.
This is the Monument to the Great Fire of London in 1666. It burned 30,000 homes, gutted the City, and yet only six deaths were officially recorded. For a long time, Londoners believed that French agents had started the fire, even though it was known to have started in one of the King's bakeries, and so an inscription condemning the French and detailing the fire itself was cut into one side of the column. Later, when the English and French were in one of their periodic times of amity, the English realized the French-hating segment was still there and so erased it, leaving a large gap in the inscription to this day. As for ghosts, a young woman named Jenny Cooper killed herself by jumping from the top of the Monument and is said to haunt Fish Street Hill to this day.
London Bridge. There's no real story about this bridge, beyond the fact that the original, massive bridge which had buildings up to seven stories high on it during medieval times is now sitting in a lake in Arizona; I just thought the lights were pretty.
That's Tower Bridge, which sadly isn't as old as it looks: merely Victorian. In the 1920s, a policeman was walking across the walkway, which is barely visible at the top and allows pedestrians to cross the river even when the bridge is up to allow ships to pass through. Supposedly, all around him he saw hundreds of black figures climbing the railings of the walkway and hurling themselves into space, but heard no splashes below: the ghosts of suicides reenacting their last decision. As the witness was a policeman, his story is lent a bit more credibility. Also in the 1950s, a bus was crossing the bridge when it started to lift. The driver, realizing he was beginning to slide backwards, floored it and jumped the gap, saving all of his passengers' lives.
The older sections of the Guildhall, where Lady Jane Grey was tried and sentenced to execution by Mary I. Today it is the headquarters for the city council of London. There have been buildings on this spot since Roman times; when the city excavated around the Guildhall to add new offices on, they found the remains of a Roman amphitheater, which explained why there had been reports of ghostly Roman gladiators and legionaries walking about for decades. After the Romans, the site of the current Guildhall housed a building erected by the Anglo-Saxons for the purpose of collecting taxes.
Where we ended our tour: beneath the shadow of St. Paul's massive dome.
Saturday, September 25, 2010
Days 24, 25, 26, 27, and 28
Tuesday was probably the most interesting day of the week, as we attended a play at the National Theatre called Earthquakes in London for our British Life and Culture class. The set was very impressive, consisting of a red, S-shaped platform of wood that snaked through the audience, along with two rooms set into either side of the S' ends where action also happened. The play was of the genre known as 'epic' theatre, where the playwright uses every tool at his or her disposal- music, projected visuals, pyrotechnics, and so on and so forth- to tell a story that covers a wide range of themes, people, and places. Earthquakes in London was, at its heart, a play about the stress placed on the Earth through the current population's over-consumption and a warning that we cannot go on living as we have. The major conflict is that of Freya, a pregnant woman struggling with whether or not she should bring her daughter into a world which, as her scientist father warns, will slide towards apocalyptic wars over resources within her daughter's lifetime. It did teach me an interesting new fact; the Earth can only support one billion people long-term: not the current eight billion, and certainly not the ten billion the population will reach within the Millennial Generation's lifetimes. There were some odd moments within the play, as when Freya's unborn child, shown on ultrasound, turns her face to the audience and screams 'Mommy?!'.
I could've done without that bit.
On Wednesday we had British Art and Architecture and Shakespeare. In Art and Architecture, we went to the Soane Museum and the Wallace Collection. The Soane was bizarre, housed as it was in a home that seemed to have been inhabited by a madman: Soane himself. Paintings were hidden behind false walls, domes piled upon domes in the center, and beneath the ground level a strange crypt had been built to hold the sarcophagus of Seti II. Barnaby wasn't memorably enlivened by the environment, but he did perk up when we went to the Wallace Collection, which housed beautiful paintings and an incredible collection of arms and armor sold to the Wallace family by a Prussian nobleman. Me being me, I gravitated to the armor and arms, and Barnaby and I had a nice conversation about whether such things could really be considered 'art.' The insane thing was that this massive manor had been built as a second country home for the family to stay in while they went duck-shooting. It wasn't even their main home! Shakespeare, as always, was wonderful, and we got into memorable debates over whether or not Hotspur was supposed to be comedic or tragic. All agreed that we were ashamed of our countrymen who had laughed at Hotspur's death scene, and the girls were unanimous that the actor that played Hal was, quote-unquote, 'beautiful.'
Nothing of much interest happened on Thursday besides having an absolutely lovely dinner with a family friend, and so I shall skip straight to Friday. The day dawned cold, foggy, and drizzly: perfect London weather. I rose late, had toast and hot chocolate, fastened my trenchcoat on, armed myself with my umbrella and iPod, and marched out into the cold and towards Trafalgar Square for my morning constitutional. I strode past Downing Street, noting the guards with assault rifles- a new development in the age of terrorism- and on towards the Tate Britain, where we were to find our paintings to do a presentation on for Art and Architecture. The Tate was interesting, although I found myself more interested in the paintings depicting nature scenes or apocalyptic battles and revelations than the innumerable portraits of aristocrats. In the main hall of the museum, an artist had taken a British Seahawk fighter jet and suspended it, nose-down, from the ceiling in an attempt to state... something. Don't look at me; modern art is not my forte. The rest of the day was spent celebrating Hillary's birthday with two rousing rounds of King's Cup before it was pub 'o clock. I stayed for two pubs, then decided I'd had enough. I don't drink anymore, having absolutely no head for alcohol, and the pubs are so loud I can't make myself heard anyway, so the entertainment value is very low. Nick was kind enough to walk me back, and so I went to bed around one in the morning.
On Saturday I went to Harrods, and I have to say, the old adage about being able to buy everything from a needle to an elephant there is (mostly) true. The elephants aren't there anymore, but you can buy a French Bulldog puppy, raised especially for Harrods, for 2,500 pounds. Also present are perfume for your dog, so it can smell like cookies instead of the animal that it is; woolly mammoth tusks; fossils from the Green River Shale; an 80,000-pound underwater jetski that pulls you along behind it; Harrods-brand lead ropes for your horse; Giorgi Armani clothing for your baby, toddler, or child; a Go-Kart modeled after an antique racecar; a massive stuffed rhino for your spoiled kid to clamber over; every high-end brand of clothing known to man; Victorian writing desks; an original engraving by Rembrandt; and Legos. I, being a tremendous nerd, ignored the clothes and makeup entirely and gravitated towards the fossils, antique furniture, Legos, and riding equipment. Unfortunately there are no pictures of the incredible interior- the main escalator room is decorated like an Ancient Egyptian tomb- because Harrods doesn't allow photography, and I didn't want to be escorted out by their green-suited security guards.
I'm sorry, I have to go off on a tangent about Legos here. All the Lego sets they had were themed, like 'City' or 'Atlantis' or 'Farm,' and nowhere in the entire place did I see any way to buy just plain, non-themed Legos. The entire fun of Legos is in building what's in the manual once, losing the manual entirely in your room and never finding it again, and ripping up your creation and chucking the pieces into your giant pot of Legos so that you can build whatever your feverish little kiddy brain can dream up. Kids today don't have that ability anymore; the pieces are themed and only go with each other. No more can you build Vanderbilt-esque mansions guarded by knights and cowboys riding dragons and horses, with fighter jets and spaceships out back, or reenact the Great Battle of the Bedstead where the evil knight (evil because his face was fixed in a plastic snarl) assaulted the flying pirate ship for the love of the fair astronaut who piloted it. Kids can't do that, and it makes me so incredibly sad.
The science toys section, I'm sorry to say, made me want to hurl. Girls can't be interested in science of their own volition anymore; they must be marketed to, with such glurge-inducing kits as 'learn chemistry through making your own bath soaps' or 'inspect the different properties of minerals through making jewelry.' What happened to girls wanting to learn about science because knowing how your world works is fascinating, not because you get to make bath soaps or jewelry? What happened to knowledge for the sake of knowledge? Also there was a special 'girl's toys' room, which was full of Barbies and dolls and dress-up clothes, but there was no similarly gender-stereotyped 'boy's toys' room.
If I have a daughter, my kid will have Barbies if she wants them, and American Girl dolls, but I will make damn sure that she has science kits and Legos and RC cars and books if she wants those too. My kid will not be a part of this ridiculous dumbing down of girls because of this 'pretty pretty princess' movement, where girls and women are treated like fragile alien creatures only interested in fashion and pink things and appearance, instead of, oh, I don't know, people.
Ahem. Rant over.
I could've done without that bit.
On Wednesday we had British Art and Architecture and Shakespeare. In Art and Architecture, we went to the Soane Museum and the Wallace Collection. The Soane was bizarre, housed as it was in a home that seemed to have been inhabited by a madman: Soane himself. Paintings were hidden behind false walls, domes piled upon domes in the center, and beneath the ground level a strange crypt had been built to hold the sarcophagus of Seti II. Barnaby wasn't memorably enlivened by the environment, but he did perk up when we went to the Wallace Collection, which housed beautiful paintings and an incredible collection of arms and armor sold to the Wallace family by a Prussian nobleman. Me being me, I gravitated to the armor and arms, and Barnaby and I had a nice conversation about whether such things could really be considered 'art.' The insane thing was that this massive manor had been built as a second country home for the family to stay in while they went duck-shooting. It wasn't even their main home! Shakespeare, as always, was wonderful, and we got into memorable debates over whether or not Hotspur was supposed to be comedic or tragic. All agreed that we were ashamed of our countrymen who had laughed at Hotspur's death scene, and the girls were unanimous that the actor that played Hal was, quote-unquote, 'beautiful.'
Nothing of much interest happened on Thursday besides having an absolutely lovely dinner with a family friend, and so I shall skip straight to Friday. The day dawned cold, foggy, and drizzly: perfect London weather. I rose late, had toast and hot chocolate, fastened my trenchcoat on, armed myself with my umbrella and iPod, and marched out into the cold and towards Trafalgar Square for my morning constitutional. I strode past Downing Street, noting the guards with assault rifles- a new development in the age of terrorism- and on towards the Tate Britain, where we were to find our paintings to do a presentation on for Art and Architecture. The Tate was interesting, although I found myself more interested in the paintings depicting nature scenes or apocalyptic battles and revelations than the innumerable portraits of aristocrats. In the main hall of the museum, an artist had taken a British Seahawk fighter jet and suspended it, nose-down, from the ceiling in an attempt to state... something. Don't look at me; modern art is not my forte. The rest of the day was spent celebrating Hillary's birthday with two rousing rounds of King's Cup before it was pub 'o clock. I stayed for two pubs, then decided I'd had enough. I don't drink anymore, having absolutely no head for alcohol, and the pubs are so loud I can't make myself heard anyway, so the entertainment value is very low. Nick was kind enough to walk me back, and so I went to bed around one in the morning.
On Saturday I went to Harrods, and I have to say, the old adage about being able to buy everything from a needle to an elephant there is (mostly) true. The elephants aren't there anymore, but you can buy a French Bulldog puppy, raised especially for Harrods, for 2,500 pounds. Also present are perfume for your dog, so it can smell like cookies instead of the animal that it is; woolly mammoth tusks; fossils from the Green River Shale; an 80,000-pound underwater jetski that pulls you along behind it; Harrods-brand lead ropes for your horse; Giorgi Armani clothing for your baby, toddler, or child; a Go-Kart modeled after an antique racecar; a massive stuffed rhino for your spoiled kid to clamber over; every high-end brand of clothing known to man; Victorian writing desks; an original engraving by Rembrandt; and Legos. I, being a tremendous nerd, ignored the clothes and makeup entirely and gravitated towards the fossils, antique furniture, Legos, and riding equipment. Unfortunately there are no pictures of the incredible interior- the main escalator room is decorated like an Ancient Egyptian tomb- because Harrods doesn't allow photography, and I didn't want to be escorted out by their green-suited security guards.
I'm sorry, I have to go off on a tangent about Legos here. All the Lego sets they had were themed, like 'City' or 'Atlantis' or 'Farm,' and nowhere in the entire place did I see any way to buy just plain, non-themed Legos. The entire fun of Legos is in building what's in the manual once, losing the manual entirely in your room and never finding it again, and ripping up your creation and chucking the pieces into your giant pot of Legos so that you can build whatever your feverish little kiddy brain can dream up. Kids today don't have that ability anymore; the pieces are themed and only go with each other. No more can you build Vanderbilt-esque mansions guarded by knights and cowboys riding dragons and horses, with fighter jets and spaceships out back, or reenact the Great Battle of the Bedstead where the evil knight (evil because his face was fixed in a plastic snarl) assaulted the flying pirate ship for the love of the fair astronaut who piloted it. Kids can't do that, and it makes me so incredibly sad.
The science toys section, I'm sorry to say, made me want to hurl. Girls can't be interested in science of their own volition anymore; they must be marketed to, with such glurge-inducing kits as 'learn chemistry through making your own bath soaps' or 'inspect the different properties of minerals through making jewelry.' What happened to girls wanting to learn about science because knowing how your world works is fascinating, not because you get to make bath soaps or jewelry? What happened to knowledge for the sake of knowledge? Also there was a special 'girl's toys' room, which was full of Barbies and dolls and dress-up clothes, but there was no similarly gender-stereotyped 'boy's toys' room.
If I have a daughter, my kid will have Barbies if she wants them, and American Girl dolls, but I will make damn sure that she has science kits and Legos and RC cars and books if she wants those too. My kid will not be a part of this ridiculous dumbing down of girls because of this 'pretty pretty princess' movement, where girls and women are treated like fragile alien creatures only interested in fashion and pink things and appearance, instead of, oh, I don't know, people.
Ahem. Rant over.
Day 23 Pictures
Everyone loves Abraham Lincoln, especially the Brits, who've got his statue in the same vicinity as Winston Churchill's, Richard the Lionheart's, and all the Edwards'.
The outside of the Abbey.
The stonework over the main entrance into the Abbey, which is crazy detailed.
The 'amazing' memorial to the British civil services in India I mentioned.
The chancel of the Abbey, which is where the monks would come together to debate and discuss. Unfortunately the glass isn't original; a lot of it was blown apart in the Blitz.
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Days 23
On Day 23 (Sunday) I finally got inside Westminster Abbey, but they took their pound of flesh by requiring twelve pounds to get inside the Abbey, even with the student discount applied. I'm starting to think I should ask if I can get twice the discount applied for being both a student and disabled, although somehow I think that wouldn't go over quite so well.
Anyway, I hate to say it, but the Abbey was disappointing, and they refuse to allow pictures, so my sarcasm-laden descriptions will have to do. It's not so much that the building or the graves are bad, because they're truly not, but because when you go in you are immediately prevented from communing with the building or the history because all you can hear is the lowing of the tourists milling, cattle-like, around the Abbey holding audio tours up to their ears and telling their children,
"That's a king buried there," and "Is it Newton that discovered evolution?" when Charles Darwin's grave is right there and you're walking on it right now-
Excuse me.
I feel that the experience of Westminster could be fixed by instituting an hourly quota on the amount of people allowed in, so you're not constantly buffeted about by irritating tourists who insist on racing through the entire thing as though they'll get a medal for fastest completion at the end.
Anyway, Westminster Abbey has had a church on its property since 1080, when Edward the Confessor decided that an Abbey was needed. His patronage of the building (which is huge by any measure you care to name) is the justification for him being named a saint. He's buried inside the Abbey in his own shrine behind the high altar, but tourists aren't allowed to enter it due to the fragility of the shrine. He's surrounded by an incredible amount of monarchs, at least five: Richard II (who was deposed and subsequently murdered), Henry III, Henry II, and so on and so forth. You proceed past it into the Lady Chapel, which houses the Tudors. Mary I and Elizabeth I share the same casket, although I have to admit I don't think either one of them would be pleased with lying next to each other for all eternity. Someone had left flowers on the casket. I was pleased that a small memorial to the victims of conscience who died for their beliefs in both Mary and Elizabeth's reigns was present.
Poet's Corner was a marvel, though. Tennyson is buried there, and Chaucer, and T.S. Eliot, and Keats, and Milton, and Coleridge, and it's pretty much what every English major dreams of. After Poet's Corner, I drifted out into the cloister, where the oldest door in England is located. It was installed in the Abbey in 1080. I touched it for a bit, and for a moment I felt that sort of historical communion I'd been looking for and had been denied by the bleating crowds. That sounds awfully metaphysical and touchy-feely, I know, but I'm the author and what I say goes. After the door, I ducked into the Westminster Abbey Museum, which had that dusty smell peculiar to museums without many visitors: one of my favorite smells in the world. The centerpiece of their exhibit was, for me, a Roman sarcophagus which had been dug up and reused for a second Christian burial of another person in Anglo-Saxon times. Even in the first millennium people were re-purposing antiques. They also had a mannequin of Horatio Nelson, said by his wife to be a tremendous likeness, dressed in Nelson's original clothes. I was unimpressed by Nelson's appearance and his height. They also had the oldest altarpiece in England, which miraculously survived the various persecutions and Cromwell's destruction of the churches. The details of Saint Peter's hands were incredibly lifelike, and for a moment it was a shock to think that someone nine centuries ago had done something so beautiful. We tend to view the people of the past, especially of the pre-medieval Dark Ages, as primitive or alien in some ways- less intelligent or artistic- when that's not the case at all, and it's funny the things that bring home just how much like us they were. I shouldn't even use 'like us'; they were us.
After mooching around in the Museum, I went back out to the cloister, and had to stop and goggle at a memorial to the British Civil Servants of India that said that they sacrificed mightily for king and country and empire, and they did such great works, and their name liveth forevermore, and stop me I am going to hurl. All I could think was that no one had apparently asked the Indians what they thought of memorializing their oppressors. This is a fairly recent memorial, too, unveiled during the current Queen's reign, so it's not as if they haven't had time to come to grips with their colonial legacy. Or not, in this case. Proceeding onward, I entered the front of the church.
In the center a slab of black Belgian marble reflected the light of a hundred candles and multiplied them into innumerable golden stars. Velvet ropes surrounded it, encasing the wreaths of red poppies that edged the Tomb: the only stone in the Abbey on which you are forbidden to walk. This was the Unknown Warrior, brought from the fields of France in state aboard the HMS Verdun, buried in a casket of oak from Hampton Court, a sword of the Royal Armory bound to the top.
The devastation of the First World War can perhaps be expressed in no better way than this. At the Unknown Warrior's internment, his honor guard were a hundred women. All had lost their husbands and all their sons in the war.
As for the Unknown Warrior, I feel like there's nothing I can say about him, or the people he represents, that can better his epitaph:
THEY BURIED HIM AMONG THE KINGS BECAUSE HE
HAD DONE GOOD TOWARD GOD AND TOWARD
HIS HOUSE
In silence, I left the Abbey and walked past the Cenotaph, past the blind stare of Douglas Haig's statue gazing towards Westminster and the accusing silence of the Tomb.
Anyway, I hate to say it, but the Abbey was disappointing, and they refuse to allow pictures, so my sarcasm-laden descriptions will have to do. It's not so much that the building or the graves are bad, because they're truly not, but because when you go in you are immediately prevented from communing with the building or the history because all you can hear is the lowing of the tourists milling, cattle-like, around the Abbey holding audio tours up to their ears and telling their children,
"That's a king buried there," and "Is it Newton that discovered evolution?" when Charles Darwin's grave is right there and you're walking on it right now-
Excuse me.
I feel that the experience of Westminster could be fixed by instituting an hourly quota on the amount of people allowed in, so you're not constantly buffeted about by irritating tourists who insist on racing through the entire thing as though they'll get a medal for fastest completion at the end.
Anyway, Westminster Abbey has had a church on its property since 1080, when Edward the Confessor decided that an Abbey was needed. His patronage of the building (which is huge by any measure you care to name) is the justification for him being named a saint. He's buried inside the Abbey in his own shrine behind the high altar, but tourists aren't allowed to enter it due to the fragility of the shrine. He's surrounded by an incredible amount of monarchs, at least five: Richard II (who was deposed and subsequently murdered), Henry III, Henry II, and so on and so forth. You proceed past it into the Lady Chapel, which houses the Tudors. Mary I and Elizabeth I share the same casket, although I have to admit I don't think either one of them would be pleased with lying next to each other for all eternity. Someone had left flowers on the casket. I was pleased that a small memorial to the victims of conscience who died for their beliefs in both Mary and Elizabeth's reigns was present.
Poet's Corner was a marvel, though. Tennyson is buried there, and Chaucer, and T.S. Eliot, and Keats, and Milton, and Coleridge, and it's pretty much what every English major dreams of. After Poet's Corner, I drifted out into the cloister, where the oldest door in England is located. It was installed in the Abbey in 1080. I touched it for a bit, and for a moment I felt that sort of historical communion I'd been looking for and had been denied by the bleating crowds. That sounds awfully metaphysical and touchy-feely, I know, but I'm the author and what I say goes. After the door, I ducked into the Westminster Abbey Museum, which had that dusty smell peculiar to museums without many visitors: one of my favorite smells in the world. The centerpiece of their exhibit was, for me, a Roman sarcophagus which had been dug up and reused for a second Christian burial of another person in Anglo-Saxon times. Even in the first millennium people were re-purposing antiques. They also had a mannequin of Horatio Nelson, said by his wife to be a tremendous likeness, dressed in Nelson's original clothes. I was unimpressed by Nelson's appearance and his height. They also had the oldest altarpiece in England, which miraculously survived the various persecutions and Cromwell's destruction of the churches. The details of Saint Peter's hands were incredibly lifelike, and for a moment it was a shock to think that someone nine centuries ago had done something so beautiful. We tend to view the people of the past, especially of the pre-medieval Dark Ages, as primitive or alien in some ways- less intelligent or artistic- when that's not the case at all, and it's funny the things that bring home just how much like us they were. I shouldn't even use 'like us'; they were us.
After mooching around in the Museum, I went back out to the cloister, and had to stop and goggle at a memorial to the British Civil Servants of India that said that they sacrificed mightily for king and country and empire, and they did such great works, and their name liveth forevermore, and stop me I am going to hurl. All I could think was that no one had apparently asked the Indians what they thought of memorializing their oppressors. This is a fairly recent memorial, too, unveiled during the current Queen's reign, so it's not as if they haven't had time to come to grips with their colonial legacy. Or not, in this case. Proceeding onward, I entered the front of the church.
In the center a slab of black Belgian marble reflected the light of a hundred candles and multiplied them into innumerable golden stars. Velvet ropes surrounded it, encasing the wreaths of red poppies that edged the Tomb: the only stone in the Abbey on which you are forbidden to walk. This was the Unknown Warrior, brought from the fields of France in state aboard the HMS Verdun, buried in a casket of oak from Hampton Court, a sword of the Royal Armory bound to the top.
The devastation of the First World War can perhaps be expressed in no better way than this. At the Unknown Warrior's internment, his honor guard were a hundred women. All had lost their husbands and all their sons in the war.
As for the Unknown Warrior, I feel like there's nothing I can say about him, or the people he represents, that can better his epitaph:
THEY BURIED HIM AMONG THE KINGS BECAUSE HE
HAD DONE GOOD TOWARD GOD AND TOWARD
HIS HOUSE
In silence, I left the Abbey and walked past the Cenotaph, past the blind stare of Douglas Haig's statue gazing towards Westminster and the accusing silence of the Tomb.
Saturday, September 18, 2010
Day 22
Today I got up at 11:30, had two bowls of Frosted Flakes (I will not call them 'Frosties,' no matter what the box says), got dressed, and took the Tube to the Tower of London. The Tower was an incredible experience, although the Norman White Tower, built in 1078 by William the Conqueror, was undergoing refurbishment and thus had ghastly plastic all over it. The ravens were there, of course, qwork-ing up a storm and fluttering about, their wings clipped so they could not fly away. The reason for this is the legend that if the ravens leave the Tower, the Tower will crumble, and the kingdom fall. I also went on a tour with one of the Beefeaters, or Yeoman Guards. These Yeoman Guards live on-site at the Tower inside the outer wall with their families, although, as our guide emphasized strongly, it's not for free. They still have to pay their council tax and utilities. I went inside the chapel of Saint Peter ad Vincula where Anne Boleyn and Lady Jane Grey are buried, but as the chapel is still a functioning church and a Beefeater was standing guard, I wasn't able to take pictures. After that, I entered the Jewel House, where the Crown Jewels of the United Kingdom are kept.
The Crown Jewels were beautiful, of course, although you aren't allowed to take pictures. There was a golden wine tureen, molded in the shape of a seashell, that held 144 bottles of wine in it; the Imperial Crown festooned with thousands of diamonds, thousands of dollars worth of gold, the ruby that supposedly belonged to Edward I, the Black Prince, and a sapphire allegedly from the ring of Edward the Confessor; the Imperial Scepter, capped with the largest high-quality cut diamond in the world; the Sword of Offering, dripping with emeralds; hundreds of millions of dollars worth of regalia all owned by one woman, who gained this wealth through no qualities of her own.
The Crown Jewels brought home to me a fundamental issue with Britain that I've been struggling with, though. The thing is, I love it here. I love their mass transport, their museums and galleries, their reverence for their own past, their humor, their tea and scones, their right to roam, their friendly pub culture, their nationalized health service, their lack of racism: so many things. If I could get a visa to return and stay here after graduation, I would.
But there's the one thing I just can't get over; why, in a country so full of smart people, do they continue to persist in having an aristocracy and a monarch, in perpetuating a system founded on giving wealth and power to people based on their blood, and not on what they do? For example, the Duke of Westminster is the sixth richest man in Britain and owns most of Central London, but he didn't achieve that through work; it was given to him because he was born to it, because a distant ancestor impressed a distant monarch and was given wealth in perpetuity. The aristocracy and the monarch don't do anything to receive their status; the monarch really doesn't do anything at all except open Parliament, give the running of the government to the Prime Minister, and live a life of luxury. And yes, she brings incredible amounts of money to the nation every year through tourism, but is that worth having a system where the common man can never hope to be at the top?
I know my ranting can be seen as hypocritical; after all, there have been reams of books written about how one's blood, and thus one's socio-economic status, determines one's outcome even- perhaps especially, in these last few years- in America. And I know that the whole 'some day, little Billy, even you can grow up to be President!' is, in the main, a comforting lie; if little Billy is born to a crack-addicted mother in the ghetto, does he really have any chance at all of becoming President or attaining wealth through hard work? But even if little Billy is born into poverty in the ghetto, there is always a chance, however small, that he could become something better. He could go to the library and self-educate. He could be lucky enough to have a teacher truly take an interest in him. He could gain scholarships. For an American child, there is always a chance- infinitesimally small as it may be- to be better than the generation before.
But in Britain, you can never be the Queen, or the Duke of Westminster. The Imperial Crown, and all the wealth and power contained in it, will never sit on your head. You may go to Eton if your parents are wealthy enough to pay the fifteen thousand pounds a year necessary, and to Cambridge if you're smart, but the power of the aristocracy, of the monarchy, will never be yours, and that's the fundamental difference for me.
Pictures:
This is the largest piece of Roman wall still standing in London. It originally stood around the Roman city of Londinium, which became modern London. The area within those walls is today known as the City, and serves as the financial and business district of London. The lower half, with the cross-pieces of brick, is the Roman part; the sections above were added on during the medieval era.
This is Traitor's Gate, which leads to the Thames. Originally built to allow the Norman kings access to their home at the White Palace and for supplies to enter the Tower, it found a new purpose as an entryway for famous prisoners who were said to be traitors to the Crown. These included Anne Boleyn, Katherine Howard, Lady Jane Grey, Thomas More, and Thomas Cranmer.
The exterior of the White Tower.
This is a memorial standing on the site where most of the scaffolds used for private executions at the Tower were set up. It bears the names of all executed on Tower Green, which is a surprisingly small number; most of those condemned to die at the Tower had public executions a little to the north outside the Tower, on Tower Hill.
A royal suit of armor, although I've forgotten for which king it was made; I think one of the post-Restoration ones, possibly Charles II. Anyway, check out the amazing intaglio work which covers the entire thing.
The Crown Jewels were beautiful, of course, although you aren't allowed to take pictures. There was a golden wine tureen, molded in the shape of a seashell, that held 144 bottles of wine in it; the Imperial Crown festooned with thousands of diamonds, thousands of dollars worth of gold, the ruby that supposedly belonged to Edward I, the Black Prince, and a sapphire allegedly from the ring of Edward the Confessor; the Imperial Scepter, capped with the largest high-quality cut diamond in the world; the Sword of Offering, dripping with emeralds; hundreds of millions of dollars worth of regalia all owned by one woman, who gained this wealth through no qualities of her own.
The Crown Jewels brought home to me a fundamental issue with Britain that I've been struggling with, though. The thing is, I love it here. I love their mass transport, their museums and galleries, their reverence for their own past, their humor, their tea and scones, their right to roam, their friendly pub culture, their nationalized health service, their lack of racism: so many things. If I could get a visa to return and stay here after graduation, I would.
But there's the one thing I just can't get over; why, in a country so full of smart people, do they continue to persist in having an aristocracy and a monarch, in perpetuating a system founded on giving wealth and power to people based on their blood, and not on what they do? For example, the Duke of Westminster is the sixth richest man in Britain and owns most of Central London, but he didn't achieve that through work; it was given to him because he was born to it, because a distant ancestor impressed a distant monarch and was given wealth in perpetuity. The aristocracy and the monarch don't do anything to receive their status; the monarch really doesn't do anything at all except open Parliament, give the running of the government to the Prime Minister, and live a life of luxury. And yes, she brings incredible amounts of money to the nation every year through tourism, but is that worth having a system where the common man can never hope to be at the top?
I know my ranting can be seen as hypocritical; after all, there have been reams of books written about how one's blood, and thus one's socio-economic status, determines one's outcome even- perhaps especially, in these last few years- in America. And I know that the whole 'some day, little Billy, even you can grow up to be President!' is, in the main, a comforting lie; if little Billy is born to a crack-addicted mother in the ghetto, does he really have any chance at all of becoming President or attaining wealth through hard work? But even if little Billy is born into poverty in the ghetto, there is always a chance, however small, that he could become something better. He could go to the library and self-educate. He could be lucky enough to have a teacher truly take an interest in him. He could gain scholarships. For an American child, there is always a chance- infinitesimally small as it may be- to be better than the generation before.
But in Britain, you can never be the Queen, or the Duke of Westminster. The Imperial Crown, and all the wealth and power contained in it, will never sit on your head. You may go to Eton if your parents are wealthy enough to pay the fifteen thousand pounds a year necessary, and to Cambridge if you're smart, but the power of the aristocracy, of the monarchy, will never be yours, and that's the fundamental difference for me.
Pictures:
This is the largest piece of Roman wall still standing in London. It originally stood around the Roman city of Londinium, which became modern London. The area within those walls is today known as the City, and serves as the financial and business district of London. The lower half, with the cross-pieces of brick, is the Roman part; the sections above were added on during the medieval era.
This is Traitor's Gate, which leads to the Thames. Originally built to allow the Norman kings access to their home at the White Palace and for supplies to enter the Tower, it found a new purpose as an entryway for famous prisoners who were said to be traitors to the Crown. These included Anne Boleyn, Katherine Howard, Lady Jane Grey, Thomas More, and Thomas Cranmer.
The exterior of the White Tower.
This is a memorial standing on the site where most of the scaffolds used for private executions at the Tower were set up. It bears the names of all executed on Tower Green, which is a surprisingly small number; most of those condemned to die at the Tower had public executions a little to the north outside the Tower, on Tower Hill.
A royal suit of armor, although I've forgotten for which king it was made; I think one of the post-Restoration ones, possibly Charles II. Anyway, check out the amazing intaglio work which covers the entire thing.
Days 20 and 21
I thought I'd start by notifying everyone that the pictures from the Imperial War Museum on Day 17 have been posted in that section, so go check them out.
There's not much to report on Day 20; we had another British Politics and Literature class, wherein we discussed the problems of representative democracy: earmarks and pork-barrel spending. After an hour and a half of discussion, however, Dr. King saw that our ability to comprehend was beginning to flag, and so we digressed into a discussion of the supposed destruction of morality in British youth in the past years, from the pitched street battles between Mods and Rockers in the Sixties to the random stabbings of today. When pressed, Dr. King admitted that although he was classified as a nerd in his youth, he leaned towards being a Mod. Mods wore jeans rolled tight, cut shirts, and shoes called 'winklepickers,' so-called because they resembled a tool one uses to pry winkles (a type of shellfish) out of their shells. Then it was back to Orwell, and next week we begin Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. V for Vendetta by Alan Moore has also been added to the syllabus, which I'm excited about, seeing as I'm a huge comics nerd who loves Alan Moore.
Day 21 was a Friday, and thus a free day. I decided to go to Westminster Abbey and Saint Paul's Cathedral. As I wandered down Whitehall Street from Trafalgar Square, I noticed that the Horse Guards were mounted, and so asked permission to pet their horses for a second, thanked them, and then meandered on my way. If I have to look like a stupid American tourist cooing over the poor Guards' steeds, I can at least be polite about it. The tourist area of Whitehall, which houses Westminster, the Eye, and Parliament, was teeming with people all there for the Pope's visit. Westminster was closed for the Pope's visit, and I got scammed out of fifteen pounds by these two women in front of the Abbey that represented themselves as being part of a charity. I'm not so much angry about the fifteen pounds (although it does hurt, since that's my weekly grocery budget and I'm also a miser in personality), but more about how they're so lazy as to try and get something for nothing and how they made me feel stupid. I can tolerate almost anything better than feeling stupid. So grumbling to myself about how horrible I felt, I continued on down the Victoria Embankment on the north side of the Thames, stopping to snap pictures of the memorials for the Battle of Britain personnel and the members of the R.A.F. that died in both World War One and Two.
After returning to the flat and having lunch, I departed again, this time for Saint Paul's Cathedral. A massive Anglican cathedral, it was designed by Christopher Wren, and has the bodies of both the Duke of Wellington and Admiral Nelson in its crypts. It cost 9.50 to get inside even with the student discount, but I suppose I can't be angry as it costs 7 million pounds a year to keep the church in good condition. Anyway, it was beautiful; gilt was everywhere, and the high domes filled the space with light and air. After wandering a bit, I took two hundred and fifty-seven steps up to the first of three galleries: the Whispering Gallery. Located inside the dome, this gallery is so precisely designed that someone whispering from one side of the gallery can be heard from the other side. I can't say I enjoyed the Gallery, as heights are not my strong suit, but I persevered and took the hundred and fifty steps to the Stone Gallery. This was located on the outside of the dome, and gave incredible views of London's surrounding boroughs. There's another gallery, the Golden Gallery, located at the very top of the dome, but my courage failed on the ascent and I had to come down.
As Rachel said, 'pics or it didn't happen.' So here is proof of my newly trench-coated status.
The approach to Saint Paul's from the side.
A shot of the interior. All of these interior shots are kind-of-sort-of against the rules of the church, but I took them anyway. If a team of masked bishops show up and take me away, just remember I did it for you.
Crazy awesome mosaics and gilt.
A shot from the Stone Gallery. In the middle of the picture you can see the replica of Shakespeare's Globe, the building with the only thatched roof in all of London. After the Great Fire, thatched roofs were banned in the city, and so Sam Wannamaker, the American actor who fought to rebuild the Globe, had to get an exception to the law in order to have his theater.
Also I've decided I want the Pope to leave. While he's here, the Tubes are a mess, which means that I don't get to hear their soft rumble beneath our flat as they pass. I've grown used to it, even find it comforting, and had a hard time falling asleep last night without the sound of London's subterranean heartbeat.
There's not much to report on Day 20; we had another British Politics and Literature class, wherein we discussed the problems of representative democracy: earmarks and pork-barrel spending. After an hour and a half of discussion, however, Dr. King saw that our ability to comprehend was beginning to flag, and so we digressed into a discussion of the supposed destruction of morality in British youth in the past years, from the pitched street battles between Mods and Rockers in the Sixties to the random stabbings of today. When pressed, Dr. King admitted that although he was classified as a nerd in his youth, he leaned towards being a Mod. Mods wore jeans rolled tight, cut shirts, and shoes called 'winklepickers,' so-called because they resembled a tool one uses to pry winkles (a type of shellfish) out of their shells. Then it was back to Orwell, and next week we begin Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. V for Vendetta by Alan Moore has also been added to the syllabus, which I'm excited about, seeing as I'm a huge comics nerd who loves Alan Moore.
Day 21 was a Friday, and thus a free day. I decided to go to Westminster Abbey and Saint Paul's Cathedral. As I wandered down Whitehall Street from Trafalgar Square, I noticed that the Horse Guards were mounted, and so asked permission to pet their horses for a second, thanked them, and then meandered on my way. If I have to look like a stupid American tourist cooing over the poor Guards' steeds, I can at least be polite about it. The tourist area of Whitehall, which houses Westminster, the Eye, and Parliament, was teeming with people all there for the Pope's visit. Westminster was closed for the Pope's visit, and I got scammed out of fifteen pounds by these two women in front of the Abbey that represented themselves as being part of a charity. I'm not so much angry about the fifteen pounds (although it does hurt, since that's my weekly grocery budget and I'm also a miser in personality), but more about how they're so lazy as to try and get something for nothing and how they made me feel stupid. I can tolerate almost anything better than feeling stupid. So grumbling to myself about how horrible I felt, I continued on down the Victoria Embankment on the north side of the Thames, stopping to snap pictures of the memorials for the Battle of Britain personnel and the members of the R.A.F. that died in both World War One and Two.
After returning to the flat and having lunch, I departed again, this time for Saint Paul's Cathedral. A massive Anglican cathedral, it was designed by Christopher Wren, and has the bodies of both the Duke of Wellington and Admiral Nelson in its crypts. It cost 9.50 to get inside even with the student discount, but I suppose I can't be angry as it costs 7 million pounds a year to keep the church in good condition. Anyway, it was beautiful; gilt was everywhere, and the high domes filled the space with light and air. After wandering a bit, I took two hundred and fifty-seven steps up to the first of three galleries: the Whispering Gallery. Located inside the dome, this gallery is so precisely designed that someone whispering from one side of the gallery can be heard from the other side. I can't say I enjoyed the Gallery, as heights are not my strong suit, but I persevered and took the hundred and fifty steps to the Stone Gallery. This was located on the outside of the dome, and gave incredible views of London's surrounding boroughs. There's another gallery, the Golden Gallery, located at the very top of the dome, but my courage failed on the ascent and I had to come down.
As Rachel said, 'pics or it didn't happen.' So here is proof of my newly trench-coated status.
The approach to Saint Paul's from the side.
A shot of the interior. All of these interior shots are kind-of-sort-of against the rules of the church, but I took them anyway. If a team of masked bishops show up and take me away, just remember I did it for you.
Crazy awesome mosaics and gilt.
A shot from the Stone Gallery. In the middle of the picture you can see the replica of Shakespeare's Globe, the building with the only thatched roof in all of London. After the Great Fire, thatched roofs were banned in the city, and so Sam Wannamaker, the American actor who fought to rebuild the Globe, had to get an exception to the law in order to have his theater.Also I've decided I want the Pope to leave. While he's here, the Tubes are a mess, which means that I don't get to hear their soft rumble beneath our flat as they pass. I've grown used to it, even find it comforting, and had a hard time falling asleep last night without the sound of London's subterranean heartbeat.
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Days 18 and 19
Day 18 was rather slow. We had our British Life and Culture class for three hours in the morning and discussed Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. It was an inspired discussion, and Susie delivered a wonderful biography of Woolf for our information. After that, we returned to the flat and sat around until we had to leave for the play we were required to see for British Life and Culture: Punk Rock at the Lyric Hammersmith. It's a play about the pressure-cooker environment British schoolchildren live in, especially as they are forced to choose the path their life must take at a comparatively early age. When they're sixteen, they take exams known as A-levels, and it's one's results on these exams that determine what school one goes to. However, these A-levels aren't general knowledge tests like the SAT or ACT; rather, they're on subjects: history, mathematics, literature, foreign languages, etc. Choosing what A-levels you want to take is effectively choosing a major. Those that take literature A-levels will be English majors, people subjected to the math A-levels will be a scientist of some sort, and so on and so forth. So British kids, at the age of sixteen, are expected to know exactly what they want to do for the rest of their lives, and there's no changing it once you're done. Anyway, like all plays about the foibles of the education system anywhere, it ended with a school shooting, which I'd predicted would happen from the first scene. Oh, well.
On Day 19, we had three hours of Art and Architecture. Barnaby (our professors requested that we call them by their first name, which I have to admit is a little weird for me) was a lot more interesting today, as he seemed a lot more enthusiastic about teaching us. We walked by Westminster Abbey, but didn't go in (as it apparently costs twelve pounds to do so), then to Covent Gardens, and finally to Saint Mary le Strand. Saint Mary le Strand, being a Baroque piece, is festooned with stone vases around the roof, and in 1802 one of the vases fell off and killed someone. After Art and Architecture, we had three hours of Shakespeare, which I love. Partly because our professor, Jean, is utterly mad and completely wonderful, and also because I just love Shakespeare. After that, Erin, Becca, and I went to a shop that was having a sale, and I got a trench coat for twenty-two pounds. I'm down to two hundred and nineteen pounds, but I don't care: A) I have a trench coat, and B) tomorrow we get our stipend and I'll be back up to having two hundred and ninety pounds.
In forty-five minutes, we have to leave for Henry IV Part 1 at the Globe. Standing up for three hours in the rain, yay.
On Day 19, we had three hours of Art and Architecture. Barnaby (our professors requested that we call them by their first name, which I have to admit is a little weird for me) was a lot more interesting today, as he seemed a lot more enthusiastic about teaching us. We walked by Westminster Abbey, but didn't go in (as it apparently costs twelve pounds to do so), then to Covent Gardens, and finally to Saint Mary le Strand. Saint Mary le Strand, being a Baroque piece, is festooned with stone vases around the roof, and in 1802 one of the vases fell off and killed someone. After Art and Architecture, we had three hours of Shakespeare, which I love. Partly because our professor, Jean, is utterly mad and completely wonderful, and also because I just love Shakespeare. After that, Erin, Becca, and I went to a shop that was having a sale, and I got a trench coat for twenty-two pounds. I'm down to two hundred and nineteen pounds, but I don't care: A) I have a trench coat, and B) tomorrow we get our stipend and I'll be back up to having two hundred and ninety pounds.
In forty-five minutes, we have to leave for Henry IV Part 1 at the Globe. Standing up for three hours in the rain, yay.
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Days 16 and 17
I woke on Day 17 newly introduced to the bane that has plagued my life these past three days: acute laryngitis. My throat felt like it had swollen shut overnight, and my voice (none too robust at the best of times) had been reduced to a whisper. I decided to spend the day in quiet (or lazy, depending on your point of view) contemplation, reading Henry IV Part 1 for our Shakespeare class. Erin and I went to St. George's Gardens to read. St. George's Gardens are a park that was built over a massive cemetery for the congregation of St. George's Church, seeing as there was no longer any room in the churchyard for bodies. At first, the congregation balked, not wanting to be buried in what they saw as unhallowed ground, but after an upper-class British noble took the brave step of being buried there, suddenly it was all okay. I presume they could tell that his soul had still managed to attain eternal bliss despite being buried outside the confines of the churchyard. Anyway, the area is now a small park where people take their dogs on walks and sit around and read books. That was the bulk of my day. Fascinating, I know.
Day 17 was much more interesting, as I finally made it out to the Imperial War Museum and to see Les Miserables. Going out to the Museum by myself gave me a chance to practice my Tube etiquette: if you are lucky enough to have a seat, you must stare at the middle distance, do not make eye contact, and say nothing until you arrive at your destination. If you are standing, hold onto the poles, try your best not to make physical contact with anyone, stare at the floor, and say nothing. Keeping an impression of staying separate from everything around you is helped greatly by wearing an mp3 player.
The Museum was amazing, and had a wonderful exhibition on the construction of the newest Great War cemetery. After wandering around amongst the V2 missiles and Jagdpanther tanks, I descended to the basement to walk through their sections on the World Wars. I only made it through most of World War One before I had to leave, but what a time it was. As you enter, there is a clock and an electronic dial displayed. Every minute on the clock is another life claimed by war in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and the dial stands in the hundreds of millions. While the museum does discuss how the advent of industrial warfare, and thus industrial slaughter of human beings, destroyed the notion of individual heroism and glory brought by sacrifice, as a British museum, it engages in its own propaganda. Douglas Haig and the High Command are glorified, despite their own separation from the experiences of the common soldier; the trauma of shell-shock is glossed over (the British are still having trouble coming to terms with the fact that they condemned hundreds of men to die for what they thought cowardice, but we now know to be PTSD), and very little emphasis is placed on the emotions of the soldiers: rather on simple recitations of battle plans.
Not for them are the films of men shaking years after the war is done, or unable to hear any word but 'bomb,' at which point they're compelled to fling themselves beneath the bed, or thrown into insane terror at the mere sight of a Pickelhaube. I make it sound like I didn't enjoy the experience, which isn't true; I enjoyed the museum greatly, I just wish that they could've said more about the cost that was inflicted, even upon the survivors, who consoled themselves with the knowledge that at least they'd helped end war. But even that consolation was taken away at the outbreak of World War Two.
As for Les Mis, Sweet Jebus it was great, and I was so mad when it was finished because I could have sat there listening to them sing for hours more. The actor they had for Jean Valjean was magnificent, and I actually enjoyed his version of 'Bring Him Home' far more than Cameron Mackintosh's, the man who originated the role of Jean Valjean and the Phantom both. He was relatively young from what I could tell, but he pulled off being old and weak at the end brilliantly. The environments were incredible: gobos created the illusion of moonlight falling across the floor; bridges over the Seine dropped in from the flyspace; enormous moving barricades came sliding in from the sides. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the young Cosette's 'Castle on a Cloud,' considering that I find most children's singing voices to be the equivalent of nails on a chalkboard. Gavroche, however, was still annoying, although I'm starting to think that having an annoying voice must be in the casting directions, as I've never heard a Gavroche that didn't sound like he was being strangled.
Somehow I didn't cry, which surprised me, having as I do a predilection for heroic sacrifice. I think part of this is because I was seated up so high that I could see the actor playing Enjolras moving around on the back of the barricade after his death. Enjolras, for those unacquainted with Les Mis, is the leader of the revolutionary students, and after the massacre at the barricades, the barricades rotate slowly to reveal his body draped over the French flag as an instrumental version of 'Bring Him Home' plays. If I hadn't been able to see Enjolras getting into position, I'm sure I would've bawled. It didn't matter, however; the two ladies behind me were crying enough for the entire theater. I was barely able to hear the finale because of how loud they were weeping. Still, it was a wonderful experience, and if I had an extra 44 pounds I'd gladly pay to see it again.
Now to see Phantom of the Opera while I'm here.
Photographs:
The massive guns placed outside the Imperial War Museum. These fired 15-inch shells, seen to either side of the barrels. One comes from HMS Roberts, another from HMS Ramillies.
A piece of the Berlin Wall.
A piece of British World War One propaganda. Called 'The Greater Game,' it depicts a young man on the pitch being asked if he will join the 'greater game' of war to save England's freedom, thus rendering industrial warfare a benign thing comparable to cricket.
The soldiers of World War One came up with their own names for their trenches, as 'forward trench,' 'reserve trench,' and 'communications trench' aren't that helpful in distinguishing one trench from another. Also, no one can say humor doesn't survive war.
Part of 'The Trenches' exhibition, where you walk through a mock-up of a trench with realistic fecal smells wafting in from above. You're also assaulted on all sides by the high-pitched screech and thunder of shells coming in. It's a good multimedia exhibition, a lot better than the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust's.
Day 17 was much more interesting, as I finally made it out to the Imperial War Museum and to see Les Miserables. Going out to the Museum by myself gave me a chance to practice my Tube etiquette: if you are lucky enough to have a seat, you must stare at the middle distance, do not make eye contact, and say nothing until you arrive at your destination. If you are standing, hold onto the poles, try your best not to make physical contact with anyone, stare at the floor, and say nothing. Keeping an impression of staying separate from everything around you is helped greatly by wearing an mp3 player.
The Museum was amazing, and had a wonderful exhibition on the construction of the newest Great War cemetery. After wandering around amongst the V2 missiles and Jagdpanther tanks, I descended to the basement to walk through their sections on the World Wars. I only made it through most of World War One before I had to leave, but what a time it was. As you enter, there is a clock and an electronic dial displayed. Every minute on the clock is another life claimed by war in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and the dial stands in the hundreds of millions. While the museum does discuss how the advent of industrial warfare, and thus industrial slaughter of human beings, destroyed the notion of individual heroism and glory brought by sacrifice, as a British museum, it engages in its own propaganda. Douglas Haig and the High Command are glorified, despite their own separation from the experiences of the common soldier; the trauma of shell-shock is glossed over (the British are still having trouble coming to terms with the fact that they condemned hundreds of men to die for what they thought cowardice, but we now know to be PTSD), and very little emphasis is placed on the emotions of the soldiers: rather on simple recitations of battle plans.
Not for them are the films of men shaking years after the war is done, or unable to hear any word but 'bomb,' at which point they're compelled to fling themselves beneath the bed, or thrown into insane terror at the mere sight of a Pickelhaube. I make it sound like I didn't enjoy the experience, which isn't true; I enjoyed the museum greatly, I just wish that they could've said more about the cost that was inflicted, even upon the survivors, who consoled themselves with the knowledge that at least they'd helped end war. But even that consolation was taken away at the outbreak of World War Two.
As for Les Mis, Sweet Jebus it was great, and I was so mad when it was finished because I could have sat there listening to them sing for hours more. The actor they had for Jean Valjean was magnificent, and I actually enjoyed his version of 'Bring Him Home' far more than Cameron Mackintosh's, the man who originated the role of Jean Valjean and the Phantom both. He was relatively young from what I could tell, but he pulled off being old and weak at the end brilliantly. The environments were incredible: gobos created the illusion of moonlight falling across the floor; bridges over the Seine dropped in from the flyspace; enormous moving barricades came sliding in from the sides. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the young Cosette's 'Castle on a Cloud,' considering that I find most children's singing voices to be the equivalent of nails on a chalkboard. Gavroche, however, was still annoying, although I'm starting to think that having an annoying voice must be in the casting directions, as I've never heard a Gavroche that didn't sound like he was being strangled.
Somehow I didn't cry, which surprised me, having as I do a predilection for heroic sacrifice. I think part of this is because I was seated up so high that I could see the actor playing Enjolras moving around on the back of the barricade after his death. Enjolras, for those unacquainted with Les Mis, is the leader of the revolutionary students, and after the massacre at the barricades, the barricades rotate slowly to reveal his body draped over the French flag as an instrumental version of 'Bring Him Home' plays. If I hadn't been able to see Enjolras getting into position, I'm sure I would've bawled. It didn't matter, however; the two ladies behind me were crying enough for the entire theater. I was barely able to hear the finale because of how loud they were weeping. Still, it was a wonderful experience, and if I had an extra 44 pounds I'd gladly pay to see it again.
Now to see Phantom of the Opera while I'm here.
Photographs:
The massive guns placed outside the Imperial War Museum. These fired 15-inch shells, seen to either side of the barrels. One comes from HMS Roberts, another from HMS Ramillies.
A piece of the Berlin Wall.
A piece of British World War One propaganda. Called 'The Greater Game,' it depicts a young man on the pitch being asked if he will join the 'greater game' of war to save England's freedom, thus rendering industrial warfare a benign thing comparable to cricket.
The soldiers of World War One came up with their own names for their trenches, as 'forward trench,' 'reserve trench,' and 'communications trench' aren't that helpful in distinguishing one trench from another. Also, no one can say humor doesn't survive war.
Part of 'The Trenches' exhibition, where you walk through a mock-up of a trench with realistic fecal smells wafting in from above. You're also assaulted on all sides by the high-pitched screech and thunder of shells coming in. It's a good multimedia exhibition, a lot better than the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust's.
Day 15
Day 15 dawned cold, dark, and drizzling: not the best weather for our expedition to Brighton. Still, the eight of us that were going (the rest of the group being in Dublin for the weekend) persevered and took the Tube to London Bridge Station, where we got tickets for the hour ride to Brighton. I love British mass transport: the somnolent hum of the train as it rattles over the tracks; the emerald fields and ridges racing past, crested with fog; the rows of houses flying into view and out. We'd been invited to visit Brighton any time by our British Life and Culture professor, Susie, who offered to show us around the city. She met us at the station, accompanied by Roxy, her nine-month-old deaf Dalmatian, and shepherded us out into Brighton's salt-encrusted streets.
Brighton used to be a medieval fishing village, but in the eighteenth century it became a fashionable weekend retreat for the upper classes, helped along by the Prince Regent building a gigantic pavilion there so that he could have affairs away from others' scrutiny. Ever since then, Brighton has held a reputation for being a place one goes on illicit love affairs. Susie explained all this as she took us down into the North Streets, which are full of funky little shops selling all sorts of things, from jewelry to vintage clothing to hats. The buildings were all decorated, with one even painted in zebra stripes.
After a wander through a food festival going on in Brighton, we arrived at the ocean. I have to be honest here: English beaches are much less nice than American beaches. For one, the Brighton beach consisted of rocks; also the water was freezing, and Susie mentioned that it never gets truly warm. To our left was the Brighton Pier, supposedly world-famous, and on the right was the burned-out metal frame of the eastern pier out in the water. The east pier burned down some years back, and there were whisperings that the people running the Brighton Pier were behind the fire. Susie said goodbye to us there, and left us to run wild in the streets. Erin, Nick, Claire, Hillary, and I opted to go back to the food festival for lunch. I had a lamb burger (called the 'posh' burger, although I didn't feel any more upper-class as I ate it), festooned with caramelized onions, ketchup, and some sort of sharp English cheese. It was quite good, although the lamb suffered from an overabundance of charring. Still, for five pounds, it was a good meal. It's amazing to me how ridiculous I was in my first few entries, crowing over getting a game pie for only eight pounds and calling it a good deal.
After eating, we wandered around the shops for a bit. I was looking for a trenchcoat, but alas, there were no trench coats within my price range in the whole of Brighton. I was also looking for a hat, but when I found one I liked, the shop didn't have any that fit my head. My quest for ankle boots also fell flat. Claire, on the other hand, managed to acquire a seafoam-green trench for thirty pounds, which is a good deal by any measure. We ducked into a bookstore and met the bookstore cat: a massive black creature called Simeon. As we were crouched bestowing our attentions, a British man came in, saw the cat, and went into convulsions of adoration, cooing 'who's a pretty pussy cat, yeah?' It was, I have to say (no matter how much the admission twinges my cold black heart), cute. After going to a hat shop called 'the Mad Hatter's' and trying on dashing hats such as a leopard-print top hat, we decided to go back to the beach and walk towards the white cliffs Susie had told us about. Alas, the roads were blocked off for the Brighton Speed Trials, in which rickety cars that look to be soldered together out of the same quality of metal East Germans used to build their Trabants with went screaming down the road at the highest speed they could muster: not much. We turned around, saw that it was about three in the afternoon, and retired to a tea shop Susie had recommended highly for afternoon tea. I shared in a pot of tea with Claire and got two scones with butter and jam. They were, I have to say, delicious. Afternoon tea has been added to my growing list of the many things I love about England.
We wandered around the shops some more, met up with the others of our group, and went to an Italian restaurant called Donatello's for dinner and dessert. Dinner was delicious, and lasted two hours, after which we headed back to the train station and home.
As we trundled back towards Bedford Place on train and Tube, we encountered all manner of people: ravers in neon clothes already rolling on Ecstasy; gaggles of over-made-up women in clothing glued to their skin, clutching bottles of Smirnoff Ice and giggling while their men loitered around the edges of the group; a busker with matted hair and oozing methamphetamine sores who boarded the Tube and played achingly beautiful music on a violin missing its tuning pegs; men sprawled over the seats at the back with iPod on and brain off, who looked as though they'd been riding the Tube so long they'd become one with it; stiff men in starched suits and briefcases getting out of work at late hours. Still, we made it back to Bedford Place by midnight and tumbled into bed, tired and happy both.
The pictures:
A very cool display of antique sewing machines inside the windows of a vintage clothing shop.
The brooding gray Channel. It's impossible to see France from Brighton, even on a clear day; the ferry crossing from Brighton to France is four hours, compared to Dover and Calais' one hour.
Us having a proper English afternoon tea. It's a horrible photo of me, but oh well; the scones were fresh-baked and absolutely delicious. I've also discovered my personal English tea formula: two cubes of sugar and a little bit of cream.
A picture of the Brighton Speed Trials. As near as I could tell, these were speed trials for cars and motorcycles that people had built themselves. They've been going on for at least fifty years. While it was very cool to see old cars and bikes go screaming past on the road below, it was a little irritating, as having the road blocked off meant that we could walk to the actual white cliffs in the distance. Not the actual White Cliffs of Dover, but still chalk cliffs.
Me being a foodie, I had to include a picture of the wonderful presentation of this apple tart Erin got at Donatello's.
Brighton used to be a medieval fishing village, but in the eighteenth century it became a fashionable weekend retreat for the upper classes, helped along by the Prince Regent building a gigantic pavilion there so that he could have affairs away from others' scrutiny. Ever since then, Brighton has held a reputation for being a place one goes on illicit love affairs. Susie explained all this as she took us down into the North Streets, which are full of funky little shops selling all sorts of things, from jewelry to vintage clothing to hats. The buildings were all decorated, with one even painted in zebra stripes.
After a wander through a food festival going on in Brighton, we arrived at the ocean. I have to be honest here: English beaches are much less nice than American beaches. For one, the Brighton beach consisted of rocks; also the water was freezing, and Susie mentioned that it never gets truly warm. To our left was the Brighton Pier, supposedly world-famous, and on the right was the burned-out metal frame of the eastern pier out in the water. The east pier burned down some years back, and there were whisperings that the people running the Brighton Pier were behind the fire. Susie said goodbye to us there, and left us to run wild in the streets. Erin, Nick, Claire, Hillary, and I opted to go back to the food festival for lunch. I had a lamb burger (called the 'posh' burger, although I didn't feel any more upper-class as I ate it), festooned with caramelized onions, ketchup, and some sort of sharp English cheese. It was quite good, although the lamb suffered from an overabundance of charring. Still, for five pounds, it was a good meal. It's amazing to me how ridiculous I was in my first few entries, crowing over getting a game pie for only eight pounds and calling it a good deal.
After eating, we wandered around the shops for a bit. I was looking for a trenchcoat, but alas, there were no trench coats within my price range in the whole of Brighton. I was also looking for a hat, but when I found one I liked, the shop didn't have any that fit my head. My quest for ankle boots also fell flat. Claire, on the other hand, managed to acquire a seafoam-green trench for thirty pounds, which is a good deal by any measure. We ducked into a bookstore and met the bookstore cat: a massive black creature called Simeon. As we were crouched bestowing our attentions, a British man came in, saw the cat, and went into convulsions of adoration, cooing 'who's a pretty pussy cat, yeah?' It was, I have to say (no matter how much the admission twinges my cold black heart), cute. After going to a hat shop called 'the Mad Hatter's' and trying on dashing hats such as a leopard-print top hat, we decided to go back to the beach and walk towards the white cliffs Susie had told us about. Alas, the roads were blocked off for the Brighton Speed Trials, in which rickety cars that look to be soldered together out of the same quality of metal East Germans used to build their Trabants with went screaming down the road at the highest speed they could muster: not much. We turned around, saw that it was about three in the afternoon, and retired to a tea shop Susie had recommended highly for afternoon tea. I shared in a pot of tea with Claire and got two scones with butter and jam. They were, I have to say, delicious. Afternoon tea has been added to my growing list of the many things I love about England.
We wandered around the shops some more, met up with the others of our group, and went to an Italian restaurant called Donatello's for dinner and dessert. Dinner was delicious, and lasted two hours, after which we headed back to the train station and home.
As we trundled back towards Bedford Place on train and Tube, we encountered all manner of people: ravers in neon clothes already rolling on Ecstasy; gaggles of over-made-up women in clothing glued to their skin, clutching bottles of Smirnoff Ice and giggling while their men loitered around the edges of the group; a busker with matted hair and oozing methamphetamine sores who boarded the Tube and played achingly beautiful music on a violin missing its tuning pegs; men sprawled over the seats at the back with iPod on and brain off, who looked as though they'd been riding the Tube so long they'd become one with it; stiff men in starched suits and briefcases getting out of work at late hours. Still, we made it back to Bedford Place by midnight and tumbled into bed, tired and happy both.
The pictures:
A very cool display of antique sewing machines inside the windows of a vintage clothing shop.
The brooding gray Channel. It's impossible to see France from Brighton, even on a clear day; the ferry crossing from Brighton to France is four hours, compared to Dover and Calais' one hour.
Us having a proper English afternoon tea. It's a horrible photo of me, but oh well; the scones were fresh-baked and absolutely delicious. I've also discovered my personal English tea formula: two cubes of sugar and a little bit of cream.
A picture of the Brighton Speed Trials. As near as I could tell, these were speed trials for cars and motorcycles that people had built themselves. They've been going on for at least fifty years. While it was very cool to see old cars and bikes go screaming past on the road below, it was a little irritating, as having the road blocked off meant that we could walk to the actual white cliffs in the distance. Not the actual White Cliffs of Dover, but still chalk cliffs.
Me being a foodie, I had to include a picture of the wonderful presentation of this apple tart Erin got at Donatello's.
Saturday, September 11, 2010
Day 14 Report and Photos
I'll get the bad news out of the way first; I didn't make it to Epping. But on the way, I got lost, got muddy, got lost again, got rained on, got offered help by a concerned stranger, got to know how much people hate backpackers on sight, and had an absolute blast.
I got up at eight, packed my backpack with two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, my guidebook, a rainslicker, my phone, iPod, keys, and neckpurse, and set out. Notice how I don't mention a water bottle, map, or compass. It was the perfect weather for rambling: overcast, damp, a little cold. 'Rambling,' by the way, is one of the British national pastimes; it entails going out on a walk through the countryside, aided by one of the best innovations any country has ever produced: the 'right to roam' law. What this means is that the public may walk without charge or censure on moorland, downland, established pathways and bridleways, and through fields belonging to private owners. In a nutshell, as long as you avoid tromping through someone's back garden and don't mess with their livestock or crops, you can go more or less where you wish. It's a wonderful thing, right up there with the UK's incredible implementation of mass transport, and is only one of the many reasons I've fallen in love with this country.
My original plan, as detailed by the Walking in Britain book I purchased, was to get off at Chingford so that the normally fifteen-mile hike from Manor Park in London to the village of Epping would be curtailed to eight miles. However, there is no Tube stop for Chingford, and so I elected instead to get off at Leytonstone, rendering the journey a respectable twelve miles. Leytonstone, like all suburbs of London, was horrid in comparison to the city, featuring nothing but row after row of rundown town homes and apartment blocks, tired-looking people and gray so-called pubs. I wandered into Leytonstone and ducked into a Primark (something like a Forever 21 in the States, but cheaper) to use their restroom. However, the security guard, who seemed to hate me for being a grubby backpacker more than being a grubby American, informed me that there was no bathroom in the Primark. For anybody. No, not even the employees, who apparently have bladders of steel listed on their resumes. I suppose he thought I'd try to take a bath or something in their sink, even though I looked perfectly respectable and was wearing nice clothing free of holes, smells, or mysterious stains.
Grumbling, I left the Primark and continued my search for the Green Man Roundabout. A semi-helpful employee at the 24-hour McDonald's pointed me towards the Roundabout, where I asked a passerby walking her dog to point me in the direction of the next landmark, Hollow Pond. When I explained that I was hiking to Epping, she tried to dissuade me, no matter how much I explained that yes, I knew that Epping was far away; yes, I knew there was a bus that could take me; no, I didn't need directions to the bus station; yes, I knew what I was doing. Mostly.
The mostly is because there are two methods of hiking. The 'right' way, practiced by most hikers, is to be trained in the use of a compass and to possess Ordinance Survey maps which detail every last rock, tree, and path in the area of interest. The 'wrong' way, or my way, follows four basic steps.
1) Set off in direction towards landmark. Have no idea what actual way you're going in relation to the compass, but know that it's generally right.
2) Wander happily for thirty minutes or so, becoming distracted by berries, birds, fungi: the woodland in general. Realize you have no concrete idea of where, exactly, you are in relation to the aforementioned landmark.
3) Do not panic. Being lost only gives you an opportunity for exploration.
4) After a period of exploration, happen upon a map or a kind passerby who can point you in the direction of the landmark. Repeat sequence, starting with Step 1.
Miraculously, this actually works to get you to where you need to go, and I found myself traipsing through Epping Forest with little to no idea of where I really was and not actually caring one bit. Mostly this was because the forest was festooned with wild blackberries, which made a perfect complement to my sandwiches. The ground was muddy wherever I walked, but I didn't care; I was just happy to be out in the woods by myself, close to civilization (once in a while the divine silence of the woods would be broken by the screech of truck tires) and yet very far away. The forest was green, leafy, and cool, and I found myself wanting to stay there forever and becoming incredibly irritated when civilization, in the form of other people or the noise of cars, intruded upon my solitude. Anyway, after a bracing hike of five hours and about three to four miles across the flats and woods, I was forced to turn back before reaching Epping. However, it was a lovely experience regardless, and I can say for sure that I have caught the hiking bug for good, and I am going to go hiking again, no matter how much my leg muscles protest. Which they are doing now with a vengeance.
And now the pictures.
There is a semi-good reason for the 'beware cattle' warning on the Epping Forest sign. In 1882, Queen Victoria granted the use of Epping Forest to the British people in perpetuity. These uses included grazing one's cattle on it, as well as collecting firewood, although that right is rarely taken advantage of in modern England. Commoners, defined as people who live in a Forest county and own at least a half acre of land, have the right to 'one faggot (or bundle, for the Americans out there) of driftwood or dead wood per adult per day,' and in the summer months can graze their cattle there. Unfortunately for me, I didn't see any cattle; lots of ravens, though, and several people walking their dogs.
This is a picture of Leyton Flats, which is an area of grassland outside Leytonstone leading into the forest areas. Inside Leyton Flats are several ponds; Eagle's Pond, which is one of them, was used as a swimming pool in the Sixties, although nobody could ever figure out how to clean the water enough to make it decent, and so in the Eighties the pond was filled in and returned to the forest.
A very small pond I happened upon while wandering lost. It's located next to a preparatory school, and thus the air was filled with the screaming of children, but when you can't hear the noise and can only see the picture, it looks quite peaceful.
Wild blackberry bushes were littered everywhere along the path, and so I foraged for blackberries as I walked. They were delicious, as only unexpected things can be.
The point where I stopped and turned back, but the road stretched on regardless. Someday I want to return and try again. Being an English major, and thus quite pretentious, I leave you with the words of a man who knew the joys of a good ramble through English countryside:
The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.
- J.R.R. Tolkien
I got up at eight, packed my backpack with two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, my guidebook, a rainslicker, my phone, iPod, keys, and neckpurse, and set out. Notice how I don't mention a water bottle, map, or compass. It was the perfect weather for rambling: overcast, damp, a little cold. 'Rambling,' by the way, is one of the British national pastimes; it entails going out on a walk through the countryside, aided by one of the best innovations any country has ever produced: the 'right to roam' law. What this means is that the public may walk without charge or censure on moorland, downland, established pathways and bridleways, and through fields belonging to private owners. In a nutshell, as long as you avoid tromping through someone's back garden and don't mess with their livestock or crops, you can go more or less where you wish. It's a wonderful thing, right up there with the UK's incredible implementation of mass transport, and is only one of the many reasons I've fallen in love with this country.
My original plan, as detailed by the Walking in Britain book I purchased, was to get off at Chingford so that the normally fifteen-mile hike from Manor Park in London to the village of Epping would be curtailed to eight miles. However, there is no Tube stop for Chingford, and so I elected instead to get off at Leytonstone, rendering the journey a respectable twelve miles. Leytonstone, like all suburbs of London, was horrid in comparison to the city, featuring nothing but row after row of rundown town homes and apartment blocks, tired-looking people and gray so-called pubs. I wandered into Leytonstone and ducked into a Primark (something like a Forever 21 in the States, but cheaper) to use their restroom. However, the security guard, who seemed to hate me for being a grubby backpacker more than being a grubby American, informed me that there was no bathroom in the Primark. For anybody. No, not even the employees, who apparently have bladders of steel listed on their resumes. I suppose he thought I'd try to take a bath or something in their sink, even though I looked perfectly respectable and was wearing nice clothing free of holes, smells, or mysterious stains.
Grumbling, I left the Primark and continued my search for the Green Man Roundabout. A semi-helpful employee at the 24-hour McDonald's pointed me towards the Roundabout, where I asked a passerby walking her dog to point me in the direction of the next landmark, Hollow Pond. When I explained that I was hiking to Epping, she tried to dissuade me, no matter how much I explained that yes, I knew that Epping was far away; yes, I knew there was a bus that could take me; no, I didn't need directions to the bus station; yes, I knew what I was doing. Mostly.
The mostly is because there are two methods of hiking. The 'right' way, practiced by most hikers, is to be trained in the use of a compass and to possess Ordinance Survey maps which detail every last rock, tree, and path in the area of interest. The 'wrong' way, or my way, follows four basic steps.
1) Set off in direction towards landmark. Have no idea what actual way you're going in relation to the compass, but know that it's generally right.
2) Wander happily for thirty minutes or so, becoming distracted by berries, birds, fungi: the woodland in general. Realize you have no concrete idea of where, exactly, you are in relation to the aforementioned landmark.
3) Do not panic. Being lost only gives you an opportunity for exploration.
4) After a period of exploration, happen upon a map or a kind passerby who can point you in the direction of the landmark. Repeat sequence, starting with Step 1.
Miraculously, this actually works to get you to where you need to go, and I found myself traipsing through Epping Forest with little to no idea of where I really was and not actually caring one bit. Mostly this was because the forest was festooned with wild blackberries, which made a perfect complement to my sandwiches. The ground was muddy wherever I walked, but I didn't care; I was just happy to be out in the woods by myself, close to civilization (once in a while the divine silence of the woods would be broken by the screech of truck tires) and yet very far away. The forest was green, leafy, and cool, and I found myself wanting to stay there forever and becoming incredibly irritated when civilization, in the form of other people or the noise of cars, intruded upon my solitude. Anyway, after a bracing hike of five hours and about three to four miles across the flats and woods, I was forced to turn back before reaching Epping. However, it was a lovely experience regardless, and I can say for sure that I have caught the hiking bug for good, and I am going to go hiking again, no matter how much my leg muscles protest. Which they are doing now with a vengeance.
And now the pictures.
There is a semi-good reason for the 'beware cattle' warning on the Epping Forest sign. In 1882, Queen Victoria granted the use of Epping Forest to the British people in perpetuity. These uses included grazing one's cattle on it, as well as collecting firewood, although that right is rarely taken advantage of in modern England. Commoners, defined as people who live in a Forest county and own at least a half acre of land, have the right to 'one faggot (or bundle, for the Americans out there) of driftwood or dead wood per adult per day,' and in the summer months can graze their cattle there. Unfortunately for me, I didn't see any cattle; lots of ravens, though, and several people walking their dogs.
This is a picture of Leyton Flats, which is an area of grassland outside Leytonstone leading into the forest areas. Inside Leyton Flats are several ponds; Eagle's Pond, which is one of them, was used as a swimming pool in the Sixties, although nobody could ever figure out how to clean the water enough to make it decent, and so in the Eighties the pond was filled in and returned to the forest.
A very small pond I happened upon while wandering lost. It's located next to a preparatory school, and thus the air was filled with the screaming of children, but when you can't hear the noise and can only see the picture, it looks quite peaceful.
Wild blackberry bushes were littered everywhere along the path, and so I foraged for blackberries as I walked. They were delicious, as only unexpected things can be.
The point where I stopped and turned back, but the road stretched on regardless. Someday I want to return and try again. Being an English major, and thus quite pretentious, I leave you with the words of a man who knew the joys of a good ramble through English countryside:
The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.
- J.R.R. Tolkien
Day 13 Photos
Photos from my second time at the British Museum.
A double-headed Aztec snake enameled in a mosaic of turquoise. Turquoise was one of the Aztec's most important minerals, as it was associated with Quetzalcoatl, the serpent rain god who represented the birth of new life. There were a lot of beautiful turquoise-covered objects at the Museum, including a mask consisting of a human skull with turquoise overlaid on top of the bone.
The front half of a massive horse, about fifteen feet high, from the top of the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus. There would have originally been four horses atop the Mausoleum, but only this one was at the Museum. The iron bit and bridle are both original.
A statue of the Molossan Mastiff. While the breed is extinct, they were respected by the Romans for their loyalty and trainability, and their genetics contributed considerably to all modern mastiff breeds today. It also reminds me of an epitaph I saw in the room devoted to Greek and Roman writings. The epitaph was for a dog named Margherita, or 'Pearl', who was born in Gaul and meant to serve as a hunting dog, but instead ended up living a life of luxury as a beloved pet before dying. Her memorial mentioned that her bark scared no one.
For Rachel: a Greek black-figure vase of Achilles and Penthesilea at Troy.
A statue of Venus interrupted while bathing.
A double-headed Aztec snake enameled in a mosaic of turquoise. Turquoise was one of the Aztec's most important minerals, as it was associated with Quetzalcoatl, the serpent rain god who represented the birth of new life. There were a lot of beautiful turquoise-covered objects at the Museum, including a mask consisting of a human skull with turquoise overlaid on top of the bone.
The front half of a massive horse, about fifteen feet high, from the top of the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus. There would have originally been four horses atop the Mausoleum, but only this one was at the Museum. The iron bit and bridle are both original.
A statue of the Molossan Mastiff. While the breed is extinct, they were respected by the Romans for their loyalty and trainability, and their genetics contributed considerably to all modern mastiff breeds today. It also reminds me of an epitaph I saw in the room devoted to Greek and Roman writings. The epitaph was for a dog named Margherita, or 'Pearl', who was born in Gaul and meant to serve as a hunting dog, but instead ended up living a life of luxury as a beloved pet before dying. Her memorial mentioned that her bark scared no one.
For Rachel: a Greek black-figure vase of Achilles and Penthesilea at Troy.
A statue of Venus interrupted while bathing.
Thursday, September 9, 2010
Days 10, 11, 12, 13
So the past few days have been quite boring (the usual routine of get up, eat, go to class, eat lunch, have the afternoon and evening free, eat dinner, go to bed, get up the next morning and do it all over again) with the exception of the Globe performance of Merry Wives of Windsor. The play was an absolute farce, and I mean that in a good way. I really have no idea what any of the characters' names were or quite what motivated them, but that didn't matter; all that mattered was that I got to see an immense man resembling Santa Clause prance across the stage in the worst attempt at impersonating a woman I have ever seen. And although we got lost on our way to the theater and ended up in the entirely wrong district of London on the entirely opposite side of the river, we managed to make it in time for the show. One warning for anybody thinking of attending a Globe performance: no matter what the weather, the show will go on. And don't even think about bringing an umbrella, because you're not allowed to open them inside the theater, the rationale being that peasant groundlings in the fifteenth century didn't have umbrellas, so neither should you. Wear comfortable shoes, because the minute you sit down these old women who look like they've been sucking on lemons since the dinosaurs roamed the earth will stomp over and yell at you to get up. Standing for two and a half hours preserves the historical ambiance, you see.
I make it sound like I'm a whinging tourist who hates anything pertaining to any kind of exertion whatsoever, but I'm sarcastic because I love. It was a wonderful experience, and I'm pumped beyond belief for Henry IV Part One next Wednesday. Speaking of pumped, tomorrow I'm doing a solo hike eight miles to Epping, in preparation for hiking along Hadrian's Wall later in the semester. And Monday I'm seeing Les Miserables! The ticket cost 44 pounds, but I'm in the second row in the center section of the balcony, and Les Mis is my favorite musical ever, so I consider it a worthy sacrifice. Also today I spent four hours in the British Museum, so I've almost cleared out the first floor. Only four more to go.
But now for what I know everybody comes here for: the pictures! These are from Day 9.
This building has some sort of malignant tumor.
The memorial to the World War Two SOE, or Special Operations Executive. These were men and women, known as the Baker Street Irregulars, who were charged by Churchill with 'setting Europe ablaze.' They carried out their mission by instigating and organizing resistance to the Nazis in occupied countries. The bust is of Violette Szabo.
The outside of the tower over the Royal Entrance into the Houses of Parliament.
One of the ceremonial guards at the Horse Guards building, which was once Henry VIII's jousting ground before he got so immense he had to be lifted onto his horse with a crane and winch. These guards are part of the Queen's Life Guards, and so obey the same protocol as the guards at Buckingham.
Me, obviously, astride one of the Landseer Lions at Trafalgar Square. It really gives a sense of just how massive these things are.
I make it sound like I'm a whinging tourist who hates anything pertaining to any kind of exertion whatsoever, but I'm sarcastic because I love. It was a wonderful experience, and I'm pumped beyond belief for Henry IV Part One next Wednesday. Speaking of pumped, tomorrow I'm doing a solo hike eight miles to Epping, in preparation for hiking along Hadrian's Wall later in the semester. And Monday I'm seeing Les Miserables! The ticket cost 44 pounds, but I'm in the second row in the center section of the balcony, and Les Mis is my favorite musical ever, so I consider it a worthy sacrifice. Also today I spent four hours in the British Museum, so I've almost cleared out the first floor. Only four more to go.
But now for what I know everybody comes here for: the pictures! These are from Day 9.
This building has some sort of malignant tumor.
The memorial to the World War Two SOE, or Special Operations Executive. These were men and women, known as the Baker Street Irregulars, who were charged by Churchill with 'setting Europe ablaze.' They carried out their mission by instigating and organizing resistance to the Nazis in occupied countries. The bust is of Violette Szabo.
The outside of the tower over the Royal Entrance into the Houses of Parliament.
One of the ceremonial guards at the Horse Guards building, which was once Henry VIII's jousting ground before he got so immense he had to be lifted onto his horse with a crane and winch. These guards are part of the Queen's Life Guards, and so obey the same protocol as the guards at Buckingham.
Me, obviously, astride one of the Landseer Lions at Trafalgar Square. It really gives a sense of just how massive these things are.
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