Getting Loose

Violet

prepared a wonderful meal. Many different courses.   Beautiful terraced cottage.  A beautiful personality that just fills the room with light!

She also had a wonderful pudding for dessert, and finished off with a cheese plate of three wonderful cheeses. Oh, my, I hope I did not look too much like un porc!

Of course we finished with tea . . . that's hot tea to your Yanks.

Farewell

It’s now the night before we are to leave tomorrow.

I have very mixed feelings.  I did not know what this experience would bring me.  I tried to be as open as I knew how to allow to emerge whatever was going to emerge.

I come away with an appreciation for heritage.  In American we think things are old at 50 years.  In the British Isles, you have to get a few hundred years under your belt before you are talking about some serious history.

I have an enhanced appreciation for social conventions and customs.  Having tea is a civilizing process as much as it is taking a break. 

I have learned that you do not always have to be in a hurry at break neck speed.

I have learned that you simply cannot do everything, but you can do some things, and that is sufficient.

I have learned on the whole how polite the English people are to each other, and how effusive they are in greeting one another.  I have also experienced their generosity—not in just a monetary way, but also of their time.  Time has always been extraordinarily precious to me, and they willingly share it with you.  That is a luxury that stupefies me.  I need to learn that lesson better than I have.

I have learned how very different the polities and customs are of the Methodist cousins across the sea.  I can see that the United Methodist Church operates far closer to how the Church of England does things, than to how British Methodism does things.

I remember thinking as I walked around from time to time that I may be seeing people who are distantly related to me.  I have roots in England with the Gifford and Anderson and Taylor names.

I have learned how differently at times we use the same language.

I have also learned that I want to come back some day and experience more than I possibly could on this trip.  Maybe get into Scotland and Ireland and France as well.

 I have loved the weather as much as these people may want to complain.  At least it was not 100° F with 100% humidity like Houston.  I think our entire range in England was 78° maximum, and 48° minimum!

I will never, ever, ever forget these wonderful English.

And a Good Time Was Had by All

If there is one thing the English know how to do well, it is tea.  As a subset of tea (and that is hot tea to you Yanks), what they do very well is cream tea.  Tom and Rekha wanted to make sure we had had the experience. 

They invited us over to their lovely house to have tea (or coffee for the slackers).  There was the wonderful tea at a table set for seven, and then wave after wave of food—the quarter sandwiches (with the crusts cut off), the pastries, the jam, the cookies—there was more food than you could shake a stick at!

We also celebrated with them the good fortune of their daughter, Christina, having gotten into Oxford University!  Getting into a particular university is a very competitive affair here in England!  I dare say that Oxford is at the top with Cambridge a very close second.  Their daughter is “reading” (American translation:  “studying”) for her law degree.  Their son, Jonathan, is very interested in theatre.  I‘ll bet that perhaps one of the very best performances he ever gave was staying awake during the tea while the old fogeys were talking and chatting and looking as if he were interested!

Culinary Delights

There are some great restaurants in the Ealing area. 

Here are two at which we have eaten and enjoyed very much:

Papaya

Monty’s

RI

I’ve been a Rotarian for years. 

And I had the most gosh-awful, difficult time trying to figure out where the Rotary Club of Hanwell & Northfields  met in order to attend a make-up meeing.  As it turned out, Google was spot on.  But looking at the addresses of the houses on the street, the address was way off.  On top of that the door was locked and you had to swipe some card to get in.  I couldn’t believe it.

After that after having travelled all that way by the E2 bus and having had to walk an entire block! 

I had to wait for a chap in an electric wheel chair to get into the parking lot and ask him if he knew where the Rotary Club met. 

He pointed right to the building beside which I was standing!

I said, “How on earth do you get in if you are not a member?”

“You see that fence over there?  Go around that fence and there is another door and it is open.”

I could not believe it.  I thought these Rotarians really do not want any visitors.  Where are the signs?  How are you supposed to know this?  Do you have to be an “insider” to know your way around?

Believe me, the parallel was not lost on me as to what visitors face at so many churches!

Once I could run through the hoops, the Rotarians were a congenial lot.  The food appeared home cooked.  There was lots of it for 11£.

I remarked how it was strange to me that they met at night, for in the USA they predominantly meet at noon or some at breakfast, but that I could not think of one who met at night!

They told me they were primarily a social club; they were not trying to make business connections per se.  There were lots of inside jokes. 

I find I have to listen harder with some people to wade my way through their accent.  I find it too easy to tune it out as if I were in a foreign country where unless you are the person being addressed, you tend to let the chatter pass you by.

I had a banner to trade with them from my own club.

“Oh, yes.  Right.  Well you see, we don’t do the banner bit anymore.  But we will make a 5£ donation to the Rotary Foundation in your honour.”

I thought, “Hmmm.  Not bad.”

The speaker spoke of Dechenne's muscular dystrophy.  I had never heard of it.  1 in 3500 boys is born with it, and even fewer girls.  It was a sobering speech.

The meeting lasted almost 2 hours!  But it was very interesting.

Between 3 & 5 p.m.

We went to an afternoon tea.  It was everything I had ever thought it might be.  Ours started at 3:30 p.m.

Ken and Hazel took us to a 4 star hotel at Runnymede.   Now you Americans, without double clicking on the name, do you remember what happened there?

As you can see in the pic, we got hot tea, (well . . . Ken got coffee), sugar, milk, four kinds of finger sandwiches (the requisite cucumber, egg & cress, smoked salmon, and ham), jam, clotted cream, scones, fruit cake (but not like the American kind), strawberry tarts, etc.  There was so much, we just couldn’t eat it all.  But it was a proper English afternoon tea.  However, they admitted hardly anyone does this anymore.  Times have changed.

That happens to be a pic of Hazel.  Guess what she does?  She teaches IT in college to adults who think they might be hopelessly lost in ever being able to use a computer!

After having a wonderful time at this venue and even going outside to look at the Thames which flows just at the edge of this property, we motored around and went to the town of Windsor.  We drove by the castle, and it turned out that the queen was there, for her flag was flying.  I had to get back, though, for I had an impending meeting to attend at the Rotary.  I was so sorry to disappoint her Majesty’s request for an audience.

I can’t get over being in a land with so much history and tradition.  Here we think a building is old at 50 years.  Some of these buildings are hundreds of years old and in excellent repair.

 

O'Neill's

Well, there are different flavours of pubs.  You’ve got your English pubs, and you’ve got your Irish pubs as well.  Last Sunday after church, we went to an Irish pub.

I had a lamb steak pie with peas and colcannon.  Have you ever heard of that?  I hadn't either!  (Now, thou knowest, you can double click any word in my blog and get an immediate definition for it, so I did not put an external link on that word just so you could try it out!) 

The Mrs. had an Irish stew.  I washed mine down with apple cider, and she washed hers down with an Irish apple bubbly drink.  We were both satisfied.

Sorry about the fuzziness!

Tea for Two

Since knowing Roger, my British exchange clergyman, our tea consumption has increased, first starting in Houston, and now here in London.  I’ve not seen this many cups before in the dishwasher for just two people . . .

BABS

Dave and Marian were very generous to invite us over to their house for a supper.  Again, very English . . . but then what would you expect?  I am in England for crying out loud!

He's a Methodist, don't you know, and she's an Anglican, don't you see?  But they have a great marriage, and a generous heart.

The first course was carrot soup.  It tasted great, but I could have never identified it as carrot.  It was so yellow like there was a lot of butter or food coloring in it.  I kept asking if there were such things as yellow carrots.

"Well maybe there are . . .  but I've never seen one!"

"So you just blended those kind of carrots that grow In the ground and are orange when you pluck them up?"

"Why, that's the very ones."

"But this soup is so yellow.  Did you add some yellow squash to it?"

"Yellow squash?  Why not at all!"

"So it's just carrots, is it?"

"Isn't that what I just said?"

"Why, come to think of it, I believe you said the very thing!"

But it was great whatever it was.  And that was a huge hurdle for her to cross.  I tend to like only raw carrots.  I'm just not a fan of cooked carrots unless they are candied in some way.  And I don't mean just that thin gruel of a sugar glaze.  I mean candied like a think, browned barbecue sauce.

Dinner was great, their back yard was delightful and the gardening evident, but what was superb was BABS.

Now for those of you who do not know, I love barbershop quartet singing.  Not that I am in a group or anything, but I love the very close harmony.  I wish the church in the village could somehow manage to pull off a song once a month.

At any rate, Dave, who happens to be part of a barbershop society group, had this recording of the American group who had won a gold medal in BABS.  They were phenomenal to put it mildly. As I was listening to the introduction by the American chap, I started laughing. 

Dave wanted to know what was so funny. 

I said, "That bloke doesn't have an accent!"

"Doesn't have an accent?"  And then he could see what I meant.

A song that really focused the difference between American and English cultures' use of the language, was using a version of George & Ira Gershwin’s, “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off.”

They highlighted the way we say and use different words and expressions—tomato; potato; loo, bathroom; queue, in line; diversion, detour; etc.  It was a lot of fun sitting with our British hosts and laughing about how differently we use our common language.

Takin' in the Pride

Well, Mytes, ‘ere’s where we ite our mid-afternoon meal at the Paddington an’ all.

 

I ‘ad a plite uv Oxford bangers an’ mash, and the Mrs. ite a rack o’ ribs. 

 

I washed mine down wiv a pint o’ cider, thou knowest, an' the Mrs. ‘ad a diet Coke.

 

We ite so much that we rolled to the Lancaster Tube stop.  It was qui' a sight if I sie so me-self.