Poetry/Quotes

A while ago, in a style that I very much stole from one of my favorite things in the world: storypeople, I started writing down little poetry/quote infusions about our sometimes crazy but always amazing life over here. I decided that I would start putting a few up every now and then, so here goes:


"Don't you ever miss home?" I asked him. "No," he said, "the Beer is better here & that makes up for everything else."


(I bet you can guess who said/inspired this one)

A Day at the Races (x2)

Its summertime in England which means, among other things, that its horse racing season! I’ve never been much into gambling, or horses either for that matter, but I am into wearing crazy looking hats, so I’ve been looking forward to the racing season for awhile.

Two weekends ago, we went up to York (2 hours north of London by train) to attend the races there. This being my first foray into betting on horses, I decided just to completely wing it and pay no attention to horses odds or statistics in any way. I chose the horse whose name I liked the best in each race and put £2 on it winning and £2 on it placing (£2 is the minimum bet). My system seemed to work because, at the end of the day, I came out £10 on top!

Winning ticket!

My hat for the York races

We stayed in York over night so that we could spend Sunday touring around the city. I was very impressed with York’s massive Cathedral, the largest north of the Alps.

York Minister Cathedral

This past weekend, we attended the Royal Ascot which is in Ascot (1 hour out of London by train). This is the motherload of all horseraces because the Ascot racecourse is the closest to London and therefore draws a crowd of tens of thousands of people (including celebrities and the Queen!). It is much more formal than the York races and many men were dressed up in top hats and tails. Financially, we weren’t as lucky at this race and ended up about £18 down at the end of the day, but we did get to see the Queen, so I guess it was worth it.

Hat for the Ascot

The Queen!!

Tube Strike Chaos

As some of you may have heard on the news (if it made it over to America) the London Tube Workers Union staged a two day strike last week. Tube strikes are threatened on a fairly regular basis in this city, and, occasionally, a strike will close down a line or two. This strike, however, knocked out nearly the entire London Underground network.

While I normally side with Unions who are out to fight “the Man,” whether that Man be large corporations, governments, etc, this Tube strike annoyed me beyond words. Why? Well…..

1: In a time of world-wide recession when many people in London are thankful just to have a job, the Tube workers decided that they wanted a 5% pay raise for working few hours.

2: It has been reported that there was almost a settlement of the strike but, at the last minute, the Tube union added on a demand to rehire two workers who had been recently fired. One of these workers opened the wrong doors of the train when he stopped at Victoria station (instead of opening the doors onto the platform, he opened them onto the adjacent track and oncoming train traffic) and the second of whom was under investigation for theft. Are these really the people I want driving me to work every day?

3: One of the platforms London’s Mayor, Boris, ran on in his election last year was coming to a strike-free agreement with the Tube union. Due to the fact that Boris’ first major act in office was to outlaw drinking on the tube, I already dislike the man. His inability to come to some kind of strike-free agreement with the Tube union is just another reason to hate him.

4: I live in East London and work in West London. London is a large city. On a good day, a bus ride to work takes me nearly an hour. On a strike day, it turns out, a ride to work takes me nearly 2 hours and 15 minutes. If you were lucky enough to get on a bus (most were so crowded they just stopped letting people on), you stood in traffic most of the way. The ride home? Well, I never found out how long the ride home would take because traffic was at such a stand-still that I ended up walking almost the entire way. It took me nearly 3 hours. On day one of the strike, I spent 6 hours commuting- a trip that normally takes me an hour.

6 Million people use London's Tube every day. When there's a strike, it turns out, a large portion of these people move to the busses. Needless to say, lines at the stops were long...

Mad rush to get home Tuesday night before the Strike began.

I have mentioned my hatred for the London Underground, for various reasons, before. This Tube strike, however, brought my loathing to a whole new level.

3 Year Wedding Anniversary

Today, Bobby and I celebrate our 3 Year Wedding Anniversary!

Can you believe it's been 3 years already?

A Testament to My Wanderlust…

I was very excited when I realized I had both of these things:

1: A photograph of me standing on the equator in Uganda

2: A photograph of me standing on the Prime Meridian in Greenwich

Bobby says that he sees this as a testament to my ability to seek out and stand on "imaginary lines all over the world," but I see it as more of a testament to my adventuresome spirit.

Rocking the Weekends

If you've looked at our calendar, you'll notice a very distinct acceleration in our weekend plans. Since the beginning of April, we've only had one or two weekends without an event.

Continuing that tradition, we packed in quite a bit over this past weekend. On Thursday (yes, we start weekends early here, at least when Laura gets every other Friday off at her job), Laura came up to Chester where I've been working for the past month. Typically I am there from Tuesday morning and then come home on Thursdays, but this time Laura came up so we could have a mini-adventure in the medieval city of Chester.

The Eastgate Clock - one of the most photographed in the world - built to celebrate Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee (whatever that is) in 1897

We rented a rowboat and I took Laura around on the River Dee

Chester's famous black and white architecture

On Saturday, we took the train back to London, then immediately ran off to Regent's Park for a wonderful performance of Much Ado About Nothing. They have a series of "Shakespeare in the Park" held in an outdoor theatre in the park. The theatre was fantastic, the cast was brilliant and the whole production was very well done. Not to mention we had perfect weather (and since the show goes on rain or shine, that was a definite plus).

Sunday brought yet another excursion, this time to Greenwich. We went with some friends, took a ferry from Westminster Pier and had a nice little picnic in Greenwich Park. We also got to step foot on the Prime Meridian, longitude 0, where time begins. I guess if you invent the system for measuring time at sea, you get to define where it all starts. It's a nice perk.

Greenwich

The gang hanging out in Greenwich Park

Laura's foot on the Prime Meridian

After Greenwich, I came home and passed out at about 6:30 - weekend adventures can be very tiring.

We're definitely looking forward to our next few weekends: horserace in York, the Royal Ascot, then on to Barcelona, Bordeaux and Pamplona. Definitely need to schedule in some nap-filled weekends soon.

Deconstruction of the Union Jack

Most of you will recognize the flag below as the Union Jack, the flag of the United Kingdom.

It’s just recently, however, that I learned the origin of this flag. The Union Jack is actually a combination of the flags of England, Scotland, and North Ireland which makes sense since the United Kingdom consists of these three countries plus Wales (whose cool dragon is left out of the Union Jack).

English Flag (St. George's Cross)

Irish Flag (St. Patrick's Cross)

Scottish Flag (St. Andrew's Cross)

I could, here, go into the debate as to whether Scotland and North Ireland are actually Countries (a debate I had for about 2 hours with my co-workers last week), but then we open the whole can of worms of Country vs Nation, the lack of a true imperial throne, and too much English history for me to speak intelligently on. So, lets just stick with the flag.

Thought I would share this interesting tidbit with you!