g
Browsing Category

England

Cycling England Europe

London to Paris sur une Bicyclette Day 3: Abbeville to Beauvais

Posted on May 28, 2010

Today’s ride is the most scenic of the trip, with terrain that resembles the Cotswolds without the dry stone walls. Their absence makes me realize how much that stone defines the aesthetic of the Cotswolds, manifest in the churches and cottages and, of course, walls. After three days of eating and riding together, our fellow cyclists are starting to become as much a part of our landscape as those dry stone walls are of the Cotswolds. Not yet knowing everyone’s name, we’ve taken to privately calling them by their defining, sometimes annoying— everything seems annoying when you are going uphill on your third straight day of distance cycling— characteristic. I’ve already introduced smoking man and sweatpants-tucked-into-his-tube socks man, but they have now been joined by a cast of characters including:

    • Foghorn Leghorn, a twenty-something gung ho gal with a plum coloured bob and a booming voice she uses to indicate that she’s very pleased with herself.
    • Australian Man Eater, Foghorn Leghorn’s buddy on this trip who’s clearly on the prowl. I presume the squeaking bed springs coming from next door in the early morning hours of Day 4 mean she was successful.
    • The “Merely-a-Paper-Cut-Gals,” a trio of posh fifty-something birds who are shockingly athletic. My nickname for them hails from the French and Saunders sketch where the duo play a pair of country toffs who constantly sustain dramatic injuries and insist with quintessential English stiff upper lipness that it’s “merely a paper cut.”
    • The Sports Bores, a group of twenty-something uber athletic men who we only see in the morning and evening because they’re always miles ahead of us. They favor achingly tight red lycra and wear their men-from-the-future sports sunglasses with their civilian clothes in the evenings.
    • The Doofus, a ginger haired boy who’s joined Foghorn and Man Eater’s clique, and keeps falling over on his bike.
    • The Doo-lolly, a blond haired, Rubenesque gal who likes to zoom past you on the downhill then suddenly stop her bike in front of you on the uphill so she can get off and walk.

By the time we arrive at our motorway adjacent lodgings, we’ve created back stories for most of the group. We continue this form of recreation over a pichet of the motel’s house rosé. (Being France, it’s quite decent wine relative to what you would expect to find at your average British or American Motel 6. Do they even sell wine at Motel 6?). And just to prove we’re not horrible people we share our pichet with Foghorn’s table.

Cycling England Europe

London to Paris sur une Bicyclette Day 2: Calais to Abbeville

Posted on May 27, 2010

Day 2 and I use every piece of advice, from trite euphemism to true wisdom, to get me through the 78 hilly miles. There’s Larry, my L.A. yoga teacher and former zen priest telling me “so what,” when I complain my feet fall asleep during zazen (and, as it happens, when cycling excessive distances). Richard, the ex-Navy Seal/zen priest in training/workout instructor/and, more recently, cable television host of a program about the weapons of war for which he gave himself the nickname Mack, is also there. He’s shouting “not dead, can’t quit,” at me just like he did when I was doing push ups at 6:30am in the Santa Monica zendo. My colleague Ian is also on hand, nodding approvingly as I wash down my sixth Nurofen of the day with a dose of neat black currant cordial. Ian had advised me painkillers and a slow and steady pace would be my best friends for this bike ride, and so far he’s been right on both counts. The cordial and jelly babies are also reliable acquaintances.

The terrain today is punishing and scenic, and seems to be populated solely by lazy, white French cows who sleep in the meadows like dogs in the shade. The villages we ride through are ghost towns, with broke down mini-chateaus and those concrete bungalows with brightly painted shutters the French seem to favor. Later there are American scale stretches of agricultural land, so vast they make the Cotswolds seem like it’s engaged in boutique farming. Despite all the greenery it somehow feels desolate in these parts.

Over dinner at our hotel we are joined by a man and his friend who are riding for the same charity, the MS Society, that I am. We get to talking and I learn that he suffers from MS and was previously in a wheel chair. His story should be inspirational, but the more he talks the more I dislike him. I find him narcissistic and feel guilty about it, despite reminding myself that disease doesn’t discriminate when it comes to the likability of its victims. When we are back in our hotel room, I ask husband if he had the same reaction and am surprised when he tells me he liked the guy. Husband suggests my reaction might be more about my discomfort with confronting MS rather than the man’s arrogance. I decide to sleep on it.

Cycling England Europe

London to Paris sur une Bicyclette Day 1: Crystal Palace to the White Cliffs of Dover

Posted on May 26, 2010

An inauspicious start to the day when our mini cab driver arrives at our flat early, aborting my attempt to make coffee, then drops us at the wrong end of Crystal Palace park, leaving us roaming for 30 minutes looking for the starting line. Lose luggage tag and woman-from-the-future special bicycling sunglasses (later retrieved in the parking lot) in the process. When we finally do arrive at the check-in point I suggest to support staff they invest in some signage for future events in a tone verging on shouting. None of them gets hooked, which is a good sign: clearly they are well versed in dealing with drama queens, a skill that will come in handy over the next few days.

The whole thing reminds me of the time husband ran the Napa Valley marathon and we drove 26 miles from our hotel in Calistoga at 6am wondering why there was so much traffic going in the opposite direction so early in the morning. When we arrived in Napa we learned we were at the Finish line, so we stormed back up the highway to Calistoga arriving just as they were disassembling the Start line bunting. Support staff telephoned ahead to their colleagues to keep the first water stop open, and husband ran off into the morning mist like Forest Gump. He was so freaked out he finished in his fastest time ever, just over four hours.

Our late start doesn’t inspire such speed on the first day of our cycle ride. 90 miles later we arrive in Dover in the bottom 3 of our group of 70-odd, not counting the handful of people who got a lift in the van. The other laggard is someone I will come to know as smoking man thanks to his habit of lighting up at the top of hills. He and a rotund chap who wears his sweatpants tucked into his tube socks will become my frequent companions at the back of the pack on day 2.

90 minutes later we arrive by ferry in Calais and convoy the 1o or some unwelcome additional miles to the Holiday Inn on the outskirts of town. Young men with long hair and earrings step out from bars with names like Le Crypte, whistling at us and inviting us for a drink in accented English. This is the closest I will come to knowing what it feels like to ride through a French town on the Tour de France, so I savour the moment.

England

The Lady Daydreams

Posted on May 3, 2010

So I finally picked up a copy of The Lady, A Journal for Gentlewomen, which I blogged about back in January. I was grocery shopping and, being short of bathtub reading, susceptible to such impulse purchases. It contained some entertaining light reading, including a dissection of the seven tribes of incomers to the countryside. (After some consideration husband and I both concluded we were closest to the description proffered for the group of incomers called The Realists; we certainly weren’t The Hassled Parents or The Bling Brigade, although I am guilty of wearing “witty Wellingtons” à la the Cath Kidston Weekenders.)

The Lady also came in handy in aiding the escapist fantasies I am prone to have when work starts to get too stressful. This class of fantasy tends to involve quitting my job to become a chef or a wedding planner or to take over the local post office and add on a tea shop selling tasteful tat. My last few weeks in my real life office have included several crises, a volcano ash cloud stranded manager (without whom I had to handle the crises alone), a launch in India, and a narrowly averted business trip to Beijing this week on impossibly short notice. In short, I was primed for escapist fantasy when I starting skimming the classified pages of The Lady and found this advertisement under the cryptically named section, Situations & Appointments:
Opportunity for semi-retired couple: Part-time housekeeper/lady’s companion and gardener/handyperson required. Excellent accommodation in detached, two-bedroom cottage; own garden, parking, rural views to sea. Terms and conditions negotiable. Near Whitby in North York Moors National Park. Visions of Emma Thompson and Anthony Hopkins and the tragic romance of Remains of the Day flashed through my head providing just enough escapist fantasy to propel me through the remains of this week.

England

Stranger than Fiction

Posted on April 15, 2010

Would you believe me if I told you:
1. UK airspace is shut down due to a cloud of Icelandic volcanic ash?
2. The UK’s Transport Minister is named Lord Adonis?
3. The UK held its first ever televised Prime Ministerial debates tonite?
4. A Welsh political party running in the upcoming general election is called Plaid?

What a queer little country I live in…

England Random

Horses for Heroes

Posted on February 7, 2010

This weekend I received an email inviting me to invest in a share of a race horse syndicate. The days when I would have found this odd are behind me. The Cotswolds are, after all, horse country and their signature horse racing event, The Cheltenham Festival, is only a month away. What was different about this invite is that it was for a charitable cause, specifically Help for Heroes, which provides assistance to injured soldiers. For every £5,000 share bought, £1,000 is donated to the charity.

Were it not for the fact that husband and I recently siphoned all our spare cash into another investment, I would have been tempted. A week or so ago we became official owners of a single share of a London musical. It took some last minute coaxing to get husband to take the plunge, but, with the help of dismal interest rates on savings accounts, I managed to convince him that greasepaint and footlights were as legitimate as a six-month CD. I, on the other hand, required no persuasion. I was raised on a steady diet of West End musicals, from Kismet to The King and I. I tap danced my way through my eleventh year to the accompaniment of the original cast recording of 42nd Street and, if challenged, am fairly certain could still sing the lyrics to Cats and Annie from beginning to end. I even liked Starlight Express.

I don’t really expect to get much back from our West End investment. I’m in it for the vicarious thrill and figure it can’t be much worse than the stock market or property in recent years. But should our musical ship come in, I’ll make sure to donate something to Help for Heroes. In the meantime, should you be in the market for a race horse for a good cause, you can buy your share here: http://www.kimbaileyracing.com/help_for_heroes_partnership.html.

Books England

Hey Lady

Posted on January 13, 2010

My new year’s resolution last year was to read something by Proust. I really wanted to read Alain de Botton’s How Proust Can Change Your Life but somehow that didn’t see like a very legitimate thing to do without having read anything by Proust first. A year later the red spine of volume one of In Search of Lost Time is still staring back at me from my bedside table, nestled between Any Human Heart and A Thousand Splendid Suns. Unlike those book club mandated tomes, the pages of ISOLT remain unsullied by my nub nailed fingers.

So this year I made another new year’s resolution, one that would enable me to keep last year’s, albeit behind schedule. I’d let my subscription to The New Yorker expire in February and reallocate NYer reading time to ISOLT. It seemed like a good plan until this morning when Rachel Johnson, sister of the slightly mad Boris the mayor of London, appeared on BBC Breakfast to talk about the magazine she is now editing, The Lady.

Now why didn’t anybody tell me about The Lady? It’s taken me years to unravel so many of the mysteries of proper British life, things like marmite, the difference between hunting and shooting, and what a gilet is and how you pronounce it. And yet all along—125 years to be exact —there has been a magazine to guide me in the ways of British ladyship. According to the news anchor its reputation of late has been the best place to advertise if you are in search of a nanny, but Ms. Johnson has livened up the old dowager. It even has literary and Cotswoldian links, having been established by the grandfather of the Mitford sisters. Coming up on my one year anniversary of becoming a Brit I feel I am practically a lady anyway. I can’t think of a better way to celebrate than subscribing….to yet another weekly.

England

Take Your Beauty Where You Find It

Posted on November 23, 2009

It’s easy to find beauty in the Cotswolds, even in November when the countryside offers up a half-hearted reprisal of spring before the winter sets in. Trees flame up with golden foliage standing in for the oil of rapeseed yellows of May, while the fields that were ploughed under in September now sport a green stubble. But last week I stumbled upon two more unlikely but nonetheless beautiful scenes.

The first was while I was driving on the M25, London’s orbital road about which it’s difficult to say anything pleasant at all. Bored of the deliberate cantankerousness of John Humphrys interviewing politicians on the Today program, I switched off Radio 4 just in time to spot what appeared to be a giant, multi-colored amusement park ride just off the motorway. It turned out to be a lot for cherry pickers, but there was something so striking about the towering height of the machines and their assorted candy colors that they would have looked equally as in place in the Turbine Hall of the Tate as on the edge of the M25.

The second was at 8:30am last Saturday morning when husband and I went to pick up my car in Soho after our Priscilla evening the night before. Early on a weekend morning Soho is almost village-like, barring the occasional but reliable sounds of a jack hammer or car alarm. We stopped into the equally reliable Bar Italia for coffee, where the Formica and neon and lipstick red Gaggia haven’t changed since the middle of the twentieth century when they were first installed. The Christmas decorations were out in the form of pannetone boxes entwined with lights strung from the ceiling. The November morning was mild enough to sit outside, where we were joined by a table of four what can only be described as blokes from the London fire brigade. Next to them sat two slight, twenty-something men discussing the merits of skinny jeans versus boy leggings over their morning coffee.

England

FAB-u-LUSSS!

Posted on November 21, 2009

We spent a rare Friday night in London last night to see Priscilla, the musical based on the film Priscilla Queen of the Desert, with R and R, aka the only gays in the village (although strictly speaking that isn’t true, I still like to call them that). I am still buzzing from the experience, breaking into the occasional disco classic as I read the paper and soak in the bath. It was just the thing to cheer you up after a dreadful week, one that say started with waking up at 3:30am on Monday morning and not being able to fall back asleep despite the fact you had to get out of bed at 5:30am to drive into London for a day of meetings with your new boss, followed by an 8:45am shouting match in which you are forced to threaten divorce in order to get your spouse to lend you his flat keys since he has given your set away to the plumber and is now inexplicably refusing to part with his, which in turn necessitates that you have to pay an extra non-expensable £15 to park in one of only two garages in Soho because it is supposedly ‘closed’ for construction unless you agree to have your car washed, all so you can be marginally on time. Let’s just say the week continued as it had started and a big gay— in both senses of the word—musical was just the thing to salvage it. It was like going to the best disco ever on Halloween in West Hollywood (only you could sit without feeling conspicuous). My favorite costume hands down was the literal take on Who Left the Cake Out in the Rain—a giant cupcake with illuminated candle hat covered by a transparent umbrella streaming tinsel. The tickets were comps from husband’s work, proving he is useful for something if not keys. He reported that bar takings at Priscilla are setting records, a trend with which we happily aligned.

England Random

Meet My Wardrobe

Posted on October 23, 2009

I have made concessions in my embrace of my newly adopted country. I will call a closet a wardrobe, for example. And yet eager as I am to assimilate, there are some things my other home country just does better, namely closets. The closet is a temple in America. Whole companies have been built around organizing them. They’re feted in films (witness Carrie in Sex and the City). You can WALK INTO THEM.

England on the other hand still seems to think of the closet as optional. Real estate is distinctly void of their presence. Industry professionals inform me it’s done to make places look bigger, but nobody is being fooled here. Suckers we the general public may be, but at least give us credit for realizing we’re going to need to take up some space in the bedroom to hang up our clothes. It is a quirk of British culture as baffling as the prevalence of the front loading washer, the very design of which makes it impossible to toss in that stray sock you dropped on your way to do laundry once the cycle has begun, lest you flood your house. Pressing the start button on a British washing machine is like sealing the space shuttle.

Alas I digress from the disgrace that is closet-less Britain, a situation that over the years has caused me considerable duress. I recall in particular a melodramatic evening spent traversing a rainy and traffic and expletive-riddled corridor of London’s North Circular road to get to a second branch of Ikea before it closed so that we could secure the right doors for two newly purchased wardrobes since having the frames and the doors in stock in the same store was apparently just too much for Ikea’s inventory management system. As a result I now suffer from Ikea-induced post-traumatic stress disorder that can be triggered at the drop of a stubby, bowling-alley style pencil.

You can therefore imagine my delight at the completion of a custom commissioned floor to ceiling wardrobe in Drover’s Cottage just last week. The fantastic carpenter who also made our front door and mantel piece, Gerald, is the man responsible for my joy. He lavished upon her the care and attention required to make her fit snuggly in the wonky angles of the bedroom floor. He measured and cut and sealed and painted her Victorian paneled doors, then adorned them with two substantial, shiny brass knobs. And what lovely doors they are, closing with a satisfying thunk. To me this is a wardrobe as magical as the The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe wardrobe — finally a resting place in England for all my clothes and shoes and power cords and wrapping paper and books husband won’t let me keep by the bed. It is mine, all mine except for a little bit in the corner where I let him hang his kilt.