Nesting Nativity

An unavoidable certitude of living in a big city flat is the absence of extraneous storage space. Witness Tree, whose lights and decorations fit in a small box that shares a dresser drawer with winter jumpers and an iron. You might have recognised Tree from last Christmas, if I had blogged about him last year. He spent the time between Christmases on the balcony overlooking the Palaces at Westminster and Lambeth on the Thames. He’s now inside again to celebrate the festive season. Recently, my beloved found the perfect nativity for city flats: the nesting nativity. The three kings are all on the same doll, so you can rotate it to give each his turn facing forward. Although baby Jesus made an appearance for the photo opportunity, the nesting dolls allow for the anatomically correct ‘storage’ of a ‘preincarnate’ Jesus in Mary’s interior/womb. After the Epiphany, the whole holy lot of them can be conveniently nested for storage.

Pseudocommunity Tree

Every year at the start of advent, the managing agents for the building put big Christmas trees in the foyers of all the buildings. The tree and a box of ornaments show up on the Friday, and the staff work their way through the compound until they are all decorated, usually by the Monday. But this year something kind of cool happened. Sometime late Friday or early Saturday, someone opened the box of ornaments and placed an ornament on the tree. The next time I came by it, there was another on the tree. I didn’t witness any of it but I imagined that some residents walking past it were placing an ornament on the tree. So I joined in and placed a third ornament on the tree. I thought this was a cool little pseudocommunity activity: even though we weren’t with each other at the time, we were all contributing to a common aim in a common space. Later that evening, there were about a dozen ornaments hanging on it, which is when I took the picture above: only half the ornaments are visible in the photo as this is the approach when leaving the building, the others are visible as you enter. I imagined that additional residents' contributions were responsible for the increase. But alas, by Sunday, the staff had caught up and finish decorating… again, not witnessed, but imagined. Here is the finished tree with my honey holding her Christmas present.

Neighborhood 2011: Part Two

My second most frequent off-compound neighborhood excursion is not to so much a place, but an area… Little Portugal. Just last week I went to the nearby Luis Deli to stock up on olive oil. And whenever I make my grandmother's chicken and rice, I get chouriço there. It really makes a difference in the dish. Before we moved to Vauxhall, I used the Spanish version (chorizo, which even Wikipedia thinks is close enough and is available in all the big grocery shops) but the spice balance in the dish is all wrong for chorizo. It just came out too acidic. But as soon as I used real chouriço, the dish tastes just like avô used to make. The deli unfortunately do not have any Azorean chouriço, which is much spicier than the typical continental version. But there is a Alentejo version available here that is almost as spicy. On my way home from work, if I hear anyone talking Portuguese on the train, they always get off the train at the same stop as me... seems I've found the London version of New Bedford, quite by accident, but found nonetheless.

Photo Credits:
Gallo
Oliveira da Serra
Chouriço
My Kitchen

Neighborhood 2011: Part One

I am not sure if anyone noticed, but 2011 marks the first in last five Augusts that we did not move. Let me assure you that we noticed. It was a treat beyond description not to move: no searching, no packing, no crazy flat mates, no wondering what temperature the shower would be, and no rodents and their traveling companions. I was flicking through entries about our previous flats and noticed that I usually posted something about the neighborhood shortly after moving. Not this time: probably because our flat is part of a monstrosity with many amenities right in the complex… or as I like to refer to it: the compound. Don’t get me wrong… it is all very convenient and orderly and clean but it is also very gentrified and sterile. I’m certainly not pining for a run down and dirty neighborhood, but a little personality would not be a bad thing, would it? The restaurant is probably the compound’s best feature. It’s called Aqua and it’s halfway decent… and on one of the 10 days in the year that you might actually want to eat outside in London, the outdoor seating area has a fantastic atmosphere. The pub on the other hand is awful: the beers are generic, the atmosphere is too posh, and the chips are the worst I’ve ever tasted. How can you mess up chips...and in London of all places!

Which brings me to my most frequent off-compound destination in the first year. The Windmill is a pub on Lambeth High Street. The term ‘high street’ may be unfamiliar to Americans and can be loosely translated to ‘main street’ or ‘downtown’. Lambeth High Street bless its little… hmmm I was going to say ‘heart’ but I’m not sure it has one. This poor ‘little street that would’ has got to be the saddest high street/main street/downtown ever, and I’m from New Bedford! You don’t need any fingers to count the number of shops on it: the pub is it. And even though the selection of beer is weak, I really like this place. There is something about the outdated decor featuring actual couches that is honest and unassuming in a way that makes you think you could be having a pint in someone's grandparent's living room. I’m not a weekend pub goer and I hope this place is rip roaring on the weekend, but during the week it is quite quiet, which is part of its charm. Sometimes it's so quiet that I am a little concerned that the next time I go it will be gone.

Photo Credits:

Aqua
Windmill

Council Housing

Another random thing about London is something called Council Housing. Back in Massachusetts, I think we called it Housing Projects. There is one thing about it that is very different in London besides the name.

Before living here, my personal experience with housing projects was that they were situated in areas distinctly separate from where the wealthy lived. In fact, it was almost guaranteed that the area surrounding a housing project was an undesirable one that those with a choice would avoid. This is not so in London, where council housing smack in the middle of prosperous neighborhoods seems a rather common occurrence. For example, when we lived at Crumpet Corner, a woman living in the flat above us was a house cleaner for Simon Cowell. He had a house about a half mile away. From his multimillion pound home, Mr. Cowell could easily walk 10 minutes in several directions to visit council housing.

Photo Credits

West Kensington

New Bedford

Mr. Cowell Walking

Four Years

One of the moments I remember from about four years ago when I had only been living in London a few months was being in a pub during the Rugby World Cup finals. It was South Africa and England, and it was mayhem. I went because I wanted to experience the culture of this place. At the time, I was only going to be here for a year. My beloved was getting her masters and then we were going to move back. So I thought I had better take a look at this event. It seemed like a big deal at the time. In the four years since I have learned that the culture of London is its own thing. There were more South Africans in the pub that night than English. That's what London is like; it may be smack in the middle of England, but it belongs to the world. London is of course born of English culture but the flavour of London is something all its own. So much that has happened since then. One year became five; a masters became a PhD; an incomprehensible culture became almost familiar.

I also remember having a conversation with someone on Matheson Road around that same time. I only had a few conversations with a man who lived a few doors down, usually it was when he was washing his car or some other such chore in front of his flat. I can’t remember which one of said that London was a crowded yet lonely city. I asked him about the Famous 3 Kings, where I watched the 2007 Rugby World Cup, and he said he didn’t go to that pub. When I asked why he said that we went to another pub that his mates like.

London has also been heavily influenced by the Commonwealth and former colonies, territories, dominions, etc. I am not saying that all Americans see history in the way that I did, but I only saw the British Empire in terms of my nation’s freedom. The empire had only two dimensions: the American colonies and the London government. I had this vague notion of a larger empire, but the image in my head only had in it: the American Founding Fathers, the Minutemen, the British Monarchy/Parliament, and the Redcoats. But being here, it is impossible to discount the vastness and diversity of the former empire and its influence on its capital. As an American, the BBC news seems so unbiased in its coverage. As an expat living in London the BBC looks just as biased to British interests as CNN or NBC is to American ones. Conversely, the vastness of the former empire brings the rest of the world into regular view here in a way that never happens in the US. The Rugby World Cup is just one of many examples of something that would likely only have a national focus if it weren't for the former empire.

Photo Credits

AceDiscoVery Watching Sport at Famous 3 Kings (it was more crowded during my visit)

The Wikipedia Anachronous British Empire

London Welsh Famous 3 Kings

Riots in London

What can I say about the London riots that some other buffoon hasn't already said. Things seem to have returned to a sort of normal. I did not witness any looting first hand. I did see images of places very familiar places like Wood Green, Peckham, and Clapham being looted and burned. I heard sirens as police vehicles sped by my window, first in one direction, then 10 minutes later in the other, then in 10 minutes back the other way. I saw smoke in the distance one day. On another, a police dog unit set up in front my workplace. I saw shopkeepers boarding up shop windows. I saw others standing vigil in front of their shops at dusk: human shields. It felt like society was unraveling; and even though I never saw any first hand violence, there was an eerie spectre that it would materialise in front of me at any moment without warning. It seems to be over by virtue of its gradual absence rather than the feeling that anything is over. Wikipedia says the riots took place between 6 and 10 August 2011. I suppose it is easy enough to change the dates or add another riot to The List if something happens tomorrow.

The List I am referring to is Wikipedia's "List of Riots in London", which lists 38 riots between 1189 and 2011. They also have riot lists for Mumbai (6 between 1832 and 1993), Leeds (19 between 1735 and 2011), Singapore (6 between 1956 and 1969), the United States (321 between 1676 and 2010), and Hyberdad (13 between 1923 and 2010). Counting just the New York City riots from that US list: there were 28 between 1689 and 2000. If London had 38 over 822 years and New York City had 26 in just 311 years, clearly New York City warrants its own list.

As far as this latest London riot goes, everyone with an agenda has weighed in. It seems that the riot has firmly reinforced what people already believe. There was a YouGov poll that asked over 2,500 Brits what they thought the main cause of the riots was. 42% said criminal behaviour. The media coverage was touting that line from day one, so kudos to 1,600 people for regurgitating what is fed them. It's obviously criminal behaviour to steal and burn stuff, but is it a cause? How does 'criminal behavior' explain why a police shooting erupted into criminal behaviour across a city and then a nation? There HAS to be some kind of undercurrent or SOMETHING other than a bunch of criminals waiting around for some reason to go on crime spree. It's easy to respond emotionally to something without looking for real reasons. 26% in the same poll said gang culture was the main cause. When those 660 people said that, did they look at gang statistics in London? Will our media organisations look into gang culture connections and the actual people arrested to see if this fear is born out in fact? Or is our initial fear and bias enough to decide complex issues.

When something as unexpected as this happens, spouting the same tired old rhetoric will just lead us down the same path that lead us here in the first place. Any thoughtful review of the riots clearly shows that there is not ONE main cause. If we just respond emotionally, we may end up throwing resources at things like combatting gangs that may not even exist, or if they do, may not have been a significant contributing factor. Wouldn't it be more effective to analyse potential causes and compare them to the actual facts? Pointing fingers at some segment of society without actually analysing the situation is just refusal to consider the complexity of societal problems. The world would be just fine if it weren't for certain professions, certain political views, certain generations, certain parents, certain races, certain religions: Feel free to fill in anyone it is convenient to persecute. Don't worry about analysing facts in search of truth: Truth is at the end of a pointing finger. Trouble is that the only truth behind pointing fingers it is that the person wagging the finger is trying to wield political control over people that they cannot convince to follow them. The finger inevitably demands sacrifice or change of someone else while the pointer gets to blissfully go about life in exactly his or her preferred way. How convenient… and we fall for it every time. We are all too willing to choose immediate gratification of reacting emotionally rather than examining complex problems critically. It is not THEY who are unraveling society, it is us.

Photo Credits

Wood Green
Peckham
Clapham

Finger

Brighton

Last month I presented at my second professional conference: the British Association / College of Occupational Therapy Annual Conference, which was in Brighton. I decided to take my beloved back to there yesterday to have a little fun by the sea. When we arrived we walked down the hill straight for the beach, which was pebbles instead of sand: witness my tootsies to the left. Sitting on the beach in the not-so-warm-English-summer was actually quite pleasant. The sun made appearances at regular intervals from behind moderately-sized clouds lazily floating past, so it was not oppressively warm. So we sat quite comfortably on the pebbles. Eventually I stuck my feet in the cold Channel. I am not sure why parts of the ocean I have never been to before call to me to stick my feet in, but they do. Thankfully, I am deaf to this calling on snow and ice covered beaches. There were very few takers rising to the challenge of bathing in the channel. While walking barefoot in pebbles is not the most comfortable sensation, it was agreeable not to have to spend ages brushing sand off of and out of everything only to find that you somehow managed to stow away about of quart of the stuff.

After enjoying copious quantities of fresh air, we wondered over to Palace Pier, which is a cute little pleasure pier. We wondered around it, had a snack, and head over to The Lanes, an older part of the town that supposedly follows the street pattern from the 14th Century. The buildings are considerably more modern. The Lanes is now a shopping district. After a bit of shopping we strolled over to the Royal Pavilion, which was a royal palace. But apparently the arrival of the railway in 1841 made Bristol too accessible to the general public, so The Royal Family decided to summer elsewhere. The town managed to purchase the palace from the Government in 1850. As you can see (below), it is quite interesting looking. The arrival of prevailing winds made Bristol too accessible to heavy clouds, so our family decided to summer elsewhere.

Photo Credits

Palace Pier

The Lanes

Royal Pavilion

Accident

Accidents are inevitable. I had one a few weeks ago. One minute, I was riding on my bicycle preparing to turn left onto a little road. The first picture is from Google Street View and shows the view from about where I was preparing to turn left. A few minutes later I am sitting on a chair on the road that I was going to turn into. The second picture (also from Google Street View) has a red circle of where I think the chair was if I remember correctly.

How I ended up in that chair is I fell (and broke my arm in the process). Then a young lady passing by on foot and three waiters from a restaurant on the corner stopped what they were doing and attended to me. The third picture is an interior view of that restaurant from their website… perhaps it was even one of those chairs! I have to say that London has been an amazing place for me in this way. Whenever anything has happened and I needed help, someone is always right there offering it. In this case it was a bunch of strangers who decided to help me. They didn’t wait to be asked. They just gave of themselves.

They waited with me, and the ambulance they called eventually came. Oddly enough, the ambulance got into a minor accident as it left the scene, but no one was hurt. And they even brought my bicycle along for the ride. The road surface and bicycle are fine by the way, no damage, but I will need a new helmet as it is cracked. I am planning to go to the restaurant some time soon. I would like to say thank you to the complete strangers who could have chosen to focus on the details of their lives but instead chose to help me.

Photo Credits

Google Street View

Yia Mas

My Parents Visit

It was a whirlwind. My parents came to visit for a week in June. The first time they came we had only been in London less than a year. We had really no idea about how the city worked. Well, more than three years have passed since that last visit, and we still don’t know how the city works… but we know a heck of a lot more now than we knew then. I learned more about London black cabs on this trip than I ever knew before as we black cabbed it around London for most of the holiday.

We did a few touristy things. We visited the many dead monarchs and one upright poet (o rare!) at Westminster Abbey with my favourite Abbey tour guide. We looked at a 5,000-year-old site featuring a pile of stones in the middle of nowhere at Stonehenge. We popped through the Cotswolds villages of Bibury, Burford, and Bourton-on-the-water. In Burford, Dad tried a few cask ales at the Cotswold Arms and Mum scored a pair of shoes on high street! We made a brief stop in at Stratford-upon-Avon to visit the homes of some writer or other. We also did a shopping day in London. We went to Lock & Co (very posh & very nice), Siggis Hats (won’t ever go there again), Gina Foster (also very nice), and M&S on Kensington High Street where Mum scored another pair of shoes! We made a brief visit at St Mary Abbots and sat for an hour in Kensington Gardens on the only sunny day of the trip.

For eats, we did one meal in our flat: I made Jerk Pork with Jamaican rice & peas and corn on the cob. All other meals were done at a mix of some of our favourite stops and some new favourites: O Fado in Knightsbridge, The Swan Hotel in Bibury, The Crypt in St-Martins-in-the-Fields, The Spaghetti House in Knightsbridge, Caffe Concerto in High Street Kensington, and Quantas in Chiswick. All were fabulous in their own way.

But of course the best part was having my Mum & Dad around all the time for a whole week! As a friend reminded me at work the other day, they are only a six hour flight away. It was wonderful.

Photo Credits

All Photos are from Wikipedia

Black Cab

Stonehenge

Bibury

Westminster Abbey

Anniversary Weekend Snap Snap Snap

I planned a surprise trip to Warwick for our anniversary (England, not Rhode Island). We took the train through the luscious greens of the countryside leading from the bustle and sprawl of London to a calm contained town.

People on the street not only made eye contact but they said hello. After we made our way to the Agincourt Lodge, we wandered into town and had dinner at Merchants. I had the Herb Pancake and she had the Ribeye, both were excellent. The next morning we each had our favourite bits of the Full English cooked perfectly and then we were off to Warwick Castle.

We walked by way of St Nicolas Park (hey! get out of the Avon). The oldest part of the castle was built in 1068 and various addition continued through the 1600s when it was converted into a country house. In the 1970s Madame Tussauds acquired it and turned it into a tourist attraction, which explains the occasional random wax figures.

But there are also flesh and blood actors playing out Warwick inhabitants. The biggest head turner was the staged rat throwing contest in the courtyard and we got to see Ursa, the Warwick Castle Trebuchet launch a 200 pound stone into a field.

We stopped at the Thomas Oken Tea Rooms just past the castle gate into town. The Oken house is another Warwick gem, and is over 500 years old. I had a roasted veg pasty with a yummy Purity ale and she had a cream tea which had the mother of all scones. It was lovely. We tried to visit St Marys (built in 1400s over foundations from 1100s) but Blakes Jerusalem was blaring out of it and a Morris Minor convertible decorated in paper ribbon was parked out front with a Daimler Conquest in a matching paint scheme parked a little ways behind it. So we went into the cemetery instead. Then, we wandered / shopped around a bit here and picked up some tea at The Golden Tea Monkey. We had an afternoon nap (maybe that was just me) and went to The Saxon Mill. I had grilled swordfish and she had chicken with lemon garlic and thyme. Another fantastic meal.

The next morning we window shopped with a peacock from the castle and visited Lord Leycester Hospital. The hospital was built against the west city gate which has a chapel above it dating from 1100s.

The hospital was built in the 1300s and spent its first 200 years housing Warwick’s Guilds. In the 1500s it became a retirement home for soldiers and has been ever since.

It has amazing gardens. We stopped at The Roebuck, which claims to be ye oldest pub in town (1470), for a light lunch of onion rings, cabbage and peas, and leek and potato soup, all delish. We walked through Priory Park to catch the train. The park are the grounds of a priory built in the 1100s which was dissolved by Henry VIII and destroyed in the 1500s.

The best part of the weekend was spending all that uninterrupted time together, something a PhD seldom allows. And although we did loads, it felt in someways that time stood still.

Click this sentence to see more of photos of our trip.

Photo Credit (last B/W photo):

Lord Leycester Hospital

Random London

Living right on the Thames, we have this long uninterrupted view, which we did not have in any of our other flats. This picture to the left is the view out our window at dusk. An unexpected benefit of this view is that we now have many surprising firework displays... surprising in not just frequency, but in that we usually have absolutely not a clue why there are fireworks going on. It will seemingly be some random night. We look in the newspaper and on the internet... nothing. And these are usually some pretty impressive displays with fancy shapes and full-on finales. Well, whatever they are for, they are quite nice to watch. Perhaps next time I will take a picture of them. (Firework collage below is from RiverBills.com)

Good Friday in London

Good Friday is my favourite holy day. It all started back in Providence at Grace Church where I fell in love with the Seven Last Words. This is a three hour event of solemn contemplation interspersed with sermons on the seven things Christ reportedly said from the cross. Each sermon has a song and a reading that goes with it. But best parts are the large swathes of silence in between each sermon, song, and reading. It really gives you time to contemplate. When in Chicago last year I had no trouble finding an Episcopal Church doing it. But until now I had not found it here in London, at least not at the parish level. I finally found something vaguely resembling it (minus the large swathes of silence) at St Paul’s. It was a Three Hour Devotion called Seeing in the Dark: The Poetry of The Passion. The poems and sermons were amazing. Thanks to the Reverend Canon Mark Oakley, I have now a selection of inspiring poetry to read.

Canon Oakley reminds us that in the age of bumper-sticker theology, true faith is nuanced and ever-changing... and that poetry is better equipped to deal with ideas like suffering, faith, and compassion than any literal edict. Another cool thing about poetry is that the same poem will speak completely differently to different people. That flexibility allows each of us to find that unique piece of the spiritual puzzle that each of us is missing as an individual. Looking at the wonderful diversity of Christian faith over time through poetry rekindled what drew me to Christianity in the first place: Its potential as a force for compassion.

One of the reasons why I like Good Friday so much is that the Almighty suffers just like we do. During my work at hospital, I witness some people whose daily suffering makes the three hours on the cross seem like a walk in the park. I also witness some overcome that suffering even though nearly everything has been taken from them. These people experience a resurrection of sorts that is individually more miraculous than anything in the Bible. Perhaps I am oddly comforted by the Almighty suffering because it opens up my heart to be compassionate toward Him. Worshiping a God who allows suffering of those who are clearly not equipped for it is no easy task. But when I visualise Him on the cross, I naturally want to relieve that suffering, just like I want to relieve the suffering of all who need hospital. It draws out the compassion in my soul; it draws out my humanity. And it encourages me to keep giving of myself and of my compassion. I know that what I am saying doesn’t make any sense. The poets explain it much better:

Dream of the Rood

Love Brought Me

The Agony

A Hymn to God the Father

I Measure Every Grief I Meet

Song for Holy Saturday

Photo Credits: Ruthwell Cross, St Pauls

Grand National

I watched the Grand National yesterday at the recommendation of a coworker. It is a 4.5-mile horse jumping race that takes place in Liverpool each year and it seems that nearly everyone bets on it even if they would never otherwise pay attention to any other horse race. During the race itself 20 of the 40 riders failed to finish because either they were unseated from or fell from their animals; or the rider simply had to stop out of concern for the animal's health. After the race, the winning horse had to be immediately brought to the stable for emergency rehydration. This is one grueling race.

The race is two laps so several of the fences, which are topped with spruce, are jumped twice. In this year's race, the riders had to be waved around two of the fences on the final lap. The cameras dutifully followed the race, but you still could clearly see what looked like a tarpaulin covering something roughly the size of a horse as the riders were waved around the first skipped fence. As the cameras followed the race past the second skipped fence, you could see a makeshift enclosure with a few people franticly moving around it. Because of the enclosure, it was difficult to see if the people were attending to a horse or a rider. Both were horses... and they both died from injuries sustained in the race.

I remember as a child going out with my family to pick out a steer for slaughter. Being raised as a meat eater, this event was neither surprising nor traumatic in any way. And as an adult, I have seen slaughtered animals and have even been to several slaughter houses. Again, this does not really bother me. (I have to admit that I am frequently troubled that this does not bother me more than it does.) I was definitely way more shaken watching Dale Earnhardt die in the Daytona 500, but this was still hard to watch. Part of it was I just was not expecting it. I knew that it was dangerous for the riders, but I had no idea I would be watching animals die. I might feel differently had I been told that this happens from time to time before I watched it. I don’t want to give the wrong impression here. I believe that the owners, handlers, and riders absolutely adore these magnificent animals. I am happy to leave it to the English to figure out what, if anything, needs to be done. All I am saying is that I was just not emotionally prepared for what I saw.

Photo Credits:
Jumping Horses
Fence 19
Dale Earnhardt

The Highway Code

I have been spending most weekends lately reading The Highway Code; these are the rules of the road here in the UK. I am doing this in preparation my taking the driving license test. Like in the US, there is a written test and a driving test. I received my provisional license a few weeks ago, which is the UK version of the Learner’s Permit. I didn’t know that the UK license had two parts: a paper part and a picture card part. I guess the picture card part is a recent innovation; apparently the paper is the important bit.

So I was wondering how people kept this thing from disintegrating. It is just a regular slice of paper so if I were to carry it around everyday, I am sure it would be in pieces in just a few months. So I asked some motorists at work. It turns out that you don’t carry it around at all; you just leave it home. So I thought that I just had to carry the card around. Turns out that I don’t have to carry that around either. That card can stay at home to. I must have had a perplexed look on my face because my motorist friend immediately explained that if you are in an accident: you have 7 days to produce your driving license at a police station. In fact, my friend told me he was pulled over just the other day. The entire exchange went something like this:

Policeman: What kind of license do you have?

Motorist: A full English one, as far as I know.

Policeman: Alright, off you go then.

The UK driving license is apparently a lot like the UK constitution: it is more of a concept, really. Yeah, that’s right: this constitutional monarchy has what is known as an uncodified (unwritten) constitution. The constitution is out there somewhere, hidden in the midst of random combinations of case law, statutes, and treaties. It will be hard to relate to this if you're not living here, but this actually explains so much of how London works... it’s uncodified!

Photo Credits:

Automobile Association (Certificate Lot)

Metropolitan Police Smart Car (CarPictures1.com)

London from Above (The Big Picture, Jason Hawkes)