It was a dark and stormy night. The fellowship of Froddo, Bilbo, myself, Dina and Adrian were in a tight spot. Do we take a hike in the woods, unprotected with no hope of a beer at the, or do we journey to the town of Adrian’s birth, where his kinsman still live and the pubs are a plentiful?

In this case, we chose to check out Shoreham-by-Sea, which happens to be where Adrian grew up and much of his family still lives. After my very very quick trip to Stockholm, I landed at Gatwick Airport which is about halfway to Brighton. So I decided to take a little overnight trip down to say hello. After a festive evening, we figured it was a lovely Saturday to take a little walk and get some exercise. Our choices were many, but the walk from Bramber to Shoreham sounded pretty and gave me a chance to see some English towns I’d not yet seen. The walk began in Bramber and meandered along the River Adur which, as Anne pointed out, sounds like it’s right out of Tolkien. The walk itself was about 5 miles and allowed us to see a number of cute villages, a gently flowing river, an old cement factory/chalk quarry and a few churches. Come hither and I shall show thee:

Bramber used to be home to a large Norman castle. During the English Civil War, Cromwell had a number of these castles torn down. Only the one wall you see in the distance remains (as well as some of the foundation). It must have been very impressive when it was in one piece.

After soaking in a little history, we decided to hit the local pub. It’s a cute old pub/inn.

Here is the River that traverses Middle Earth. At its widest, it was about double this length. Near Shoreham, we even got to cross the remnants of a very rickety bridge that apparently still had car traffic over it into the 1970s. After a nice walk along the river with a detour to Botolphs, we reached our destination.

No not the Red Lion Inn. Shoreham! This pub used to be where coaches would stop for the night. The wooden beams make the ceiling so low, I couldn’t stand up straight near the bar. Good selection ales, happy vibe.

Once we reached Shoreham, we met up with Adrian’s mum and made merry until it was time for me to return to the land of London and my cute kitties. As always, it was a pleasure to spend a little time out of the city and see the beauty that is the English countryside.

So I’m walking back from lunch (mmmm, gnocchi and boar’s meat) and there’s a cloud that doesn’t look right. First of all, there’re no other clouds in the sky and this cloud is thick and black. Alas, I didn’t have a camera with me. We thought something was amiss and it’s true. The BBC is saying the it happened right near the future site for the 2012 Olympics. Crazy!

update: So it was apparently an abandoned warehouse on the Olympic site. The future home of the Olympics is pretty empty right now and isn’t very ready. But they’ve got a few more years, right? 🙂

While taking a walk along the River Adur (not Ardur!) with Dina and Adrian, we came upon the Parish Church of St Botolph. Apparently, this parish now only numbers 50-60, but the church is significant because the main part of it is from about 950, making it one of the oldest churches still standing in England. It was always designed to service the nearby farming communities. St Botolph is pretty obscure but he’s apparently the patron saint of travelers. The church is situated in an isolated feeling section of southern England. It’s only about 3.5 miles from Shoreham, which has about 20,000 people living there, but you wouldn’t know to come walking upon it.

The tower part is somewhat newer (if you consider the 13th century to be new).

Apparently Anglo-Saxon churches tend to be of simple decorations and design, but it’s got a nice quiet contemplative feel to it. And the acoustics in all these old structures is always impressive.

So here I am in Stockholm, where people drive on the same side of the road as  in my homeland and what did I find? I was completely confused! I had no idea where the cars were supposed to come from. I was in a cab and the driver made a left turn and I freaked out for a second thinking he was on the wrong side of the road. In my head, I’ve become so accustomed to looking for cars on the England side of the road that when I’m not there, I have no idea where to look. I hit a couple of intersections and just kept looking in both directions still not sure which way to expect the cars to come. Damn you English drivers!! 🙂

Greetings once again from Stockholm. I had one of the weirdest flights here. I ended up flying a low cost Danish carrier called Sterling. Until I got on the plane, I didn’t actually see a single person directly employed by them. The ticket counter had some company called Servisair. The gate just had some Gatwick employee. And, until I was on the plane, I could have managed to have no idea who I was flying with. Zero branding. Very odd in this day and age. Even better, they left the gate early. They had everyone on the plane, so they left 10 mintues early. And Stockholm is so efficient, I was off the plane and on the train to the city centre in 15 minutes. That’s getting off the plane, passport control, baggage claim, buying a ticket and an elevator down to the train. And the train goes like 100mph. Sweet.

Anyway, here’s yet another shot of another hotel room. This is another 2 day trip in and out. But it’s freezing and there’s only like 5 hours of daylight this time of year anyways 🙂

Living in a capitol city has some major perks. One of them is the abundance of free museums. In my younger days (my first trip to London 15 years ago — wow!) I was amazed and awed by the British Museum. So, you would think, living a train or bus ride away, I’d be there every weekend. Stupid me, I hadn’t gone even once in 7 months. This past weekend, I vowed to change that and see how the place sized up when I was older and wiser.

Well, it’s still pretty impressive. It doesn’t feel as large and some of the pieces I remembered are smaller, but still very big (more on that in a minute). But it’s still an amazing museum. I need to book some tickets for Carolyn and myself to see the terracotta warriors this spring. But for my first of many trips back, I chose to focus on the Egyptian (non-mummy) part of the museum. I figure, with free admission, I can just pop in for an hour and really check out each part. So that’s what I did.

The classic front to the museum. I love how it’s on this seemingly tiny little charming street filled with old book and antique shops as well as a decent tourist pub and other touristy kind of food.

After you enter the main entrance, you find yourself in the Great Court which is definitely not the same as it was 15 years ago. It’s a decent combination of old and new and the glass roof gives a sensation of being outside without actually being there so you can still have works of art out in the open.

This head was part of a large statue. When I talked about how huge things felt merely big now, this would be it. Next to the head is the arm of the statue. In my younger days, I remember it being 100 feet long. Now, it’s a mere 20 feet long which would still make the full statue gigantic 🙂

This is the crown of the museum and a perfect example of colonialism taking other country’s heritage. The Rosetta Stone has the same text in Hieroglyphics, Demotic and Greek. It allowed people to finally understand the language of Ancient Egypt. What I find even more fascinating is that, by the time the stone was carved, no one really used Hieroglyphics for writing. It was the original written language of the Egyptians. However, as the written language evolved from pictures and symbol into more abstract characters, it was used more for ceremonial and religious purposes. Demotic (the language below it and more recognizable as a language to our modern eyes) was the day to day written language of the literate Egyptian. Greek, at this point, was the language of official Egypt, the language of the government.

What’s sometimes even harder to realize is that most people of this time couldn’t read any of these languages. Until the printing press and the Industrial Revolution democratized the written language by allowing for mass production of words, literacy was something that was unobtainable to most people. It wasn’t until the 19th and 20th century that literacy began to spread far and wide (particularly through the industrialized world — there’s still many people who cannot read or write).

Anyway, that was my first trip to the British Museum. It’s made me think and made me marvel at some amazing things. I don’t know which part will be next, but I hope to share it with you here.

Dina sent me a bunch of pictures from the Apple Festival and included some pictures from Carolyn’s visit. Among them was this cute one:

You might be asking what the hell I’m doing behind the very happy looking Carolyn. Well, the Tate Modern is a museum built in the remains of an old power station. Aside from a very nice selection of Francis Bacon paintings as well as a huge array of Modern British Art, they sponsor large installation pieces in the main part of the building. The previous piece was a series of multi-story slides to go down. The latest installation is this very large crack along the floor representing something about racism or colonialism in British history or something. I’m just making it a little wider.

Outside the museum is a large spider by Louis Bourgeois. Cool!

A time honoured tradition in my part of the US is apple picking. This is where you go straight to the source and pick the apples yourselves. Or, you can at least go to the orchard and get some apples that are far superior to the store-bought crap and pick up some tasty donuts and cider as well (with that in mind, I’ll just plug Salinger’s Orchard as having some damn good apples).

Here in England, at least in the world I run in, they have the “Apple Festival” at Middle Farm just outside Lewes. There was no apple picking at this Farm on the day I went. Instead, there were rides, tasty food, some apples, but mostly cider and ales. Yummy! Dina and Adrian’s friend, Lou, plays in a country-type band and were part of the entertainment. I had the misfortune of coming down with a cold (which is still plaguing me two weeks later), but I refused to let it stop me from taking a trip to the country-side and enjoying myself. Probably a mistake since I’m only barely recovering now (and those of you who have been feeling sympathetic towards me for being sick might not be as inclined now).

One of the things I really appreciated about the day was being out of the city. I hadn’t left London in almost two months (since Paris), and it was really nice to be in a bus looking at the country go by and seeing some smaller locales around Lewes and Haywards Heath. Then, it was nice to just be outside in the not-too-chilly fall air and doing something that was just a little bit different. Some of the highlights:

This is Lou’s band. I’m blanking on their name now, but Dina can jump in and remind me. They were having fun, played a good set and it wasn’t totally surreal watching Brits play American bluegrass music 🙂

Yep, this is exactly what it looks like. It’s sheep racing. And yes, those are little jockey’s on their backs. Even better, Adrian and I picked the winning sheep and got some candy.

After a few drinks, we all figured it’d be a good idea to take one of the carnival rides that spin around a lot. This is our third time on the ride from my vantage-point.

This doesn’t help keep you sober. There’s a permanent store on the farm that has a very very large selection of ciders and ales. You get a small cup and are free to sample. And, inevitably, you buy some too. Very interesting to try so many ciders. I know so little about it and there really is a vast difference in all of these.

I’m certain this might be one of those pictures that’ll disqualify us from public office in the US, but we all look so happy here.

So, while Carolyn was still here (2 weeks ago, sniffle), we had the good fortune of spending a night out with some very good food (at a pretty hefty price!). It’s a converted pub called Bacchus. Aside from a night of fine dining, this would be the first time Ben (my coworker) and Gerry (his wife) had met Carolyn (they thought she was imaginary).

Bacchus’ “gimmick” was that it used a cooking technique called sous-vide which is basically boiling things in vacuum sealed bags for many many hours until it’s cooked. This sounded interesting enough. Little did we know it was also just extremely well done.

The area it’s in is a relatively deserted section of Hoxton, about a 15 minute walk from my office. We got there and started worrying that we’re waaay under dressed. However, while we could have gotten away with dressing nicer, it had more of a Chicago restaurant vibe (translation: no one cares what you wear) to it. We start to peruse the menu and while I began by thinking I’d get a couple of dishes and some beer, we all ended up doing the 6 dish (there were 9 dishes total on the menu) with wine pairing meal. Good choice! It was clear the chef had thought out his menu based on having them all together and each dish flowed really nicely into the next. This was also the first time any of us savages had done any sort of wine pairing. The sommelier made it a great first time. The wines were all very good and ‘paired’ with the dishes nicely. Anyhoo, here’s what some of it looked like:

This was, if I recall correctly, a salmon dish. Really nicely done.

Gerry is a vegetarian and Carolyn doesn’t eat a lot of pork, so they substituted this dish for a pork dish on the fixed menu. Alas, I forget what it was. hmmm.

Those chocolate truffles were absolutely perfect. Yummy.

So 5 November is something called “Guy Fawkes Night“. I know very little about the man, but it involved a massive assassination plot and is called the gunpowder plot. Apparently, that means that, for the next few days, the Brits will be setting off fireworks and lighting bonfires. I figured I’d try to find a few interesting displays this weekend until it decided to start (on 2 November) right outside my freaking window. I’m sitting on the couch and I hear a little sizzle and suddenly BOOM!!!! The cats are hiding right now and I need to see where the source it, but my heart is still pounding. Crap that was loud!

And now people further down the street are getting in the act. Remember, this is in the middle of central London. Crazy.

On an unrelated note, it looks like the CTA has been given a cash infusion that’ll hold off the crisis for a couple of months — if the Federal govt is ok with it. But, it’s just another band-aid solution. If they’d stop stupid laws like not allowing the CTA to run a deficit, this wouldn’t be an issue. jeez.

So it seems like every year, the CTA does their usual song and dance in which they threaten to cut service to such a level no one could actually use it and raise fares so only someone who could afford a limo can pay. Then the legislature, instead of looking at the larger picture issues with funding, passes a stop-gap bill that pays for things, until next year.

Well, this year, it looks like the game has come to a head. In four days, if the legislature screws around some more, there will be major cuts to buses and massive fare increases. Hell, the fares in some situations rival Londons tube fares. Yikes!

Well, to all the lovely people in Chicago, I hope this goes the way it normally does. Personally, I think the CTA needs major work to run better, but they should get a shitload more funding. But I’m a huge fan of public transit and people need to remember that public transit is SUPPOSED to be subsidized and not make money. It’s an infrastructure cost that makes a city more liveable and desirable. And it more often benefits the people that might not be able to afford a car. Stop blowing money on highways and fix the trains!

So until some time around lunch, I completely forgot that today was Halloween. It might be because I’m just not tuned into British culture, but I’ve only seen the occasion sign advertising Halloween candy in a few stores. Beyond that, there was the sign in one of my local groceries saying that that my local council has requested that stores not sell flour or eggs to people under 16.

Again, I don’t have my pulse on the nation or anything, but here was my Halloween experience. I went to a pub which was much more interested in the Arsenal match that the day itself, although their guest ale on tap was Hobgoblin and the indicator plaque had a glowing pumpkin. Beyond that, I saw a whopping two trick-or-treaters and someone said they saw a higher-than-usual number of chavs wearing hoodies. All-in-all, my UK world doesn’t do Halloween very enthusiastically 🙂

Some of you might be aware that Greenwich is home to the Prime Meridian, which is where East and West meet (at least longitudinally). Were you aware how close Greenwich is to London? It’s actually right on the southwest edge of the City and an easy tube ride to it. Well, maybe you all do and I’m just being silly, but it’s one of those destinations I’d been wanting to see for many months. On one of the days when I was working, Carolyn found an interesting way to see the tourist parts of London — London Walks. It’s a slightly quirky way of getting a tour of London. Well, on one of my days off, we found one which would start over near the Tower of London then take the river ferry over to Greenwich for more edu-ma-cation. We thought it would be fun. And it was, except for the driving rain that didn’t let up until we were almost home and soaked to the bone :).

It’s a pity since Greenwich is very much about being outdoors. In its history it has been a favourite haunt of the royals as well as a rich maritime history. It’s been a naval hospital and is currently home to the University of Greenwich. As a result, it has tons of amazing architecture as well as the royal observatory which is why they chose it to be 0 degrees longitude.

Here’s a little fun in photos for your enjoyment.

This is part of what used to be the Naval hospital. After many years of living the tough life at sea, this ain’t a bad way to spend some time resting your days out.

Here’s a view looking up at the Royal Observatory. Yes, in this weather, we still hiked up there. At 1pm every day, that red ball rises up and then drops (like New Years in Times Square every day!).

After the walking tour ended, we took a little time to warm up in a pub with a pint and some good food (Shepherd Neame make some good pies as well as ales).  Then we made the hike up the hill, got a little lost and found our way to the Prime Meridian. Here’s Carolyn straddling two hemispheres!

Here’s a slightly taller (but no less wet) Matt in the same spot. hurrah!

So I might not have a working TV (yet!) and I might be sick (I blame Krista for bring it into the office), but it’s the Rugby World Cup final and England, unlike in the Cricket World Cup earlier this year, are in the final. Last week, Carolyn and I went to a pub to check out the action which was tons of fun. Alas, I’m resting today so I don’t get too sick, so I’m using the wonders of the intertubes to watch it on my computer. Go England!

Oh yeah, I still have very little idea what’s going on in this sport. But I’m slowly picking it up (then I’ll know how rugby AND cricket are played). 🙂

Update: England lost 15-6. I’d give you my insightful analysis, but I know very little about the sport.