Mike and Trish are getting married. Next year. For now, we’re having a party. At Trish’s house, with Hawaiian theme and good food. Not to mention the pool and the ice cream and all that.
A day of sun, food, friends, and laughter. Cherish these moments, Homer.
This has been quite a week for New York City.
Wednesday saw a tornado touch down just north of here in Westchester County. Apparently, some buildings were destroyed as this was in fact a proper twister!
And, a van carrying mentally retarded men hit a tree and burst into a fireball. Now, I could drop some terribly insensitive remark about Darwinism and that, but I won’t. Fireballs aren’t standard, even in New York.
What a week. We’ll see what’s next from up above.
You again. Oh, we meet again. You haven’t changed much. Still struggling to add that whole 5th Terminal thing, but other than that the same old Heathrow. You slut.
First things first. Arrived at Heathrow hungry, my own fault, but whatever. After queueing for what seemed like hours to check in my single piece of luggage, went in search of something remotely healthy/satisfying. Found a bagel joint. Oh, they got me! I looked at the board, which was terribly designed and confusing, and determined that a bagel with one spread is £1.15, or something. Reasonable, I suppose. But in fact one spread doesn’t cover cream cheese. CC and humus are listed separately, and cost A LOT more. Can you believe that for two bagels w/cc and a coke I paid £6! Six fuckin pounds. I’m not even going to convert that into dollars – its absurd on any continent.
As if bagel-gate wasn’t enough, I had to deal with the snide remarks of the greezy Frenchman behind the counter. Seeing my obvious disapproval (and perhaps hearing my comments) he proceeded to add “Maybe in America bagels are cheap, but this is England”. As if he’s English.
I, not being a great writer, cannot express through written words the degree of anger that filled me at that moment. For the first time since perhaps my teen years, I wanted to leap across the counter and smash his face into the wall – leaving him in a bloody unconsciousness. But I restrained myself – airports are not the best place to get down and dirty, especially in London where the police are a bit trigger happy toward brown-skinned men. That and hunger.
After writing the preceding paragraphs, the nearly 3-hour delay seems inconsequential. Sleeping on a wooden bench, listening to audiobooks, wandering around the overpriced-yet-duty-free shops.
The flight, however, was brilliant. Virgin is by the far the best airline to get from New York to London and back. But I profess, Brokeback Mountain is a silly fucking movie. Skip it.
Out to Finsbury Park for RiseLondon – an annual music festival to celebrate diversity and eradicate racism and all that bollocks. But for Keith and I, it meant a day out with people of all colours and shapes and sizes and odors.
Jamaican food on this side of the pond is surprisingly disappointing. As is soft-serve ice cream. (here, they don’t fill the cone, they just set the ice cream on top. Cheap bastards). But even here, there are hippies. Loads of em. Old Jamaican men with greying dreads, teenagers with facial piercings, families with small children in strollers, and pretty much anyone else you can imagine.
Shooting from the hip at all the coloured randomness.
And the first few shots are just me sitting having lunch at a pub in Marylebone. I like this area of London because the streets are wide and light can penetrate. Buildings are tall, as if they were actually planned that way. Streets come to intersections. In other words, it reminds me of New York.
Nothing says America’s Birthday like a riverboat party on the Thames. That’s London, in case you didn’t know.
Jason and Drexel undergrads greet me as I board. Laughs and catch-up talk. Meet the yanks. As the shadows lengthen, we see the landmarks and cameras flicker as hastily-posed snapshots become universally fashionable.
The symbols, of course, are slightly conflicted. American Independence in Britain’s capital. Signs and relics of the Empire surround us as our nasal, North American brogues pierce the evening air. Its the fourth of July, but our ship is flying the flag of her Majesty’s Navy. I feel like Nelson. Or maybe, John Paul Jones.
In the dusk hours, raffle tickets, and their holders. Still-sober hands grip coloured bits of paper – a one-pound shot in the dark, a chance for glory and escapism. Win a holiday. Win a prize.
And as the sun sets, the dancing begins. The lower deck clearly wasn’t designed to hold 200 screaming yanks and their drinks. No drinks on the dance floor? Yea right. Try to keep your trousers cuffs out of the sludge! Not quite as bad as frat house basement, but nearly there.
Everyone is smiling. Everyone is having fun. Forget your troubles, forget the drama, forget your latitude and just enjoy the night.
Afterward, to Haymarket for a bit of afterpartying at student night at the Sports Bar. Baseball on the tube, Born in the USA playing far too loud, boatloads of yankee students, in London for the summer.
Oh, by the way, I won a 9-day European Tour! #428, baby.
[side note: there were A LOT of women out on this night. I can't make sense of it, really. I guess if you have to be beautiful to get a work visa in Britain.]
And a few photos taken after swing dancing Monday night. Got on the wrong bus, wound up near Bank tube station. Took a few shots.
On the road again, this time heading back East. Long story short, we couldn’t find any place to ride horses (because its Sunday) so we decided to take a detour to Bath.
Bathing with the Romans, in a manner of speaking, in the bathhouse and natural spring in what is certainly the strangest British city I have seen. Its seems to me more European than English, with steep facades and town squares, all decked out with gothic architecture. And everything is stone coloured, a strange sort of sandy-brown.
Its fucking cool.
As I mentioned, Britain is in the midst of a heatwave. And having spent the past week and a half in cities, I realised I needed to spend some time outdoors. So we went to the beach. It is summer, after all.
Out on St. David’s Peninsula, the sand is fine and waves are small. And the water is freezing! I think with all the sun and sand, we forget that Wales is on a pretty northern latitude, well above the Jersey Shore – more like Labrador Coast.
I didn’t go in the water but rather just lay in the sun for a while. But there was some sort of Lifeguarding challenge going on, which was entertaining.
Carmarthen is the oldest town in Wales and supposedly the birthplace of Merlin. These days, its not much of a site to see, but did have to stop by to walk for a moment in the footsteps of the Romans, this time at an ampitheatre.
These days, its really more of a hill (with good acoustics) but its still worth a few photos.
Next, hop on the bus and down to the Cardiff Bay, where, apparently, things are happening.
Cardiff Bay is actually pretty nice. It reminds me of Baltimore, or one of those other cities that actually pays attention to the stuff that touches the river. This is where all the Welsh Assembly buildings go and where experimental architecture comes home to roost. And there are plenty of places to eat and watch the football. England lost, which, strangely, I knew would happen.
