Are you a stag? Are you a hen? Do you like to party? Then have I got news for you!
But I don’t now if I’m a stag or a hen!
A stag is what Anglo types call a bachelor; a hen is a bachelorette. A stag party is therefore the local term for a bachelor party, and a hen party is for the ladies.
Ah yes, I see now. And what do these engagements involve when not within a 2 hour flight of Las Vegas?
What an excellent question! My personal research on the topic (asking Mark and seeing people walking down the street) has taught me a number of key things. First of all, traveling to another city for a night on the town makes things fun and interesting, and where you choose to go would be a reflection of your personal standing in life. Once at your final destination, expect to go out to bars and clubs and consume alcohol. Lots of alcohol.
Let’s say your wardrobe consists of 90% ‘tracky Bs’ (track suit bottoms) and most of your sentences end with ‘innit’, or perhaps you’re 18 and pregnant with your third child and have finally decided to settle down. If this is the case, then I might recommend Blackpool as the destination for you. It’s cheesy and not known for being classy or sophisticated in any way, sort of like yourself!
At the other end of the spectrum, perhaps you’re a 32 year-old investment banker who likes to cruise up and down King’s Road in your Aston Martin on the weekends. Then you and your buds might jet off to a sophisticated European city known for either partying or cheap liquor, such as Ibiza or Prague. The possibilities are extensive, but do not generally include sophisticated cities: Paris and Venice are not common stag and hen party destinations!
Or let’s say you’re somewhere in between these two, like a 30 year-old engineer whose friends range in affluence and you don’t want to force them all to pay for airfare. You and your buds might choose to head to someplace local yet not classless, such as Edinburgh (as I learned over the weekend) or Brighton.
Who decides these things? When should I expect this all to occur?
Apparently you should have the best man or maid of honor to blame for these things. And expect this all to take place a month or two before the wedding.
Let’s say I’ve been invited to a stag or hen party in Edinburgh. What do I wear?
There’s good news and bad news in this regard. The good news is that you probably won’t have to put together your own outfit, the bad news is that you will quite possibly be donning ‘fancy dress’ (especially if you’re domestic!). Our observations of the weekend included a group of girls all dressed up as cops, with the bride to be dressed as a prisoner, a group of guys wearing pink cowboy hats with the lucky groom to be rocking a little pink dress advertising massages and some nice fishnets, school girls is a popular choice (for girls), and as we were in Scotland, perhaps some kilts with matching plaid hats with attached red hair. Aka, girls: be prepared to wear a short skirt. Men: be prepared to wear a silly hat. Of course, all this generally goes towards showing solidarity and support for your poor sucker of a friend who’s getting hitched. It’s sort of cute, really.
What if I don’t want to wear a short skirt or a silly hat?
Then you’re not a good friend! And it seems after a few drinks you won’t mind so much!
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Monday, July 28, 2008
Mark Sees Scotland
My young person’s railcard expires forever on Thursday. This is sad as this means that a) I am no longer a younger person and b) I’m going to have to pay full fare for train tickets outside of the network railcard catchment area (I got a free network railcard as part of my annual travelcard for the tube). While the network railcard area is quite large, and includes basically all of south east England, it does not extend very far north. So, to say good-bye to my railcard in style, and as someone had never been, Mark and I went to Edinburgh for the weekend.
We caught the 5pm train Friday afternoon, requiring us to work through lunch and then make separate but equally frenzied mad dashes to Kings Cross from out workplaces. It was a so-called ‘fast’ train, stopping only at York, Doncaster (I’d never heard of it either), Newcastle and Edinburgh. It was 4 hours and 20 minutes. While this seems long, it’s really about even in total travel time with flying only much more relaxing! We took some food on with us as well as plenty of reading material and soon enough we were in another ‘country’.
As it was around 10 by the time we got to our hotel (via a pleasant walk through old town), we just slipped out for a couple of drinks. We were staying in Best Western a bit south west of the castle, near the University of Edinburgh. Thanks to some information hanging on the wall, we were able to discover that the building originally housed Edinburgh’s first custom built maternity hospital, opening in 1879. It was called Simpson Hospital after the obstetrician, local university man, and innovator of using chloroform for general anaesthesia, Dr., um, Simpson. His first name doesn’t matter. I just thought the history gave the building a good twist, and it was a nice old stone building.
On Saturday we got an early start. We are ruined career types now who wake up at 7am on the weekends, meaning we were out the door by 8:30. Nobody else is up this early in Edinburgh on the weekends, and the local Starbucks didn’t even open until 9am. Luckily we found a little café that was open and able to give us breakfast. We arrived at Edinburgh Castle about 5 minutes before it opened, bypassed the ticket line as we’d bought fast track tickets on the internet the day before, and were on the first (and therefore uncrowded!) guided tour of the day. Our next stop was the Scotch Whiskey, um, place, that was right next door. We were hesitant to go on a tour that involved alcohol tasting before noon, but it turns out they offer a 35% discount on admission in the mornings and so it was well worth it! I found the tour very interesting and I learned lots about scotch! There was a whiskey barrel ride advertised as part of the tour, which I thought sounded exciting. However, the ride moved at a speed of approximately 1 mile an hour and I can assure you this is too slow.
After a quick lunch we ended up spending a really long time at an antique map store chatting with the owner. Mark ended up with an old school replica map of Hampshire. Still being only early afternoon, we went down to stare inquisitively at the Scottish Parliament building and then hiked up Arthur’s Seat to induce sweat and of course to see the views! We then regrettable decided to go to Our Dynamic Earth, a museum detailing the history of the planet in a not good way. After a quick nap (we were pooped!) we went for bangers and mash for dinner, then went down to the Grassmarket (old market and site of the old public gallows!) for some drinks. While there we discovered that Edinburgh is densely populated by groups on ‘stag’ and ‘hen’ parties. I’ll have to discuss these in a separate entry, they’re really quite strange!
On Sunday morning we got a slightly later start, arrived at Starbucks during opening hours, and went to the Museum of Scotland. I’d like to say we went there to learn about the history of Scotland and its peoples, but really we were just motivated by the fact that they have costumes you can try on! I’ll have to get those pictures uploaded for general amusement! We grabbed a quick lunch and then headed for new town, quickly finding ourselves on a double decker bus tour of the city. While we had seen much of it already, we still learned quite a bit from the tour guide and it was a generally enjoyable experience! With our train time still a few hours off, we went and sat in a park and ended up doing a bit of shopping, then had to walk hurriedly to catch the train! Unlike the journey up, things didn’t go smoothly and we ended up arriving half an hour late into London.
This was my third trip to Edinburgh and I must admit it continues to grow on me! While still managing to be quite a compact city, it’s got the amazing old town, which is just a highly concentrated area of surprisingly tall stone buildings surrounding the castle (some are 8 or 9 floors!), and then just a few minutes away you have the cleanly laid out new town with open parks and plenty of shopping. While the new town seems to have been sadly damaged during WW2, the old town managed to remain relatively untouched, and you can tell the planning laws are extremely (and thankfully) very restrictive in the area. All in all, I would say that Edinburgh is definitely my second favorite city in the UK (behind London, of course!).
We caught the 5pm train Friday afternoon, requiring us to work through lunch and then make separate but equally frenzied mad dashes to Kings Cross from out workplaces. It was a so-called ‘fast’ train, stopping only at York, Doncaster (I’d never heard of it either), Newcastle and Edinburgh. It was 4 hours and 20 minutes. While this seems long, it’s really about even in total travel time with flying only much more relaxing! We took some food on with us as well as plenty of reading material and soon enough we were in another ‘country’.
As it was around 10 by the time we got to our hotel (via a pleasant walk through old town), we just slipped out for a couple of drinks. We were staying in Best Western a bit south west of the castle, near the University of Edinburgh. Thanks to some information hanging on the wall, we were able to discover that the building originally housed Edinburgh’s first custom built maternity hospital, opening in 1879. It was called Simpson Hospital after the obstetrician, local university man, and innovator of using chloroform for general anaesthesia, Dr., um, Simpson. His first name doesn’t matter. I just thought the history gave the building a good twist, and it was a nice old stone building.
On Saturday we got an early start. We are ruined career types now who wake up at 7am on the weekends, meaning we were out the door by 8:30. Nobody else is up this early in Edinburgh on the weekends, and the local Starbucks didn’t even open until 9am. Luckily we found a little café that was open and able to give us breakfast. We arrived at Edinburgh Castle about 5 minutes before it opened, bypassed the ticket line as we’d bought fast track tickets on the internet the day before, and were on the first (and therefore uncrowded!) guided tour of the day. Our next stop was the Scotch Whiskey, um, place, that was right next door. We were hesitant to go on a tour that involved alcohol tasting before noon, but it turns out they offer a 35% discount on admission in the mornings and so it was well worth it! I found the tour very interesting and I learned lots about scotch! There was a whiskey barrel ride advertised as part of the tour, which I thought sounded exciting. However, the ride moved at a speed of approximately 1 mile an hour and I can assure you this is too slow.
After a quick lunch we ended up spending a really long time at an antique map store chatting with the owner. Mark ended up with an old school replica map of Hampshire. Still being only early afternoon, we went down to stare inquisitively at the Scottish Parliament building and then hiked up Arthur’s Seat to induce sweat and of course to see the views! We then regrettable decided to go to Our Dynamic Earth, a museum detailing the history of the planet in a not good way. After a quick nap (we were pooped!) we went for bangers and mash for dinner, then went down to the Grassmarket (old market and site of the old public gallows!) for some drinks. While there we discovered that Edinburgh is densely populated by groups on ‘stag’ and ‘hen’ parties. I’ll have to discuss these in a separate entry, they’re really quite strange!
On Sunday morning we got a slightly later start, arrived at Starbucks during opening hours, and went to the Museum of Scotland. I’d like to say we went there to learn about the history of Scotland and its peoples, but really we were just motivated by the fact that they have costumes you can try on! I’ll have to get those pictures uploaded for general amusement! We grabbed a quick lunch and then headed for new town, quickly finding ourselves on a double decker bus tour of the city. While we had seen much of it already, we still learned quite a bit from the tour guide and it was a generally enjoyable experience! With our train time still a few hours off, we went and sat in a park and ended up doing a bit of shopping, then had to walk hurriedly to catch the train! Unlike the journey up, things didn’t go smoothly and we ended up arriving half an hour late into London.
This was my third trip to Edinburgh and I must admit it continues to grow on me! While still managing to be quite a compact city, it’s got the amazing old town, which is just a highly concentrated area of surprisingly tall stone buildings surrounding the castle (some are 8 or 9 floors!), and then just a few minutes away you have the cleanly laid out new town with open parks and plenty of shopping. While the new town seems to have been sadly damaged during WW2, the old town managed to remain relatively untouched, and you can tell the planning laws are extremely (and thankfully) very restrictive in the area. All in all, I would say that Edinburgh is definitely my second favorite city in the UK (behind London, of course!).
Thursday, July 24, 2008
'Glamour' Models
There is this enviable profession in this land called 'glamour modelling' (it's their thing, so I'll use their spelling). When I first heard the term I wasn't exactly how it differed from regular modeling or even if it was a different thing (as you never heard any talk of glamour-less models). After flipping through some of the free evening papers and watching some tv documentaries, I can safely tell you that glamour modeling does not involve modeling clothing, such as you would expect from a traditional model, nor does it involve catwalks or Vogue. You know how car magazines will often feature a random girl in a bikini thrown across the hood? She would be a glamour model.
In basic terms, glamour models often have had some 'work' done and are therefore qualified for walking around with lots of make-up and little clothing, and are then photographed doing, well, all sorts of random things. Quite frankly I'm not sure what exactly they do model.
Their unofficial queen is Jordan, real name Katie Price, who has really large, um, assets, that qualify her to be the author of many books, have her own reality television program with her significant other, have her own perfume, and of course, be photographed with little clothing on. Sort of like Pamela Anderson, only there's not even an attempt at acting (which is what these types tend to label themselves as stateside: actresses, only not the serious ones).
I think it's a rather sad thing for young girls to aspire to. You also see young women wanting to get, um, augmented so they can try and be glamour models. I think this is mainly as it seems to involve no actual work (not even walking up and down a catwalk!) but much admiration from the media. It might even be easier than being on Big Brother. Which I think is really saying something!
In basic terms, glamour models often have had some 'work' done and are therefore qualified for walking around with lots of make-up and little clothing, and are then photographed doing, well, all sorts of random things. Quite frankly I'm not sure what exactly they do model.
Their unofficial queen is Jordan, real name Katie Price, who has really large, um, assets, that qualify her to be the author of many books, have her own reality television program with her significant other, have her own perfume, and of course, be photographed with little clothing on. Sort of like Pamela Anderson, only there's not even an attempt at acting (which is what these types tend to label themselves as stateside: actresses, only not the serious ones).
I think it's a rather sad thing for young girls to aspire to. You also see young women wanting to get, um, augmented so they can try and be glamour models. I think this is mainly as it seems to involve no actual work (not even walking up and down a catwalk!) but much admiration from the media. It might even be easier than being on Big Brother. Which I think is really saying something!
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Graduation Day
Yesterday was graduation day. Yes, I know, it took long enough for it to roll around. Now, whilst I didn’t attend myself, I had an inside source planted at the event who I then persuaded to reveal everything. To respect the privacy of this source they shall remain anonymous, but for the sake of clarity, I shall to refer to them as ‘Mark’.
Whilst I have commented on the graduation process before, I shall still do a brief recap. Okay, so instead of doing big giant catch-all graduations, the university does approximately 800 wee tiny little small ones spread out over around two weeks, but none of them are on the weekends. The first one is at about 9am, and the last one in the late afternoon sometime, so as to make sure that no one could possibly attend without taking time off work. If I had taken a day off of work and paid vast sums of money to attend, I would have partaken in a 3:30 pm ceremony involving other post-graduate students from the civil engineering department. Gowns are of course involved, but there are no hats due to health & safety restrictions. Something about throwing them up in the air and taking peoples’ eyes out on the way back down, I think.
Brief side note: I was looking at some websites for tourist venues in Edinburgh today. One site did not allow children under 5 for health & safety reasons; the other had a downloadable risk assessment form for groups to fill out. (Risk: water mains break and building instantly floods. Mitigating measures: all group members wear life jackets).
Each graduate walks across the stage, has an unnaturally long hand shake with some high-up important old man who thus feels obliged to mutter a few words to you, perhaps asking you what your favourite flavour Skittle is, and then you proceed across the stage. Phd students apparently take longer as they are required to kneel and offer a small sacrifice (such as a 2nd year physical therapy student) before they are allowed to proceed.
Afterwards, the department was so nice as to have a champagne reception, allowing graduates and their parents to mingle awkwardly with teachers they haven’t seen for a year. Little sandwiches were also provided. At some point in all of this, you of course also had to return your robe. So someone in one of today’s ceremonies could then reuse it.
The graduation ceremony was attended by a limited number of male full-time students who have parents who live in England. It was also attended by a number of part-time students, which surprised me as I wouldn’t think they would be particularly motivated or really care. Perhaps they just heard about the free little sandwiches?
With the graduation all over and done with, you can say that any remaining ties to the University have officially been severed. Finally!
Whilst I have commented on the graduation process before, I shall still do a brief recap. Okay, so instead of doing big giant catch-all graduations, the university does approximately 800 wee tiny little small ones spread out over around two weeks, but none of them are on the weekends. The first one is at about 9am, and the last one in the late afternoon sometime, so as to make sure that no one could possibly attend without taking time off work. If I had taken a day off of work and paid vast sums of money to attend, I would have partaken in a 3:30 pm ceremony involving other post-graduate students from the civil engineering department. Gowns are of course involved, but there are no hats due to health & safety restrictions. Something about throwing them up in the air and taking peoples’ eyes out on the way back down, I think.
Brief side note: I was looking at some websites for tourist venues in Edinburgh today. One site did not allow children under 5 for health & safety reasons; the other had a downloadable risk assessment form for groups to fill out. (Risk: water mains break and building instantly floods. Mitigating measures: all group members wear life jackets).
Each graduate walks across the stage, has an unnaturally long hand shake with some high-up important old man who thus feels obliged to mutter a few words to you, perhaps asking you what your favourite flavour Skittle is, and then you proceed across the stage. Phd students apparently take longer as they are required to kneel and offer a small sacrifice (such as a 2nd year physical therapy student) before they are allowed to proceed.
Afterwards, the department was so nice as to have a champagne reception, allowing graduates and their parents to mingle awkwardly with teachers they haven’t seen for a year. Little sandwiches were also provided. At some point in all of this, you of course also had to return your robe. So someone in one of today’s ceremonies could then reuse it.
The graduation ceremony was attended by a limited number of male full-time students who have parents who live in England. It was also attended by a number of part-time students, which surprised me as I wouldn’t think they would be particularly motivated or really care. Perhaps they just heard about the free little sandwiches?
With the graduation all over and done with, you can say that any remaining ties to the University have officially been severed. Finally!
Monday, July 21, 2008
Health & Safety
There’s a lurking shadow that follows you everywhere you go in the UK. It restricts your movements and theoretically keeps you from death. It’s your best friend. It’s your worst nightmare (okay, maybe not). It’s health & safety!
Not to be confused with health and/or safety.
Perhaps it’s just from growing up in a litigious society, but healthy & safety to me seems like an elaborate set of rules to keep corporations from being sued. In reality, it’s supposed to be a complex check on what will happen if (and when!) things go horribly wrong.
But what does that even mean? Good question. Here at work we have health & safety officers. I’m pretty sure they’re the last ones to leave the floor in case of a fire, and they probably have some sort of input in the health & safety manual, which tells you all sort of things (I’m just assuming, I haven’t actually looked through any). I imagine it involves advice such how to lift boxes and what types of fire extinguishers to use with different fires.
This is all well and good, perhaps familiar to non-health & safety workplaces. But wait, there’s more. Health & safety becomes particularly annoying when attempting to do out of the classroom university activities. When coming up with our proposal for data collection last year, we had to fill out a health & safety form. This involves a) listing risks we would face, b) formulating the level of possible harm from the risk, c) guessing the likelihood of it happening, d) calculating a death factor (not what it’s actually called), and e) coming up with things you can do to mitigate the risk. So, one could assume that while watching buses in Southampton, getting hit by a bus might be a risk. If this were to happen, you would be seriously harmed (3), but it may not be very likely (1). To minimize risk you might not stand in the street. And this is how it goes.
Now I’m not sure what sort of good lengthy health & safety procedure have brought about, but I can only assume that people were extremely prone to death before they came along. It’s destined to be mocked by some (me!) and taken very seriously by others. I can only assume that Gareth was the health & safety officer at Wernham Hogg (yes, I had to look up the name of the company...).
Not to be confused with health and/or safety.
Perhaps it’s just from growing up in a litigious society, but healthy & safety to me seems like an elaborate set of rules to keep corporations from being sued. In reality, it’s supposed to be a complex check on what will happen if (and when!) things go horribly wrong.
But what does that even mean? Good question. Here at work we have health & safety officers. I’m pretty sure they’re the last ones to leave the floor in case of a fire, and they probably have some sort of input in the health & safety manual, which tells you all sort of things (I’m just assuming, I haven’t actually looked through any). I imagine it involves advice such how to lift boxes and what types of fire extinguishers to use with different fires.
This is all well and good, perhaps familiar to non-health & safety workplaces. But wait, there’s more. Health & safety becomes particularly annoying when attempting to do out of the classroom university activities. When coming up with our proposal for data collection last year, we had to fill out a health & safety form. This involves a) listing risks we would face, b) formulating the level of possible harm from the risk, c) guessing the likelihood of it happening, d) calculating a death factor (not what it’s actually called), and e) coming up with things you can do to mitigate the risk. So, one could assume that while watching buses in Southampton, getting hit by a bus might be a risk. If this were to happen, you would be seriously harmed (3), but it may not be very likely (1). To minimize risk you might not stand in the street. And this is how it goes.
Now I’m not sure what sort of good lengthy health & safety procedure have brought about, but I can only assume that people were extremely prone to death before they came along. It’s destined to be mocked by some (me!) and taken very seriously by others. I can only assume that Gareth was the health & safety officer at Wernham Hogg (yes, I had to look up the name of the company...).
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
adding a little something....
As Margo has ventured north this afternoon for work and won't get home till later tonight I thought I’d write today’s blog entry!
This has something to do with a change I have noticed with Margo over the last 10 months since we started working after our masters. The topic is water or more exactly flavoured water!
Now when Margo and I first moved to London I can remember her questioning this substance that we put into our water to add taste. It’s often called cordial - I am not sure on its consumption in the States but here its very common. The two main kinds are Ribena (blackcurrant - about 93% of the blackcurrants grown in the UK are for ribena) and Robinsons (comes in a variety of flavours such as apple and blackcurrant, orange, summer fruits etc) there are also other kinds like supermarket own branded versions and Kia etc.
This substance is available at Margo’s work and I guess after 10 months she decided to give it a go - you put 9 parts water to 1 part cordial to make what I would term squash (not the sport). She for about a week after that sent me daily emails on how good it was and even complained when they had run out! Probably because of the increased demand!!!
Now this I only found this interesting because when she first moved over here she was very anti squash but now she even buys it for her pleasure at home!
I do like it though as it changes what is in essence a very boring drink but nevertheless it is a very important drink.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
The Status of the English Language
There were ‘minor’ delays on the District Line yet again this morning. In all, I had to wait 20 minutes for a train, and it was the 4th one that rolled past and I really only managed to squeeze in due to luck. Don’t get me started on the concept of crush capacity of trains!
Anyways, in that 20 minutes I was standing on a platform standing eerily close to both railroad tracks with the capacity to kill me and a lot of other people rather intent on getting on one of these trains to go to work. To my left was a sharply dressed Eastern European man speaking loudly on his cell phone, seemingly to his mother (he kept saying something that sounded like ‘mama’), and to my right was a couple from who knows where speaking yet another language I was unfamiliar with. Again, with all this time to think on my hands (I’m between books), I started to think about the relative prevalence levels of hearing English spoken in London and Portland/Seattle and I suppose the US in general.
In London, it seems sometimes that most conversations overheard in public are not in English. In the US, a much smaller portion of overheard conversations are in foreign languages, but for some reason this seems to cause a lot of worry amongst people. The only reason that I could think of for this is that while here we have the higher proportion of foreign conversations, they are in a very wide range of languages. In the US you primarily hear people speaking in Spanish. This thus leads to the general conclusion that the US is going to be overtaken by people speaking Spanish and no one will be able to speak English. Which I think is unlikely, but even so, not the end of the world in many respects.
That all being said, I should toss in the disclaimer that people do often complain about the lack of English-language skills amongst immigrants. It’s rather unlikely that you’ll ever have an English waiter or waitress, nor will you be ordering your coffee from a native. People generally complain that all of the builders and plumbers are Polish (Polish beer sales are threw the roof!). However, there are no apocalyptic worries about the demise of the English language in general terms!
Just something to think about, I suppose!
Anyways, in that 20 minutes I was standing on a platform standing eerily close to both railroad tracks with the capacity to kill me and a lot of other people rather intent on getting on one of these trains to go to work. To my left was a sharply dressed Eastern European man speaking loudly on his cell phone, seemingly to his mother (he kept saying something that sounded like ‘mama’), and to my right was a couple from who knows where speaking yet another language I was unfamiliar with. Again, with all this time to think on my hands (I’m between books), I started to think about the relative prevalence levels of hearing English spoken in London and Portland/Seattle and I suppose the US in general.
In London, it seems sometimes that most conversations overheard in public are not in English. In the US, a much smaller portion of overheard conversations are in foreign languages, but for some reason this seems to cause a lot of worry amongst people. The only reason that I could think of for this is that while here we have the higher proportion of foreign conversations, they are in a very wide range of languages. In the US you primarily hear people speaking in Spanish. This thus leads to the general conclusion that the US is going to be overtaken by people speaking Spanish and no one will be able to speak English. Which I think is unlikely, but even so, not the end of the world in many respects.
That all being said, I should toss in the disclaimer that people do often complain about the lack of English-language skills amongst immigrants. It’s rather unlikely that you’ll ever have an English waiter or waitress, nor will you be ordering your coffee from a native. People generally complain that all of the builders and plumbers are Polish (Polish beer sales are threw the roof!). However, there are no apocalyptic worries about the demise of the English language in general terms!
Just something to think about, I suppose!
Monday, July 14, 2008
The Walkers
There is a strange breed of person found in this land that you don’t seem to find elsewhere. I call them ‘The Walkers’. Not like a family name, but as in people who walk. And not walk as in to the grocery store (which in its own way is sort of unheard of stateside), but people who walk for a month. For fun.
A few weeks ago on the train up to Birmingham, I was conveniently placed to eavesdrop on a long conversation between two men. One of them was what I would term a senior citizen (over 70) and the other was much younger (say, 50) but claimed to be a retired truck driver. Both of these men were en route for solo walking times. The older gentleman was planning on spending 5 days or so walking around where his daughter lived. The younger gentleman, on the other hand, was going to spend the next month walking around Dorset, starting from Exeter. Because you know, last time he went for two weeks and it just wasn’t long enough.
His planned route was something like 300 miles, his approach was to camp during the week and then maybe take it a bit easy, checking into the occasional bed and breakfast for the weekend. The two also discussed future walking ambitions; with the younger apparently heading to New Zealand to do nothing but walk around for months on end.
I found this all very fascinating. Bill Bryson touched upon the concept in his book on England, alluding to the ways of the serious English walker, but I had never otherwise heard it mentioned or discussed. To find out that the tales were true was sort of like finding out that Santa Claus really does exist.
My second oral reference to the serious walker came at my boss’s barbecue, when one woman came up to another woman upon learning they shared the walking passion. An in-depth conversation followed about places they had walked and places they would like to walk. I again found it all very strange.
Serious walking is not to be confused with hiking. Hiking is something you do for a few days, or, perhaps if you’re spry, a long weekend. Hiking is viewed somewhat as a form of exercise, and often involves hills and such. The serious walking seems to be more of a lifestyle choice, a way of seeing things at a different pace. And it seems it is often done alone.
This form of walking doesn’t seem as feasible in places like the northwest for one key reason: population density. If you want to walk for a long time in the US you need to take a lot of stuff with you, as there’s a good chance you won’t come across any sign of civilization while you are out and about. In England, you are likely to come across at least a few villages with at least one shop every day, ensuring you don’t starve and don’t become completely isolated from human contact. Warm showers remain a possibility, as do cheeseburgers.
A few weeks ago on the train up to Birmingham, I was conveniently placed to eavesdrop on a long conversation between two men. One of them was what I would term a senior citizen (over 70) and the other was much younger (say, 50) but claimed to be a retired truck driver. Both of these men were en route for solo walking times. The older gentleman was planning on spending 5 days or so walking around where his daughter lived. The younger gentleman, on the other hand, was going to spend the next month walking around Dorset, starting from Exeter. Because you know, last time he went for two weeks and it just wasn’t long enough.
His planned route was something like 300 miles, his approach was to camp during the week and then maybe take it a bit easy, checking into the occasional bed and breakfast for the weekend. The two also discussed future walking ambitions; with the younger apparently heading to New Zealand to do nothing but walk around for months on end.
I found this all very fascinating. Bill Bryson touched upon the concept in his book on England, alluding to the ways of the serious English walker, but I had never otherwise heard it mentioned or discussed. To find out that the tales were true was sort of like finding out that Santa Claus really does exist.
My second oral reference to the serious walker came at my boss’s barbecue, when one woman came up to another woman upon learning they shared the walking passion. An in-depth conversation followed about places they had walked and places they would like to walk. I again found it all very strange.
Serious walking is not to be confused with hiking. Hiking is something you do for a few days, or, perhaps if you’re spry, a long weekend. Hiking is viewed somewhat as a form of exercise, and often involves hills and such. The serious walking seems to be more of a lifestyle choice, a way of seeing things at a different pace. And it seems it is often done alone.
This form of walking doesn’t seem as feasible in places like the northwest for one key reason: population density. If you want to walk for a long time in the US you need to take a lot of stuff with you, as there’s a good chance you won’t come across any sign of civilization while you are out and about. In England, you are likely to come across at least a few villages with at least one shop every day, ensuring you don’t starve and don’t become completely isolated from human contact. Warm showers remain a possibility, as do cheeseburgers.
Wednesday, July 09, 2008
The British Summer
I’ve come across more than one reference to the term ‘British summer’ now and so that means I’m qualified to make far reaching assumptions about what exactly this means. One of these references was simply on a sign outside of my local smoothie shop, implying that smoothies are a key ingredient to the British summer. However, this reference does not tell you exactly what a British summer specifically entails, or how it differentiates from a non-British summer.
Luckily the other mention of the British summer was in the form of an oft-repeated cider commercial. This commercial was kind enough to essentially list out all the key ingredients required to make your summer British, and it seems being in Britain is not on the list so perhaps we can all have British summers!
Here are the requirements:
- Smoothies (apparently…)
- Complain when it’s too hot
- Complain when it rains
- Get stuck in traffic in a car with no air-conditioning going to or from a specific summer event, such as a music festival or the beach
- Attempt to obtain a sun tan when rational people would assume it’s too cold to do so
- Do something quirky – the commercial suggests riding one of those reclining bicycles down a waterside promenade while holding an inflatable alligator under one arm
- Hang out with your good-looking friends in a pleasant outdoor environment drinking alcoholic cider from glasses wet with condensation
My apologies if you don’t have good-looking friends. Perhaps it’s enough to just sit out in your backyard by yourself, but just to be sure, you best refer to the yard as your garden while you are out there.
A few months ago there was an additional commercial that alluded to the British summer, but I can’t recall if it specifically used the phrase. A Walkers Crisps ad (aka, Lays Potato Chips) involved a man driving to National Trust sites in a Routemaster bus while singing and enjoying a salty snack. To me this implies that visiting stately houses and Roman ruins may also be integral to making a summer British.
All in all, I’m slightly pleased to know that I’m not expected to go camping or partake in extreme sports to be making the most of my summer. Sitting around drinking beer is much more approachable…
Friday, July 04, 2008
4th of July
Happy 4th everyone! While all you stateside folk are off relaxing and generally bumming the day away, I’m at work, researching car clubs. Please try to contain your jealousy. Anyways, I’m assuming no one will read blog as you’re all out having barbecues and watching blockbuster summer releases in overly air-conditioned theatres, and otherwise wiling the hours away until darkness falls and you can blow things up, but I’m doing one anyways.
First a brief recap on last night’s pub quiz! We showed up about ten minutes before it was supposed to start and there were two other people in the pub so we were quite worried! Apparently, the 7:30 start time is just a ruse and it actually started closer to 8:30, with about 8 teams participating. It turned out to be quite a good quiz and we tied for first but lost the tie-breaker, meaning we really came in second. Either way, it was an enjoyable experience and I hope to either go back to that one or go to another pub quiz elsewhere in town soon.
Believe it or not, London is not a particularly festive place to be on the 4th of July. To try and make things a bit more interesting I baked two kinds of cookies the night before last – snickerdoodles and chocolate peanut butter chip – that I have brought in to serve to the few people on my floor that have actually shown up today (I should have called in sick it seems!). For the evening, I’ve gotten a little bit lucky as a pub very near my house is having an ‘American Beer Festival’ this weekend. According to the posters, this involves not just American beers but also line dancing and other festivities. The pub, properly named the White Horse but infamously known as the Sloaney Pony, is right on Parsons Green and has a large beer garden out front facing said green and always have some giant barbecues going, offering up sausages and hamburgers alongside their fresh-faced collar-popped yuppies. Again given the limitations of my locale, I think a hamburger fresh off a bbq with some sort of American beer is all I’m really after. But I might pass on the line dancing…
Side note: by American beer, they do not mean Budweiser. The pub has at least Sierra Nevada on tap regularly, so I’m assuming they’ll have at least a few quality beers, probably from east coast breweries. I’ll provide an update at a later date.
First a brief recap on last night’s pub quiz! We showed up about ten minutes before it was supposed to start and there were two other people in the pub so we were quite worried! Apparently, the 7:30 start time is just a ruse and it actually started closer to 8:30, with about 8 teams participating. It turned out to be quite a good quiz and we tied for first but lost the tie-breaker, meaning we really came in second. Either way, it was an enjoyable experience and I hope to either go back to that one or go to another pub quiz elsewhere in town soon.
Believe it or not, London is not a particularly festive place to be on the 4th of July. To try and make things a bit more interesting I baked two kinds of cookies the night before last – snickerdoodles and chocolate peanut butter chip – that I have brought in to serve to the few people on my floor that have actually shown up today (I should have called in sick it seems!). For the evening, I’ve gotten a little bit lucky as a pub very near my house is having an ‘American Beer Festival’ this weekend. According to the posters, this involves not just American beers but also line dancing and other festivities. The pub, properly named the White Horse but infamously known as the Sloaney Pony, is right on Parsons Green and has a large beer garden out front facing said green and always have some giant barbecues going, offering up sausages and hamburgers alongside their fresh-faced collar-popped yuppies. Again given the limitations of my locale, I think a hamburger fresh off a bbq with some sort of American beer is all I’m really after. But I might pass on the line dancing…
Side note: by American beer, they do not mean Budweiser. The pub has at least Sierra Nevada on tap regularly, so I’m assuming they’ll have at least a few quality beers, probably from east coast breweries. I’ll provide an update at a later date.
Thursday, July 03, 2008
Getting the band back together
Taking a cue from the Blues Brothers, Elwood and myself (Elwood being Mark, as he’s the tall one) have decided to get the band back together. After over a year away from the game, we will be attempting to rematch our former pub quiz glory. Yes, that’s right; Chesty Nips is having a reunion.
For those unaware or who generally have bad memories, down in Southampton we spent essentially every Thursday for a string of several months at the Stile, doing our best with the pub quiz. We started out well, coming in 3rd, 2nd and then 1st in successive weeks, only to never place again. In those days there were questions that were easy for Americans to answer, but these seemed to disappear after my presence was noted by the authorities. That’s just my theory; however, perhaps we really just got lucky a few times. After weeks of frustration, we decided to start going to a bar in town called Mono on Thursday nights as they offered 2 for 1 pizza and 2 for 1 cocktails and no agony of defeat.
But now all of this has changed. Elwood (‘Mark’) and I managed to find a cute little pub in the middle of an otherwise completely residential street on a back route from our new house to the park. Called The Cottage, it lives up the name and features cute hanging flower baskets out front and a nice beer garden in the back. They also had a sign in the window advertising a quiz on Thursday nights at 7:30. Under the pressure to have people over to see our new place, but with size restricting the numbers we could have over at any given time, we have invited the Southampton folk to come down this evening to scarf down some jambalaya and then giving the quiz a whirl. Mind you, we really don’t know what to expect and will quite probably fail miserably and come in last, but maybe, just maybe, we’ll get lucky and it will all end with a giant car chase through the streets of Chicago.
For those unaware or who generally have bad memories, down in Southampton we spent essentially every Thursday for a string of several months at the Stile, doing our best with the pub quiz. We started out well, coming in 3rd, 2nd and then 1st in successive weeks, only to never place again. In those days there were questions that were easy for Americans to answer, but these seemed to disappear after my presence was noted by the authorities. That’s just my theory; however, perhaps we really just got lucky a few times. After weeks of frustration, we decided to start going to a bar in town called Mono on Thursday nights as they offered 2 for 1 pizza and 2 for 1 cocktails and no agony of defeat.
But now all of this has changed. Elwood (‘Mark’) and I managed to find a cute little pub in the middle of an otherwise completely residential street on a back route from our new house to the park. Called The Cottage, it lives up the name and features cute hanging flower baskets out front and a nice beer garden in the back. They also had a sign in the window advertising a quiz on Thursday nights at 7:30. Under the pressure to have people over to see our new place, but with size restricting the numbers we could have over at any given time, we have invited the Southampton folk to come down this evening to scarf down some jambalaya and then giving the quiz a whirl. Mind you, we really don’t know what to expect and will quite probably fail miserably and come in last, but maybe, just maybe, we’ll get lucky and it will all end with a giant car chase through the streets of Chicago.
Tuesday, July 01, 2008
Sports Update
Many things have been going on as of late in the sporting world. Nothing fabulous enough to warrant its own entry, but enough to get a collective one.
1. Euro 2008 - Spain beat Germany on Sunday night in the final to be crowned champions. The general consensus is not so much that people are pleased that Spain has won, but that Germany has lost. They apparently get away with doing well in these things despite not being good.
2. Wimbledon - Andy Murray, who is Scottish, aka 'British' for support purposes, has magically made it into the quarterfinals. He literally came back from the edge in his last game, which has been much discussed around town. People are most definitely pulling for him. I would of course likewise be cheering for an American man in the quarterfinals, but alas, there are none. But thank goodness for those Williams sisters! I'm just not sure who I like better! Let's go with Venus - she's a 1981-er like myself.
3. Pilates - This is just a personal one, really. I had a substitute pilates teacher today, who started out by explaining that she taught American style pilates instead of English style pilates. I hadn't known there was a difference, so found this news quite exciting. We did rolling like a ball. It was the first time I'd done it in a class. Most of the class struggled and I was, well, rolling like a ball. I felt like I had a grasp of what I was doing. It was fab.
4. Cricket - People are playing test cricket. That's boring so I sort of drift into space when it's being discussed. I think New Zealand might be involved...
5. Running - Mark has volunteered to be part of the SDG team in some Morgan Chase 3.5 mile run next week. He has a white SDG tank. Let's wish him luck. I think we should come up with some inspirational songs for a playlist on his pod. I shall start with anything and everything from the Rocky films and go from there.
1. Euro 2008 - Spain beat Germany on Sunday night in the final to be crowned champions. The general consensus is not so much that people are pleased that Spain has won, but that Germany has lost. They apparently get away with doing well in these things despite not being good.
2. Wimbledon - Andy Murray, who is Scottish, aka 'British' for support purposes, has magically made it into the quarterfinals. He literally came back from the edge in his last game, which has been much discussed around town. People are most definitely pulling for him. I would of course likewise be cheering for an American man in the quarterfinals, but alas, there are none. But thank goodness for those Williams sisters! I'm just not sure who I like better! Let's go with Venus - she's a 1981-er like myself.
3. Pilates - This is just a personal one, really. I had a substitute pilates teacher today, who started out by explaining that she taught American style pilates instead of English style pilates. I hadn't known there was a difference, so found this news quite exciting. We did rolling like a ball. It was the first time I'd done it in a class. Most of the class struggled and I was, well, rolling like a ball. I felt like I had a grasp of what I was doing. It was fab.
4. Cricket - People are playing test cricket. That's boring so I sort of drift into space when it's being discussed. I think New Zealand might be involved...
5. Running - Mark has volunteered to be part of the SDG team in some Morgan Chase 3.5 mile run next week. He has a white SDG tank. Let's wish him luck. I think we should come up with some inspirational songs for a playlist on his pod. I shall start with anything and everything from the Rocky films and go from there.
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