King Tut and St Paul

Brit Boy and I have had our bit of Fourth of July today. We just put out our two little American flags on the table. In the interest of fairness, we also have tiny England flags that we put out on St George's Day. (smile) We had cheeseburgers, potato salad, and beans. It was reminiscent of the picnic food that my mom would make for the Fourth of July when I was back home. We would have even more sometimes…hotdogs, ribs, chicken, deviled eggs, and sometimes some homemade ice cream. Then there were usually fireworks in the evening in town. Those were good times. (smile) Anyway, we did our own little version of a picnic and it turned out great. And I have to say, that my potato salad was incredible if I do say so myself. (smile) I got really into it and it turned out great. The secret I think was the bit of dijon mustard that gave it a slight kick. My mom would be proud and my brother Tim would have loved it too. He LOVED potato salad and was known to get up in the wee hours of the morning to make it, because he had a taste for it as he awoke from sleep. (smile)

Just an update, we finally got our broadband sorted out. Basically our old router went kaput and we had to get another one. Doesn’t it seem that there is always something to spend money on? (smile) Oh well, both Brit Boy and I need it for work, so it’s all good. We are just glad that it is working.

So I will pick up now with my story of our trip to London last week. I left off last time with my story of our Wimbledon experience. Well, the next day we headed to the O2 Arena to see the King Tut exhibit and we took a trip to St Paul’s Cathedral.

We started out the day early-ish. Thankfully they fixed our shower, so we could do the cleaning thing. We had tickets to the King Tut exhibit that were for a certain window of entry. Our window was from 10:30-11:00am. We had a bit of a trip on the tube to the O2, but we made it in plenty of time.

The exhibit was interesting and the pieces were intriguing. I did learn quite a bit about King Tutankhamen. Some experts had once thought that he may have had a curvature of his spine, but now they think that he may have not had this at all. But his body was possibly slightly twisted when he was being mummified and prepared for burial.

Here are photos of the outside of the exhibition.





After we came out of the exhibit, we decided that we would have something to eat at the O2 complex since it was getting along to lunch time and we hadn’t eaten. They have lots of restaurants there in the complex, so there was quite a lot to choose from. But as ever, we were trying to eat on a budget. (smile) We settled on eating at Pizza Express which has lovely, authentic, fresh pizza as well as many other tasty things. I wanted to try everything and so did Brit Boy. (smile) We both had two slices of pepperoni pizza, and we shared a big green salad. Brit Boy had a Sprite and I had a Sicilian lemonade and I will just say, it was like being back home. (laugh) I’ve written here before about my search for lemonade. Well, who knew that the southern lemonade that I had back home is a close cousin to Sicilian lemonade. (smile) It was very slightly sweet and tart and just right…smooth.

There is a structure in the lobby area of the O2 that I always find intriguing. It looks like strands of huge pearls suspended. Here is a photo of it.



Once we were back outside again, we headed for the tube station. I had to take a photo of the O2. I love it. It is very unusual looking from the outside. Here is a photo as I walked backwards to the tube station.



Then we headed off to see St Paul’s Cathedral. I have been to London many times now and I have seen a lot of it, but not all of it by any stretch of the imagination. One place neither I, nor Brit Boy had visited, was the cathedral. It was a very breezy day and so as we rounded the corner to the cathedral, I got grit in my eyes that blew up from the street. This seemed to be a recurring theme most days. (laugh) So it was murder on my eye makeup. Anyway, the cathedral is magnificent. They don’t allow photography inside, but I got a photo of the outside. Here it is.



I will just say that the inside is glorious. (smile) Truly divine. Everywhere you look it is just awe-inspiring. The stonework, the carvings, the decoration, the ceilings…just amazing! Visitors are allowed to go up into the rotunda, but you have to brave hundreds of steps. It is so worth the effort. (smile) We walked 257 steps to the Whispering Gallery. When you get up there, there is a railing that you can walk along and look down to the cathedral floor. The cool thing is that you can whisper up there on one side and it can be heard on the other side of the rotunda. It is cool. You are also allowed to go further up to the next level. The view from there is amazing.

When we came back downstairs, they were doing The Lord’s Prayer and invited visitors to join in. So Brit Boy and I participated. After that, we walked around and looked at all of the dedications and such. Over in one corner, there is the American Chapel which is to honor the help of the US during WWII. This caused a bit of a lump in my throat, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, just on a simple level it was good to see cooperation between people for the common good and this memorial was about Britain and America and Brit Boy and I come from across that divide. So I don’t know…it was just deep. But also, my dad was a WWII veteran, and thankfully he made it home. As I have mentioned before, I am the last of a long line of kids and there is a gap between me and the others in years. I was a late comer. (smile) Also, my dad was quite a few years older than my mother, so that is why I have a dad who was a WWII vet and not a grandfather who was one. (smile) So I had a moment there in that chapel.

Then we went down into the tombs of the cathedral. We saw dedications to and tombs of: the Duke of Wellington, William Blake, J.M.W. Turner, Florence Nightingale, Horatio Nelson, Alexander Fleming, and of course…"The Guy They Call Sir", Sir Christopher Wren, the architect of St Paul’s that I mentioned in an earlier post. There were many, many dedications and tombs and I was intrigued by them all, but I had to see Sir Christopher’s. (smile) I live nearby where he was born, so I had to pay my respects. He did beautiful work on the cathedral also. And I thought this was a nice touch that his tomb is right next to a radiator in a corner. I like to think that it’s there to keep him warm. (smile) Well he deserves it for designing such a beautiful place.

When we came back outside, we noticed the Temple Bar. It is a barrier arch that marks the westernmost extent of the City of London. Here is a photo.



After this we took a lengthy walk in search of The Monument, which marks the spot where the Great Fire started. When we eventually found it, it was covered with scaffolding for work to be done.

After that, we were tired and it had been a long day. So we headed for the tube to go back to our hotel. On the short walk from the tube station to our hotel, we stopped at McDonald’s and had a bite to eat.

Later that night, we were lying around in bed watching a bit of television. I got up and looked outside and saw some teenagers in fancy gowns coming to the hotel. Brit Boy and I watched the scene unfold. Apparently they were having their school prom. I did think that it was unusual that they were having their prom on a Wednesday night, but perhaps they had already finished school. I don't know. It didn't go on too late I don't think. It was nice to see the teens having fun. (smile) Proms have been a part of American high school culture for decades and in the last few years they have become more popular here in England. I was surprised to read some things lately in the news media here about some people saying that proms aren't a good tradition because it costs too much and seems to be all about money or having the fancy gowns or fancy cars and such and it is consumerism gone wild. Some media even went so far as to call it a tacky tradition. Well I don’t agree with that at all.

Proms back in the day in America were more low-key and were usually held in high school gyms and not in hotels like they are now. And from what I hear from my older sisters a lot of the time the gowns were homemade or bought cheap. It was just a wonderful rite of passage to signify the end of your high school days. A first formal affair as kids went out into the adult world. So proms were simply fun. Nowadays, kids want proms at hotels and yes they get fancy gowns and tuxedos and limos and all of that, but these newer ways of doing things are just symptoms of our times. It can get over the top sometimes now, but people should look at our world now…it is just different in good ways and bad. Still, I think that I would rather that kids do get dressed up and go to proms, even in limos, if it will keep them from skipping out on school altogether and the prom, in favor of falling down drunk in the street and puking in the gutters like you see on the news. Yeah, the prom nowadays is a bit splashier, but it is a gentle thing compared to a lot of the evil out there. So I say, lighten up to the media, and let the kids have their proms if they want, here and back home. (smile)And at the end of the day, sometimes some things are just to have fun. What is wrong with that? You are only young once.

When Brit Boy and I were watching the kids arriving, we saw this family…a mom, dad, little sister, and teenage girl dressed in a flowing dress. She was lovely. The golden sheen of her dress was set off by her beautiful brown skin. It was so sweet. She didn’t arrive in a limo. Mom and Dad and sis dropped her off. They parked along the street and took a series of photos of the girl, and then of her with various members of her family. It was a sweet scene and is really what the prom and special occasions in our lives are all about…the memories that we make. (smile) I told Brit Boy that it was just like watching kids back home. It was one of those universal moments we all share whether this girl and her family were here or back home in my Georgia town. It is like that saying goes; we are all alike more than we are different sometimes. I'm not saying that everyone has to do what America does, because I believe in cultures having their own thing going,but after all, it's just a fancy dance for teenagers. (smile) I love individuality like the next person, but sometimes there is a tug from within when I see shared experiences reflected between people. I think it is important for Britain to have its traditions and America and everywhere else to have their traditions, but I don’t think it hurts a thing or encroaches on anybody’s turf to see ourselves in each other sometimes. (smile)There is so much bad in the world that we all have to share, so why not share a fun thing. I know it may sound simplistic, but sometimes things are debated too much and it is much ado about nothing.

After all of the photo-taking, the family all hugged…even little sis and big sis and then this lovely young lady’s parents waved her off and she walked into her prom. They will never forget that moment within their family, and neither will I.

Being the Baby

Yesterday I wrote about my brother Tim and it drew my thoughts to my family. As I said yesterday, my brother Tim would have been fifty-eight this year and it blows my mind that he would be that age now, since I always remember him in his forties, which was when he died. I come from a rather big family. I am “the baby” as we used to say back home. I am the youngest of my parents’ kids. I have another brother and four sisters. All of them are much closer in age and I was born quite a few years later.

My brother Tim was the second child after my eldest sister. They were only a year apart. My mother was in her late teens when she married, so this is how it worked out that I had siblings who are quite a bit older than me. I used to work in a pharmacy years back when I was about nineteen. We lived in a small town so everybody knew everybody. And many times I would have customers who would come through the line and see a family resemblance that I don’t see. (smile) They would usually be former classmates of my eldest brother and sister and they would always ask which one of them was my parent. I would have to tell them that neither one was my parent and that actually I was their little sister. They would always say, “I didn’t ever know about you. I thought that youngest boy was the last one. Where did you come from?” Now what was I supposed to say to that? (laugh) It could’ve given me a complex or something, but I just usually shrugged it off and laughed and said something like, “Well I guess the stork dropped me when you weren’t looking.” I used to tell my sister all the time that someone else thought I was her kid and she would say, “Now those folks know that I wasn’t pregnant back then.” And we would laugh about it.

So it has always just been one of those things in my life…people thinking that one of my siblings is my parent. (laugh) My mom used to laugh and say to me, “Well since everybody thinks you are one of theirs I guess that you should start calling me Granny.”

My siblings came like this: sister, my brother Tim, sister, brother (stillborn), sister, sister, and brother. And then I came quite a few years after my last brother. I am more of a contemporary of some of their kids age-wise, so my older nieces and nephews seem more like cousins to me. I grew up with them. My eldest niece is only five years younger than me. It’s kinda cool.

In writing about all of this, I had a thought about my mother. She was made of some strong stuff, because she had to endure the death of two children. As the saying always goes, no parent should have to bury their child. I just think about the fact that she had one of my brother’s stillborn and then she buried my other brother. I know that many mothers and fathers bury their children everyday under terrible circumstances and it just must be excruciating. I see all of the terrible tragedies of the world on the news with parents losing their children and it just breaks your heart for them. Burying a child, no matter the circumstances, is just so antithetical to nature.

So anyway, that’s my story of being the baby. Incidentally, Brit Boy is the baby of his family too, although his is less than half the size of mine. So Brit Boy and I are in solidarity with the baby thing. We always joke that hey, our respective families simply saved the best for last. (laugh) Just kidding. Although I think that Brit Boy and I both came last because we like to arrive fashionably late. (smile)

Two Tims

On last Friday, another person that I remember so vividly from back home passed away. Tim Russert died and I like everyone else was shocked. His show, “Meet the Press” was one of my favorite tv places to check into on Sunday mornings. I would watch that show live or tape it and watch my other favorite Sunday morning shows...it just depended on what I was in the mood for. Those Sunday morning shows are a few things that I miss about not being back home. But I have some new traditions forming now. Anyway, I was so saddened to hear of his passing. He was a great journalist and I didn’t know the man, but he seemed to have integrity about what he was doing. In the last year or so, I have been watching the national news from back home on satellite over here in England. I did it in the beginning just to chase away the homesickness since this was the newscast that I watched when I got home from work when I was back in Georgia. The newscast is on at 11:30pm here, so if I'm sleepy, I will tape it and watch it the next day. Brit Boy got into the habit of watching it with me. With all of the exciting election coverage going on, a couple of nights a week, Tim Russert would come on and give his take on what was happening. Brit Boy and I used to always love his excited delivery of the latest moves in the campaign and he was like an encyclopedia of political history. You could tell that this man just loved seeing the process in action and it made Brit Boy and I excited too. (smile) We both said Friday when we heard the news, that there will be a definite hole in the news of the election now. We have all lost a guy who was a proper journalist who knew his stuff and who loved his life and family.

Incidentally, I mentioned to Brit Boy on Friday night, that the passing of Tim Russert had a personal parallel for me. Friday was the anniversary of my brother Tim passing away. My brother, if he had lived, would have been the same age as Tim Russert. And my brother also died of a heart attack. The similarities in those ways sent a chill down my spine when I realized that. I miss my brother, he has been gone over a decade, and I think about him, my mom, and dad everyday...less and less in sorrow, but more now in remembrance of them and knowing that they are all together now. (smile)

On a lighter note, Santa Claus came to our street this weekend. (smile) Well, not exactly. The lady across the street from us has had landscapers at her house all of last week working on laying her garden and walkway with brick. So they finally finished on Friday and she had a visitor for the weekend. Brit Boy and I don’t know if he is our neighbor’s father or uncle or what, but he looks like Santa Claus or Father Christmas as some say here. He has the fluffy white beard, rosy cheeks, and round belly, but he leaves the red suit elsewhere. (smile) He is a cabbie and he usually comes to visit her in his cab on Easter or Christmas. The first time that we saw him, it was Christmas Eve and he drives up and gets out of his cab and I screamed to Brit Boy rather gleefully, “Santa!!!!” I don’t know what came over me...no I hadn’t been drinking. (laugh) This was the first Christmas after my mom passed away so I guess that I needed to just believe in miracles a bit. Brit Boy and I decided that his cab was a secret disguise for his sleigh. (smile) So whenever we hear his cab coming down the street it brings a smile to our faces.

So this past weekend he showed up, a bit off of his normal schedule. I guess that he came to enjoy his daughter or niece’s new garden. Then late Sunday evening, I heard the familiar rattling sound of the cab driving away. I looked out the window just in time to see his sleigh...I mean his cab, driving away.