The Charity People

And now for one of the bains of my existence. We all know them, we all dread them. Those do-gooders who spend their days standing on the street with clipboards trying to get innocent passers-by to just casually give them their checking account information so they can take your money away in the name of charity. Well I can't stand them.

So I work in an 11-storey building on a corner. The building is set slightly back from the street, and so in addition to some outdoor space up some stairs, we have an extra-wide sidewalk out front. Additionally, if you walk from my office to Tesco, you pass by another recessed building, this one with shops and such, with another 20-foot sidewalk. Given these widths, this gives the money-seekers plenty of room in which to work without complaints that they are blocking the sidewalk. On any given day, there will be a line of 3 or 4 of them spaced out between where you cross the street and Tesco, my usual lunchtime destination as they sell Coke for less than £1 and these days have half-price Muller rice yogurt. Sometimes we get additionally lucky and there will be one in front of the building, only I admit we normally just have someone selling the Big Issue, which is like Real Change.

Anyways, so basically everyday (3 or 4 days a week, really), I have to try and get down a football field length sidewalk without getting pounced on by one of these charity types. It is not easy. You are particularly vulnerable when walking by yourself, as it's more difficult to drag them into an alley and beat them up. So of the 4, two of them are often talking to each other and couldn't care less, one will usually have convinced someone to talk to them, and one is still trying to reel someone in. So you'd think that walking busily in a nowhere near straight line to get around them after glaring at them would be enough for them to think 'oh, maybe they don't want to listen to me rattle on about why they should give me their bank details', but no. They like to think that they just need to get your attention, so sometimes they will try calling out to you. For example, let's say you often wear a purple coat, people will say 'hey purple coat girl, give me your bank details or I shall pester and annoy you for the rest of the block'. Yesterday, my dirty-look/walking diagonally with my head down apparently again made me susceptible. The fact that I went into Tesco and then chose to return to my office along the same sidewalk (there's no other place to cross!) again with my head down, meant I had reconsidered and was ready to hand over the dough. I came very, very close to cursing at this person. Like, very, but I can't help but think that if you aknowledge their existence in any way it would just encourage them. Not sure what effect a good smack to the face would have.

Now, I'm not sure what these people are actually thinking, and while they do seem to be agents of legitimate charities (I've seen Oxfam, Cancer Research UK and the Red Cross), it just seems they are going about this horribly wrong. Okay, so the area has wide sidewalks, and is not as business-centric as some other parts of London, but it's also not touristy. I imagine most people that pass walk by encounter these people on a daily basis. Yet for some reason these folks seem to think that everyone is completely unfamiliar with what they may be doing, and will obviously be interested in talking to them and giving them their bank details so they can get new colorful bands for their dreadlocks. I mean, for charity. Is it so hard for them to understand that a) I see them but don't want to talk to them, b) glaring at them means I'm not interested, c) walking down the sidewalk does not mean I am incapable of giving money to worthy charities by less sketchy means, d) making a major diversion of avoidence means that while I may understand listening to their schpeel doesn't require me to give them any personal details, I also know that it is easier to cure most diseases than to get rid of them once they've gotten going. Like surely they would get more money walking around Covent Garden with a change bucket.

Anyways, that is my rant about the charity people of Notting Hill Gate. Just so you know that if I at one point fail to update blog for a long period it will most likely because I am in jail awaiting trial on assault charges in a charity related offence.

Murder in the Green

Apparently my neighborhood has a murder rate. Yes, that's right, my yuppy as can be neighborhood has hosted a violent crime. Let's discuss. So, last week sometime when I was returning from the gym, there was police tape blocking off a section of road at the end of the pedestrian walkway from the tube, where it goes on to the regular streets. The police seemed to be finishing up doing some survey work of a small section of road. For some reason I was thinking this had been Tuesday, but now I think it may have been Monday. So I had assumed someone had gotten hit by a car or something, and sort of filed it away.

This week some signs have appeared en route to the tube station from my house. Some big yellow metal signs with the headline MURDER. Below is a quick rundown basically as follows "Between Sunday 20th January and Monday 21st January shots were fired inside a home on Maur road and a male was forced into a vehicle and kidnapped". The sign is an appeal from the Metropolitan Police looking for witnesses, giving a phone number to call in case any of us noticed anything at the time. After briefly discussing where this Maur Road was, we saw that Saint Maur Road is the first road you hit upon leaving the pedestrian walkway from the tube. Aka, where the police tape had been last week.

If you look at google maps, you can see that Maur Road is not that far from my own street, about 6 streets away, running parallel to my own. Now how any sort of crime, let alone one of this magnitude, could be committed on this street is beyond me. For one thing it's nicer than mine, lined completed with two-store bricked town houses that are all cute and neat as can be, complete with trees along the sidewalk. I've walked down in a few times when picking up my dry cleaning after work. It's basically the complete opposite of sketch. Given this level of niceness, I must say that I am not really at all worried that I'm in a dangerous area. In fact I'm still pretty sure it's one of the safer areas in town. So instead of being wary of this crime, I must admit I am really just perplexed.

Despite the title on the sign and the run-down, I'm still not quite sure what has happened. So we know that an incident seemed to occur inside a home, so it wasn't on the street. We don't know if this was a crime between strangers or acquaintances, so we don't know how people wielding guns got into the house. Or quite frankly, as guns are essentially illegal in this country, how anyone got them. We don't know if someone was shot within the house, or if it only involved this man who was apparently kidnapped. We don't know if things have been resolved or what the motives behind the crime was. Was there a ransom situation? Was illegal activity involved? Disgruntled employees? Or just some random thing? I spent at least two minutes looking for something in the news about it yesterday but couldn't find anything. This was probably because it was week old news, but still. I'm hoping for a bit of closure.

Anyways, despite the crime I don't want people to think less of Parsons Green. If anything it just sort of goes to show that things of this nature can happen anywhere.

Australia Day & purple tights

I didn't get around to it yesterday so today I will give my Saturday recap. In the day-time in lieu of going to the gym, Mark and I walked up Kings Road in Chelsea (starting from home), which was like 2 or 3 miles. So Kings Road is just another shopping street, comparable to many others but still unique in its own way. It's main point of uniqueness is the quality of cars you have driving down this street. It was a constant stream (inter-mixed with buses) of Mercedes, BMWs, Aston Martins, Maseratis, Rolls Royces, Ferraris, etc. Like it was completely ridiculous. And there was a very high rate of horrible driving as well, primarily in the form of people blocking intersections after their light had turned red. Which resulted in a fair amount of honking. So along with the fancy cars, the people on Kings Road are also very fancy. Like I felt a bit out of place amongst these masses. Aside from the usual suspects of UK high street chains, they had a really neat Zara, a giant John Lewis (more on that in a second), and a really awesome little farmers market. Well, farmers market might be a stretch, as maybe one stall was selling veggies, but they had all kinds of fancy yet reasonably priced food and cheeses and baked goods and meat pies and huge pots of Thai food and all that stuff. Sadly we had just gotten sandwiches from Tesco Express about 20 minutes prior. We have made plans to return with appetites next Saturday.

So after ripping one of my pairs last week, I was after pants. And I needed new nylons, as well, they never last very long. So I went to Zara and loaded up to the try-on limit with 5 pairs (and a dress that was on sale that turned out to be unnaturally short and got easily vetoed). So I consider myself to be relatively tall, yet like all of these pants managed to be rather high-waisted, yet still cover my entire foot, even when standing on my tippy-toes. None of the pants made the cut. I'm hoping once the sales are done and the new stuff comes in I'll have better luck. After coming out of Zara entirely unimpressed with life, lucky Mark got dragged to the hosiery department at John Lewis. Aside from the usual pantyhose types, I got a new pair of black tights, these ones much more opaque than my last pair which had sort of died. As I hadn't spent enough time there already, I ended up grabbing a pair of 'grape' fashion tights on funky impulse. I was looking for something in a brown when Mark advised that I might have enough already. Which was true.

In the evening time we decided to go to a Mexican establishment we had seen last week. It was reached via the bus, so after donning the purple tights we hopped on. Now Saturday was Australia Day. Which is the anniversary of when the first boats of white settlers/prisoners arrived in Australia. In celebration of this day, Australians around the world gather to start drinking early in the day and keep going until late in the evening. At around 7pm, cruising via bus past the bars in Fulham Broadway I felt like I had entered some sort of parallel universe. The bars were suddenly all Australian (even the Havana Club!) and seemed to be having some competition for the largest Australian flag. The winner was seemingly the Slug @ Fulham, which is Australian all the time (they keep out the non-believers by playing unnaturally loud music at all hours of all days so it sort of hurts your ears as you walk by on the sidewalk). Despite what I thought was a relatively early hour, it had a very long line out front to get in. On the streets were people in shorts of t-shirts, some the Australian green and yellow, others were just wrapped in Australian flags. Now there seems to be a general concentration of Aussies in the Fulham area so I don't know how widespread this phenomenon was, but it certainly was intense.

This is getting long so I'll try and wrap it up. The Mexican place was still luckily Mexican and was very good, reasonably priced and had pitchers of sangria. Will be going back. Afterwards tried going to a movie but nothing looked good, so decided to try some local bars. The first one was overly pretentious and we couldn't figure out how to get served. The second one was Australian for the day and you could hear everyone inside singing along to Daydream Believer from a block away. The third was not only essentially empty, but was having a half price wine sale. So all the bottles of wine were half price. So it was like, have a bottle of wine or a cocktail and they were the same price. No brainer.

The purple tight wearing went well. But I'm not sure if I'll get up the guts to wear them to work this week. I think you just feel less silly wearing purple tights when others are walking around wearing flags.

British Cuisine

Sometimes I get asked what exactly American cuisine is. The obvious answer seems to always be hamburgers, but I like to think as a nation we've developed more than one meal. I can't help but get the impression that what makes up American cuisine is not just food that is American, but it is more the collection of different types of food that are commonly consumed without being termed 'exotic', even though the foods did not originate within the US. So while any form of BBQ and most forms of sweet pie are American in both origin and frequency of consumption, at the same time Mexican, Italian and Chinese all form integral parts of what we as Americans consume. Hopefully that all makes sense, because now I'm going to flip that around and delve into what these crazy Brits eat.

First I will go over what I term to be, well, let's say English cuisine. They are a bit different in Scotland so I'm going to leave them out of it. When I think of English food I generally think of 'savoury' pies. A pastry crust filled with meat and potatoes, and maybe like, a carrot. The meats vary, of course, from things like beef and chicken to lamb (they are so much bigger on lamb than we are). And of course other meats. The main reason that I don't think my mother could survive on the locale cuisine is that bread is not like, ever, included in an English meal. Perhaps this is do to the high percentage of potatoes, but sometimes I'm like, why is there never any bread?? Other typical English meals include of course bangers and mash and perhaps the king of them all, the roast.

Roasts are typically consumed as big Sunday lunches, and are a common feature of a pub on a Sunday. I've had I think 4. The star of the roast is, well, the roasted meat, and you typically have options. Most common would be beef, lamb and pork. Said meat would come covered in gravy. The meat is accompanied by sometimes two forms of roast potatoes, and other steamed vegetables such as carrots or peas, and perhaps there will be a bit of 'cauliflower cheese' which is basically as it sounds. There might be a yorkshire pudding on top, which while bready is obviously not bread because you eat it with a knife and fork and you don't put butter on it.

Then there is the food that the English eat. Like with ourselves, Italian is popular, only pizza tends to more of the Italian style with a very thin crust. In the East Asian department, there is some Chinese and Thai and the occasional Japanese. So that's all basically the same. Tapas are a lot more common, you know, like Spanish food. This is probably because we are not as far from Spain. Now the key difference, in my mind at least, is that Mexican and Indian food as basically swapped in positions. Both are present in both countries, but here Mexican is more of a rare bit of exoticism while curry is a bit of a food staple, with chicken tikka sometimes called the national dish. I liken this swap not to different tastes, but simple demographics and major immigration patterns.

So that's what I have to say about that, while certainly not covering a lot of food, it sorts of sets up more talk on food as it in some ways shows what I'm dealing with here as far as tastes are concerned. I might also add that I feel I have been here long enough where I can make people go eat American and Mexican food as often as possible. Which really isn't very often. Sadly.

Sweets

Today we shall explore the wonders and caveats of the English snack cake situation. The easiest way to do this, I reckon, is to just make a list of words, defining each one. So here goes.

Donut - They sell Krispy Kremes in Tesco, and there is a stand inside Fulham Broadway. Aside from the KK variety, most grocery stores will sell their own variation of your glazed and jam filled, but you SOL if you're after a maple bar or an apple fritter.
Muffin - The coffee places all sell muffins, and in essence the Starbucks muffins here are the same as those in the NW, but maybe slightly different flavors. They are just generally referred to as muffins. A place at West Quay in Southampton specified that they sold American muffins, these again being of the same variety. Now if you go to the grocery store, you can buy some again not very good blueberry muffins or whatever, or what they also just refer to as muffins but we call English muffins. I believe these to have been their original muffin, and then we sort of invaded with our tastier, non-toasted variety and sort of forced the word to have duel meaning.
Biscuit - Falls under what we would term a cookie, but aren't really fans of. Generally cracker-like cookies small in size and not overly sweet, commonly dipped in hot beverages.
Cookie - The larger, usually softer variety of cookie often inclusive of bits of chocolate. Sainsburys sells some specifically labelled as being 'American style cookies'. Often sold commercially as chocolate CHUNK (not chip), double chocolate, or with Smarties (M&Ms). Oatmeal raisin and snickerdoodles are non-existent.
Raisin - A bit out of step, but I find bizarre. Generally referred to as sultanas and coming from white grapes. In lieu of raisin bran you have sultana bran, for example, but you can still buy the little packs of California raisins.
Scone - What we would refer to as a buttermilk biscuit, often found termed as 'fruit' and containing raisins/sultanas, but no other fruit. A limited number of Starbucks in London also carry the 'mixed berry scone' which is what we term a scone and filled with berries and has sugar on top. Our version of the scone has not been seen anywhere else in these parts.
Pancake - A bit of a tricky one, because as with many of these terms, can describe a variety of things. American style pancakes are not common for whatever reason. There are pre-made pancakes available in the grocery store that appear to be similar to our thin pancakes, only packed full of preservatives and ergo not so good. Pancake can also be used to describe the large, flat burrito-style variety that, while I'm not 100%, are what we just call crepes. Crepes also available.
Crumpet - Easily mistaken for thick English muffin. They are unnaturally moist and a bit sticky, with one porous side and one cooked pancake like side. They are toasted and you apparently top with butter, which melts and oozes into the porous area, infiltrating the crumpet. They scare me. Also a slang term for referring to a woman.
Croissant - Available in excess, and often in more varieties than seen regularly in the US. The chocolate filled variety, pain au chocolat, is much more popular and better than those I've had stateside.
Toast - Luckily toast is universal, but the terms for bread are not. White bread is white bread, but then it all falls apart. Brown bread is the main alternative, and is similar to wheat but of an even brown chunkless tone. My favorite is granary bread, which is sort of like wheat but not as wheaty, if that makes any sense. There is also granary wholemeal, which is a bit darker than original granary. If ordering toast out and about, your choices are probably just white or brown bread.
Brownie - The same. Was at Starbucks a few weeks ago and I swear they had three different kinds that probably all tasted exactly the same.

I think that covers most of the spectrum. Personally I find the whole food area quite interesting, so perhaps I'll continue along those lines tomorrow. Let me know if there's anything I've forgotten!

Natural disaster

One thing that the Brits (for some reason) seem to sort of pride themselves on is that their little land is relatively immune from natural disasters. No earthquakes or hurricanes for them! Just smooth mundane weather for them! But to be honest, I'm actually surprised by how much fury nature seems to unleash upon my surroundings.

First of all, there is this bizarre tornado thing. Like, little tornadoes randomly pop up in cities and wreak a small amount of havoc. Having seen the Wizard of Oz a few too many times, my vision of a tornado involves the gathering up of lots of dust and cows as it sweeps over the plains. Not randomly taking off a few roofs in the middle of Birmingham. Like I have no understanding of why there are tornadoes, but I swear there are. And many more than you would think!

Next there are the floods. Last summer huge swathes of the middle of the country were covered in water for a considerable amount of time. It was a big deal, like trains were cancelled, people didn't have any drinking water and people had mud issues. And you were like, oh no this is horrible, they don't get natural disasters in England so this must be really difficult! So here we are, less than six months later, and what is going on? Many of these same rivers are breaking their banks again. The news shows people being rescued because their workplaces have been surrounded by water during the day and other people are getting carried away in their cars. Now I don't really know where these places are as they all have slightly odd yet similar names, but Shropshire is having some issues. I'm starting to think that maybe flooding is a somewhat regular issue for large portions of the country. Having spent a good portion of yesterday reading planning guidelines and panning past page after page of 'acceptable' shaped chimneys and 'unacceptable' shaped chimneys, I couldn't help but think, maybe instead of worrying so much about chimneys and fences, they should be like hmm, maybe let's avoid building everything on a flood plain. I don't know, just a thought.

The third thing that is not so much a natural disaster but makes the news occasionally is that of what I term booty. Ships occasionally get in trouble off the coast, running into rocks and things and sort of start to sink and all their cargo makes its way to shore at random places along the south coast. Like last week I was reading about people getting motorcycles and cat food that had washed ashore. Yesterday the news was giving wide coverage as a 10-mile section of the south coast is being inundated with 2x4s from a ship that's been stuck off the Dorset coast for a week at a really funny angle.

Basically, for this seemingly disaster free land, a lot of random stuff seems to go awry. Personally I'd rather have a tiny little earthquake every few years where a glass falls over or whatever than have my house flood every 6 months.

*** Disclaimer: I realize that most places don't flood, and the places flooding now are not necessarily those that flooded over the summer. I have not been personally affected by flooding or tornadoes or the beaching of booty.

Jack the Ripper

As it's Monday morning, it's time for the recap of my weekend. My apologies in advance if you find my weekend uninteresting.

On Saturday morning I was signed up for 'group cycling' class at the gym. It was my first venture into anything resembling spinning, so I was nervous. I stopped on the way to get a bottle of water and sat in the back corner so the fewest amount of people could laugh at me. It was certainly an interesting experience. Despite my expectations of something at least resembling gender equality, the only male in the class was the instructor. Perhaps they all just go to the more intense spinning class instead. Anyways, the class involved the overhead lights being turned off, some color-changing dance-club-esque lights being turned on, and loud music. The warm-up was to the BeeGee's Night Fever, for example. The instructor told us when to add resistance, when to remove it, when to stand up, when to sit down and how we should be feeling at random points in time. Some songs were sort for recovery, some were for 'climbing hills'. It was a good class and I thought the instructor did a very good job, but that doesn't mean it was easy. By the end my hair was basically drenched in sweat. It wasn't ideal, especially when I had to stop at the grocery store, the dry cleaners and Starbucks on the way home. I was expecting some leg soreness, but perhaps I didn't use enough resistance for that. Instead I just have soreness from sitting on that horribly uncomfortable bike seat!

Late in the day, Mark and I headed east to eat some chicken at the Nando's under a railway bridge by vinopolis and then went on our long-awaited Jack the Ripper tour. While Nando's is a big chain and includes normal looking branches both at Fulham Broadway and across the street from my work, I was assured that this was a special one, and indeed it was. It was built into the arches under the old bridge, so it had basically two rooms with very, very tall arched ceilings and chandeliers hanging down. In this dramatic setting we had chicken burgers and fries with, somewhat unique in this land to Nando's, bottomless self-serve Cokes.

The Jack the Ripper tour was quite the enterprise. Basically everyone checked in at the same tube station, and we got sort of broken up into smaller groups of between 25 and 30 people, and then remained spaced out for the tours so we didn't come across each other. We had a group with what seemed to be predominantly English people, mainly couples (at one point we looked ahead of us and then behind and it was basically just a parade of couples holding hands, was rather amusing at the time). Anyways, we walked around a variety of random locations, learning about what life was like in that part of London in the late 1800s (to sum it up, it sucked and everyone had fleas because they bathed once a month), about the crimes Jack the Ripper committed, what the press was like at the time and what the police were doing to try and solve the crimes, and the tour capping off with a run-down of potential suspects and the one the tour endorsed as the actual killer. While many things have changed in those parts over the years, there was still quite a bit that remained. We passed some really old pubs, went down some old-style streets and saw some dark alleyways. We also walked down Brick Lane for a couple blocks and were inundated with offers for the nearby curry houses. The thing I found most interesting was on a street just off Brick Lane with period houses that for the most-part had been done up and were worth massive amounts of money, there was one house that looked run-down and quite derelict. According to the tour guide, that house was left like that on purpose and rented out to film companies in need of a worn-out period house. Interesting indeed. Anyways, the tour was pretty neat and a way to spend an evening that was a bit different. I'm intrigued to find out what other sorts of walking tours are available now in other parts of town.

To finish up the weekend, yesterday we went and saw No Country for Old Men (a bit strange that one, and I didn't really understand the end) and then went and used a buy-one-get-one-free coupon thing at Wagamamma's. Both these activities took place in Putney, aka, the opposite direction as Fulham Broadway. We took the bus. It was a bit strange but it generally looks like a lot of good things go on over that way so will have venture that way more in the future!

Relocation, Relocation

Last week my favorite home finding show started a new season. Looking back at that sentence I realize it sounds a bit sad and pathetic, and I'm willing to concede that it is a bit sad. But the television over here is awash in property related shows, so you end up watching them from time to time. Anyways, since last summer I have been watching quite a few old episodes of Relocation, Relocation. I must admit I find it very intriguing to find out what your money can buy you in the UK housing market. But the problem was that the shows were old, and house prices have most likely changed in most areas since 2003, so hence my excitement for the new season.

Relocation, Relocation has the double name as in each hour-long episode the hosts find two homes for people. Generally this is a main family home in some quaint area of the country, and a much smaller city place either for the husband to live in during the work week or for the family to rent out. Last night there was a family where the husband obviously made bank and his wife had trouble lifting a finger unless it was to swipe her credit card. They were leaving London and had £550,000 to buy a house in Harrogate, which from the looks of it is a cute town way, way, WAY far north, and then they had £200,000 left over to buy a place in London for the husband to stay in 3 nights a week for work.

Up in Harrogate, the couple decided on a 4-bedroom house in the middle of town that needed a bit of work. It was an old stone townhouse on the end of it's little row (an 'end-terrace'). They ended up paying £525,000 for the house (yes, commonly known as $1,000,000), and had the work priced to cost about £75,000. Of course it could have been done for less, as they decided to tear down walls and put in free-standing baths and the wife required a project manager to oversea things as she just didn't have time for that sort of thing (we later learn her time is filled by lunches and teas).

Anyways, more interesting to me is what the £200,000 would get them in the center of London. Seemingly in central London it got you a 11 foot by 9 foot room. With no refrigerator. Deciding this was indeed too small, they dragged the folks out to (God forbid!) zone 2 in north London where they managed to get a studio above a cafe with an actual separate room for the kitchen. As a young person in this city who would perhaps think about buying something in this neck of the woods, this is not encouraging. How does anyone ever afford to buy anything in these parts? What regular person can just leap into a property market where you get a room that barely fits a bed for $400,000?

Quite a few of the people I work with nearing the 30 mark are property owners. They live in places I've never heard of and have commutes involving both overground and underground trains. They conceivable spend £2,000 in commuting costs every year (or more) and as they live in the sticks, might have a car for getting around on the weekends. They say house prices are going to be going down this year. We'll see if these house prices are on the same over-priced scale that many of the goods here or if they'll fall to at least semi-human level.

Speaking of over the shoulder reading, today I saw a headline saying that gas here had reached £5 a gallon. That's like, $10. Makes you ponder.

Socks

Last Friday morning I was waiting for a train at High Street Kensington to take me the final leg of my journey to Notting Hill. Across the tracks, sitting in a bench casually reading the newspaper with legs crossed, was a man perhaps around 40, wearing a black suit, white shirt, bright pink tie and coordinated bright pink socks. I was at first shocked by the sight of such bright pink socks on a man otherwise dressed quite formally and obviously heading in to work. After this thought subsided I realized that such a fashion statement was not, in context, much of a statement at all. It sort of dawned on me that the English often rebel against the conformity of the uniform of dark suits and ironed shirts by adding odd little touches to help them stand out in the crowd, often in the form of socks (for men) and their hosiery (for women). I liken this to people in Japan dying their hair crazy colors so they can be more easily picked out a crowd.

These little signs of individuality can in some respects be chalked up to what we stereotypically think of as English eccentricity. However, I do not agree with this analysis. Like with hair in Japan, you see these sorts of things everywhere you go. Like in Seattle people seem to think it's a socially acceptable statement to walk into a) Starbucks or b) their place of business wearing nothing but a slightly too tight spandex onesy that is apparently essential for bike riding. To be honest I would much rather be sitting at a table somewhere and look up to see someone in turquoise tights than a complexly decorated spandex ensemble. And unless I'm totally unaware of the leggings phenomenon going on in the northwest these days, you're likely to turn more heads wearing the tights than the onesy, while here the complete opposite would be true. Of course maybe people in Seattle in Portland have just trained themselves to look away upon spying such a onesy in the corner of their eye.

The wearing of intriguing accessories, however, seems to be limited to the lower half. There does not seem to be a trend towards really crazy ties, for example, and people aren't sitting there with completely bizarre necklaces and dangly earrings. While women tend to have slightly funkier shoes than their NW counterparts, the men still generally stick with very staid black oxfords and loafers. Anyways, while I'm still not sure exactly how to classify the man with the bright pink coordinated final outfit touches, I certainly wouldn't call him eccentric.

Innit

Before I delve into the exciting story behind today's title, I shall first discuss Mark's new, well, not toy per se, but fun gadget-oriented hobby type thing. He's created a website, which can be found at (wait for it....wait for it.....) www.markwoturner.co.uk. It also has some mac address, but that one is easier to remember and it's all the same anyways. So if you want to learn a bit more about Mark and see some additional photos (such as Saturday's trip to the British Museum), it's the place to go. I'll add a link to my sidebar.

Now for the tale behind the title. 'Innit' is a slang word/term used by what I would term as generally annoying types. It most likely originated as the term 'isn't it', and while it has taken on a life of it's own, this is generally what it means. While it may be termed as either a north London or south London colloquialism, I'm not sure which one. They're all the same to me.

So who says innit? How do they use it? What makes these people annoying? So many questions, but the answers are relatively simple. I will use two examples. First example, Heathrow airport tube station, New Year's day, about 7:30 in the morning. Heaves of tired grumpy travellers waiting 20 minutes for the tube, and 2 young men sitting slouchily on the one bench talking at unnaturally high volumes, getting glared at by the bold, as sometimes the young men occasionally felt obliged to say something back to people they saw looking at them. They also had knew they were being loud, and seemed to savor it. As they were talking at this unnaturally loud volume (and I have no idea where they came from or why they were there at that time, I didn't see suitcases), I could hear everything they said. In the conversation between these b-boy types, approximately every other sentence has an 'innit' tagged onto the end. Here is an example sentence, 'So I met this fit girl last night, innit.' And I suppose also worth mentioning is that the innit user does not otherwise speak the Queen's English or have what we think of as a typical English accent, instead it is specifically either a north or south London accent, again I'm just not savvy enough to know the difference.

My second example is from Tuesday evening, when due to there being 2 people on the track's at various places on the District line (although not between me and my destination) my train stopped at High Street Kensington and I had to get on a bus. I was sitting upstairs and ended up sort of surrounded by some young men. The one sitting one seat over in the row in front of me made several phone calls. In a conversation basically talking about 'football' in various aspects, he again managed to use the word innit to cap off several sentences. It was again at a slightly louder than necessary volume, which just in my mind put the annoyance level just a little bit higher.

So why the prevalence of this particular word? Why does just the sound of it make so many people shudder? What power does it hold? Well, for starters, I'm pretty sure that if you went into an interview for a respectable job, the uttering of the word innit at the end of a sentence would probably be enough to ensure you won't get hired. The impression I get is that the use of the word is associated with a lot of anti-social behavior. While I'm in no way implying that if you use the word innit regularly does it mean you enjoy intimidating passers-by on the street, have no respect for authority and lack the ability to sit and speak properly, but those who do fall within those categories in certain parts of London are likely to use the term. Like a not all rectangles are squares but all squares are rectangles situation, although again I don't think 'all' is the proper word to apply in this situation. However, the prevalence is such that the use of the word is enough to at least make many people think of 'yob' behavior and will make many people someone wary of you (aka, not willing to glare at you for speaking loudly, not asking you to turn down your music).

One of the major downsides of this slang term and all its connotations is that when you have to use the phrase 'in it', you feel like some sort of criminal who needs to justify their actions. For example, saying 'does this have tomatoes in it?', BAD. Rephrase, 'are there tomatoes in this?', GOOD. You know what I mean, innit?

Behold the power of tea

Tea is an extra special beverage in the UK because unlike coffee or hot chocolate, it has magical healing powers. Or at least that's what popular culture has convinced you to think. Having read more than my fair share of books about the UK and books taking place in the UK before I came over here, and having read more since this time, I feel I'm at least somewhat qualified to relay at least some of the following.

We'll start with Wilkie Collins, who is of course my favorite and should be yours, and his book Armadale, which I recently completed. Taking place in the 1850s in England, there were plenty of references to tea and its power. Large portions of the story were told via the main villain's diary. The character, a murderous ginger laudanum addict (or whatever it is called), would occasionally get a bit stressed out while going over her plans to ruin the lives of others/kill people/take over the world. In such times of stress, in lieu of taking her psychedelic drugs, she would make herself a nice cup of tea. Afterwards she would thus be calm, clear-headed and relaxed, able to resume her ambitious plans. Perhaps this message should be spread to today's meth addicts.

In more recent literature, before Christmas break I glanced through my work neighbor's copy of 'Watching the English' (she's Irish so not technically one of them, thus allowing her to watch), by Kate Fox. Skimming through it, one of the few sections I did read was that on tea. According to its sociological findings, the cup of tea is the default fix-all in times of general worry. In extremely stressful situation, like let's say your house just collapsed in a tornado, you simply up the ante to a cup of tea with a biscuit. I'm speculating a bit here, but I think the power is increased if a matronly grandmother type wearing an apron makes the tea for you and watches expectantly with their hands clasped while you drink it. A cup of tea from a despondent teenager wearing headphones just wouldn't be as effective.

From my understanding, a cup of tea can be taken to cure any of the following:
- Tiredness
- Stress
- Cold
- Flu
- Woe
- Fretfulness

And should be consumed ASAP when any of the following situations occur:
- coming in from the cold
- sleepiness strikes
- you are bedstricken with a crippling fever
- you are visiting someone in the hospital because they have a crippling fever
- hosting a dinner party
- a pet runs away
- coup attempt
- you declare bankruptcy
- nothing much else to do

As you can see, tea is really a cure all. This is the most obvious explanation for its overwhelming prevalence in British society today (and in the days of yore before they had useful drugs and the answer to everything was having a doctor slice your arm open so you bleed into a bowl). While this is all just my opinion, at least 18% of it is backed up by solid evidence and it is therefore best to accept the whole thing as gospel.

Tea in public

In the third and second to last entry covering my exploration of tea, I shall discuss the consumption of tea in the public arena, outside the home and workplace. Given the status of tea in both these other realms, I find the breakdown of tea consumption in public quite intriguing and have my theories as to why this is.

As mentioned in the previous posts, tea is quite a popular beverage at home and at work. While people drink coffee, it's certainly not what all the commotion is about. Step outside these places, however, and it suddenly becomes difficult to find a cup. Much like in the US, the streets here are lined with coffee shops, in addition to Starbucks, Cafe Nero and another place of which I am currently blanking on the name are quite prevalent. While all of these places of course serve tea, they are now clearly secondary to the consumption of coffee-based beverages and baked goods. I have not come across any chains, such as Peet's, where tea is placed on anything resembling an equal priority to coffee.

Much like in America, a number of finer establishments offer the concept of high tea. Apparently you haven't lived until you've gone for high tea at the Savoy. Or maybe it was the Ritz. Or maybe one of those other really fancy hotels. Anyways, as can be supposed, these situations involve the handing over of vast sums of money to sit and drink tea with a vast array of tiny sandwiches and biscuits and such spread out before you. In my mind you are also wearing a pastel suit but I don't think that's necessary. Pinkies however, should never touch anything but air (again, I'm just assuming). Despite knowing that these things exist, I don't know of anyone who has been to one.

The third option for tea consumption in public is the one I have actually partaken in, that being what I see to be a rural/small town sort of phenomenon as the quaint little tea shop. Having visited such a place while in quaint little Beaulieu, frequently this sort of establishment involves a little pot of tea, some what the English call scones, what we call buttermilk biscuits, clotted cream, and jam (as illustrated in the above photo from last April). They should have more of these places in London. It's a nice little change of pace.

So why doesn't tea take centre stage when out and about? Why doesn't everyone suddenly disappear off Oxford Street at 4pm for tea? I don't know but it sounds like an awesome idea and I'm going to pursue it. I could have a scone with jam everyday. Anyways, my real point here is that in a busy city people often do not have the time or inclination to stop and savor a cup of tea as they might in the home or in the countryside. Tea is a relaxing, destressing beverage at home and well, I'm assuming a staying awake beverage at work. While both of these would be handy while shopping and running errands, it would also somehow cheapen and depersonalize the tea-drinking experience. Or perhaps there is just a lack of options for tea drinking in these parts. If I opened 'Anglo Mango's Urban Tea Oasis' and had little mugs and saucers with flowers on them would I be tapping into a hugely under served market?

Tomorrow in my final tea entry, I shall discuss the amazing power of tea as discussed in literature and popular culture throughout the centuries. No really, I will.

Tea in the home

In the second of my tea series, I explore the presence and power of tea in the private realm of the home. Again, having only had limited exposure to these sorts of things, I'm putting in a disclaimer that some of the following may be somewhat inaccurate.

I must admit that despite not being a tea drinker, and the roomie not really being a tea drinker, I have tea in my home. Not only do I have tea, but alongside my cute little strawberry canisters labeled 'coffee' and 'sugar' there is one called 'tea'. Needless to say, it is the one never used, but still it is filled with tea. Apparently you get deported if you don't have tea on hand in case of emergencies. Now, I must admit I don't know what kind of tea fills up the little canister. It used to be Asda brand, but that apparently has been replaced by something fresher, I just don't know what.

So I suppose before delving into the serving of tea at home, I'll discuss the buying of the tea. Much like we have an aisle devoted to salad dressing, the English grocery store has a tea section. While the US grocery store would also have such a section, it seems primarily to be of this size to fit on a maximum number of obscurely flavored teas. While there are still plenty of varieties on offer here, the size of the area seems to be to allow bigger and bigger boxes of tea. The bottom shelf is often of double height and stacked with boxes containing 100 tea bags. It's one of the few products at the grocery store that you can genuinely buy in bulk.

To be honest, I don't know what flavor the generic English tea is. I don't know if it's what we call English breakfast, Earl Grey, Lady Grey or any of that stuff. It's just called tea. And aside from PG tips, which I can easily believe to be England's most popular tea because it's everywhere (I sit next to the filing area, on top of the cabinets one of the storage boxes is a disused PG tips box, it once contained '2 x 1150 one pyramid catering tea bags', whatever that means), you often see a lot of grocery store branded tea bags (hence my old Asda ones). Again, the boxes just say it's tea, so I guess you just sort of roll with it. And it is also very cheap. Although it must be if the people are drinking it like water.

One of my primary failings as a hostess in this land (at least in my mind) is that I have never offered anyone any tea. I offer water, beer, wine, lemonade and all that racket, but never any tea. One time I did manage to have a bit of an epiphany and offered Mark a cup of tea, but it went wrong when I realized I not only didn't really know what I was doing but the tea had apparently passed it's ideal freshness date. After that the Asda tea was retired. So to date, as that cup was not fully consumed, I believe only one glass of tea has been consumed in my house, and that was by Mark's mom. Excuse me, his 'mum'. And having heard of our tea shortcomings, she bought the tea beforehand.

As a guest in the homes of others, I have been offered tea on numerous occasions and occasionally accepted. Again, I never really know what goes on in the making of this tea, but it always comes out tasting and looking the same. It's got the same subtle flavor, and is of what I consider to by an orange-tinted milky brown color. It is the orange tint that makes it recognizable as not being coffee. Again it has sugar in it, but nobody seems to have sugar cubes around (nor are there any in my office), it's just the regular loose variety. I've heard rumors of people who drink tea constantly while at home, where the roommate circle assures that someone is always making some and offering it up to the others. It's something.

The one last component of the home tea experience that I find rather bizarre is the electric kettle. Much like here at work, people don't seem to heat their water up with a regular kettle on the stove. The electric kettle is a standard issue appliance, and it somehow manages to heat your water up much quicker. This can be key when drinking tea like the gallon, but you can then also use it when heating up water for cooking purposes. There is one on my counter right now. And sometimes, I use. But then sometimes I just like to heat up my noodle water the old-fashioned way.

Tea in the office

It just wouldn't be England if tea weren't consumed by the truckload. Today I will begin what may become a multi-part series on the culture surrounding the consumption of tea by those around me. Since I've been tending to write blog when I get into the office a bit early (as is the case today), I shall start by discussing the role that tea plays within these walls everyday.

To give a little background, in the little kitchenette, there is a coffeemaker that may have originated in the 1980s and an electric kettle. For use with the kettle, in the cupboard there is instant coffee, hot chocolate mix, and boxes and boxes of tea bags. There is also sugar in the cupboard and strange little boxes of milk in the mini-fridge. In a separate cupboard, there is a bevy of mugs, many of them generic company mugs for general use.

So while I obviously can't speak for the whole of the land, I can relay what I observe in my immediate surroundings. Within my group of six desks (myself included) there are two regular tea drinkers, and one sort of unknown. My connections in other areas also rely heavily on the power of tea. I don't know of anyone who drinks the coffee. Then again I can't blame anyone, as having tried it before I can assure you it's not good.

What is missing from my immediate surroundings, that I have heard of happening quite frequently in other arenas, is the concept of people sort of getting rounds of tea as people take turns getting everyone's drinks in a pub. No one ever offers to get me a cup of tea! And quite frankly it's in everyone's best interest that I don't make any as I really don't know how (how much sugar? how much milk? how long do you leave the tea bag in??). I sort of get the impression this group tea making is a way of group bonding in some circles, much like drinking in the pub. For all I know people get coffee for each other in the US, but the DOT didn't have free beverages at the ready so such culture didn't exist there.

There is also this concept of tea discussion. Yesterday someone walking by yelled out to someone else walking by 'Where's my tea!?', to which they received the response 'In the kettle!' This morning one of the group tea drinkers interrupted a casual conversation with the statement 'Not before I have my cup of tea.'

Personally I don't understand with this requirement of having tea. While it's caffeinated, it's not really that caffeinated. I just sort of get the impression that there is this deep cultural bond to this generic milky tea that seems to be consumed in considerable proportions. Speaking of which, perhaps tomorrow I will discuss the role of tea in socializing in the home (not that I really know what I'm talking about, but I can speculate....).

Allot Grdns

It took me a long time to figure out why so many open spaces in these parts are called Allot Grdns (as represented in maps). It's short for allotment gardens, and it's what they call community gardens. And having determined what they are, I feel like I am therefore qualified to give an opinion on their presence. First of all, these allotment gardens are plentiful and large and so you come across them somewhat regularly. My first face to face exposure was my first day of exploration last summer when I moved to London and decided to go check out Bishop's Park by my house. A large area (let's say around 2 football fields) within the park was fenced off and full of small rectangular raised planter beds. There was some scattered greenery, but the general impression was that of inaccessible decay and isolation, a place not frequented by human beings. I assumed at the time that it was something connected to the neighboring school.

Since this time I have seen 'Allot Grdns' appear on many maps, including one of Bishop's Park, and have thus been able to make the connection to what they actually are. While it seems like a good idea, people living in cities having a little plot of earth to call their own and grow plants and vegetables and such, they just don't come across as being of much use in reality. Perhaps it's just been the time of year, but they all just look sad and lonely to me. I've never seen anyone actually tending to their little plot. I can't help but think it might be a bit more conducive to community development if they were just left as open fields that everyone could actually walk through. I don't know, perhaps come April they'll be packed every Saturday with little families teaching their small children to grow tomatoes and I'll be eating my words. But they could at least take down the high fencing or have visiting hours or something. And I am in no way considering getting myself an allotment. I would have to spend my Saturdays weeding. When I could be sitting around watching tv.

In a scattering of other news, it's really winding out and I'm slightly fearful that the building is going to collapse. We found out yesterday that ours is the only flat in the building that has the extra room extended onto the back of the building. For some reason my gym has decided that their current locking system of putting in a £1 coin to release the key (you get it back when you put the key back in) is too conducive to people leaving their stuff in lockers when they're not there, so have decided to switch over to old-fashioned padlocks. Because having to carry a padlock around with you all the time does not tempt you to just leave it on a locker all the time. So now I have to go find a padlock at lunch today or spend £5 to get the one they are selling at the gym (I want to get my own, otherwise I would never be able to figure out which one was mine when I was done with the work out). I haven't used a padlock since high school. Oh, and all the people have returned to work and I'm stuck with unnaturally overcrowded trains while trying to get to work. I shall be a sardine for the foreseeable future.

Rugby!

Today capped off the Christmas season. As part of the festive melee, Mark and I went to a rugby game somewhere in the quasi-suburbs of southwest London. It was part of his Christmas gift, you see.

Anyways, the stadium is near the national rugby stadium at Twickenham. The Harlequins were playing Leicester. I asked what city the Harlequins actually represented and was answered by a puzzling glaze. But that's not the important part. Key here is that it was my first real-live rugby 'match'.

The stadium was relatively small, with a sell-out crowd barely topping 10,000. It was a nice sunny day, and when the sun was out it was not too cold, which I thought was key! As the stadium was small, we were relatively low down and close to the action. While I had a bit of trouble following the ball at times, that was probably mainly because of my novice viewer level. The game started out well enough, with the quins getting a couple, um, uhhhh, let's just say field goals and they went up 6-0. There were some scrums and some occasions of throwing people up in the air, both of which I found quite exciting. The other fans for the most part seemed relatively normal, and aside from being in the considerable female minority and American, I didn't feel particularly out of place. There weren't any songs like at the Southampton game, just occasional chants of 'Harlequins'. There were two mascots, both bears, one called Harley the other called Charley. Within my notice, one stole someone's beer and the other one managed to get some guy to pick him up and twirl him in the air. It was cute.

Things sort of went downhill in the second half. And quickly. Leicester was up 42-6 before the quins finally managed to score a, um, oh wait I know this one, a try, and the final score was 42-13. So much more respectable to lose by less than 30 points. Anyways, overall it was an enjoyable experience. The game wasn't too long, there was plenty of action, and a lot of short shorts.

Kleenex

Having had a cold that crossed the Atlantic with me this past month, I couldn't help but notice the differences in the Kleenex found in each land. Despite all intuition indicating it would be the opposite, I am generally much more impressed with the UK Kleenex. It's both considerably thicker and softer. It's not just that the stuff I have here is the premium either, my desk/home boxes are the cheapest grade of Kleenex available. Yet they are still triple ply. When you have a cold and are going through a lot of Kleenex, these little things can make a huge difference. Like my nose is a little happier over here. When comparing my slightly more luxurious travel Kleenex to the US stuff it's even more remarkable. It's like the Bellagio versus, umm, Circus Circus or something. Or maybe the parents just stock really, really horrible tissue. Unlikely.

In other news, I'll be shoving my application for a new visa in the mail today. I had been intending to do this on Wednesday but I didn't have everything I need, and then yesterday I had collected the things I had forgotten but removed something else. But today it's all hitting the streets. This is a worrying thing on many levels. First there is the obvious concern that I will be turned down for the visa and therefore be deported, then there is my general well-founded lack of faith in the Royal Mail to get my passports back to me when they are done with them.

Along the lines of completely unrelated paragraphs, I might also add that I am so glad to have purchased a box of my dearly beloved granola bars while at Target last weekend. Not only were they nice snacks to have on the return journey, but they've been fabulous snacks since then as well. Why, why, why does the UK not have Quaker peanut butter chocolate chip granola bars?? Do they not know what a glaring hole this is in society's ability to snack in a reasonable manner? You want a granola bar here you end up with some obscure thing generally lacking taste and only coming in one flavor - chocolate chip. Mind you, Nature Valley is around but I don't really find these comparable given the fact that they have two in every package, making them a much more considerable snack than the single bar. Plus you just get crumbs everywhere with the Nature Valley. Anyways, I could go on and on about granola bars all day. But I won't. I'm going to clean my desk instead. At least a little bit.

Happy New Year!

After my brief sojourn in the US, I'm back at work in Notting Hill, my Christmas tree has disappeared and for some reason it's a new year despite the fact that I was on a plane at midnight (everyone knows red-eye flights don't really count as 'nights').

So I arrived at Heathrow yesterday morning at around 6:30, having gotten about 2 hours of sleep on the plane. They certainly don't make it easy on you. You get on the plane at 12:30, and then around 3:30 west coast time they decide it's 'night' and they turn all the lights off and you're like, um, I'm not sleepy. And then when it finally gets to 9:00 west coast time they turn all the lights on and serve you breakfast. It's just wrong. Anyways, I made it through customs with considerable ease and grabbed my bags. Sadly because it was pre-8 am on a holiday, trains were not running that frequently, so I had to wait about 20 minutes for a Piccadilly line train into town. And as did everyone else at the airport, so it was packed with giant suitcases. There were loads of empty seats, you just couldn't get to them because of bag barricades. At Earl's Court there was another 15 minute for a Wimbledon train to come, but I finally made it through my front door around 9:15. After using the facilities, watering Basil and Thymey Tim, I took a 3-hour nap. I figured all the New Years revelers were sleeping until noon, so it wouldn't be too horrible if I did as well.

So, after my nap the Turners arrived with about 8 carloads of items and then were off like the night. I spent the rest of the day doing some unpacking, vacuuming up pine needles, putting up my new shower curtain and chatting with someone wearing an Oregon State sweatshirt. It's like I just can't escape those darn Beavers!

The combo of jet lag, time change, and the thought of returning to work make it extremely difficult to get out of bed this morning. After three snoozes and an additional ten-minute period of semi-conciousness, I finally managed to get up. It was not great. And now I'm back at work. There was no one on the trains this morning and there aren't many people around here. It makes me think I could have slept in a bit later this morning. And the email servers seem to be down so I can't check my emails. It's going to be a long day! I'm looking forward to going back to bed already!