Halloween in the US

Unlike England, Halloween is a big deal in the US and it seems to me like everyone in New Jersey loves it even more. It's not my favorite holiday - giving unhealthy treats to random children who knock on your door, but I loved it as a kid, and Olivia and Eliot had been discussing it the whole month of October.

Olivia decided to be a pirate this year after some consideration. Her first choice was Laura Ingalls Wilder, but then after we couldn't find a sunbonnet and she really thought she should have long hair, she switched to a pirate. I was proud of her because she designed the whole costume herself, using things from her dress up box.

Eliot didn't really care to dress up, but wanted to wear his red binoculars to school, so he came up with the idea of a bird watcher. He wore the hat for the pictures, but wasn't too keen on wearing it the whole night.

They feel like they are living the good life now, since they have more candy than they'll see for at least another year. They're so honest about it too, asking us each time before they eat some if it's okay.

The Dangerous Paddling Pool

Across the street from our flat in Cambridge was a a huge park, outfitted with a seasonal paddling pool. When we arrived last September, hearty British children were splashing about in this greenish water from the Cam in various stages of undress, and having a blast. It looked like there was a thin film on the bottom of the pool. There was no lifeguard in sight, and I didn't even want to begin to estimate how many kids had "weed" in it. I was completely disgusted by this pool and preferred not to go near that end of the park. Of course Eliot and Olivia wanted to try it out, but I was not about to let them make a habit of it. It was unsanitary, unsafe and besides it was only 55 degrees out anyway.

As you can see from the photographic evidence, Olivia and Eliot did make it into the paddling pool eventually. By June it was refilled and ready for another season. By June I realized that sitting at the side of the pool, reading my book, was a much better option than explaining, for the umpteenth time, the reasons they couldn't splash around with everyone else. Cross cultural studies often remark that it takes around one year to begin to assimilate to the foreign culture. In my case it was only 9 months.

Food

Once upon a time—1992, to be precise, the first year I lived in England—I entered my college’s dining hall just as dinner was being served. I was hungry, and I dived right in to what was set before me. But after one bite I turned to the student next to me and said, in a voice of outrage and disbelief: “What is this stuff?”

My fellow dinner looked at me quizzically for a moment, then raised his eyebrows and shrugged. “It’s steak and kidney pie.” Observing my continuing consternation—agony, really—he went on: “I’ll eat yours if you don’t want it.” Wordlessly I pushed my plate towards him. Then I gulped some water.

If you’ve never tasted steak and kidney pie—well, some things are beyond words. But take a moment and remind yourself what kidneys do. Yup, that’s right. Now you have a rough idea what steak and kidney pie tastes like.

For years, this little event has lingered in my mind as a symbol of English food in general. (British food, really, since Scotland doesn’t get off the hook here: ever had haggis?) Even the most resolute Anglophile will admit that the English national taste is, well—let’s just say that there’s a country just south of here where they do things a little better. (I’ll give you a hint: it starts with an “F.”)

A few years ago Jamie Oliver, a high-end chef, called English school meals the “laughing-stock of Europe” and went on a campaign to try to get kids to eat better. He got the government to commit millions of pounds to cutting out fat and cholesterol, and offering fresh fruit and vegetables. But at a school in Yorkshire, a number of mums got together and started selling food to students outside. "We go up at break time and take down the orders through the school fence. We then go back at 1pm to deliver the food and give them their change,” said one. "We are now delivering around 50 to 60 meals a day and we have no intention of stopping." The kids’ favorite, aside from hamburgers and fish and chips, is the so-called “Chip Butty:” two pieces of buttered white bread, with chips and ketchup in between.

Anybody who’s stayed at a Bed & Breakfast in this country has encountered one of those breakfasts that the English apparently regard as one of their Major Contributions to Civilization, right up there with Shakespeare and Big Ben. Unless you intervene the night before, and request a “cold breakfast” (and if you do, be prepared for a shocked look from your kind hostess; you might as well have told her you always thought Princess Di was ugly)—unless, I say, you intervene in time, you will be met the next morning by a plate full of the following: two eggs fried until stiff, some sausages, several hunks of bacon (the ham-like stuff we call “Canadian bacon”), some bread that has been toasted and then deep fried in bacon fat and who knows what else until the fibers break down and it looks and tastes like an old sock, a fried tomato (this is the only way the English eat tomatoes; they seem never to have heard of putting one in a salad), and—the pièce de résistance—some canned mushrooms, nuked until lukewarm.

Oh—and instant coffee. Don’t even get me started on the coffee.

Now the first day, or maybe the first two days, you might be feeling game, generous, culturally sensitive, even. So you tuck in. But you’ll notice, if you keep this up for very long, that it really starts to wear you down. You roll out of bed, you swill down some Nescafe, and there, staring up at you, is enough cholesterol to power a small locomotive. With every mouthful you feel your best years slipping away. Every morning there seem to be more mushrooms. And eventually you ask yourself: “must I do this?” And you realize that you’re having one of those existential moments when you’re called upon to stand up for what you believe in. So you stop pretending to like it, and you ask for some cornflakes, and you resign yourself to always being an Outsider. I heard once that Jean-Paul Sartre wrote Nausea after staying at an English B&B for a week. Seriously.

And yet.

We’re eating better here than we do at home. And it’s really quite easy. Every week we get a box of fresh organic fruit and vegetables delivered to our flat. We get this really amazing yoghurt that the kids devour. We get non-homogenized milk, which is remarkably better than the homogenized stuff. We shop at the market in downtown Cambridge, where we can get local produce, fish, fresh bread, and excellent cheese. There’s a butcher five minutes away where we buy our meat. Even the food from the supermarket is better. Because it isn’t pumped full of hormones, a chicken here looks like a chicken, not like one of those Frankenchickens with distended, rubbery chests so typical in the States. None of this is prohibitively expensive—in fact, we spend about the same amount on food here as we do back in New Jersey. As I remarked recently to our friend Katherine when she came to visit, “you don’t come to England for the food.” But, actually, you could.

Scotland - Olivia and Eliot's Favorite Parts

In June we drove through northern England with my parents and up into Scotland. We stayed on a working farm for a week in a little town called Peebles. We were there to experience history first hand - the Romans, Robert the Bruce, Mary Queen of Scots, and Sir Walter Scott. Olivia couldn't wait to get back to our cottage each day to visit the horses. Eliot couldn't wait to go into every gift shop, dress up and see what his parents would buy him. All I can say is that Colin bought him the first foam weapon and the rest is history.

Germany

At the end of May we took a week long trip to Germany. While we were there, we were able to stay with good friends that we had met in Cambridge 5 years ago, Eva, Philip and their boys. They were wonderful hosts and we toured the southwestern bit of the country. We saw castles and Roman ruins and a monastery, not to mention amazing scenery. We also met up with Kathy, who lives right across the street from us in Highland Park. She was visiting her brother in Germany at the same time. We had a lovely afternoon with her family. Germany has so much to see, we will have to go back.

An English Country Fair

A few weeks ago, on a Saturday morning, we decided to set out for the Granchester Fair on our bikes. Granchester is a lovely little village - thatched cottages, an ancient church, 2 pubs and tea gardens. It's just south of Cambridge and you can easily walk or bike there across the fields, as long as you make way for the grazing cattle you are bound to meet in transit.

We arrived without mishap (although 20 some large brown cows in the path meant we had to walk our bikes part of the way) and had a great afternoon. Typical fair events included a Suffolk Punch horse show, sheep shearing, a working dog exhibition, a falconry demonstration, Punch and Judy, and a bunch of re-enactors dressed as knights.

The sheep shearing drew a big crowd of Brits. It was discouraging to hear the average shearer makes 1 pound ($1.60) for every sheep he shears. At his best, the guy doing the demo said he could shear 400 sheep a day, but this is after years of practice and the problem is that in the begining you can't shear many sheep a day, so fewer and fewer young people are learning this trade.

Colin and I were amazed at the falconry demonstration. The strength and beauty of these birds was incredible. Olivia and some other children got a close up view of an Eagle Owl as it flew silently over them.

Eliot wasn't sure what to make of fighting knights. He kept asking, "Is he dead? Is he dead now?" It was tricky to explain the complicated dynamics of re-enactment to him. Both of the kids sat down eagerly for the Punch and Judy show, but after 10 minutes of puppet violence they were done. We moved on. However, they now like to say to one another, "Ow, I bumped me nose again," over and over and over and this brings on gales of laughter, so obviously they thought it was a bit funny too.

Of course, the fair had over priced rides and junky, greasy food, but that wasn't unique to Britain, so we had to skip over it (okay, we did let them go down the inflatable slide and eat french fries, but don't tell).

Cricket

Sometimes when I need a laugh I get a newspaper and read an account of a recent cricket match. It’s an amazing experience, for although it’s written in my native tongue, I can read paragraph after paragraph without understanding a blessed thing. Just to give you a sample, from a recent account in the Times of London:

Praising a player named Bopara: “His straight-driving and leg-side play in general was a delight and despite one instance of a loss of concentration when, half-forward to Sulieman Ben over 40, he ought to have been given left-before out, yet he was utterly untroubled until the final session. Then, perhaps aware of the approaching landmark, and running out of partners, after Broad cut airily, he began to infuse his calculating approach with greater risk.”

Got that? Maybe this guy is a banker?

Also, you may wish to know about someone named Edwards: “Finding his best rhythm after lunch from the Nursery end, no batsman looked at ease against his slingy thunderbolts and he pegged back England each time they threatened to get away. He finished with four wickets but deserved better.”

OK, then. I’m sure he did deserve better. Meanwhile, I’d love to know how to peg someone back with a slingy thunderbolt. Kind of reminds of me Jabberwockey: “’Twas brillig, and the slithey toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe.” I wonder what would happen if someone just substituted Jabberwockey for the cricket column—would anyone even notice?

In any case, Edwards kept at it, transforming himself, meanwhile, from Jove into a schoolmaster, or possibly a doctor: “In a magical six-over spell from the nursery end, the Boscobel Bullet sent back Cook, Pietersen, for a first-ball blonger, and Collingwood, each batsman undone by a combination of swinging balls and questionable technique that will add weight to the claims that they came into this match ill prepared for the kind of stern examination to which Edwards subjected them.”

Ouch. Clearly you don’t want to be a first-ball blonger. And as for being undone by swinging balls, well, I don’t really want to touch that one.

Finally, since this is England, we need to talk about the weather. The pitch (that is, the field) began “green about the gills and damp to the touch.” (I assume that means it was raining.) But things improved later: “Nash opened the bowling after the break with his filthy left-armers, with two England batsmen set, the sun shining and the pitch now docile.”

Amidst swinging balls, filthy left-armers, first-ball blongers, and Broad cutting airily, we have, at last, a docile pitch. Thank goodness for that.