Panic on the Streets of London!

Terror at the Tower of London: In which our heroines engage in some very touristy & photogenic behaviour in their last huzzah in London before setting out on their Grand Tour.


The Tower of London is just something that every pilgrim to the City of Vice has to do. The only spooky thing about the Tower these days, is how cheeful the busloads of tourists seem as they hand over their ₤16 to see where people died horribily. Often with rats involved. And hacking.

Lots and lots of hacking.


There are other things in the Tower: the Crown Jewels, the Royal Armoury, an over-priced cafeteria, a torture chamber and a church. But really, everyone is there to hear about the hacking.

The reason for this is that unlike most jobs these days, you didn't have to be sober to be on duty as an executioner. As long as you could pick up your axe and swing it (in the general direction of the doomed person was preferable), you could report for duty. And if you didn't knock off their head in the first fifteen tries, they would eventually just die of being hacked into small pieces.

Eventually.


The Traitor's Gate (formerly a water entrance to the Tower) where prisoners of higher rank such as Queen Anne Boleyn and Sir Thomas Moore, could be brought discretely into the Tower before being liberated of their cranial burden.


Famous prisoners of the Tower include:

Sir Walter Raleigh: Who practically lived there. After being imprisoned three times (The first was for getting married without asking Queen Elizabeth's permission. The last time was for failing to find the New World and disobeying his only order which was "don't anger the Spanish" by burning and raiding every Spanish ship he could find between here and America), his head was retrieved by his wife who carried it around in a bag around her waist for twelve years.

I don't even know what to say about that.

Gruffydd ap Llywelyn Fawr: (Who was Welsh, if you hadn't guessed) A prince who fell to his death in an escape attempt. Apparently had not heard of the groovy new Greek invention called "stairs."

Lady Jane Grey: The Nine/Thirteen Day Queen who is so important that no one can remember for exactly how long she was on the throne.

Rudolph Hess: German deputy leader of the Nazi party who forgot to appraise the United Kingdom of his travel plans when he parachuted into Scotland with the intent of brokering peace between the two nations without telling Churchill or Hitler about it. Smooth.


Venetian Lions "liberated" from Venice. Apparently they did not want them back. I cannot imagine why.


A Norman toilet. But where does the magazine rack go?


The famous biting ravens of the Tower. If the ravens leave the Tower, the monarchy will fall. Which is a pretty precarious means of establishing governmental stability if you ask me.


My best Anne Boleyn impression


A Yeoman of the Guard (Okay, a beefeater). They are all bluff and cheeky. Just like in the stories but better.


Inner tower with the Armoury and in the wee corner on the left is where they keep the Crown Jewels which are incredibly shiny. And kinda gaudy. They also look incredibly easy to steal. You enter the chamber on a sort of viewing platform which zooms you around the jewels (its kind of like an abattoir without the killing) and into the gift shop where you can by all manner of royal replicas.

The entire structure was conceived by a very cunning capitalist. I salute them.


I would hate to think of the conversation with the interior designer.

"I was thinking florals. Maybe marigolds? Some buttercup curtains?"

"I'm thinking guns.... Lots of guns. More guns. Guns on the walls, guns on the pillars, guns arranged in a circle. Break it up with a wall of swords. Then, some more guns."

"..."


The grotesque war horse statues. Scariest weapon in the entire British arsenal.


Every night the entire tower and its residents are locked up in a complicated ceremony involving a lot of marching and wearing frilly hats which represent the might of the British Empire.


We then headed to the Tate Modern because it was freezing and we needed an hour to kill (which are the only reasons why one should ever visit the Tate Modern).

That which I appear to be tripping over is actually installation art. It's a crack that runs over the entire concrete basement of the Tate and I thought it was pretty cool until I learned that it represented colonialism

Must post-modernism ruin everything?


And thus the day ended as every day should end: With sushi.

C-C-C-C-Cambridge

Well, it's official. I'm never cleaning anything ever again.

Nope, not even my own apartment or house or sink or cardboard box. I will never clean anything ever. I will hire someone and pay them to clean for me as I think I have cleaned enough in the past five months to exempt me from ever cleaning again.

In short...


Bye-bye Blenheim...


Hello Cambridge!


Ah Cambridge University! Home to such minds as Eric Idle, Stephen Fry, Emma Thompson, Hugh Laurie, John Cleese, Graham Chapman, and other people who didn't write comedy like John Milton (Unless you're part of the small minority that finds Paradise Lost hilarious).


Having loyalties to Oxfordshire, I was slightly worried about venturing into enemy territory. Oxford and Cambridge are bitter rivals and many an unwary tourist has found themselves tied to an anchor and throw into the bottom of the Cam for wearing a Oxford University sweatshirt.

Bearing this in mind, the first thing I did when I arrived in the city was to wave my Oxford University Press copy of Evelyn Waugh's short stories in front of windows of the Cambridge University Press bookstore.

I live on the edge.


I travelled Cambridge with the most intrepid of all travelling partners, Miss Krushel and our fabulous guide and pointer-outer of important things, Miss Kathy who did not beat me up for seething that Oxford was tops but instead found us the only sushi restaurant in all of England. After Stephen Fry, she is the best person ever to have stepped foot in Cambridge.

And after wiping away the tears of joy that sprang forth from tasting raw fish once more, I reconsidered Cambridge.


The colleges of Old Cambridge are ridiculously beautiful (except Ruskin - what were they thinking?) and as you walk along the cobbled streets, dodging the handsome young scholars on bicycles with their robes whipping behind them, you can hear the choirs wafting out from the top of the towers and the organs practicing for the evening service and the bells marking the hours.

And after about five minutes of walking the streets of Old Cambridge, you start talking like a woozy, Victorian poet who's overdosed on the mead and romanticism.


This is the inner courtyard of King's College which you can observe for free if you walk past the gates looking haggard and talking about "ballyol' tutors" like a P.G Wodehouse character.


Punters on the Cam! Punters punting in front of King's College, Cambridge University! All my English expectations in one scene!

I swooned and was revived by Kim Philby and together we went away to become glamorous spies for the Soviets.


My man Henry VIII in front of Trinity College.


The lonely tree of Trinity College.



In order to help schoolchildren in Kenya, some bearded idealist decided to live in a tree and collect donations to support his removal from the rest of the ground level population.

Because we took a picture, Kathy gave him a pound donation and then asked how long he had been in the tree.

"Five hours," was his blithe reply.

Five hours? I'd spent more time on the bus that day.

Feeling a bit cheated, we sat around with pointy sticks to make sure we got our money's worth of tree living.


However, Cambridge does have something in common with Oxford: The pub food is terrible.


We ate at the Eagle Pub where the ceiling is decorated with the signatures of WWII RAF pilots and their women who signed with lipstick and lighters.

The Eagle is also where Watson and Crick held the press conference to announce their discovery of the Double Helix model of DNA. During the course of this press conference, they did not announce that they'd basically stolen the entire idea from Rosalind Franklin but I guess they were busy choking on the pub food and collecting Nobel prizes.


That there where my foot is resting on in defiance of college regulations? Is pristine and sacred King's College grass.

Life Mission No.33: Complete.

Winter in Woodstock

...

...

...

Bwah-ha-ha!

I crack myself up sometimes.


Seriously, that's more like it.


Winter in England seems to consist of a day of light to miserable pissing rain (this day usually falling on a Thursday - the maid's day off) followed by a week of glorious sunshine, high temperatures and old people walking their dogs.


Snow seems to be some mystical powder that many have heard about but none have actually seen.


The closest thing to snow that I have seen in this country is this lovely snowglobe generously donated (in the spirit of cross-Atlantic education) by the wonderful Lads & Ladies of the Library which deeply moved the heart of this maid considerably who misses the folks behind the Check-Out and Customer Service desk.

A most humble and heartfelt thanks is in order and expect a large box of hearty Scottish oat cakes coming your way.


I've heard from my oversea sources, that Alberta is suffering from the worst winter in twenty years: Slings of sleet, arrows of abnormally low temperatures and a sea of snow.

Believe me, my frozen friends:


I


Feel


Your


Pain.


... Okay, not really.

But while I'm frolicking through the bright green grass through the sun dappled hills and the golden fields, I occasionally have to pass by a flock of sheep which are the most foetid, reeking, rank animals known to man.

See? I have troubles too.

Adventures in Socio-Linguistics!

England and America are two countries separated by the same language - George Bernard Shaw

And an excruciating twelve hour trans-Atlantic flight. - Corene Maret Brown



After many year spent as an apprentice at my mother's knee trying to decipher what the hell they were going on about on Coronation Street, I can usually understand the English folk as long as they aren't mumbling in a broad Oxfordshire or marble-mouthed east London accent. However, as interested linguists will be foaming at the mouth to know, there are several strange lexicographical turn of phrases that haven't made it over the ocean and inevitably provide hilarious verbal hijinks with Canadian visitors bearing the brunt of the ridicule.

The most important thing for visitors to the UK to note:
TROUSERS (United Kingdom) = PANTS (North America)
PANTS (North American) = NAUGHTY BIT COVERS (United Kingdom)

I cannot stress this enough. At no point in any conversation with someone from the UK should you ever say: "God, I can't wait to put some pants on."

My most memorable lost in translation moment was when I was chatting to a co-worker; a charming, mannered Scottish lady of impeccable moral standards.

"I have to go home and tidy my flat," she said.

"Why? I haven't bothered to clean anything in my apartment since the shooting season started. I think we clean enough all day, every day."

"Well, I have a man coming to inspect my flat and I can't have him thinking I'm a slut."

"..."

"Why are you staring at me like that?"

"... That word cannot mean what you think I think it means."

After a long, involved discussion with lots of incredulous stares (on her part) and shrieks of laughter (on my part), we discerned that in fact she was not a lady of negotiable virtue nor was her apartment knee deep in frilly underwear. In Scotland, a "slut" is a messy, lackadaisical woman who doesn't care about standards or how she looks.

And now you know.

Eat your heart out, Calvin Veltman.

Maid Mishaps

I just burnt a hole in my shoe.

A hole in my favourite 15 quid maid shoes.

I was trying not to dishonour my country by freezing to death indoors in the wussy English winter by keeping close to the gas fire (as the link between gas heating and huge explosions when people forget they've left the gas oven on and light a match has not yet been discovered in this country), leaning against the grate with my shoe perched against the metal edge for balancing purposes when after a few minutes of heated luxury, I felt a strange sensation akin to my nylons melting to the skin of my foot.

I looked down and realized that the sole of my shoe was melting. The heat was so intense that it was burning through my shoe and making a full frontal assault on my extremely flammable nylons in a very painful way.

Lesson learned?

Gas Fires: Not Just for Decoration - Actually Producing Heat.

Odd About Town

Things that are delightful & strange about England:


1. "Britvic - Sparkling Ginger Ale" The United Kingdom's answer to Canadian Dry ginger ale. Tastes like water that has lost the will to live. 'Parently after years of murdering their taste buds with deep fried toast and stomachs of various farm animals, they can no longer taste the difference.

And their Sprite tastes like dirt. Literally. I think there were flecks of sod in my can.


2. Light switches switch on and off the opposite way. Flipped up is on and flipped down is off. This would seem to make sense written down but try testing your own light switches at home. See? It's all wrong.

I spent my first few nights in the United Kingdom convinced that electricity was still on rationing as everytime I tried to flip on a switch, I remained plunged in darkness.


3. The bats are vicious, maid seeking missiles which apparently don't have rabies. A fact that people only bothered to tell me once I spent an entire afternoon being chased around screaming by a ravenous looking beast.


4. Bill Bailey.