keeping track (and testing memory): part I

Recap of my trip to England and Scotland.

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 16, 2009

I got on a plane at JFK to London.  For the first time, I was served wine on the plane.  At this point, I began to resent America’s drinking age.  When we landed in the morning, I paced up and down the aisles to try to get a view of the outside, the ocean, the sunrise, England.  No such luck—everyone seemed to be sleeping with the blinds half down, and the little windows in the emergency exits were only big enough to see an insignificant fraction of the sky.

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 17, 2009

Landed and Jennie picked me up from the airport.  I hadn’t seen her in over four years!  We talked all the drive back to Aldershot, mostly about her life and our mutual experiences with Grandma and her worrying over us.  Also how we used to “torture” her when we were little…with water and things. Don’t worry, nothing she couldn’t handle 😉

In Aldershot I saw Barbara, and it was cold, and Jennie and I sat in her office and then walked to a little shop to get sandwiches for lunch.  They asked me if I wanted white or brown bread.  Apparently they don’t use the word “wheat” in the UK.  I helped Jennie look through cans in the garage, after being warned by several of her coworkers that I could not be alone in any buildings (lest I see a mouse and slip on some ice and injure myself, or that sort of thing) and Jennie was to be sure to show me the location of any and all fire exits.  The garage door seemed like a pretty good escape route in the event of a freak bread-pudding-meets-canned-peas fire accident.

We drove home and I saw Danny, he was so furry and I almost forgot he’s a poodle, because normally I think of poodles as sort of ugly in all their pampering, but Danny was fuzzy and full, how poodles are meant to be.  Jennie and I drove to town to pick up some Chinese food for dinner, and we had the first of our many dinners in front of the TV, watching British shows like “Eastenders” (a soap opera I unfortunately became invested in by the end of my stay) and “Deal or No Deal” (which I thought was stupid at first, then began to watch because the contestants were all dressed as elves in honor of Christmas, and then stopped watching after my favorite contestant, Sanjay, was off the show…he was very cute, or fit, as they say).  By the time I went to bed, I had been awake for over 24 hours, I think for the first time in my whole life.

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 18, 2009

By the time I woke up, Hawkley and the surrounding villages, towns, and counties were smothered in snow.  It was beautiful.  We made it out to Tesco, after some ordeals with the cars (including Jennie having to stay home from work after sliding down the hill in her rental car), and did some food shopping.  I can’t decide whether I like Tesco or Publix better.  Both of them appeal to me in their simple packaging, and the aesthetics of the store.  Much less flashy than Safeway or Marks & Spencer or Piazza or even Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s, both of which I love.  Shopping seems nice when foods are plain, in their packages, not trying to be more than what they are: Ground beef. Chicken breasts.  Biscuits.  Bananas.  Scones.  Yogurt.  Blocks of cheese.  Grapes.  Orange juice.  Cheerios.  These are things I like.

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 19, 2009

We went shopping in Portsmouth at a big mall, and it was so cold walking around between the shops.  You would think, being a somewhat cold and northern country, that the Brits would put their malls indoors… nope.  I think part of the mall may have had actual hallways, but mostly we traipsed around outdoors between shops that were well heated, but left their doors open (to invite shoppers in?  and simultaneously waste a ton of energy?).  I found some great jeans…at Gap of all places.  I can’t believe I traveled across an ocean just to shop at Gap.  We ate lunch at a Mexican restaurant, and then, after Jennie and Barbara agonized for a few hours about what to get their friends for Christmas, we went home to the cold and dark and snow.

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 20, 2009

This was the first night I went to the Hawkley pub.  I think Jennie was out sleeping over at James’ house, so Barbara and I went for a drink or two.  I tried cider at Jennie’s suggestion, expecting it to be some kind of warm alcoholic apple cider.  In fact, it ended up being more like beer.  It wasn’t until later, in Glasgow with Eleanor, that I discovered Kopperberg’s fruit cider, which is delicious.

The pub was magically warm, with its little fireplaces, honey-colored walls, low wooden tables and arm chairs.  We sat at the bar and admired the Moose head (which apparently usually has a joint in its mouth) and Bob, a man who Jennie thinks Barbara should date.  It was nice, being able to order a drink and watch people hang out, without any feelings of age-based status.  It was an old person’s pub, it was a young person’s pub, it was a village pub where everyone seemed to be welcome and everyone was willing to be friends.  Or at least that’s how it seemed to me, not being a townie myself.

MONDAY, DECEMBER 21, 2009

Jennie and Barbara went to work today, so I took Danny on a walk in the snow.  There was a footpath to the village center (I think it’s great how there are so many footpaths in the UK!) which we began down, until I realized there was a field of sheep to our left and I had better get Danny on a leash lest he agitate the sheep and end up shot by a worried farmer.  This took some chasing, but I got him on the leash and he pulled me, tripping over snow and his feet, to the end of the path, and then we walked down the road to the village center.  It didn’t take us long to explore the whole village:  a grassy “commons” the smaller than Barbara’s yard, a church (which I tried to go in, but it was locked), and the graveyard.  After a bit more of chasing Danny as other dogs walked by, I decided to keep him back on the leash until we had walked back around to the Hawkley inn (the pub) for a glass of wine by the fire.  Danny sat so nicely by my feet, and I read my book (The Dispossessed by Ursula K. LeGuin, recommended to me by my dad, which I was reading somewhat to my chagrin, and yet was determined to finish) until I was warm, and then we walked home.

It took Jennie and Barbara over three hours to get home from work that night.  I cooked cottage pie, and it was after eight by the time they got back for us to eat it.  The snow had been so bad that the roads were freezing, and the little English cars were inching along, getting stuck every which way, forcing some people to walk home or sit in their cars for hours, waiting for help.  This was the beginning of a record in cold and snow to rival the past thirty years, or as the news stations called it, The Big Freeze.