Bodiam Castle

Yesterday was an action packed day. Mark and I booked out a Streetcar for 24 hours, picking it up at 10 am. Our first stop was Ikea. While theoretically not far away, down in Croydon, there aren't exactly any Freeways or anything of the like connecting us and there. Traffic was not quite ideal and it took (sorry, Sweet Caroline sing along break there) over an hour and a half to get there. Luckily, we are the speediest Ikea shoppers of all times, and managed to get Mark a desk and chair and still be out of there by 12:15. So then off we headed to the English countryside.

You see, my boss's 40th birthday is this weekend, and to celebrate she was having a bbq at her country house. In my attempt to kiss a little toosh, so to speak, I convinced Mark that we should go. Now my boss's house is in a little tiny village on the train line to Hastings, near Battle, closer to Roberstbridge. Robertsbridge also happens to be the closest town to Bodiam Castle, which we had actually been sort of hoping to go to anyways and this provided the perfect excuse. Really killing two birds with one stone. The castle was again sort of in the middle of nowhere, but way cool. See, it's an actual medieval castle with a moat! Yes, a moat! It's widely photographed and very pretty. Sadly, it's pretty much ruins on the inside, but still very awesome. I've got an album's worth of photos, but they're not up on picasa yet. Instead, you can check out some photos of my new place.

Anyways, Bodiam Castle was built in the late 1300s by a knight during the 100 years war with France. While theoretically built to be a defensive sort of place, with a drawbridge and a gatehouse with holes for pouring tar on invaders, it was also built to be a nice house to live in. So really it's a bit of a mixed style and people question the strength of the defense features, but I saw poo on you, it's a neat old castle with a moat! It's surrounded by pretty green English countryside, and you can just sit and chill on the grass outside basically all day long. Or, you can pay a few pounds to the National Trust and cross the moat and climb around inside the castle. While at first I thought the inside seemed quite small, I then sort of thought of it in context with the size of where I presently live and then it seemed a bit bigger indeed. We climbed up one of the corner towers up quite frankly the steepest, windiest staircase ever, where each step was about 12 inches high, but it was worthwhile to get up to the top. The view of the surrounds was very pretty, and I imagine in some respects relatively unchanged from back in the day. It was an absolutely beautiful day, which always goes to make a place seem nicer, but the place really was quite special in my mind. I recommend. As I was telling Mark, we don't have a single medieval castle with a moat in Oregon.

After the castle we headed just down the road to my boss's house for a big old bbq. On special was pork products from my boss's last set of slaughtered home grown pigs (you could also go and visit the current set). Let's just say the ribs and sausages were amazing. Home grown seems to make all the difference in these things! Plus you had the reassurance that there was no pig eye ball in the sausages... Anyways, after a few hours of country life, we headed back to London, getting lost more than once on the way back. But we still made it back a little after 9, no worse for wear!

What to Name the Baby

Despite all of our similarities, the Americans and the English have managed to develop some subtle differences in what they opt to name their children. While a great number of names are commonly seen in both lands, some are seen much more commonly in one than the other, and some are really only seen in one for reasons I don't fully understand. The following is a very, very brief list, mainly with names of people I know, because they seem to come up the most often. I have also been influenced by the list of names that come up for my work address book, hence the dominance of male names.

Common the world over:
Kate/Katie/Kathryn and all involved spellings
Chris/Christopher
Dave/David
Tom/Thomas
Nick/Nicholas
John
Mark

Names Anglos love:
James (but where are the Jims???)
Richard (again, but no one called Dick, or Rich or Rick for that matter)
Caroline

Names Anglos use within moderation that intrigue me in some way:
Seamus
Declan
Ellie/Eleanor, Elaine, Louise, etc 'old lady' names on lots of people under 30
Damien (do you they not know he's the devil?)

Names not seen this side of the pond:
Aaron, allegedly
Hilary
Kristen
Ashley
All those -son and -er names, Madison, Parker, etc.

What the general trend seems to be is that the English tend to stick with traditional first names, while the Americans seem to enjoy making their child in some way 'special' and 'unique' by giving them the special/unique name du jour, such as Dakota or Harley. I'm not really sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing, quite frankly, but it seems a little more creativity wouldn't hurt the English and a little less 'creativity' wouldn't hurt us. Again, this is just a quick list, but it's something I find constantly quite intriguing!

Wimbledon

Aside from being the name of my branch of the District Line, Wimbledon is also apparently the name of a major tennis tournament, handily accessible via my line of the District Line. Not at the Wimbledon or Wimbledon Park stops, mind you, but word on the street is that it's at Southfields. Anyways, that's the not the point. The point is that is started on Monday, and that this is indeed a big deal.

Now the UK doesn't exactly have any 'good' tennis players (although I may get some objections to this), that doesn't stop them from getting all excited about the whole thing. The Wimbledon people are tricky you see, and the majority of tickets are available purchased on the day of play. Demand outstrips supply to such a degree that people camp overnight to try and get tickets. The good tickets get you into the good games, but there are also plenty of tickets that allow you to see random not very good people in far flung corners of the Wimbledon Lawn Tennis Club.

Luckily, this camping aspect pretty much assures that I remain essentially unaffected by the whole thing, despite it only being 3 stops farther south. It does, however, seem to impact me in other ways. For example, BBC seems to think that everyone now wants to spend their evenings watching 'Today at Wimbledon', to which I say NO BBC, I want to spend my evening watching Britain's Youngest Grannies! Although now that I think about it, I believe they were both on BBC, just on different BBC channels...

There is also a need for people to discuss the tournament. Amongst things discussed: that none of the UK tennis players are any good, as well as rumors about the strawberries and cream or whatever they eat in there. And finally, people seem to have decided that tennis is worth playing. The last few times I've been to my local park, the 8 or so tennis courts have been packed by people who all seem to play much better tennis than me (which I must admit is not saying much!).

So we're only on day 3, and thinks have certainly not yet heated up (although Andy Murray did thankfully make it at least into the second round!), so we'll have to wait and see what things are like at this time next week!

Birmingham, Revisited

I made my second trip to Birmingham yesterday, for exactly the same purposes as my first. The primary differences being that this time I was all by myself and there in the morning, instead of the afternoon. The train on the way there was absolutely packed, another standing room only situation. What I don't understand is why Virgin (who operates the trains on that line) insists on having 4 first class carriages and 5 standard class carriages, including one half taken up by the food stand. I couldn't imagine people having to stand in the first class carriages, where, by the way, the tables come pre-set with wine glasses. Don't ask me how practical that is on a train that tilts going around corners, but alas, such is the case.

My taxi driver en route to the meeting locale took a different route than all the others, which seemed silly as the cab far was nearly £4 cheaper this way, but it was especially monumental as along this route we passed a Costco. I practically did a little dance in my seat. Now I can't help but wonder how many of these little Costco jewels they have hidden in this country. For example, is there one near me. As it is, I am currently mentally debating whether or not it would be worthwhile to start going to the one in Birmingham. I also can't help but wonder how large their boxes of tea are...

After the meeting, I went back to the train station only to run into one of the Chinese girls from my course in Southampton, who was apparently about to head off somewhere by train. It's a very odd thing for me, given the number of people I know in this country, to randomly run into someone like that. Oh, and it was around this time that I unfortunately discovered that some where along the lines of the day I had lost my phone. So don't call me. Given the age of that phone and the fact that it seemed to be bordering on imminent breakage, this does not so much bother me, really it's just a nice excuse to get a new phone. I'm going to go back to Orange, my initial UK provider. I had switched to vodafone as they got service in the Southampton library while Orange didn't, but I don't go there anymore and you can get 2 for 1 movie tickets on Wednesdays, so it's just common sense!

Bill v Rick

Given my more or less constant annoyance at the existence of Rick Steves, and my more or less constant admiration for Bill Bryson, you can imagine my delight when the two managed to intersect for a rather amusing, well, sentence or two.

The following is an excerpt from Bill Bryson's 'Notes from a Big Country':

There were four books exclusively on Britain, plus another eight or so on Europe generally, with chapters on Britain. My favourite, at a glance, was Rick Steves' Europe 1996. I had never heard of Rick, but according to the jacket he spends several months each year 'feeling the fjords and caressing the castles', which sounds awfully diligent if a little pointless.

Now, I do like Bill, and he's become my favorite tube riding author (I even got a random comment one day as a man said to me 'have you read a walk in the woods?' I have not, but he says it's good), and to find him making fun of little Rick Steves for the essentially the same reasons as myself is really quite refreshing. Perhaps more importantly, I now consider Bill Bryson to be firmly on my side in the Rick Steves credibility war.


In more general terms, I am finding this current Bill book very interesting, as well as amusing. So what you have is an American who lived in England for the better part of 20 years back living in America writing a column on American life for an English newspaper. Anyways, it's a good read for short time periods (like waiting at the dentist, riding the bus, waiting for your drink at Starbucks) because the book is just a collection of columns that are very reasonable lengths!

The Big Move

Yesterday was day 1 of the big move. Here is a rundown: picked up keys at lunch, dropped off Mark's keys at house, went back to work, finished work and went to old house, loaded up our Streetcar for the evening and went to new house, unloaded car, repeated with two more car loads, slept at new house.

Now let us slow things down to go over a few things in greater detail. Arriving at the new house to unload the first car load was the first time I'd seen it aside from our rather quick initial viewing. And I must say, aside from both being in converted terraced Victorian houses within a 5 minute walk of each other, the two places are pretty much as different as can be. The new place is definitely small, but you can tell a lot of thought has been into making it work in those proportions, it really is very pretty and very nice, and it's wonderfully light and bright. Speaking of proportions and all that, it has a variety of nice little touches that imply that it was actually done up with some intention of niceness. For example, it not only has dimming overhead lights in every room, but there are also two wall-mounted lamps in the living room at either end of the couch that also dim. The garbage can is on a track underneath the sink so that it comes to you when you open the door and don't have to stick your hands all up under the sink. Oh, and the stove actually has 5 hobs, including a massive one in the middle, and is gas. The fridge, on the other hand, is a bit regrettable, being all tiny with the built in freezer. However, it does appear to be of about as good a quality as you can get in those things.

Aside from kitchen cabinets, a decent amount of space in the kitchen, and the closets in the bedroom, there really aren't any storage options. The ceilings throughout are very tall, and in both the kitchen and the bedroom storage areas extend well beyond my reach, which seems it will be key for keeping things tucked away that I don't really ever use. For example, Mark's tomato juice can go up there. It's not like I ever need to be able to get a hold of it. But we've still got quite a bit of stuff at the old place that's going to get moved tonight, and it's going to be interesting to see if we can find room for it all while still maintaining the cuteness of the current place.

And finally, we used Streetcar last night. It was a diesel 4-door Volkswagon Polo. It did it's job admirably, if not a little noisily, and came in very handy. I suppose it's sort of a testament to the fact that sometimes things are just easier in a car. I can also foresee using it for a possible Ikea run in the near future, or perhaps if we feel inclined to go on a major grocery store run. I think it's sort of interesting, as a transportation professional mind you, that even when you think you really don't need to car, the sudden ability to use one sort of unleashes a repressed demand!

Car Talk

Along with it's parallel universe of cars, England comes with a completely different array of car talk. In the US we seem to have a list of basic questions we ask when we hear someone has gotten a new car.

If you're a girl it goes something like this:
Girl A: 'Oh, so you got a new car? What kind?'
Girl B: 'A new bug!'
Girl A: 'Cute! What color?'
Girl B: 'Baby blue.'
Girl A: 'Adorable! I'm so jealous!'

If you're a boy it goes something like this:
Boy A: 'Hey dude, what did you end up with?'
Boy B: 'It's a black F-150 extended cab, V-8.'
Boy A: 'Uh-huh. So what kind of power you got?'
Boy B: '250 horsepower, 28 cup holders.'
Boy A: 'What about mileage?'
Boy B: 'About 3 miles to the gallon.'
Boy A: 'That ain't bad, dude.'
Boy B: 'Yeah, dude, it's awesome.'

Please excuse my boy talk, I know it's not the best, but my point being is that things often discussed would be a) the engine size, usually termed as V-something, b) amount of horsepower, and c) gas mileage.

I've been privy to a few conversations about cars in these parts, and I can tell you the list of concerns are a bit strange. Perhaps a similar convo would go as follows (again, my apologies for totally messing this up):
Bloke A: 'Hey mate, did you get a new car?'
Bloke B: 'Why, yes I have, mate.'
Bloke A: 'What did you go for, mate?'
Bloke B: 'I went Italian.'
Bloke A: 'Fiat, Alfa?'
Bloke B: 'Fiat [insert Fiat model here].'
Bloke A: 'Awesome, mate. What size engine?'
Bloke B: 'It's a 1.2 litre.'
Bloke A: 'What's the reg?'
Bloke B: '06.'
Bloke A: 'How's the tax?'
Bloke B: 'Not bad, actually, 3rd from the bottom.'
Bloke A: 'That's cool, mate. Cuppa tea?'
Bloke B: 'That would be lovely.'
Bloke A: 'Biccie?'
Bloke B: 'Yes, please.'

Translation: you apparently take interest in the size of the engine in liters, the registration (aka, basically the year, plates now change about every six months, a car from the first half of 2007 would have a plate with an 07, second half would be 57) is even more particular than the model year and also indicates where the car originated via a fancy two letter code, and the plates essentially stay with the cars for life so are generally pretty telling. Finally, people seem to ask how much the car costs to tax, which is based entirely on emissions these days. Newer cars are generally better with these things and are therefore generally cheaper in this manner. Oh, and you can change plates on a car, it's just more restrictive. For example, I'm assuming that the plates on the hummer I saw yesterday that read 'HU52MER' were not the original plates and they paid a pretty penny to acquire them.

Brumm

I made my maiden voyage to Birmingham yesterday. It was for a meeting, and not a social visit, so I must admit my exposure level was somewhat limited. However, this is not going to stop me from forming an opinion which I shall now express.

Birmingham is located 90 minutes by train from London, and I'm pretty sure it's in the generally northwest direction. It has numerous train stations, but the biggest one is Birmingham New Street, which is the one the fast trains from London go into. Coming out of the train station, the first thing you see is the Bull Ring. This is not a ring with bulls, it is a massive shopping complex, in many respects one of Birmingham's main draws. And while the pull of the mall was strong, I was sadly not able to partake in its miles and miles of consumer bliss. Instead I got into a cab because the architect's office was located 5 miles away in between an industrial estate and the freeway and there was really no other way to get there.

En route I was a little taken aback by the road dominance in the city center. The road I was on was actually elevated above street level, with I'm assuming another street underneath. I realized that walking would be a daunting task in that part of town. I also went past quite a bit of industrial stuff, also leading me to think of Birmingham as being quite industrial. The architect's office was in a building called Fort Dunlop, and it seemed to be a newly converted (and by converted I mean they left some of the shell and demolished the rest so the front and one of the sides was brick) Dunlop tire factory. The place was truly bizarre, basically I think the architect got a little too high on architect juice before designing this place. There were giant orange dots outside, oddly placed arrows, it took me a while to figure out where the stalls were in the bathroom, and there was a Travelodge built into it that was bright blue, had seemingly no windows on one side and only little round portal windows on the other. Oh, and as its in the middle of nowhere, you don't want to stay there on your visit to the city.

Here is what else I know about Birmingham: it has canals that are apparently decently cute, has, if not a top notch university, at least a rather respectable one of decent size, Ozzy Osbourne is from there, and it's where you go to catch a train to Aberystwyth. While there were definite signs of redevelopment, I still foresee a lot of room for improvement. Will I go back? Most definitely.... I have another meeting at that architect's office on the 23rd...

Light Beer

It's recently dawned on me that no one drinks light beer here in England. You'd think that in a land well-populated with the beer-bellied would latch on to the concept of getting a little more beer for your calories, but alas, this does not seem to be the case. In the carbonated beverage realm, both diet coke and coke zero seem to have been embraced by the market, but beer is another tale. There seems to be a general obsession in this country about the alcohol percentage in beers, wines and spirits (so much so that there is Becks Vier to signify it's 4% alcohol and Carling introduced C2, their 2% beer), but little attention is paid to the calorie content. I consider this a relatively large difference in concerns considering both aspects are directly related to health. In England apparently you just aren't supposed to get too intoxicated, while in America it's just key your belly in check. This all being said, I don't know anyone in the US who regularly drinks light beer as it's generally just a yellower version of water, and they do actually sell light beer here (this is based purely on the fact that there was a Coors light commercial on tv over the weekend, I haven't seen it anywhere).

Perhaps another trend is the general way different beers are, for lack of a better word, branded. In the US we have frosty carbonated ales, which is of course a general fault of this place. This being said, in the US we tend to have a wider variety of 'flavors' of beer. At a bar or restaurant you can opt for the pale ale, the IPA, the amber, guinness, lager, or lager light, so to speak. You might say, hmm, what goes well with a burger? And go from there. In these parts, there is comparatively little flavor distinction. While some pubs will have ales, this is not a certainty and they are generally non-existent in restaurants. So, being generally limited to lagers, the choice of what to drink is often times based on the 'premium' factor of the beer (Fosters says 'I'm cheap', Kronenbourg: 'I'm a little less cheap'), with taste generally improving as you move up the scale. Based on this taste scale, the general tasteless nature of light beer would likely put it at the bottom of this scale and then I would imagine there would be no money involved.

Finally, to stick up for this place a little bit, there are some bars out there with incredible beer taste arrays. Mark and I have been going to a bar called the Temperance down by Putney Bridge recently. The main draw of this place is its vast array of different beers available on tap. They have your traditional lagers (although these are sort of hidden away), then some wheat beers, fruit beer, an impressive assortment of premium lagers, regular and pear ciders, pumped casket ales, and as I even discovered last Friday, a frosty carbonated pale ale (it was called Meantime Pale Ale, no idea where it came from, but I'd get it again, it had a neat glass!). Oh, and they also have Sierra Nevada on tap for some reason... Anyways, it's definitely a bar you go to savor the flavors of the beer. Quite frankly I think Seattle or Portland would both be lucky to have a place with such a selection! (this is probably where I get barrage of comments attesting that they do...).

A Week in the Life of the Tube

It was been quite an eventful week for that underground. Since Saturday it's been privy to a wild party, a derailment, and a 60 year old bomb. If only all our lives could be eventful.

London has a new mayor. His name, sadly, is Boris and he's a 'Conservative', which is really just like a Republican who recycles. One of his first acts was to ban the consumption of alcohol on all public transportation in London. First off, what intrigued me about this was that it meant that it used to be legal, but then I recalled that they sold beer from the little carts on overground trains so I guess I knew all along. Anyways, the law came into affect at midnight on June 1st, which meant the tube was open for alcohol consuming business until midnight last Saturday. To celebrate this end of an era, approximately 1 gazillion people partook in a Circle Line party, which apparently involved people cramming themselves into overcrowded Circle Line trains and riding around in a circle whilst consuming alcohol. Things spilled out into Liverpool Street station over by the City, where the news showed people weaving through the crowds in a conga line. Police had to be called out and several stations closed. Some people have interpreted this as justification for the new law, as clearly only chaos can ensue when people drink on the tube. Personally I enjoy sipping 40's on my way home after a long day at work and I'm not going to let a little law get in the way of that. We'll see what enforcement is like, I imagine it will generally just be a way of allowing enforcement officials to get the annoying drunk people to be a little less, well, annoying.

Like most weeks, the District Line has had some troubles, but this time the excuses are new and different. Instead of your box standard 'signal failures', 'lack of available trains' or 'person the tracks', this week we have gotten 'train derailment', 'army investigation' and, well, this morning's was long but basically it was because the authorities ran late in attempting to diffuse a bomb. While I must admit I have learned nothing further of the alleged derailment, I think we can safely assume that it was really a rather minor incident in which no one was hurt.

Then there's the bomb. Apparently an old World War II bomb was found in a river over in east London near a tube station which is served by the District Line. The Army was apparently called in on Tuesday to check it out, and they had last night scheduled for bomb diffusion. This ended badly as apparently it started to tick and ooze liquid. This caused there to be severe repercussions in this morning's commute. Luckily my branch was relatively unaffected except for the severe crowding issue caused by the lack of city-bound trains. Alas, the ooze and such prevented the bomb from being successfully diffused and they're going to give it another try tonight. So again tomorrow morning there will be a partial suspension of the line east of the city, meaning people will be freaking out throughout the rest of the line. Anyways, hopefully the thing gets dealt with tonight. I'm just glad I don't live near that thing.

Contract Day

Mark and I are signing the contract for our new place tonight. And speaking of which, it's time we discuss the anglification of my terminology. I've come to learn that word choice is sometimes a politic statement, sometimes a point of confusion and the rest of the time a possibly quaint statement of one's cultural origins. For example, I chose to use the term 'place' as I felt this was non-country specific. This is due to the fact that I feel like a bit of a poser when I use the term flat. Plus there is the general concept that 'flat' refers to a surface without topographical variation, but let's not go down that route.

From time to time I am actually taken aback to find myself using a word that the locals do not know. When I know the English equivalent this is not such an issue, but sometimes I don't know and the conversation kind of comes to an end as I mumble incoherently and then just stare off into space. The phrase I have in mind at the moment is 'station wagon'. I think it might be called an estate car, but that sounds somber and oppressive so I'm not sure if that's right.

Other words you should avoid while in the UK: sketchy, garbage, sedan, awesome (tv commercials have led me to believe this is an Americanism, and while understandable, they will not use the word in return). I'm sure there are others but I'm blanking on them now!

The good news is you get to shorten all kinds of words and add 'ies' to the end, which I find just good fun and I'm a little disappointed that we didn't come up with it first. Most well known is of course the shortening of television to telly, but also includes the common shortening of umbrella to brolly, beverage to bevvies (as in, let's go out and get some bevvies), biscuits to biccies (not sure how that one's spelled), and presents to prezzies (as spelled by Mark). Of course the Aussies also shorten barbecue to barbie, but this isn't about them, now is it.

Primark

I know I've been in this country for a while now, but I still find this whole place rather odd from time to time. For example, on Saturday I accompanied Mark to a rugby game at Twickenham, along with 80,000 other people. We were sitting by ourselves (so to speak) but Mark knew quite a few other people attending, including his brother. For reasons my American mind can't comprehend, his brother was sitting with 28 of his closest friends, and they were all dressed up like knights of the crusades. Two of them got arrested for attempting to run onto the field to have a sword fight. While Americans will occasionally dress festively for a sporting events, they usually do so to show their support for one of the teams involved. This makes sense to me. But dressing up in faux chain mail to watch the Wasps play the Tigers is, well, I don't even know what it is. Walking around after the game, I was continuously surprised at the vast array of fans that rugby seems to attract. Basically, I expect it to draw the same fans as football, but you seem to get just like loads of young preppy male types with pink polos. And then a guy with a giant beer belly walks by and everything is as it should be.

In a slight change of pace, I went shopping yesterday. Not for anything fun, mind you, but I was in desperate need of nylons as I had killed all of my flesh toned pairs, which has been limiting what I can wear to work. Anyways, to make things a bit more exciting I decided to poke my head into Primark to see what exactly the deal was. My best description of Primark is that its Old Navy on a bit of crack. Everything is dirt, dirt cheap and so everything in there is carrying around a shopping bag with about 15 items in it, and they're all climbing over everyone and you can't walk anywhere. The line to buy stuff was about 100 50 yards long. Needless to say, I got scared and quickly made my way back out again.

After getting in some practice with my Oxford Street slow shopper weave, I made my way down Regent Street to check out London's new and only Banana Republic. It was very nice, only about 80% as expensive as I feared, and there were many things I wanted. I again made a quick exit, only this time to keep myself from buying things I couldn't afford.