Hi Ho, Hi Ho, it's off to Heathrow we go

It is the morning of Friday, November 21 and our London experiment is coming to a close. Today John and I return to New York. It is very strange to be leaving this place. We've been here long enough to get used to it, pick up the linguistic differences, have favorite restaurants, know some local shopkeepers and, well, feel at home. But leave we must.

In no particular order, here's a list of things I will miss about the last five months:

• Being able to pop into a pub from time to time and enjoy a beer or a light meal
  
• The post office with the best exchange rate and the incredible services
  
• Being able to buy a copy of The Guardian every morning and The Observer on Sundays
  
• The efficiency and ease of the bus system, even if the 214 is crap!
  
• The British Museum, The British Library, The Tate, The Tate Modern - and all free
• The Tower and Hampton Court - not free!
  
• The 100-foot flat screen LG television set in the flat
• Having my own washer/dryer right in the flat even if it takes hours (we share laundry facilities with everyone in our building in Manhattan)
• The United Nations of restaurants and services a stone's throw from my front door
• Easy train access to the Continent. I have been to Paris, Rome, Tuscany, Brussels and NE France all within hours
  
• Great architecture: ancient, modern and everything in between
  
• Living amongst history
• Great labeling on food in grocery stores
• No high fructose corn syrup in our food
• Knowing that the National Health Service was always there if I fell ill
  
• Sharing my thoughts with you here

And now: back home.

Our Flat

In this, our last week living in London, I thought I should talk a little about the flat that has been our home away from home since the summer.

Naturally, I can't complain. I've been living rent-free for four and a half months in one of the most expensive cities in the world. The one-bedroom flat has been claustrophobic at times, but has served us well.

We are on the 2nd floor (3rd for Americans) of a building built in the 1980s on Albert Street in Camden Town. You can see the location of the flat in this photo: the three windows at the upper left. According to a local history book there used to be a small factory of some sort on this plot. The only remnant of that older building is a stone plaque set into the facade that says E.R. VII for Edvardvs Rex, the seventh (King Edward VII). The first two stories are occupied by the British headquarters of World ORT, a Jewish non-governmental education and training organization.

There is an L-shaped entry hall off of which are the bedroom to the left and the bathroom to the right. The living room is straight ahead, and the kitchen is off the far side of the living room. The space is much smaller than what we were used to having in New York (The living room here is about the size of our second bedroom at home). But the bed is comfortable, we have a high speed Internet connection and a lovely flat-screen TV (it must be 3 feet across) with a gazillion cable channels.

An interesting aspect about the flat is the artwork that greeted us when we moved in. It's as if it had been selected especially for us. In the bedroom there a print of John Lennon and Yoko Ono watching over us every night. As some of you know, John Lennon was one of my John's idols and he's a fan of both artists. In the living room over the sofa or settee there is a painting of calla lilies in a vase--they happen to be one of our favorite flowers. On another wall Steve McQueen grins at us atop his motorcycle that he rode in the film The Great Escape, one of my favorite WWII films. (McQueen, a motorcycle enthusiast, got the producers to change the storyline so he could steal a German motorcycle and try to jump over the barbed wire border with Switzerland.) Finally, on the wall above the TV is the beautiful visage of Audrey Hepburn as Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany's. She stares out at us directly wearing a black sleeve-less frock, long black gloves, a pearl necklace and diamond tiara, and is about to puff on her cigarette in a ridiculously long holder.

Our kitchen has been troublesome for us. John and I both enjoy cooking, but have felt sort of hamstrung in that department since we arrived. Although I brought some good knives with me we're missing a lot of utensils and pots/pans that we've grown accustomed to. The oven is a fan variety and works pretty well although cooking times have to be adjusted from a regular gas or electric one. The hob (stove) is a drag because it has electric plates; they heat up very fast, but you can't cool them down in a hurry. "Simmer" is a difficult operation on this hob. The fridge is very small. It fits below the counter and there's no freezer to speak of. It's a lot like the fridges we used to rent in our college dorm.

We have a clothes washer/dryer all-in-one unit in the kitchen, as well. One wash takes up to 2 hours, but is probably energy efficient. It sloshes the clothes around in about an inch of water! Then we line-dry the clothes or use the drying function in the unit. It's a slow process again, taking up to an hour and a half to dry a load.

Where's the Remote?

You’ve got to have friends, or so Bette Midler sang in the '70s. Well, I am afraid I have to disagree. I am not referring to social connections, people to hang out with and share your life with. I am talking about the television show Friends. This show is broadcast on UK television about 8 hours a day. When you change channels during most hours of prime time chances are you will come across an episode. When you don’t find Friends, you find a mattering of other American sitcoms from the past 20 years.

I know most of us think of UK television as something a cut about the average American fare. We have images of Monty Python's Flying Circus, Upstairs Downstairs, Brideshead Revisited, Keeping up Appearances and Are You Being Served. Well, not to shatter your illusions but those are all from a long forgotten past. Today British television is made of mostly of reality show, shows about reality shows and chat shows hosted by former reality show participants interviewing reality show participants. There are a few bright moments in between but they are the exception.

One show we have mentioned on a previous post is called Booze Britain. This chronicles young Brits as the set about destroying their livers, and sometimes more, on a night out. Last night we watch a group of 8 young men in tailored suits spend almost 2000 pounds drinking on one night. If you recognize yourself in anyone on this show, it is time to enroll in a program! A brilliant television executive must have seen an opportunity in spawned a sister show--Boozed Up Brits Abroad. How original! On this show they follow around groups of young Brits in the age of low air fares mostly in Eastern Europe as they binge beyond belief. I guess they don’t consider it so bad when it is done abroad.

There is another show that follows around a “celebrity” couple. This couple became celebrities by appearing on different series (seasons to Americans) of Big Brother. They met when they both participated in Celebrity Big Brother. They had become celebrities by virtue of appearing on Big Brother! Once they had been firmly placed in the pantheon of a real live celebrity, they were given their won chat show (talk show). When nobody tuned in the decided to move to California, following in the steps of Posh and Becks (yes they are huge here even if most American don’t have a clue who they are). The result was a new reality show following them around from one agent to another trying to be famous. Fame in California eluded them so they are back here in the UK appearing in tabloids at the newsstands everywhere!

We can’t wait to return to the land of Letterman, Mad Men and HBO.

(Creative credit: John Carroll)

Oh Where Oh Where Has My Zipcar Gone?

Yesterday morning in London was beautiful: sunny, crisp and autumnal. A world of difference from the soggy, rainy mess that greeted our eyes the morning before! The plan of the day was to pick up a Zipcar not far from our flat and drive John to his company's office in Basingstoke in the county of Hampshire, 50-some miles southwest of the capital. While he was busy with meetings, I would drive to Winchester to see the sights.

The plan hit the first hitch when I arrived to pick up the car--it wasn't there. Normally the Zipcar called Honda Jazz "Jonathan" is parked at All Saints Church in Islington, but all I found was an empty parking space with a sign telling me it was reserved 24 hours for Zipcar.

In a panic I called Zipcar.

"Are you sure you're in the right place?" asked the customer service nimrod at Zipcar.

"I'm where I'm supposed to be but your car is not here!" I shouted. (The wind was blowing into my cell phone.)

"All I can do, sir, is give you another available Zipcar. There appears to be one at a Travelodge on Museum Street, near High Holborn, about a mile from you. We would be happy to reimburse you for the expense of a cab."

What was I to do? I needed the car and the plan was rapidly falling behind schedule. Then the plan hit a second snag: when I called John on my English pay-as-you-go cellphone to give him the bad news, the phone told me I only had 2 minutes left to talk. Great! John heard panic in my voice and told me to calm down. I told him I was off to find this new car and would call back...somehow. Believe it or not I have not used a pay phone in four months in the UK.

Cursing Zipcar.com under my breath I started walking toward the King's Cross/St. Pancras area at the height of the morning rush to catch a bus, the Tube or a cab. I reached the new car's location by bus and foot. By the time I got back to Camden Town to get John, we were more than an hour behind time. Luckily we were going against the commuting stream and made good progress through London and into the 'burbs. We pulled up to his company's office at a quarter past 11 o'clock, so he was fifteen minutes late for a meeting.

Then I was off to Winchester, 16 miles away. This historic cathedral city is worth a visit. Ancient capital of England, it was the home of Saxon kings including King Alfred the Great. I made first for the huge Gothic cathedral. The building of the current edifice began in 1079, replacing a much older minster. It has one of the longest naves in Europe. It was once an important pilgrimage center: the ancient Pilgrims' Way traveling to Canterbury began at Winchester. I also visited the 13th-century Great Hall, the only part of Winchester Castle that Cromwell didn't have blown up during the English Civil War. Inside is "King Arthur's Roundtable." Though it's not old enough to be the real one, it's still charming to see.

The highlight of my day, however, was visiting the tiny village of Littleton on the outskirts of Winchester. It was here around 1615 that my ancestor, William Fifield, was born. Most Fifields in the US descend from this one man. William sailed from England on the ship Hercules in the spring of 1634 to Ipswich, Massachusetts. He became one of the original settlers of Hampton, NH in 1638 and died there in 1700.

I decided to look around the village church, Church of St. Catherine, for clues of Fifields. I'd just gotten to the front door of the church when I found a Fifield tombstone just to the left of the entrance! It was the grave of the wife a one Richard Fiffild. Then I found more and more Fifield graves around the churchyard. It was very exciting. It seems Fifields lived there for centuries.

Click here to see all my Winchester photos.

November 11

Today my mind was on the men and women who served in World War I. And those who perished in that cataclysm who, to quote Eric Bogle, were "a whole generation butchered and damned." For my own selfish existential reasons I am grateful that both my grandfathers survived unharmed. I know that millions of families were not so lucky.

There was another ceremony at the Cenotaph in London today at which the last three surviving British veterans of the Great War "laid" wreaths. At ages 112, 110 and 108, respectively, these ancient men couldn't stand, let alone place a wreath on a monument.

The French don't have any WWI veterans left. At the Verdun battlefield, President Sarkozy and Prince Charles laid wreathes. In a last bit of WWI posturing Sarkozy had changed the memorial service to Verdun from the traditional Paris. The English were wondering why a purely Franco-German battlefield was chosen over an Anglo-Franco-German place like the Somme. And German Chancellor Angela Merkel canceled plans to attend. She is said to be furious the change of venue to the site of German ferocity. The war is over but it's still going on in a way.

I will leave you today with the thoughts of my Grandfather Grant Willard.

Monday, November 11, 1918:

The [82nd] Division is moving today and so are we. I reported back to our HQ. this A.M. and found them packing up. We left about noon for Clefmont on the main road between Neufchâteau and Langres about 35 km south of Neufchâteau.

While we were en route the news that the Armistice had been signed and all firing had ceased at 11 A.M. today was received and the towns were wild all the way down. Everybody was smiling. It’s hard to realize. I haven’t grasped the idea yet. How joyous everyone is!

When we reached Clefmont we went down to the school house and helped the kids ring the bell. We are the only soldiers in the town so we have things pretty much our own way. Our Frenchmen are busy making a hit with the French people around here. Luyx, Hap, Johnnie, Fraze, Eric, Titchmer, Schmittie, McGuire and myself ate in town this evening. We had chicken, french-fried, omelet, bread and raspberry jam and champagne to celebrate the armistice. A merry party.

Remembrance Sunday

Today is Remembrance Sunday: the day that people remember Britain's war dead. The Queen laid a wreath of red poppies at the Cenotaph memorial in the middle of Whitehall Street as Princes Philip, Charles and William looked on. The prime minister and other members of the government also laid wreaths. British veterans of conflicts from World War II to Iraq and Afghanistan marched past the Cenotaph.

This year's Remembrance Sunday seems all the more poignant as it's falling just two days before the 90th anniversary of the World War I armistice. The Great War is more of a living presence in Britain, France, Belgium and Germany (and other countries) than it is in the United States. There are war memorials in every town and people turn out for these remembrance events. The British media, among others, have been running special WWI commemorative pieces in print, online and on the air. For weeks now Britons have been sporting red paper poppies on their jackets and coats, showing their support of British service people past and present. It's de rigueur that all TV presenters and personalities wear the poppy while on the air. And truth be told, I've been wearing one, too.

It's been a cold, rainy weekend for the most part. The streets and sidewalks (pavements) are covered with fallen leaves from the plane trees and every time we go in or out of the front door of our building leaves seem to blow into the hallway. Autumn is definitely here. The plane tree outside the flat is practically denuded.

We played host this weekend to an old friend from the Netherlands. M and John first worked together nearly twenty years ago and have been friends ever since. She was in England for a job interview and crashed on our settee last night. We had a good time strolling around Primrose Hill and Camden Town showing M the sights. It was great fun to talk about old times and future hopes.

Later in the day John and I went to the movies to see Oliver Stone's W. Josh Brolin gives an impressive performance as George W. Bush, and the supporting cast are all equally strong. Stone puts Bush on the analyst's couch, so to speak, and we find that he's been trying to live up to his father's expectations all his life. How many people are dead because W has been working out his demons in the White House? The movie's subject matter was maddening, but would have been worse if the outcome of last week's election had been different. To George Bush I say: good riddance to bad rubbish!

Fireworks!

Remember, remember the Fifth of November,
The Gunpowder Treason and Plot,
I can think of no reason
Why the Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot.

Tonight is Bonfire Night or Guy Fawkes Night that commemorates the foiling of the Gunpowder Plot of the November 5, 1605, in which a number of conspirators, including Guy Fawkes, attempted to blow up the Houses of Parliament. As I type, fireworks are being lit all around our flat in London. We can see and hear the explosions.

But John and I prefer to think that people are setting off fireworks in honor of the election of Barak Obama to the US presidency. It's a historic day, and I was up until 4 a.m. watching the election results. I am optimistic it's a new day for the US and the world.

How Long Are You Planning to Stay in Our Country?

The rest of my time in France was filled with driving through beautiful autumnal countryside of rolling hills and pastures, visiting very sobering cemeteries and taking photographs of the places where my grandfather had been.

As it's difficult to put this moving experience into words I will let my photographs and my grandfather's speak for me.

On my way back to London I had to change trains (and train stations) in Paris. At the Gare du Nord before boarding the Eurostar to London one must pass through the UK border control. I was already sweating from the 10 minute hike between Parisian stations when I started getting grilled about why I was visiting the UK. The agent started flipping through my passport and saw all the entry and exit stamps I've acquired since the summer. And I start sweating a little more...

• When did you first arrive in the UK?
• How long did you stay in March?
• What is your occupation?
• How much money do you have with you?
• How much money is in your bank account?
• Whose flat is this in London you wrote down?
• What does your partner do?

All the while she's madly scribbling notes on the back the landing card I had filled out. Did I say something wrong? I know I haven't been in the UK longer than the allotted 6 months. I know I've done no work paid or unpaid while here. I haven't broken the law. I have an airplane ticket to take me back to NY on November 21.

Still, the agent was suspicious and not entirely satisfied with my answers. She let me back into the UK for 6 months, but she stamped my passport with a special stamp with a code number that can allow another agent to pull up her remarks the next time I try to enter the country.

Now I understand a little about what visitors to the United States go through when they fly into our cities. How everyone has to be fingerprinted when visiting America; how Latinos or Arabs must feel when they get singled out try to pass legally through our borders. It's not pleasant.

Verdun to Pont-à-Mousson

The weather in this part of France turned cold and rainy overnight and stayed that way for the rest of the day. I decided to return to the Verdun battlefield this morning in an attempt to find the exact spots where my grandfather had been. I think I got pretty close--as close as I'm going to get without tramping through the woods with a compass to find the aid stations he serviced. I wouldn't want to set off any unexploded shells.

It's been ninety years since the slaughter here and most of the battlefield has grown over into a managed forest. It was hard to equate the photos of the area that Grant Willard took showing a desolate, cratered, moon-like surface with the beautiful, peaceful autumn forests I found today.

It was difficult to spot this:













In this:















From Verdun I drove southeast along the Meuse River and a beautiful canal built alongside, the surface of the canal like a mirror. At St. Mihiel I turned east into the heart of what had been the German-held St. Mihiel Salient, a knife-like protrusion in the Western Front. In September 1918 the Americans fought the Germans for the first time on their own and won a decisive victory. The salient was removed.

This part of France is very rural. I doubt the land has changed much in thousands of years. The towns are very small--a church, a townhall and a WWI monument. I passed some of the spots where my grandfather spent the spring and summer of 1918 seeing some of the most grueling action just south of the salient. While in these tiny villages he and his comrades were subjected to chemical warfare. They were all shaken out of their sleep my a mustard gas shell exploding outside their quarters. They spent the night in the cellar in the gas masks with rats dying around them. In the following days they were gassed further while removing the wounded. Grant wound up in the hospital for a few days.

By September, Grant and his unit were working the eastern end of the offensive around Pont-à-Mousson. That's where I'm spending the night.There has been a bridge across the Moselle here since the Middle Ages, but the present one was built after heavy bombardment during both world wars. The town survived relatively unscathed, despite the importance of the St-Gobain iron foundry – the name Pont-à-Mousson is familiar throughout France as just about every manhole cover in the country is made here.

Here's what was on my grandfather's mind ninety years ago:

Sunday, October 27:

Got 3 hours of sleep last night. Pretty good for me on post. Our guns cut loose this A.M. at 4 o’clock and a couple of big boys over back of us somewhere shook me out of bed. Sat in the dressing station until 6 A.M. when I got a call to Sommerance. "Fritz" raised hell in Fléville last night. Several new shell holes in the road and many newly killed horses.


Read Pres. Wilson’s reply to German plea for armistice. Hope there is no armistice until we have German militarism ousted. Don’t think it will be long now. What is the new German system going to amount to?


Took a shower bath this A.M. at headquarters -- the first since returning from Paris. Everybody has cooties!

On My Grandfather's Trail

I’m spending five days in northeastern France retracing the footsteps of my grandfather, Grant Willard, who was an ambulance driver with the French and U.S. Armies during the First World War.

Tonight I am in Verdun, a sleepy city on the Meuse River—very sleepy. Last night was Saturday and half of the restaurants in the center were closed. I couldn’t tell if they were just closed or out of business. Perhaps I’m here at the low tourist season. But then as elsewhere in the world, I don’t think the economy is hopping here in the Department of the Meuse.

I’m staying at this comical old inn called Le Coq Hardi (The Hardy Cock)—no jokes, please. The inn is housed in several old houses that easily could be several hundred years old. There is a marvelous stone fireplace in the lobby with a fire blazing away and a wood-beam main staircase. There is also an Otis elevator from the 1920s or 30s with a grate across the door that you have to open and shut yourself. To get to my room I go to the 2nd floor, walk down a hallway, then up a ramp and then down a ramp. The rooms are actually very nice and well-apportioned. There is also a bistro downstairs as well as a “restaurant gastronomique” with a menu whose prices made my eyes pop out of my head. Naturally, both are closed tonight. (As it happened, the entire hotel was closed last night including the "business center.")

I spent a good part of today exploring the Verdun battlefield. Although it’s been ninety-two years since the big battle, the earth is still scarred from the thousands and thousands of artillery shells that were fired by the Germans and the French. It is hard to visualize the hilly terrain completely devoid trees and vegetation as I have seen in photos.

Driving through the beautiful fall forests my eyes were drawn to the ground under the trees that was incredibly pockmarked and cratered. It’s damaged for centuries. I visited the Fort de Vaux and Fort Douaument, two major focal points of the battle. Both of these 19th-century fortresses were smashed into heaps of rubble and still look that way. So many explosives fell here that the land can still kill. There were signs warning not to stray off the paths.

I also saw some of the cemeteries that litter the area. It was interesting to see a Muslim section in the cemetery at Douament with all the tombstones facing Mecca. The white crosses next to them were aligned completely differently.

Grant Willard was my mother’s dad. As part of a volunteer ambulance corps he evacuated wounded French soldiers from the Verdun front line in August 1917 under pretty awful conditions. Then he joined the U.S. Army to do the same job as a buck private. He served at the St. Mihiel Salient and the Meuse Argonne Offensives in 1918.

Throughout it all Grant kept a detailed diary during his service and was a prolific letter writer. Both have been invaluable in planning this trip.

Ninety years ago today Grant was in the thick of the Meuse-Argonne Offensive that helped end the war. During a brief respite he wrote to his mother back in Mankato, Minnesota. Although he did so practically every day to his family and fiancée, everyone in his unit was ordered to write home:

Saturday, Oct. 26, 1918

Dearest Mother,

In compliance with Section Order #46, I am writing you this note. The order calls for a letter but this is the best I can do now. Maybe I’ll be here tomorrow – if so I’ll write again.

I have just come in from 24 hours on post with no sleep and just enough gas to make me very sleepy and dopey so I’m afraid I can’t do much by way of a letter.

Tonight another big racket starts and the chances are that we shall all be called out again before morning so I must pull in for a bit of sleep.

Am enclosing a “Lettre de Félicitations” sent, I think, to all [ambulance] sections by General Pétain. It makes a rather good souvenir.

Expect we’ll be going forward again tonight. Am very tired as is everyone else in the section but excitement keeps our minds off of such trivials.

Heaps of love,

Grant.

In his diary Grant wrote today:

Went up on post again this a.m. Artillery activity is picking up on our front. Apremont is shelled every morning and night to endeavor to cripple operations on the railhead. No damage has been done so far. They are coming darn close to [us], however. I prescribe another advance to spoil Fritz’s range on our home. Fléville is under almost constant fire. It’s an awfully good thing they moved our dressing station out and back to the farm because the old place has been hit twice and our nice little ambulance home is in ruins. Fléville is lousy with artillery -- 75s, 155s and 210s. Every clump of bushes and every natural shelter the other side of Fléville bristles with howitzers and 155 rifles. Tonight the roads were so choked with guns and ammunition and we had a great deal of difficulty in getting our ambulances through. "Speed" left the farm for Sommerance this evening at 6:00. At 9 o’clock he hadn’t returned. We began to get worried. At 9:15 McCrackin and I went up to the ditch and barns and Fléville. Got but one patient. Things were quiet. Told Mac that I would run up to Sommerance on phone and were told that "Speed" had left there at 7:30 with three patients. I was just starting out when in pulled "Speed." I sure was relieved because I never saw a darker night, and a heavier fog with just enough sneezing and tear gas on the roads to make things disagreeable -- and traffic! "Speed" had been held up all this time in traffic. Couldn’t do a thing against it. Never saw so many guns.

I Left My Stinky Cheese in Paris

John and I arrived in Paris last Friday afternoon for a fun, relaxing and unstructured weekend. We walked a lot--returning to some favorite old haunts and exploring some new places--and enjoyed some of the city's gastronomic pleasures.

A highlight of the trip was the apartment we stayed in. I found it on the Internet and it was a great alternative to staying in a hotel. Located on the Rue de Poissy in the 5th arrondissement, the apartment was on the ground floor of a typical Parisian apartment building. It was modern, clean and comfortable. And pet-free! For my life, I couldn't find a hotel in Paris that didn't allow pets.

We strolled around Père Lachaise Cemetery in beautiful sunshine on Saturday. Neither of us had ever visited before. With its hilly terrain and cobblestone lanes, it's a huge city of the dead. There were too many graves of famous people for us to see all of them, but some of those we saw included Oscar Wilde, Edith Piaf, Marcel Marceau, Gertrude Stein & Alice B. Toklas, and, of course, Jim Morrison. Wilde's tomb is covered with the lipstick traces of kisses, and Morrison's has a security guard standing by to prevent vandalism. Fans of The Doors have nevertheless scribbled notes on nearby graves and trees.

Saturday evening we had a fantastic meal at Brasserie Lipp, the renowned Alsatian "brewery" in Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Generations of French writers, artists, actors and politicians have hung out "Chez Lipp." Part of the charm of the place is due in no small part to the maintenance of the original 1926 art deco interior with its bright tiles, decorated mirrors, painted ceiling and lights. It's the sort of restaurant where one can really feel the history.

I had one of the specialties of the house: choucroute garni (sauerkraut with sausages, pork and ham) and John had a delicious beef pot-au-feu. With our starters and these substantial main courses, we had no room for dessert. But we did linger over coffee and got to talking to two women to our left. They were both Australian nurses on a grand tour of Europe. We were enjoying ourselves so much that we treated the nurses to a bottle of champagne and made their night.

We had fun exploring some of Paris's produce and specialty markets. Near Notre-Dame cathedral there were merchants selling birds and other animals as pets. John worked his magic with the parakeets and soon had them talking to him. And near our apartment there was a great meat and produce market. I bought some beautiful soft-n-stinky French cheese and enjoyed eating part of it back at the apartment with a glass of Côte-du-Rhône. Then in the rush to vacate the apartment on Monday morning I left the cheese stinking up the fridge. Oh well...

Click here if you want to see our Paris photos.

The Moveable Feast

John and I have escaped to Paris for a long weekend. His birthday is coming up this week, and we thought it would be fun to get away considering how hard he has been working.

We barely made it.

We had reserved seats aboard the Eurostar from London's St. Pancras Station to Paris's Gare du Nord at 10:28 AM on Friday. We got to the station with an hour to spare--bought some sandwiches before passing through security. We were in no rush. Just as John was withdrawing some Euros from an ATM, I heard the final boarding call of a train to Paris and rechecked our tickets. It was our train!!! Some how our train was leaving 20 minutes earlier than scheduled and no one had had the goodness to tell us!

Mercifully having packed light, we scampered up the rolling ramp to the platform, found our carriage and seats, and sat down slightly out of breath and little peaved as the Eurostar pulled out of the station. It turns out that due to the fire in the Channel Tunnel on September 11 last (some of you may have read about it), trains are running through the Chunnel at much reduced speeds. That means that much of the schedule has been disrupted, but no one had told us and I had not had the foresight to verify the timetable.

In any event, we were soon flying down the rails at 180+ mph (mostly) in glorious weather on our way to Paris. The trip under the English Channel took more than half an hour in place of 20 minutes, but it was still worlds better thank flying and all that that entails. Once aboard the only serious drawback to our train travel was a 2-year-old English girl named Jemima. She had beautiful golden curls and reminded me quite a bit of Shirley Temple in her heyday. She also had a voice and scream that could etch glass. She was traveling with her parents and an older (calmer) sister.

After dear Jemima had subjected the entire carriage to her screeches, screams and yells for more than an hour, a Frenchman across the aisle from us had had enough. (He swore outloud in French which tickled me no end.)

"Putain," he said, "Ce n'est pas possible!" (Fuck! I can't believe this!) He continued in English with a gallic accent: "Please--could you calm your children?" he asked Jemima's mum and dad. They said they would try. Jemima informed her parents that she didn't want to be quiet, but somehow they got her to color, and she was pretty calm for the rest of the trip.

I appreciate that it's very difficult for children to be cooped up on a train (or plane) for hours, and it's amazing the control parents can exert when they are engaged.

More on Paris later.

Do You Like Bacon?

I went to the Tate Britain yesterday to see a new exhibition of works by the late Francis Bacon (1909-92). He's an artist whose name I've known for years, but whose paintings I haven't seen much in person. Like so many artists, Bacon had a miserable, twisted childhood and it influenced his art. While I can't say I would hang one of his paintings over my mantle (well... maybe I would if I were rich enough to buy one), I did enjoy seeing them and appreciated Bacon's talent and artistry.

I had not been to the Tate Britain since 1982 when it was called the Tate Gallery. I don't recall much about it then except they were so cramped for space; the walls were crowded with paintings from floor to ceiling. Now that they have separated the "British" and "Modern" aspects of the collection into separate buildings in London, there is more space. The original gallery is now called Tate Britain and is the national gallery for British art from 1500 to the present day, as well as some modern British art. Tate Modern, in the former Bankside Power Station on the south side of the Thames, opened in 2000 and now exhibits the national collection of modern art from 1900 to the present day, including some modern British art.

There was a piece of "modern art" at the Tate that really tickled my funny bone. As I was making my way down the museum's marble halls to the Bacon retrospective, a guy ran past me at full speed. I thought maybe he'd lost his tour group or was a chaperon gone awry. But when another guy ran down the hall at full speed a moment later, I realized I must be seeing a "work of art" of some kind. Indeed it turns out what I was witnessing was Martin Creed's Work No. 850. According the Tate web site Work No. 850 is based "on a simple idea: that a person will run as fast as they can every thirty seconds through the gallery. Each run is followed by an equivalent pause, like a musical rest, during which the grand Neoclassical gallery is empty." Seeing people run in the museum struck me as silly and not much of a work of art, but that is only my opinion. It made me wonder what Creed's Works No. 1 through 849 were like.

On a patriotic note: my absentee ballot for the November general election arrived yesterday in the post. I voted when I got home yesterday afternoon and mailed the ballot to New York today at Her Majesty's Post Office. I'm trusting that the envelope will arrive by November 4. The clerk (read: clark) at the PO agreed with my choice for president.

Indian Summer in London

It's a beautiful Sunday morning in London. To the right is a shot of Albert Street taken today from our living room window. In fact, we've been enjoying gorgeous weather all week. It's been sunny with high temperatures in the upper 60s.

I went out a while ago to buy a Sunday newspaper; Albert Street and Parkway were very quiet in the sunshine. That was a great contrast to last night with raucous crowds outside the pubs. It was also particularly noisy outside our flat because there was a party going on in one of the townhouses opposite. The revelers spilled out onto the street several times before they lost steam.

A Rainy Day in Camden Town

I flew back to London yesterday. For the first time I took a daytime flight: Virgin Atlantic's Flight 26. The plane left JFK at 7:30 in the morning and got to Heathrow at 7 in the evening. Thanks to a strong tail wind the flight only lasted six hours--that's a little longer than it takes to fly between the two American coasts.

It was a strange sensation to take a flight to Europe that didn't fly by night. We didn't hit dusk until we were almost on the ground in England. Somewhere over the Atlantic we must have passed the hoards of planes from Europe bound for the New York airports that arrive in the afternoon.

While I was waiting at the gate at JFK I sat next to an Irish couple. They were married and probably in their 70s. The man had a stunned look in his eyes and seemed feeble. I was fascinated by his facial hair. He was clean shaven, but had hairs growing out of the tip of his nose--white hairs that matched the snow white hair on his head. He also had a big forest of white hair growing out of his ears.

The plane was pretty full with no room to stretch out, but I had an aisle seat. There was a pleasant guy next to me wearing an expensive gangsta jacket and matching oversize baseball cap. He was a good travel companion: only got up once the whole flight. He said he was coming to London to see his girlfriend for a month.

It is truly autumn now in England. The nights are nippy and the days can bring rain and temperatures around 60 degrees Fahrenheit. As I look out the living room windows of the flat I can see that the leaves of the large plane tree are changing from deep green to yellow and brown. Soon our living room will not be cloaked as it has been by the tree all summer. I daresay we'll have more sunlight pouring in... when there is sun.

John and I are both experiencing the strange sensation of having lived here for three months, then having returned to our home in New York for a very brief period, and now being back here in London. We're a bit topsy-turvy. And the sensation may only get more pronounced as there is less than a month and a half left in our London experiment.

By the way, I took the fall color photos in Duluth, Minnesota, following my nephew's wedding. The maple trees were on fire.

Beef-A-Rama

The first thing I saw was a majestic white-tail deer with a beautiful rack of antlers springing into motion in the crisp autumn air. The beast had a terrified look in his eyes. From behind I saw a large bear, probably a grizzly, growling with bared teeth. It stood on its hind legs with forelegs outstretched, claws ready to tear into the deer's flesh. It was an exhilarating moment: would the deer escape the clutches of death or would the bear get a decent meal?

I never found out the answer because these animals were dead and stuffed--perpetually stuck in a game of the hunter and the hunted. These were among the dozens of dead animals that adorned the hotel in Minocqua, Wisconsin, where I just spent a long weekend for my nephew's wedding. There were many antlered-heads on the walls of the hotel lobby: deer and moose, mostly. Many fish were also to be found collecting dust. On the mantle piece of the great stone fireplace was an interesting collage of five trouts swimming vertically up a piece of drift wood! The hotel was slightly reminiscent of the Overlook Hotel and I was afraid I might meet Jack Nicholson carrying an ax in the corridor.

Minocqua is a picturesque resort town situated on an island in a lake surrounded by many other lakes. The German restaurants and bars downtown tell of the heavy German ancestry in the area. And the above average real estate prices tell of moneyed folks from Milwaukee and Chicago who own second homes on the area's lakes.

In addition to my nephew's wedding, the big do of the weekend in Minocqua was the 44th Annual Beef-A-Rama--a major street festival and celebration of...well...beef. The restaurateurs of the town grill meat right on main street. Some of the events that I tragically missed included a "Beef Eating" contest at Culver's Restaurant, the Rump Roast Run, the "MOOnocqua" Moo Calling Contest and the Famous "Parade of Beef."

On Saturday morning a bunch of us went to Paul Bunyan's Restaurant for the all-you-can-eat "Logging Camp" breakfast. For a fixed price you get platters of hearty breakfast food served family style at your table. You eat off of tin plates, just like the old lumberjacks. The logging camp decor was even more rustic than the hotel.

As for the wedding, the bride was very beautiful and radiant, and my nephew didn't look too shabby, either. The party they threw for us was memorable and I wasn't making too much sense by the end of it. I was happy that all six of my siblings could be together in the Wisconsin woods, however briefly. That doesn't happen too often anymore.

New York Bound

I'm off this afternoon for New York, Minnesota and the hinterlands for two weeks. A nephew is getting married and the family beckons.

I'll be back in London in early October.

Stay tuned...

The West Country: Aquae Sulis and Beyond

A word to the wise: don't try driving out of London at rush hour on a Friday evening. We did, and my left ankle is still sore from all the clutching. The A40, M4 and roads in-between were all stop-and-go. A trip of 119 miles from London to Bristol that should have taken a little over two hours took four. But eventually we reached our hotel in Bristol and all was well.

John and I realized that in the months we've been living in London we hadn't really seen much of England outside the big city. So we decided to spend a weekend in the West Country. The gods must have smiled on us because we were very fortunate with the weather: sunny skies and mild temperatures.

Some of the highlights of our weekend in the West Country included:

A visit to the city of Bath, called Aquae Sulis by the Romans, was wonderful. I had not been there in many, many twenty-some years and John had never seen this Georgian city made of pale golden stone. Visiting the old Roman baths is a trip back in time.

Getting to know the city of Bristol a bit. We didn't get to see all the things in Bristol we wanted to do. There was a half marathon going on one day which closed a good deal of the town to us. But we found some good restaurants and visited a 16th-century pub called the King's Head (a very popular pub name).

Driving through the beautiful English countryside to the mystical city of Glastonbury and the city of Wells. We arrived at the Wells Cathedral late in the afternoon and evensong was being sung in the choir. It's a beautiful building. It has unique double pointed inverted arches in the crossing (to help support the tower). I found the effect to be beguiling.

A return visit to Avebury and the ancient sites around this remarkable place. We viewed Silbury Hill, the largest man-made earthen mound in Europe. It's purpose is still a mystery. The stone circle at Avebury is ever fascinating: it's older than Stonehenge and there are many theories about its purpose.

And we planted our feet in a village called Fyfield. Enough said.

Booze Britain

If you have read this blog before, or if we have spoken in the past few months, you will know that we have both been shocked by the public drunkenness and overall alcohol consumption here in the UK. Back in March, we spent a long weekend in Edinburgh and witnessed 17-year-olds drinking pitchers of green booze at 11:00 AM on a Saturday morning, and in July we were stunned by the folks at a street festival being so inebriated at 1 PM that they couldn't stand. In London we live on a street with two pubs and are nightly serenaded by a combination of thousands of bottles being dumped in recycling bins as well as drunk revelers talking on cell phones, getting into arguments and flirting both with each other and disaster.

Overall we have thought this pretty amusing. It didn't stress us out--it was just part of the local character. We watch a TV show here called Booze Britain where the camera follows groups of Brits out on the town drinking to excess. Imagine starting out your evening at home with a few cases of beer washed down with some Smirnoff vodka. Then hitting the pubs with your "lads" or "ladettes" challenging each other to drink dozens of shots of black Sambuca, super-chilled Jägermeister or some other ungodly concoction. This inevitably leads to public displays of rowdiness, urination, vomiting and some really unmentionable behavior. But it's all captured by the camera. We assumed that people on Booze Britain were encouraged somewhat by the presence of the camera to indulge in over-the-top behavior. Well, we were wrong.

We just returned from a weekend in the West Country, having deposited ourselves in the city of Bristol. On Friday night we were walking back to our hotel from dinner and a visit to a great 17th century pub named for Charles II. It was after 11 PM when we rounded the corner near our hotel. Lying flat on his back on the pavement was a man in his 40s wearing a tuxedo (dinner suit to the locals). We didn't know what to do, and certainly didn't want to risk moving him and causing injury. His breathing was shallow and there were no apparent cuts or bruises. Had he had a stroke? A heart attack? We didn't know. Amazingly this man had keeled over in full view of the night watchman of a nearby building, but we had to tap on the glass and get the guard to call the emergency services (999). We waited, not for a police car or an ambulance, but for an emergency response car purpose built to handle drunks on the street. The dead man came alive when the medical technician touched his neck to get a pulse. He was able to get the man to sit upright, at least briefly. The medic asked if he had been drinking. The man said yes. No drugs, only drink. He admitted to drinking since 7:00 PM. In 4 hours he drank himself into a state so he didn't know where he was, how he got there or how he would get home. He could easily have died on the pavement that night. Booze Britain isn't so funny anymore.

(Creative credit: John and Peter)

Back in the Land of Smurfs, Waffles, French...er...Fries and Beer

Flashback to August 1983: I was a nerdy teenager who went to Belgium to live for a year with a family whom I had never met. The family's name was Dupuis and they lived in Waterloo. There was a maman, a papa, a son and three daughters--a close-knit family that laughed often.

Fast forward to August 2008: La famille Dupuis has grown as families do over the years. The children are adults with homes and lives of their own. There are grandchildren for the bonne maman and bon papa to dote upon. But they are still close and laugh a lot when they get together. Their smiles and laughter are infectious even if one doesn't always get the joke's punch line as it speeds past one's ears in rapid French. It's been a quarter of a century and I still feel like part of the family.

I "flew" from London and Brussels on the new Eurostar train; the trip lasts just two hours. It used to take the good part of a day to travel by train and ferry boat between the two countries. The Eurostar speeds along at 186 mph and goes right under the English Channel in the Channel Tunnel. Twenty minutes under ground and you barely notice you're moving. Amazing!

My first night I stayed with my Belgian brother X and his wife and sons. They live in a small rural village in the Belgian province of Walloon Brabant in an old farm house that they've renovated largely themselves. I enjoy spending time with this family, talking over old times and new situations. I've seen their sons, now teenagers, grow up during my sporadic visits to Belgium. It was fun to hang out with them a bit. They are fans of the American TV show Desperate Housewives and we whiled away a few hours watching some episodes on DVD dubbed into French. The youngest boy also went with me on a walking tour of the university city of Louvain-la-Neuve where I spent 1987-88 studying and sharing an apartment with two Belgian guys.

The rest of my nights were spent at the home of M. and Mme. Dupuis in the Walloon community of Braine-l'Alleud, not far from Waterloo where they'd raised their family. They built their retirement house about ten years ago amid farm fields and pastures; the backyard looks out onto corrales with four horses. There's something very calming about watching these beautiful animals in the distance all day.

Mme. Dupuis is an amazing cook and I probably gained 5 lbs eating her food. There is almost always a soup course, a delicious main course and some dessert that she just whipped up. It was good to spend some quality time with the parents again. We visited a museum dedicated to the works of the late Belgian artist, Jean-Michel Folon, and attended an interesting outdoor concert at a beautiful 18th-century château near their home. And they hosted two family dinners so that I could see everyone again.

Where Charles Lost His Head

John and I have been making the most of a membership in the Historic Royal Palaces. It gives us unlimited access to the Tower of London, Hampton Court Palace, the Banqueting House, Kensington Palace and Kew Palace. It also gives us royal intrigue, infidelity, marriages, death and executions until we're blue in the face.

We visited the Banqueting House and Kensington Palace one weekend recently. Inigo Jones's 1622 Banqueting House is the only remnant of the Palace of Whitehall that was the main residence of the English monarchs in London from 1530 until 1698. Before most of it was destroyed by fire it had grown to be the largest palace in Europe, with over 1,500 rooms.

As you can see from the photo on the right the most amazing thing in the Banqueting House are the ceiling paintings done by Peter Paul Rubens in the 1600s. Charles I hired the Flemish master to immortalize his father, James I, as a god. And, indeed, one sees King James floating around the stratosphere with classical gods, cherubs and the like on several of the major panels. And why not? I asked myself. James and Charles both believed they had a divine right from God to rule over Great Britain.

The problem was Charles I really put the Divine Right of Kings to the test when he tried to rule without the consent of Parliament, came out on the losing side in the English Civil War, was tried and found guilty of high treason and was sentenced to death. In January 1649 he was beheaded (ironically and ignominiously) on a scaffold erected outside the Banqueting Hall he loved so much.

Our visit to Kensington Palace on the western edge of Hyde Park was a different experience. Much of that royal palace is off limits to the general public because it houses the offices and private apartments of a number of members of the Royal Family. We did tour the Royal Apartments used by Stuart and Hanoverian monarchs. One room I found particularly interesting was Queen Victoria's childhood bedroom; it was here that she learned early one morning that she was queen.

In the former apartments of the late Princess Margaret there's a borderline camp exhibit on the last debutante season of 1958. Ball gowns, cut-aways, dance and etiquette lessons and just how to curtsy. The amount of detail about this right of passage for young aristocratic women was staggering.

Naturally it's difficult to go to Kensington Palace and not think of Diana, Princess of Wales. She lived there from the time she married Prince Charles until her death in 1997. There's an exhibit of about a dozen of her designer dresses as well as reminders of the public outpouring of grief at her accidental death. John recalled flying to London on the day of her funeral for business, driving by the Palace and seeing the million bouquets of flowers left at the gates.

Mother of All Parliaments

The other week I took advantage of the fact that the UK Parliament is in recess until early October to take a public tour of the old place. The official name of the Victorian pile where they meet is the Palace of Westminster. Once the home of the royal family, officially remains a royal palace. The site was used as a royal residence until Henry VIII moved the royal family out in 1512 following a fire.

After passing through several layers of logical, thorough, polite British security, I entered the complex through Westminster Hall--a room I've wanted to visit for a good part of my life. Westminster Hall is the oldest part of Parliament. Once used as a law court, the hall has held several notable trials, including that of Sir William Wallace (1305), the Gunpowder Plot conspirators (1606) and King Charles I (1649). Today the hall is used for important state occasions and the lying-in-state of famous Britons. The walls were built in 1097, but the thing I really wanted to see was the huge hammerbeam roof from the 1390s. It's one of the best examples of that kind of architecture in world and amazing that it wasn't destroyed in WWII.

It was in the Hall that our tour group met Nigel, a well-informed guide. A retired Metropolitan police officer, he prefaced and punctuated almost every sentence with, "Ladies and gents." Nigel led us first to the west end of Westminster Palace--the royal end, one could say. We saw the Monarch's Entrance, Her Majesty's Robing Room where Elizabeth II gets dolled up to open the Parliament every fall, the Royal Gallery and finally the House of Lords. All of these rooms were decorated in opulent colors: red and gold, mostly. The decor is really over-the-top Victorian. Most opulent of all was the throne where the monarch opens Parliament every year.

As we made our way through the central lobby to the Commons side of the palace, the opulence vanished and one was left with subdued colors, predominantly green, wood paneling and plain stone walls. Nigel brought us into the antechamber outside the Commons where there are statues and bust of former prime ministers. There was a scary statue of Margaret Thatcher: she's pointing at someone or something and looked as though she might speak.

A highlight of the tour was to stand in the House of Commons. I know it's corny, but I couldn't help but think of the important issues discussed there, the lively speeches given and the great people who have served the British people. We stood amongst the government's benches looking over at the opposition side. On departing I even got to touch the dispatch box from which the PM and his ministers speak.

Life Love Legacy: Hadrian: Empire and Conflict

Back in London less than a week, we were still in the grip of Rome. On Saturday John and I ventured out to the British Museum to see its new exhibition about the Roman Emperor Hadrian (76-138 AD). Presented in the beautifully restored Reading Room, the exhibition contains objects from 28 museums worldwide and finds from recent excavations (including this head from a statue of Hadrian unearthed in Turkey in 2007).

The Roman Empire ruled by Hadrian encompassed much of Europe, northern Africa and the Middle East. He had a great passion for travel, architecture and Greek culture. (He wore a beard in Greek fashion unlike previous clean shaven Roman rulers.) And this exhibition provides fresh insight into the sharp contradictions of Hadrian’s character and challenges faced during his reign. We were very pleased to see it dealt honestly with Hadrian's relationship with his male lover, Antinous. When Antinous died he was worshiped as a deity by Romans.

The British Museum has great educational programs for children and students, and we saw a good example the day we visited. Visiting children (or anyone) got to help recreate Hadrian's fabulous villa at Tivoli outside Rome. Kids could color templates to make various buildings or they could personalize statues. All these were placed in the reconstructed villa complex.

Naturally we couldn't resist revisiting some of the treasures the Museum possesses like the Elgin Marbles from the Parthenon and the Rosetta Stone. It's amazing to realize that this fragment from a larger tablet was the key to unlocking the mystery of Egyptian hieroglyphics, but it's difficult to get close to the stone with so many people clamoring around its Plexiglas container.