Thursday, December 25, 2008
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Ho, Ho, Ho
There are some times when you realize that you really don’t belong in this country, much as you may love it.
Last week we went to something called “Reindeer Night” at a local farm. Olivia’s choir from school was singing, and Wendy had arranged for a ride earlier. Eliot and I decided it would be fun to tag along too.
It was dark and about 35 degrees and raining steadily when Eliot and I set off at 4:15. Our friend Devrin dropped us off at some shops several miles outside Cambridge; we had been instructed to make use of the “park and ride scheme” because parking at the farm itself was limited. We had originally invited Devrin and his kids along with us, but he muttered something about a phone call and headed back to Cambridge. Devrin is a smart guy; I should have been paying better attention.
Confident, however, in the “park and ride scheme” and in the general organizational competence of the English, Eliot and I waved goodbye to Devrin and trudged off into the night. It was dark. And cold. And wet. And muddy. None of the parking attendants had heard anything about a park and ride scheme. They suggested we wait out by the road.
Twenty minutes later, Eliot, who had been chattering merrily away all this time, asked me why we were standing next to a busy road, in the middle of a field, in the rain. This struck me as a remarkably intelligent question. So we trudged back to find the parking attendants. In the interval they had determined that there indeed was a park and ride scheme in operation, though no one knew exactly when it would begin to operate. They advised patience.
Several other parents had straggled in by this time, though none of them, as I think about it now, had a three year old in tow. And they were all wearing wellies. It was about this time that it began to dawn on me that I may have seriously misjudged this particular venture. But this was also about the time (quarter past five, for those of you keeping score at home) that lights appeared in the distance. Things were looking up!
The lights got closer, and the roar of an engine louder. Here, at last, after standing in the rain and the cold and the mud for 45 minutes, was our park and ride scheme. The kind folks from the farm had sent it for us, and it was …. a tractor. Yep. A tractor. Or, to be perfectly accurate, a tractor pulling a hay wagon.
Well, we were going to a farm, after all.
Now, I grew up in a cold-ish part of the world (New Hampshire) and I think of myself as fairly tough. But the chill of an English winter is of a different order. 35 degrees isn’t that cold by the thermometer, but I’d rather have zero in New Hampshire than 35 here. Unlike the raging, good vs. evil spiritual warfare of a New England winter, where you always know whose side you’re on and that light will eventually triumph over darkness if you just hang on long enough, the damp of an English winter sneaks around, insinuating itself like Iago into your thoughts, your attitude, your whole outlook on life. Coleridge said that Iago was an example of “motiveless malignancy,” and that pretty much gets to the heart of a rainy English night in December.
Fifteen minutes later, the hay wagon deposited us at the farm. Eliot and I had now spent a full hour getting to Reindeer Night. And what was Reindeer Night? Well, for three pounds a head you get to walk around in the mud with hundreds of other people, look at a few donkeys—and, well, that’s about it, really. You could spend a couple of extra pounds for some mulled wine in a paper cup. The ubiquitous Santa in his grotto was there, too, but Olivia has I think seen enough old men in grottos f
or one year. Oh—and there were reindeer, too, in a stable. They looked rather the worse for wear, to be honest. Santa must have worked them pretty hard over the last couple of years before retiring to his grotto.
Trying to restore feeling to my feet by stamping and jumping, peering at a bunch of broken down reindeer, slipping and sliding around in the dark, feeling mud and who knows what else slowly seeping through the soles of my shoes, I realized that, to coin a phrase, I’m just not from around here. It’s as if there’s a hidden code, and if you see the words “farm” and “night” and “December” in relative proximity to each other, you immediately think: “leave three-year-olds at home,” “wear wellies,” “bring a torch” “expect a tractor,” and “pretend to have a good time.” Unless, of course, you’re me, in which case that particular neuron didn’t fire, and you bring your three year old out in his sneakers to sit in the rain in an open hay wagon because you thought, in your innocence, that it would be “fun” to see some reindeer. I looked around. No one else had brought a three year old. Everyone else was wearing wellies. And, just to rub it in, they were all pretending to have a good time, too.
Ah: I almost forgot the reason we had gone through all this. Olivia’s choir sang Christmas carols in the Reindeer’s stable. And—but you knew this already—they sounded magnificent.
Last week we went to something called “Reindeer Night” at a local farm. Olivia’s choir from school was singing, and Wendy had arranged for a ride earlier. Eliot and I decided it would be fun to tag along too.
It was dark and about 35 degrees and raining steadily when Eliot and I set off at 4:15. Our friend Devrin dropped us off at some shops several miles outside Cambridge; we had been instructed to make use of the “park and ride scheme” because parking at the farm itself was limited. We had originally invited Devrin and his kids along with us, but he muttered something about a phone call and headed back to Cambridge. Devrin is a smart guy; I should have been paying better attention.
Confident, however, in the “park and ride scheme” and in the general organizational competence of the English, Eliot and I waved goodbye to Devrin and trudged off into the night. It was dark. And cold. And wet. And muddy. None of the parking attendants had heard anything about a park and ride scheme. They suggested we wait out by the road.
Twenty minutes later, Eliot, who had been chattering merrily away all this time, asked me why we were standing next to a busy road, in the middle of a field, in the rain. This struck me as a remarkably intelligent question. So we trudged back to find the parking attendants. In the interval they had determined that there indeed was a park and ride scheme in operation, though no one knew exactly when it would begin to operate. They advised patience.
Several other parents had straggled in by this time, though none of them, as I think about it now, had a three year old in tow. And they were all wearing wellies. It was about this time that it began to dawn on me that I may have seriously misjudged this particular venture. But this was also about the time (quarter past five, for those of you keeping score at home) that lights appeared in the distance. Things were looking up!
The lights got closer, and the roar of an engine louder. Here, at last, after standing in the rain and the cold and the mud for 45 minutes, was our park and ride scheme. The kind folks from the farm had sent it for us, and it was …. a tractor. Yep. A tractor. Or, to be perfectly accurate, a tractor pulling a hay wagon.
Well, we were going to a farm, after all.
Now, I grew up in a cold-ish part of the world (New Hampshire) and I think of myself as fairly tough. But the chill of an English winter is of a different order. 35 degrees isn’t that cold by the thermometer, but I’d rather have zero in New Hampshire than 35 here. Unlike the raging, good vs. evil spiritual warfare of a New England winter, where you always know whose side you’re on and that light will eventually triumph over darkness if you just hang on long enough, the damp of an English winter sneaks around, insinuating itself like Iago into your thoughts, your attitude, your whole outlook on life. Coleridge said that Iago was an example of “motiveless malignancy,” and that pretty much gets to the heart of a rainy English night in December.
Fifteen minutes later, the hay wagon deposited us at the farm. Eliot and I had now spent a full hour getting to Reindeer Night. And what was Reindeer Night? Well, for three pounds a head you get to walk around in the mud with hundreds of other people, look at a few donkeys—and, well, that’s about it, really. You could spend a couple of extra pounds for some mulled wine in a paper cup. The ubiquitous Santa in his grotto was there, too, but Olivia has I think seen enough old men in grottos f
or one year. Oh—and there were reindeer, too, in a stable. They looked rather the worse for wear, to be honest. Santa must have worked them pretty hard over the last couple of years before retiring to his grotto.Trying to restore feeling to my feet by stamping and jumping, peering at a bunch of broken down reindeer, slipping and sliding around in the dark, feeling mud and who knows what else slowly seeping through the soles of my shoes, I realized that, to coin a phrase, I’m just not from around here. It’s as if there’s a hidden code, and if you see the words “farm” and “night” and “December” in relative proximity to each other, you immediately think: “leave three-year-olds at home,” “wear wellies,” “bring a torch” “expect a tractor,” and “pretend to have a good time.” Unless, of course, you’re me, in which case that particular neuron didn’t fire, and you bring your three year old out in his sneakers to sit in the rain in an open hay wagon because you thought, in your innocence, that it would be “fun” to see some reindeer. I looked around. No one else had brought a three year old. Everyone else was wearing wellies. And, just to rub it in, they were all pretending to have a good time, too.
Ah: I almost forgot the reason we had gone through all this. Olivia’s choir sang Christmas carols in the Reindeer’s stable. And—but you knew this already—they sounded magnificent.
Sunday, December 14, 2008
The Nativity Pageant At Holy Trinity
This morning Eliot and Olivia participated in the annual Nativity Pageant at the church we attend here in Cambridge. You see Olivia stan
ding outside the church with some of her friends. Olivia was Mary and Eliot was Sheep #1. Both had lines to memorize and said them perfectly. As these things go, the pageant went off fairly well considering there were, at a minimum, 15 three year old sheep.
Saturday, December 6, 2008
The Barton School Christmas Fayre
This morning Olivia and I attended her school Christmas Fayre with two of her good friends, Heidi and Morgan. And no, I didn't spell it incorrectly. Based on my first experience, the annual school Christmas Fayre seems to be a Christmas bazaar and school carnival rolled into one. The school's multipurpose room was filled with stalls selling Christmas crafts that the children had made, baked goods and various games you could play for a small fee.
Olivia tried her luck at the "Lucky Lolly"stall (received a unmarked lolly, so no prize), the "Jammy Jar" stall (won a jar full of goodies only a kid would love: plastic monster finger puppet, plastic bear, plastic bendy pencil and a box of smarties - which are like M&Ms and probably made of plastic), and the snowman raffle, where to my amazement she won a stuffed snowman on her first try. The odds were against her so I thought that one would be a safe. At least the snowman wasn't plastic.
She finished the morning off with a visit to Santa in his grotto. There, for a mere 2 pounds, you are allowed behind the tinsel barrier and escorted by an adult elf, through a little maze of what I think are supposed to be snowdrifts, but which really look like piles of boxes covered in white sheets bedecked with candles, to an elderly Santa crouching in a dimly lit corner. I think we both thought the set up a bit odd, so I accompanied her. After a brief visit in which Santa asked her her name and her age, but not where she lived, she received a wrapped gift. It turned out to be a set of plastic craft beads.
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Abroad during Election Day
Today is the first time since we've been here that I wish I was back home. I'd like to stand in line with some other Americans at the polls and feel like I'm part of history. As it is, we printed out and mailed in our absentee ballots a while ago and there's nothing to do today. By the time the first polls close it will be after midnight here. I doubt we'll still be awake. Being abroad during a presidential election, especially one like this where so much is at stake, seems wrong. I've been reminded, though, that the English do care what happens in America. More than Americans ever care about what happens in another country's presidential election.
This past Saturday, I was chatting with a man at a rummage sale, and his eagerness to talk about the election was genuine. He wanted to know what I thought and was eager for my response. He knew all about the candidates. For the last 6 weeks, every Sunday morning, at the church we attend, prayers have been offered on behalf of the American people and the candidates running - that God will guide and direct our decisions and our next president. I attend a women's Bible study on Tuesday mornings. We begin with someone opening in prayer. This morning a prayer was given by a woman named Maggie. Her only prayer was for the people of America as they voted today, and she asked that whoever is elected will guide the country with wisdom and justice. She prayed that her grandchildren, who are American citizens, would never have to fight in a war. And I realized that we are all hoping for the same.
It's good to be somewhere else and be reminded that the decisions we make do affect each other - greatly. And it's good to be reminded how to care about the rest of the world too.
Sunday, November 2, 2008
Those Friendly Brits
A few weeks ago, when we visited Bury St. Edmund’s, our kids were clambering around on the ruins of the old Abbey there. The ruins are in a lovely public park, open to all. It was early in the morning, and we were some of the first people there. An older British couple wandered by, and the woman looked at our children for a moment. I expected her to make some comment about how cute they were (that’s what usually happens). But instead, she looked at me and said, in her proper middle-class British way: “These are very important ruins; I don’t think children should be climbing on them.”
I was, admittedly, taken aback. There were no signs saying to keep off, the place is a public park, and indeed, within an hour, there were probably 50 kids dashing around and over the ruined walls. So it’s clear we weren’t breaking any rules. The key here is the woman’s phrasing: “I don’t think….” She apparently felt perfectly entitled to give her opinion about the behavior of our children, despite the fact that they were a) not disturbing her; and b) not breaking any rules. She probably also heard our accents and saw our backpacks and pegged us as stupid Americans who wouldn’t know culture if we fell over it.
Of course, I spent the next hour thinking of all the clever and devastating things I could have said. Like, “Oh, these are very important ruins? I thought they were just a bunch of old stones!” Or, “I just love the warmth of the British people, you know?” Or, “Thanks, but no one asked you.” Or maybe, “Where I come from we still have an empire, not just ruins” (though, on second thought, that one’s not strictly accurate). Anyway, what I did say was “I don’t think they’re hurting anything,” which I thought was all right given the circumstances and considering that I’m a pretty conflict-averse person. And, amazingly, she came right back at me: “They still shouldn’t be climbing on them,” she announced, before turning on her heel and marching away.
I was reminded of this incident the other day, during Halloween. As Wendy mentioned in her earlier post, trick-or-treating isn’t really that common over here. But it’s not because people think there might be a danger to children, or someone might give them poisoned candy. Just the reverse, actually. Apparently 6-year olds requesting candy once a year is both an invasion of privacy and terrifying for pensioners (aka senior citizens). The other day a local newspaper noted, very seriously, that “Halloween can be harmless fun, but sometimes members
of the community can become distressed by unexpected callers.” (Unexpected callers? How could they be unexpected, unless you’ve somehow missed that it’s Halloween?) On the BBC web site today there was a story entitled “Should Halloween be banned?” And lots of communities give away signs like the one on the right. And on reflection, though I'm sure some of Olivia's disappointment this year had to do with not scoring much candy, I wonder if there's a deeper level as well, in which she was forced to confront that fact that kids just aren't at the center of the world here, even on a day (like Halloween) that's supposed to be for them.
So part of it is that the British just don't indulge children the way that Americans do. And the over-60 crowd can be particularly chilly. But the other part is this sense of privacy, which is interesting because, of course, in many ways people over here live much less private lives. Their homes are smaller and closer together, they're outside in public a lot more, they take public transportation more often. All these things help make European quality of life much higher in all kinds of ways. But there may be a kind of compensation in which you've got to protect what few boundaries you have left. In the US we barricade ourselves in huge homes and sentimentalize children. In the UK they do neither.
I was, admittedly, taken aback. There were no signs saying to keep off, the place is a public park, and indeed, within an hour, there were probably 50 kids dashing around and over the ruined walls. So it’s clear we weren’t breaking any rules. The key here is the woman’s phrasing: “I don’t think….” She apparently felt perfectly entitled to give her opinion about the behavior of our children, despite the fact that they were a) not disturbing her; and b) not breaking any rules. She probably also heard our accents and saw our backpacks and pegged us as stupid Americans who wouldn’t know culture if we fell over it.
Of course, I spent the next hour thinking of all the clever and devastating things I could have said. Like, “Oh, these are very important ruins? I thought they were just a bunch of old stones!” Or, “I just love the warmth of the British people, you know?” Or, “Thanks, but no one asked you.” Or maybe, “Where I come from we still have an empire, not just ruins” (though, on second thought, that one’s not strictly accurate). Anyway, what I did say was “I don’t think they’re hurting anything,” which I thought was all right given the circumstances and considering that I’m a pretty conflict-averse person. And, amazingly, she came right back at me: “They still shouldn’t be climbing on them,” she announced, before turning on her heel and marching away.
I was reminded of this incident the other day, during Halloween. As Wendy mentioned in her earlier post, trick-or-treating isn’t really that common over here. But it’s not because people think there might be a danger to children, or someone might give them poisoned candy. Just the reverse, actually. Apparently 6-year olds requesting candy once a year is both an invasion of privacy and terrifying for pensioners (aka senior citizens). The other day a local newspaper noted, very seriously, that “Halloween can be harmless fun, but sometimes members
of the community can become distressed by unexpected callers.” (Unexpected callers? How could they be unexpected, unless you’ve somehow missed that it’s Halloween?) On the BBC web site today there was a story entitled “Should Halloween be banned?” And lots of communities give away signs like the one on the right. And on reflection, though I'm sure some of Olivia's disappointment this year had to do with not scoring much candy, I wonder if there's a deeper level as well, in which she was forced to confront that fact that kids just aren't at the center of the world here, even on a day (like Halloween) that's supposed to be for them.So part of it is that the British just don't indulge children the way that Americans do. And the over-60 crowd can be particularly chilly. But the other part is this sense of privacy, which is interesting because, of course, in many ways people over here live much less private lives. Their homes are smaller and closer together, they're outside in public a lot more, they take public transportation more often. All these things help make European quality of life much higher in all kinds of ways. But there may be a kind of compensation in which you've got to protect what few boundaries you have left. In the US we barricade ourselves in huge homes and sentimentalize children. In the UK they do neither.
Friday, October 31, 2008
Halloween
Here is Olivia dressed up as a witch for Halloween. She was invited to a friend's house for a party and I think she had fun, but came home with only 3 pieces of candy. She said, "Now can we go trick-or-treating?" but, of course, they don't really do trick-or-treating here. She was so disappointed. We'd told her before, but you know when you hear something you don't like, it's best to forget it. I asked her if it was the going door to door she missed or the candy and she said, "Well, the candy mostly." I promised she could pick out a small bag of candy at the candy stall in the market this weekend. That seemed to satisfy her. Cultural clash temporarily diverted. I've got to get thinking about how to deal with Thanksgiving.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Punting this past Sunday
Since the weather has been uncommonly sunny for autumn in England, we've been trying to do lots outdoors. This past Sunday we packed a little picnic lunch and went punting after church. We thought a nice tour along the backs of the colleges would be an educational event for our children. Despite their father's best efforts, they remained somewhat ambivalent to the glorious wonders, history and architecture of our surroundings. Their main interest seemed to be who got what half of the large gingerbread man recently purchased in the market as a special treat. Eliot's comments consisted of exclaiming, "Punt Crash!" every time we came close to another punt, even though we were never close to crashing. He also toyed with the idea of blowing the whistle on his life jacket and kept asking why he couldn't. Olivia said she was tired. Perhaps you will find the pictures from the afternoon enlightening since the verdict is out on whether the kids did or not.
Ivy covering one of the buildings at St. John's College.
Coming out from under the "Bridge of Sighs."
King's College chapel and Trinity College to the left.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Bury St. Edmunds
On Saturday we took the train to a town called Bury St Edmunds, a bit less than an hour from Cambridge. St Edmund was the last king of East Anglia (the easternmost region of England); the Danes killed him in 856, and his body was reburied here in 903. A thousand years ago this whole region of England was under pretty much constant attack by rampaging Scandinavians. Why they wanted it I’m not sure, since much of it was under water. But th
at’s a story for another day. Anyway, the town gets its name from the shrine to St. Edmund; pretty quickly a powerful Benedictine monastery grew up around the shrine, and became a famous pilgrimage site. The abbey is mentioned in the Domesday book.
St. Edmundsbury Abbey was apparently the wealthiest abbey in England by the time Henry VIII got his big idea, so it really took a beating in the 1530s. Henry liked to collect "evidence" of just how bad the abbeys and monasteries were; when he sent one of his goons to Bury in 1535, the report noted "much guzzling, gambling, wine, and women." Much to our disappointment, none of these were in evidence during our visit. Today the abbey is just a pict
uresque ruin, spread out over many acres, which the town maintains as a huge public park, with lovely flowers, a playground, and so on. The walls themselves are pretty worn down; it turns out that after the dissolution the good townsfolk of Bury used it as a quarry. So the stone is spread all over town; a kind of literal dissolution, I guess, which nicely matches the literalistic tenor of the English Reformation. Anyway, it’s a really great place, and the kids had a terrific time clambering about on the walls.
Henry’s sister, Mary Tudor, the queen of France, had been buried in the Abbey. But when Henry stamped out Catholicism in England, and the abbey along with it, he had to exhume his own sister and then re-bury her in nearby St. Mary’s church. I guess there are some unforeseen consequences when you pick a fight with the Pope.
While Wendy and the kids were romping about in the ruins, I wandered off a bit and happened, quite by chance, on the Greene King Brewery. Greene King is the largest brewer in this part of England, and they’ve been based in Bury St Edmunds since their founding 150 years ago. Beer is made from barley, and apparently the barley in East Anglia is the best in England. There’s a museum at the brewery, so I wandered in. It turns
out that beer has been brewed in Bury St. Edmunds for an awfully long time. The monks were apparently going at it full tilt by the 12th century, selling beer to all the pilgrims who came to the abbey and presumably making a nice little profit. But a lot of the product never left the abbey walls. According to the account books, in the 13th century the monks were allowed a ration of a gallon of beer a day. If they were ill, this was increased to a gallon and a half per day.
Now, I’ve long thought that I would be a good candidate for the monastic life. (Wendy, who knows me pretty well, thinks this is preposterous. You be the judge.) But I was never quite sure why it was so appealing. Now I know. A gallon of beer a day! Sure, the poverty and the chastity would be hard, but, sheesh, that’s a lot of free beer.
at’s a story for another day. Anyway, the town gets its name from the shrine to St. Edmund; pretty quickly a powerful Benedictine monastery grew up around the shrine, and became a famous pilgrimage site. The abbey is mentioned in the Domesday book.St. Edmundsbury Abbey was apparently the wealthiest abbey in England by the time Henry VIII got his big idea, so it really took a beating in the 1530s. Henry liked to collect "evidence" of just how bad the abbeys and monasteries were; when he sent one of his goons to Bury in 1535, the report noted "much guzzling, gambling, wine, and women." Much to our disappointment, none of these were in evidence during our visit. Today the abbey is just a pict
uresque ruin, spread out over many acres, which the town maintains as a huge public park, with lovely flowers, a playground, and so on. The walls themselves are pretty worn down; it turns out that after the dissolution the good townsfolk of Bury used it as a quarry. So the stone is spread all over town; a kind of literal dissolution, I guess, which nicely matches the literalistic tenor of the English Reformation. Anyway, it’s a really great place, and the kids had a terrific time clambering about on the walls.Henry’s sister, Mary Tudor, the queen of France, had been buried in the Abbey. But when Henry stamped out Catholicism in England, and the abbey along with it, he had to exhume his own sister and then re-bury her in nearby St. Mary’s church. I guess there are some unforeseen consequences when you pick a fight with the Pope.
While Wendy and the kids were romping about in the ruins, I wandered off a bit and happened, quite by chance, on the Greene King Brewery. Greene King is the largest brewer in this part of England, and they’ve been based in Bury St Edmunds since their founding 150 years ago. Beer is made from barley, and apparently the barley in East Anglia is the best in England. There’s a museum at the brewery, so I wandered in. It turns
out that beer has been brewed in Bury St. Edmunds for an awfully long time. The monks were apparently going at it full tilt by the 12th century, selling beer to all the pilgrims who came to the abbey and presumably making a nice little profit. But a lot of the product never left the abbey walls. According to the account books, in the 13th century the monks were allowed a ration of a gallon of beer a day. If they were ill, this was increased to a gallon and a half per day.Now, I’ve long thought that I would be a good candidate for the monastic life. (Wendy, who knows me pretty well, thinks this is preposterous. You be the judge.) But I was never quite sure why it was so appealing. Now I know. A gallon of beer a day! Sure, the poverty and the chastity would be hard, but, sheesh, that’s a lot of free beer.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Looking back, it's kinda funny
I wrote this post up a few weeks ago; now that the financial world is in complete meltdown, it seems a good time to post it.
Colin
Wednesday, 3 Sept 2008
I got a bank account. This took all day.
I walked in to Cambridge this morning (20 mins) and stopped at a branch of Barclay’s, one of the largest banks in the UK. I had with me: my passport, my tenancy agreement, a letter from the President of Rutgers University detailing my salary, a letter from the chair of my department describing what I would be doing in Cambridge, a letter from Clare Hall announcing that I’d been elected as a Life Member and was welcome back at any time, a bank statement from my account in the U.S.A., and several recent pay stubs. A nice woman looked at all of these, shook her head sadly and said that what I really needed was a letter from Clare Hall confirming that I was a life member, and indicating that I indeed lived where I said I did. I pointed out that I did have all these things, just not in the same letter. No dice. But if I could produce such a letter Barclay’s would be most happy to have me as a customer.
So I hoofed it out to Clare Hall (20 mins) to see if I could find someone to create a letter. Alas, the only secretary who could do such a thing was on holiday—for 3 weeks. She’d only just left yesterday. Sorry.
Was there anyone else who could possibly help me?
If you’ve spent any time in the UK you’ll be familiar with the particular kind of relationship that passes for customer service here. You come into an office, say, or stand in line for a half hour at the post office, and the secretary or clerk looks up at you with a bedraggled expression that says, “you’ve come here expressly to ruin my day, haven’t you?” Being a friendly American, you smile and say hello and make your request in the nicest possible way, and the secretary or clerk slumps a little bit more, and perhaps sighs, and shakes her head as if she thought that people stopped making requests like that years ago.
This is the point at which most Americans will give up and slink away, feeling not only defeated but naïve, as if, in our innocence, we had just assumed that the world was there for the asking. “No,” this encounter tells us. The world isn’t like that. Not at all. In fact, it’s a gloomy place where nobody ever smiles or pretends to be having a nice day.
But the key here is not to give up. In fact, you’ve almost broken through. You try your request one more time, and this time the secretary or clerk gives you a look so defeated and despairing that when she gets up you’re afraid she’ll announce that she’s just going to nip off into the next room and poison herself. Instead, she gets up and finds the one person who actually can help you out. Success! And the funny thing is, it’s clear that she actually enjoys being helpful; by the time I leave, she’s telling me about her grandkids. She wishes me a nice day. She smiles.
Letter in hand (the production of which takes 40 mins) I hoof it back in to the center of Cambridge (20 mins). I go to Barclay’s. I sit down with a bank manager. I proudly produce my letter and passport and ask for a bank account. She examines the letter, then my passport. She shakes her head. Apparently the letter refers to me as “Colin Jager,” whereas on my passport I am “Colin Lovell Jager.” Well, yes, “Lovell” is my middle name. This is a problem, you see, because the name on the letter and the name on the passport have to be exactly the same.
“But nobody told me about the middle name business,” I plead.
“They should have known at your college how we need it done,” is the reply. (This is a common, if implicit, refrain in many dealings with the English. You should always have known something beforehand, and the fact that nobody told you is entirely beside the point.)
“Well,” I say, going into my winsome American mode once again, “the secretary who normally handles such things is on holiday, so a different secretary did the letter for me as a special favor, and perhaps she didn’t know the proper form.” As I say this, I subtly emphasize the words “as a special favor.” I feel sure that the manager will immediately recognize that she too is being invited into the special club of nice people who have recently done nice things for the nice American placing himself in their nice, capable hands.
No response. Perhaps I am being over-subtle. And suddenly the jet lag hits me and I am tired and hungry and I’ve walked an hour and chatted up secretaries and dodged bicycles and raindrops and I’m stopped short by a middle name that I didn’t even like until I was 20 years old.
I ask her to call Clare Hall and get another letter. I go home for lunch, and promise to be back at 2:30.
I walk home (20 mins).
I walk back in (20 mins).
Even though I have a booked appointment with her at 2:30, the bank manager is seeing another customer. I suspect I’ve been thrown over. Either that, or she was developing feelings for me and didn’t want to mix business with pleasure. At 3:00 a different manager tells me can see me. Still no response from Clare Hall. I start pulling out every form of identification I have. Bank statements, mortgage statements, tenancy agreements, my US driver’s license. Hey, look at that: my driver’s license refers to me as “Colin L Jager.” Maybe that “L” is close enough to “Lovell” to get me in the door? I pull out my last smile of the day, and it really does feel like my last. She checks with someone behind the scenes, whom I now suspect of being some puppet master who has been pulling strings and torturing me since 10 o’clock this morning. She comes back. She smiles. I’m in!
An hour later, I am the latest member of the Barclay’s family.
I walk home (20 mins), triumphant.
Total time spent: 7 hours.
Miles walked: 6.
When I get home, Wendy hands me a cup of tea and says, “You knew it would be like this.”
Colin
Wednesday, 3 Sept 2008
I got a bank account. This took all day.
I walked in to Cambridge this morning (20 mins) and stopped at a branch of Barclay’s, one of the largest banks in the UK. I had with me: my passport, my tenancy agreement, a letter from the President of Rutgers University detailing my salary, a letter from the chair of my department describing what I would be doing in Cambridge, a letter from Clare Hall announcing that I’d been elected as a Life Member and was welcome back at any time, a bank statement from my account in the U.S.A., and several recent pay stubs. A nice woman looked at all of these, shook her head sadly and said that what I really needed was a letter from Clare Hall confirming that I was a life member, and indicating that I indeed lived where I said I did. I pointed out that I did have all these things, just not in the same letter. No dice. But if I could produce such a letter Barclay’s would be most happy to have me as a customer.
So I hoofed it out to Clare Hall (20 mins) to see if I could find someone to create a letter. Alas, the only secretary who could do such a thing was on holiday—for 3 weeks. She’d only just left yesterday. Sorry.
Was there anyone else who could possibly help me?
If you’ve spent any time in the UK you’ll be familiar with the particular kind of relationship that passes for customer service here. You come into an office, say, or stand in line for a half hour at the post office, and the secretary or clerk looks up at you with a bedraggled expression that says, “you’ve come here expressly to ruin my day, haven’t you?” Being a friendly American, you smile and say hello and make your request in the nicest possible way, and the secretary or clerk slumps a little bit more, and perhaps sighs, and shakes her head as if she thought that people stopped making requests like that years ago.
This is the point at which most Americans will give up and slink away, feeling not only defeated but naïve, as if, in our innocence, we had just assumed that the world was there for the asking. “No,” this encounter tells us. The world isn’t like that. Not at all. In fact, it’s a gloomy place where nobody ever smiles or pretends to be having a nice day.
But the key here is not to give up. In fact, you’ve almost broken through. You try your request one more time, and this time the secretary or clerk gives you a look so defeated and despairing that when she gets up you’re afraid she’ll announce that she’s just going to nip off into the next room and poison herself. Instead, she gets up and finds the one person who actually can help you out. Success! And the funny thing is, it’s clear that she actually enjoys being helpful; by the time I leave, she’s telling me about her grandkids. She wishes me a nice day. She smiles.
Letter in hand (the production of which takes 40 mins) I hoof it back in to the center of Cambridge (20 mins). I go to Barclay’s. I sit down with a bank manager. I proudly produce my letter and passport and ask for a bank account. She examines the letter, then my passport. She shakes her head. Apparently the letter refers to me as “Colin Jager,” whereas on my passport I am “Colin Lovell Jager.” Well, yes, “Lovell” is my middle name. This is a problem, you see, because the name on the letter and the name on the passport have to be exactly the same.
“But nobody told me about the middle name business,” I plead.
“They should have known at your college how we need it done,” is the reply. (This is a common, if implicit, refrain in many dealings with the English. You should always have known something beforehand, and the fact that nobody told you is entirely beside the point.)
“Well,” I say, going into my winsome American mode once again, “the secretary who normally handles such things is on holiday, so a different secretary did the letter for me as a special favor, and perhaps she didn’t know the proper form.” As I say this, I subtly emphasize the words “as a special favor.” I feel sure that the manager will immediately recognize that she too is being invited into the special club of nice people who have recently done nice things for the nice American placing himself in their nice, capable hands.
No response. Perhaps I am being over-subtle. And suddenly the jet lag hits me and I am tired and hungry and I’ve walked an hour and chatted up secretaries and dodged bicycles and raindrops and I’m stopped short by a middle name that I didn’t even like until I was 20 years old.
I ask her to call Clare Hall and get another letter. I go home for lunch, and promise to be back at 2:30.
I walk home (20 mins).
I walk back in (20 mins).
Even though I have a booked appointment with her at 2:30, the bank manager is seeing another customer. I suspect I’ve been thrown over. Either that, or she was developing feelings for me and didn’t want to mix business with pleasure. At 3:00 a different manager tells me can see me. Still no response from Clare Hall. I start pulling out every form of identification I have. Bank statements, mortgage statements, tenancy agreements, my US driver’s license. Hey, look at that: my driver’s license refers to me as “Colin L Jager.” Maybe that “L” is close enough to “Lovell” to get me in the door? I pull out my last smile of the day, and it really does feel like my last. She checks with someone behind the scenes, whom I now suspect of being some puppet master who has been pulling strings and torturing me since 10 o’clock this morning. She comes back. She smiles. I’m in!
An hour later, I am the latest member of the Barclay’s family.
I walk home (20 mins), triumphant.
Total time spent: 7 hours.
Miles walked: 6.
When I get home, Wendy hands me a cup of tea and says, “You knew it would be like this.”
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Barton Village and Church
Almost every morning I cycle Olivia to her school in Barton Village, just over 3 miles from Cambridge. Barton seems like a quintessential sleepy English village, with a pub and post office and some 900 residents. When Olivia and I pull off the road in the mornings we can hear the roosters behind the pub announcing themselves to the world.
When Cambridge University was founded in 1209 (by some monks who got kicked out of Oxford), Barton was already a thriving village. It’s mentioned 3 times in the Do
mesday Book. (The Domesday Book is an account book instituted by William the Conqueror to try to get a handle on the country he’d just invaded.) And there are records of a church in the village dating from the 12th century. The present church, built about 1300, sits at the center of the village, just across a lane from Olivia’s school. Like many of the oldest churches in the area, it’s a simple Norman structure, made of stone. It feels thick and substantial, as though, having been around for 700 years, it has no intention of going anywhere soon.
Before the Reformation the inside of the church was filled with paintings
, which were then covered over by Cromwell’s troops (Cromwell actually hails from around here; I’ll have to do a post on him at some point) and remained hidden until 1920, when they were discovered and cleaned. Here’s what they look like now; I thought the knight in the upper left might be St. George, which would be appropriate enough.
One day last week, after dropping Olivia off, I wandered into the church. It’s hard to describe the feel of this place. One is struck by a density of historical time that simply has no analogue in North America. People have been present at this site for a thousand years, marking the chapters of their lives: birth, baptism, marriage, death. As is generally the case, the churchyard surrounds the church, so that one is literally encompassed by those who have come, and gone, before. Standing in this church, whatever one’s feelings about religion, it’s impossible not to feel that the urgency of one’s own preoccupations fade a bit as they brush up against everything that has already taken place here.
I am reminded of Philip Larkin’s great poem “Church Going,” which is too long to copy out here (go read it sometime), but which meditates on the many impossibly old and now largely empty churches scattered around the English countryside. It ends like this:
A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognized, and robed as destinies.
And that much never can be obsolete,
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round.
When Cambridge University was founded in 1209 (by some monks who got kicked out of Oxford), Barton was already a thriving village. It’s mentioned 3 times in the Do
mesday Book. (The Domesday Book is an account book instituted by William the Conqueror to try to get a handle on the country he’d just invaded.) And there are records of a church in the village dating from the 12th century. The present church, built about 1300, sits at the center of the village, just across a lane from Olivia’s school. Like many of the oldest churches in the area, it’s a simple Norman structure, made of stone. It feels thick and substantial, as though, having been around for 700 years, it has no intention of going anywhere soon.Before the Reformation the inside of the church was filled with paintings
, which were then covered over by Cromwell’s troops (Cromwell actually hails from around here; I’ll have to do a post on him at some point) and remained hidden until 1920, when they were discovered and cleaned. Here’s what they look like now; I thought the knight in the upper left might be St. George, which would be appropriate enough.One day last week, after dropping Olivia off, I wandered into the church. It’s hard to describe the feel of this place. One is struck by a density of historical time that simply has no analogue in North America. People have been present at this site for a thousand years, marking the chapters of their lives: birth, baptism, marriage, death. As is generally the case, the churchyard surrounds the church, so that one is literally encompassed by those who have come, and gone, before. Standing in this church, whatever one’s feelings about religion, it’s impossible not to feel that the urgency of one’s own preoccupations fade a bit as they brush up against everything that has already taken place here.
I am reminded of Philip Larkin’s great poem “Church Going,” which is too long to copy out here (go read it sometime), but which meditates on the many impossibly old and now largely empty churches scattered around the English countryside. It ends like this:
A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognized, and robed as destinies.
And that much never can be obsolete,
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round.
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Llamas Land Park
Looking out our apartment windows and across the busy street is Llamas Land Park. It's about 25 acres of open green space with lots of climbing toys, tennis and lawn bowling courts and
a wading pool. We have been here every day since we arrived and will probably be there every day until we leave. On the weekends this place is packed with families from all over town. During the week we can pop over after dinner for 20 minutes and we might be the only ones there. Both of the kids love the climbing frames. They call the one Olivia is sitting in "The Spider's Web." There are a couple of toys that seem like a remnant of days gone by like the five seater horse and the round-a-bout, which happens to be Eliot's favorite. He runs around and a
round with it, jumping on and off and I'm sure he's going to fall and yet he hasn't. I get dizzy just watching him.
The wading pool is the most unsanitary piece of standing water I've seen in a long time. Of course, it's not really warm enough to get wet here and yet the last 3 days that pool has been filled with British kids prancing around in their underwear or nothing at all. Olivia and Eliot have been wanting to go wading every day, so yesterday I finally said, "Yes." We walked over, it must have been about 65 degrees or so and I took one look at the murky, yellowish water
with various flotsam and jetsam in it and said, "If you guys go in here you are really going to have to scrub up well tonight." Eliot immediately said, "Okay!" and went in in his underwear (not in the nude as we're not that European yet) and had a blast running back and forth. Olivia studied the water, rolled up her pants and walked back and forth a few times, and got out and went over to the monkey bars. I sat on the side wondering how this passed for anything close to a pool.
a wading pool. We have been here every day since we arrived and will probably be there every day until we leave. On the weekends this place is packed with families from all over town. During the week we can pop over after dinner for 20 minutes and we might be the only ones there. Both of the kids love the climbing frames. They call the one Olivia is sitting in "The Spider's Web." There are a couple of toys that seem like a remnant of days gone by like the five seater horse and the round-a-bout, which happens to be Eliot's favorite. He runs around and a
round with it, jumping on and off and I'm sure he's going to fall and yet he hasn't. I get dizzy just watching him.The wading pool is the most unsanitary piece of standing water I've seen in a long time. Of course, it's not really warm enough to get wet here and yet the last 3 days that pool has been filled with British kids prancing around in their underwear or nothing at all. Olivia and Eliot have been wanting to go wading every day, so yesterday I finally said, "Yes." We walked over, it must have been about 65 degrees or so and I took one look at the murky, yellowish water
with various flotsam and jetsam in it and said, "If you guys go in here you are really going to have to scrub up well tonight." Eliot immediately said, "Okay!" and went in in his underwear (not in the nude as we're not that European yet) and had a blast running back and forth. Olivia studied the water, rolled up her pants and walked back and forth a few times, and got out and went over to the monkey bars. I sat on the side wondering how this passed for anything close to a pool.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
A Visit to Grantchester
This past Saturday we cycled to Grantchester, a small village about 2 miles south of Cambridge. It’s a pleasant cycle near the river Cam, with lots of cows and hedgerows and other bucolic scenery. Grantchester itself is small and pretty, with a very old church, a couple of pubs, and—our destination—the Orchard Tea Rooms. If you arrive at the Tea Rooms on a reasonably pleasant morning, as we did, you order tea and scones in the small kitchen and then bring them outside to sit in Orchard, among the apple trees. It’s really nice, and almost unbearably English.
The kids had a great time exploring around the orchard while Wendy and I sipped our Earl Grey. After awhile Olivia asked why they hadn’t mown the grass, because her trousers and shoes were all wet with last night’s rain. “It’s more natural this way,” I explained. A blank look. “The English like sitting around in orchards,” I tried again. “Why?” she asked. By this point I knew I was in way over my head. How do you explain Englishness to a seven-year old? “Go play with your brother,” I said, and turned back to my Earl Grey.
Later, we wandered up to the village church. In the picturesque churchyard behind it the kids spotted a small animal that turned out, upon investigation, to be a monkjack. It’s a kind of young deer, but with much shorter legs than a North American fawn. It was very fast and an impressive jumper. A nice woman at the church explained that they were always getting trapped in the church yard because of its high walls, but they eventually find their way out. She gave the kids some orange juice—or what passes for orange juice in this country, which is a highly concentrated liquid to which they add copious amounts of water. The kids were nice about it, at least.
You can’t visit Grantchester without running into the spirit of Rupert Brooke, a mediocre poet who had the good fortune to die young. Brooke was a student at King’s College, Cambridge, and after that he lived at the Old Vicarage in Grantchester (currently occupied by Jeffrey Archer, it turns out). For some reason he impressed various members of the Bloomsbury group, including Virginia Woolf and Bertrand Russell, and they took him up. He doesn’t seem to have been good for much beyond looking beautiful at their tea parties and composing terrible verses about how lovely life in Grantchester was:
Stands the Church clock at ten to three?
And is there honey still for tea?
I mean, yikes. Still, Brooke certainly looks like a poet; Yeats apparently called him the “handsomest young man in England.”
Brooke enthusiastically signed up for the war in 1915, and died later that year, on his way to a battle in Turkey. If he hadn’t died, he would have been forgotten; as it was, his sonnet “The Soldier” was read from the pulpit of St. Paul’s Cathedral on Easter Sunday, and no less a personage than Winston Churchill wrote his obituary in the Times. Here’s the sonnet, which isn’t bad but tells you everything you need to know about the guy’s penchant for self-mythologization:
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.
And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.
Wilfred Owen it’s certainly not. Brooke got to celebrate the war because he never really fought in it. Things were looking pretty different by 1918, when Owen called sentiments likes these “The old Lie.”
Nonetheless, when you go to Grantchester today it feels like it’s still 1914. And, in case you were wondering, there is honey still for tea, though I myself prefer sugar.
The kids had a great time exploring around the orchard while Wendy and I sipped our Earl Grey. After awhile Olivia asked why they hadn’t mown the grass, because her trousers and shoes were all wet with last night’s rain. “It’s more natural this way,” I explained. A blank look. “The English like sitting around in orchards,” I tried again. “Why?” she asked. By this point I knew I was in way over my head. How do you explain Englishness to a seven-year old? “Go play with your brother,” I said, and turned back to my Earl Grey.
Later, we wandered up to the village church. In the picturesque churchyard behind it the kids spotted a small animal that turned out, upon investigation, to be a monkjack. It’s a kind of young deer, but with much shorter legs than a North American fawn. It was very fast and an impressive jumper. A nice woman at the church explained that they were always getting trapped in the church yard because of its high walls, but they eventually find their way out. She gave the kids some orange juice—or what passes for orange juice in this country, which is a highly concentrated liquid to which they add copious amounts of water. The kids were nice about it, at least.
You can’t visit Grantchester without running into the spirit of Rupert Brooke, a mediocre poet who had the good fortune to die young. Brooke was a student at King’s College, Cambridge, and after that he lived at the Old Vicarage in Grantchester (currently occupied by Jeffrey Archer, it turns out). For some reason he impressed various members of the Bloomsbury group, including Virginia Woolf and Bertrand Russell, and they took him up. He doesn’t seem to have been good for much beyond looking beautiful at their tea parties and composing terrible verses about how lovely life in Grantchester was:
Stands the Church clock at ten to three?
And is there honey still for tea?
I mean, yikes. Still, Brooke certainly looks like a poet; Yeats apparently called him the “handsomest young man in England.”
Brooke enthusiastically signed up for the war in 1915, and died later that year, on his way to a battle in Turkey. If he hadn’t died, he would have been forgotten; as it was, his sonnet “The Soldier” was read from the pulpit of St. Paul’s Cathedral on Easter Sunday, and no less a personage than Winston Churchill wrote his obituary in the Times. Here’s the sonnet, which isn’t bad but tells you everything you need to know about the guy’s penchant for self-mythologization:
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England's, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.
And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.
Wilfred Owen it’s certainly not. Brooke got to celebrate the war because he never really fought in it. Things were looking pretty different by 1918, when Owen called sentiments likes these “The old Lie.”
Nonetheless, when you go to Grantchester today it feels like it’s still 1914. And, in case you were wondering, there is honey still for tea, though I myself prefer sugar.
Monday, September 15, 2008
Going To Barton C of E Primary School
Here is Olivia on her first day of school. She wears a uniform which consists of a blue sweatshirt, cardigan or fleece along with a checked skirt, grey pinafore dress or trousers. At this point she prefers the trousers.
Barton is a small village 3 miles west of Cambridge and they have had a village school associated with the church for hundreds of years (more on that later). The C of E in the school's name stands for the Church of England, which is the state church of England. The school is a public school, in that you do not pay any fees to attend, but it has a religious component due to its long standing affiliation with the village church. We do not have this category in the United States.
Olivia loves school so far. She commented tonight on how kind the students are. It seems like a very warm environment. Her class consists of Year 3s (equivalent of 2nd grade) and Year 4s (third grade). There are 34 students in the room, which is a lot, but there are 2 full time aids along with the teacher, so the overall student to adult ratio is good. Every morning they have a brief chapel session, followed by 2 1/2 hours for either literacy or numeracy (math). After an hour for lunch and recess,the afternoon is devoted to various subjects like: foreign language, music, P.E., religion, art, history/geography, design technology (sort of like home ec. and shop, if I'm understanding it correctly) and science.
Colin bikes her there each morning, and she gets a ride home in a carpool. The bike ride takes them about 25 minutes and they are well equipped for rain but haven't had to deal with that yet, thankfully. Two weeks in and we are well pleased with the situation.
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Here we are
Hi there. We'll try to chronicle some of our doings over the course of this year. The idea is that it will be interesting to people who know us but are not necessarily our immediate family. So we'll do our best to keep the "adorable kids" stories to a minimum. Anyway, welcome.
About the picture at the top of the screen. This is the "Bridge of Sighs" over the River Cam. The Cam is a shallow and rather narrow river that flows through the heart of Cambridge, and there are lots of picturesque bridges spanning it. This one, on the grounds of St. John's College, is probably the most famous. It's a replica of the original "Bridge of Sighs" in Venice. That bridge spans a canal and back in the day it connected two halves of a prison. The cells were on one side of the canal, the execution chamber on the other. Prisoners led over the Bridge of Sighs didn't come back. Hence the name.
Cambridge built a replica of the bridge, and so did Oxford. But the one at Oxford only spans a street. So this one looks more like the real thing. In the centuries-old battle between Oxford and Cambridge, these kinds of things matter.
About the picture at the top of the screen. This is the "Bridge of Sighs" over the River Cam. The Cam is a shallow and rather narrow river that flows through the heart of Cambridge, and there are lots of picturesque bridges spanning it. This one, on the grounds of St. John's College, is probably the most famous. It's a replica of the original "Bridge of Sighs" in Venice. That bridge spans a canal and back in the day it connected two halves of a prison. The cells were on one side of the canal, the execution chamber on the other. Prisoners led over the Bridge of Sighs didn't come back. Hence the name.
Cambridge built a replica of the bridge, and so did Oxford. But the one at Oxford only spans a street. So this one looks more like the real thing. In the centuries-old battle between Oxford and Cambridge, these kinds of things matter.
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