From one thing t'other

Salutations
Happy belated Fourth of July! This post was supposed to be finished on the Fourth and wasn't, obviously.

Happy Thanksgiving and Merry Christmas! There, I'm covered.

But yes, the Fourth. As I pointed out to a friend during the England-USA match in the opening round of the World Cup (in June), "The American national anthem was written by an American prisoner of war on the deck of a British ship during the bombardment of Fort McHenry. And then you lost." This has absolutely nothing to do with how I feel about being in England, on the Fourth of July or otherwise, but I thought it was funny at the time. If America lost, he told me, I'd have to stand up on a chair and sing the national anthem in front of everybody. If America won, I told him, he'd have to join me. England and America then conveniently drew 1-1, saving us both from any undue embarrassment.

** Sidenote: Did you know that My Country, 'Tis of Thee in America is God Save the Queen in England? It's true! America threw off its royal shackles and turned the British national anthem into a patriotic song all it's own, just like Vanilla Ice did to Queen and Bowie 160 years later. **

So. Yes. From one thing t'other.

Lahndan-town

Found cheap (£18) tickets to London for the weekend four weeks ago now, and so I went. Just like that. Picked up the tickets at 4pm on Friday, worked till 2am at Work II, went to bed at 4am, got up at 6am, got on the train at 8am, got off at 10:30am and spent two days in The Big Smoke. It's about as spontaneous a trip to London as you can do without rolling up on the day and shelling out £200 for the privilege of not flying.

Spent the early part of Saturday getting lost and wandering around in northern London, before wandering around the graves of Karl Marx, Douglas Adams and Mary Anne Evans (aka George Eliot) who are all buried within 150 meters of each other at Highgate Cemetery. Actually walked entirely around Highgate Cemetery East before locating the entrance, which was right next to where I'd started looking. (No connection to T.S. Eliot.) I'd never heard of Highgate Cemetery until a coworker mentioned that Karl Marx was buried there, and not embalmed and lying next to Lenin in a Moscow nightclub. Highgate East is actually a fantastic place; a quiet wedge of green stuck between a suburb, a park and a block of council flats, surrounded on all sides by a Victorian fence (except the gate that I missed), and mostly overgrown. The view through the fence (as I had for almost an entire circuit) is like a Victorian folly: row upon row of crosses, headstones, vaults and plaques poke through bushes, vines and trees, with the occasional cleared path between.

North London  is quite nice in the sunshine.

Spent the afternoon wandering around some more, meeting interesting people from around the world, and poking in used and antiquarian bookshops. Met a guy from Norway in a pub when I popped in for a drink and map-check (and a place to sit down) and discussed London pubs, travels and data-mapping; then met two American university teachers ("tutors" or "professors" depending on you cultural orientation) from Massachusetts in a wine and spirits shop where we discussed Japanese whiskey and Dickensian London; then met another American  in a pub in Notting Hill where we both ambivalently cheered for our team. I heard lots of Americans in London - Notting Hill especially - it's not even exciting to ask where people are from, so far from home, and other than the university academics everyone has that boring, generic, jaded-Hollywood tone of voice so you'll know that yeah, like, they're expats, but they don't really care or whatever. The academics were excited about Dickens and whiskey.

Bought two books in two shops in Cecil Court, off Charing Cross Road: "Graham Greene and the Politics of Popular Fiction and Film" by Brian Lindsay Thomson because it had a blurb on the back by Prof. Michael Brennan, my former tutor at Leeds; and a first-edition "Our Man in Havana" by Graham Greene because...well, just because. I didn't buy a first edition "The Man Who Was Thursday" by GKC, mainly because it cost £1700. Also didn't buy a first English edition of "Ulysses" - see the bottom picture in the last post...yep, that one - for £450. I need to find a better-paying job.

The downside to an impromptu trip is that planning anything effectively conflicts directly with napping on the train. That said, I managed to get stuck in a Saturday afternoon Oxford Street shop-a-thon and miss Foyles and Tin Pan Alley by mere steps. Still, this justifies a further, better-thought-out trip for future. End of September, I'll be back.

Met up with Lisa and Gabes later that night and crashed out at their place in South London. Up early-ish on Sunday to let them pack (they moved the following weekend? Two weekends? Can't remember now.) Wandered around town a bit; went back to Notting Hill to check out some other shops and to meet up with Claire, a friend from Japan, to watch the England-Germany match. Quite fun to watch the match in a lively atmosphere (apart from the disallowed England goal), and a large contingent of Germany fans was there to cheer their team to victory. Claire's Scottish, so she wasn't too bothered either way. Watched it in The Prince Bonaparte, a stylish gastropub named after Napoleon I's nephew, 'Prince' Louis Lucien Napoleon, who lived in the Notting Hill area in the 1850s, and made his mark on history by studying the Basque language. (More about Notting Hill history here.) I can't possibly imagine that GKC didn't use him as part inspiration for "The Napoleon of Notting Hill". Got so excited I forgot to take a picture of it.


The Dales Way

Jo and I spent the day in Malham in the Yorkshire Dales three Saturdays ago (3rd of July?), walking up hills and down hills, over hills and...over more hills. It was sunny and windy and nice, and sunburn was mostly avoided. Malham, as I might have said elsewhere, is a quaint little town located on the outskirts of a glacial cliff, or "cove". Said cove is about 200 feet high (or 70 meters, which don't always correspond) and the pamphlet we got said it would have rivalled Niagara in terms of beauty. Having been to Niagara Falls made walking across the top of a defunct 200-foot waterfall a strange, wonderful experience. The stone face, no longer pouring water, is now home to an eyrie of peregrine falcons (Eyrie = falcon plural. Didn't know that before.), which is pretty sweet. I've had an affinity for peregrine falcons ever since I read Jean Craighead George's 'My Side of the Mountain' about 23 years ago; though the desire to live in a hollowed-out tree has dimmed somewhat. We managed to see a few falcons from the base of the cove, but the best views were from the top: watching a falcon catch the up-draft off the cove to dive towards crows and pigeons. Got all GM Hopkins and realised I'd forgotten most of the words. Still, ultimately cool.

Also tried to take pictures of a falcon in its "scrape", or cliff-edge apartment, but my inability to locate the digital zoom on my camera meant the best shot I could get was of a grey, bird-shaped spot in the middle of a grey, rock-shaped ledge - i.e. a ledged falcon. *rimshot*

Farther down the trail we came across the remains of an Iron Age settlement consisting of no more than raised circles and lines indicating round houses and walls. Between 1800 and 2300 years ago this was a small village of probably shepherds and farmers who were born, lived, worked and died on the rolling slopes below the limestone cliffs of North Yorkshire, between a waterfall and a canyon, which is now a sheep field and a path to a campsite. Kind of like the Cake song, it puts your own existence into perspective: Home may be where the heart is, but it's also where the sheep poop will be one day. (I never say anything you'd want to embroider on a cushion.)

From existential crisis to canyon (or from hard place to rock), we followed the path down into the Goredale valley, across a campsite and up into Goredale Scar (or "canyon" in English). Goredale Scar doesn't look very impressive from the distance, more like a rocky ravine with a peaceful meadow and a babbling brook at the bottom (glen & beck?), but then you go around a corner and you are there: the walls loom out and over, 130 feet high, vertical or inverted enough to keep rock climbers happy. The Victorians went fairly nuts over the Scar; there are paintings of Gordale Scar by celebrated landscape painter James Ward hanging in the Tate Collection in London, and according to the BBC Press Office, "poet Thomas Gray said he could only bear to stay here for a quarter of an hour, but 'not without shuddering'. The landscape provoked an assault on the senses, an adrenalin rush so strong that it was considered truly sublime." The threat of big rocks falling on your head will do that I suppose.

Walked as far back as we could go without going under a waterfall or scrambling up rocks bigger than a van covered in tufa, a slippery soft stone formed by dissolved limestone in the water, and decided that trying to scramble up at least two more falls over slippery rocks to get to another trail that we didn't have a map for might not be the best idea. Met a guy coming down said way, and helped him lower his rucksack down over an eight-foot ledge by the waterfall so he could climb down unhindered. Asked him if his heavy pack had rock climbing equipment in it; replied "Nope, two litres of water and a six-pack o' beers." The Boy Scouts have really changed since my day.

Wandered back down out of the Scar, and headed next to Janet's Foss, which Anglo-Something for "Old Sheepwash" (and "sheepwash" being a waterfall you drive sheep under to get them clean. Strange, but I can see it working. I'll never look at a waterfall the same way again). Janet, the namesake, was Queen of the Fairies and supposedly lived a magical cave hidden behind the waterfall. I found a cave nearby, but it smelled like cigarettes and beer. I think it was probably a different cave, unless Janet was also the Queen of Bored Teenagers on Camping Trips with their Parents.

Still, Janet's Foss is a beautiful gem of a location, managed to come across it just as the sun was sending beams through the trees and directly onto the pond, which gave the place a magical feel suiting its legendary history.

Wandered downstream from the Foss through a beautiful glen that reminded me of Shove Park in Syracuse when I was young, and through a meadow along a stream. Got back into Malham in the late afternoon, had a quick pint in the local pub (Jo didn't as she was driving), enjoyed the beautiful outdoors, and headed back.

As American as Apple Pie and Explosives
I don't think we did anything exciting on the Fourth of July. "Pulled through" as Clemens put it.

And then the next

Two Fridays ago (9th of July) saw the wedding of Jo's friend Claire who married her "Mr. Darcy", a tall Aussie who answers to to the name Russell, at the fantastic Wood Hall Hotel near Wetherby.

A fine time was had by all: champagne and canapes in the garden overlooking a beautiful valley, the bride and groom giving heartfelt speeches before a fantastic meal, and music, dancing and conversations until silly o'clock in the morning. Met a German guy who works for the BBC World Service and discussed the changing means of information dissemination, including *gasp* blogs. Didn't mention this particular venture, as I wouldn't necessarily call Thom Abroad a " reputable (or even regular) source of current events and news" and I doubt anything on here would necessarily be banned in Tehran or Pyongyang. Could Thom Abroad someday become Thom Deep Undercover From An Undisclosed Location? No, probably not. Still, contacts were made.

The next morning was a weird blend of Romantic and Romero: sat down for a terrific (running out of adjectives here) buffet breakfast and some of the -ahem- more enthusiastic participants of the night before shuffled in like reanimated corpses, moaning softly about braaains. They may have been saying beeeans, I'm not sure.

Next Level: America
For those of you not paying attention, in the next two weeks we're headed up to Aberdeen for a full-scale Scotanese hootenanny with Iain and Minori, and then back to Middle Coast USA for a little r&r, some weddingdom fun, and a whole heap of birthdayliciousness. If you'd like to tag along, let me know. We will hopefully be doing very little productive, except trying to wrangle me a new drivers license and possibly telling my bank where to stick their surcharges.

Hope your summer's going well, and you're not developing any future melanomas of the epidermis. Enjoy your dog days.

-TA->