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)