Foolish Questions

So we’re back home, at last, in the grand old US of A, Land of the Free and Super-Colossal-Sized Sugary Beverages!

After so long abroad, I thought I’d record our first observations. The sun is really bright, I mean, like eye-dazzlingly, intensely bright. And the sky is so blue. So very, very blue. And yet we haven’t had a chance to take advantage of the new pot legalization initiative here in Colorado, so the sky is no more blue than it usually is here. I think the major difference is that we can actually see the blue skies and not the obscuring clouds. And we have stars!!

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When we first arrived in London, we made a pact that we would not buy a bunch of stuff and then end up having to ship it all back home. Well, we managed to successfully go one for two. We’re not shipping stuff home. We weren’t quite as successful at the not buying things aspect.

Apparently, US Customs, or Homeland Security, or the US Agency For Obscure and Infuriating Regulations, have tightened up on shipping things back to the States. It used to be you’d shove a couple of boxes of Cuban cigars and a bottle or three of absinthe in a cardboard box, mark the outside to indicate that it contained souvenirs from exotic Caribbean locales and you were good. Or so I understand, not having done this myself because as I have been informed, it’s illegal. These days, however, shipping stuff home is a little more involved.

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So after three plus months in London, we’re winding things down and getting ready to return to the America, Land of the Free, and Unlimited Semi-Automatic Weapons, With Extra-Large Capacity Magazines. Just for varmint hunting.

We were discussing the other day what we missed from the good ol’ US of A and came up with a list. Well, two lists, because if one list is good, two are _________. Please fill in the blank yourself, I’m not going to do all the work for you.

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Christmas Break

So because I’m always willing to embrace my inner, lazy, slothful side, I’ll be taking a short break this next week, to embrace the holidays with both hands and a couple or three bottles of Christmasy booze. Speaking of which, I’ve recently discovered mulled wine, of which I will probably write a 10,000 word paean at some point, and it’s the perfect winter pick-me-up.  I’ll rouse myself again in a week’s time, sadder, older and not a whit wiser.

Merry, Happy Christmas Holidays, Everyone!

I could have made this an addendum to the original post about the Winter Wonderland, but I decided not to, since a new post means I can then I have Friday all sorted out, and then move on into the weekend. Plus, if I added to the original post, then it would be awful long, and people have a short attention span. I know, I know, tl;dr.  Update: Hrrump, well, it’s the weekend already and I’m behind on this post but in my defense it was because we had to get an early start yesterday to go to the Harry Potter Land of Supreme Excellence. More on that later.

So continuing on with the theme of Christmas Fairs and the strange things you find at them that qualify as attractions, I have two more submissions.

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Last week we went to Winter Wonderland 2012, in Hyde Park, London, England, Northern Hemisphere, Planet Earth, Sol Solar System, Milky Way Galaxy. Just to make it clear that it wasn’t that other Winter Wonderland on the planet Allosimanius Syneca, familiar to everyone who’s read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, or seen the movie, or listened to the radio plays or seen, in passing an abridged and completely unauthorized copy of the book, in Cliff Notes form.

Mary and our niece, Caroline, desired to see the bright lights of the Wonderland, while I was in pursuit of glühwein, currywurst and Gummi Bears. OK, I lied about the Gummi Bears – I have no interest in them at all. I mean you can get them at any newsagent and Tube station platform vender, so why go out on a freezing cold night to buy some from a fair stand, at no doubt horribly inflated prices? And the currywurst, well, I didn’t find out about that till we got to the fair. But once I saw they had currywurst, I had to have it. Because currywurst! Who wouldn’t want to sample the delight that is a steamed and fried totally bland sausage, covered in ketchup and sprinkled with curry powder?

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We went to the theatre the other night. Because that’s what you do when you live in London. Or that’s what we tell ourselves. Actually, truth be told I’d figure we’d go to the theatre probably once or twice a year, if we were really living here, rather than just visiting long term. That’s kind of what you do when you live in a touristy place. Like we actually live on Pike’s Peak, or so we say, since we live on a ridge that can very tenuously be described as being attached to the actual peak. Anyway, we’ve gone to the top of the mountain, probably once in the last seven years, all on our own and not in the company of guests. And that one incident was only because I climbed the mountain. On foot. Very, very slowly. And then walked back down from the peak, even more slowly. And painfully.

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Sign seen at a local church, of which there are approximately eleventy-thousand just in the City alone:

“Would you like to sing in a voluntary choir?”

See, this is why we will have to eventually leave England, much as we are liking it at the moment, because, apparently you can be caught up in a choir press gang, and chained together to sing choral music, involuntarily. This is a harsh and brutal land, where people can be swept up off the street, forced to raise their voices high for Handel’s Messiah, probably because it’s all Christmas and all. Still, there’s no indication that after the holidays are over you can return to your family, hoarser but wiser. So it’s probably safer if we escape back to America where our ancestors first threw off the chains of choral tyranny.

Mary pointed out the other day that unlike the US, here the invasive, all pervasive Christmas music is all pretty much completely secular. We haven’t heard a single “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing”, “O Little Town Of Bethlehem”, or even, and here I do thank whatever deity is my current favorite, no “Little Drummer Boy”. You do hear lots of “White Christmas”, and other Irving Berlin hits, though. It’s not that I dislike the religious themed songs, it’s just that it’s a nice change of pace not to listen to them till my ears bleed. I think the lack of religious Christmas tunes are a direct effect of the British forsaking their traditional gods, probably because a culture that has the sausage roll and the bacon butty has no need of a Supreme Being.

Why in god’s name don’t we have little individual serving mincemeat pies in the States? These things are wonderful. It’s like a mini-Christmas party in your mouth every time you eat one. The little individual Christmas puddings are more of an acquired taste. I’m working on acquiring the taste as I write this, and the ones impregnated with extra alcohol go a long way to bumping them to the head of my Christmas Naughty But Oh, So Nice List.

Back in the Eighties, which is the last century now, which saddens and ages me, all in one, I first started coming to jolly old England. In that halcyon age, long ago, British television consisted of a grand total of four channels: BBC 1, BBC 2, ITV, and Channel 4. So maybe Channel 4 isn’t what you’d call the most imaginatively titled channel ever. Still, it’s easy to remember where it is on the dial. Though the dial is gone too, now, along with my youth, my hair and my stylishly flared jeans.

ITV was a commercial channel so it had advertisements like American TV. The Beeb, or Beebs, I’m not quite clear on the proper nomenclature here, they were and are, commercial free, much like PBS, though without the interminable pledge drives. Since the Beeb wasn’t a commercial venture and was funded by a television license fee, it didn’t have to make shows that people actually wanted to watch. So there was a lot of public interest type of things, which while laudable, could be a little or a lot boring.

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Everywhere you go in this burg you find something interesting, or weird, or interesting and weird. That last is my favorite category, btw. So herewith, eighty percent weird and twenty percent amazing.

The first suicide hot line in the world I think, and they kept the phone. They never throw anything out in this country. You’d think this would be in a museum, but as it turns out it’s in a church. In the vestibule, or whatever they call the area where you can hang out and talk without committing some kind of sacrilege. Do Anglicans even do sacrilege? I was raised Catholic and they do sacrilege like no one’s business. See also stake burning, torturing heretics, smiting infidels, etc.

Binks was a cat
A cat with a hat

I went to a hatter. And bought a hat. At the hattery, which isn’t a real word, though by all rights it ought to be, they have a mascot. A dead and stuffed mascot. Binks is his name. Binks, the Mad Hatter’s Catter. This is why I don’t do poetry, and you should all thank me for that. I’ve never understood why anyone taxidermies a dead animal, even a beloved pet, much less a cat, but if you have to do it, you should pose it with a small hat perched at a jaunty angle and a little cigarette, because, you know, all the cool cats smoke, daddio

I’m not exactly sure, but isn’t this how Springsteen got his start? All kinds of things seem to wash up at low tide along the Thames. He wasn’t half bad. Great hat, too!

What a great country! I mean, look at this place – an ale and pie  house! Why can’t we have good things like this in the US? No, I know, we’d just break them, we’d serve Miller Lite instead of ale, and we’d serve deep-fried pies filled with processed ham and American cheese. Or Pizza Munchees, which right there is why we don’t deserve good things.

And finally the 20% amazingness. Mary took this picture, which you can tell because it’s in focus and she caught the light just right, and well, it’s amazing. St. Paul’s Cathedral, but since it’s local, we just call it All Paul’s, or PaullyDome, depending on our mood. At sunset, Sunday.