Odd bits

A couple of random things since today I spent mainly cleaning and getting ready to be gone for a week.

Overheard on the street last week and never, ever heard on the streets of Abilene: "I sure did fancy that mackerel pate."No lie, I actually heard a woman say this to her friend.

I thought I would find the British to be substantially healthier than Americans, especially in this community where there is alot of walking. Not so. The dish that England is famous for is fish and chips. This is essentially a platter sized serving of the #1 combo at Long John Silvers. Wash it all down with a warm, dark beer... now who feels like getting a little exercise?

I often think of Abilene as a college town and it is in it's own way. There are other college towns, like College Station and Norman, Oklahoma. None compare to Oxford, England. In the Oxford University system there are 59 colleges right here in Oxford. I don't know how many foreign universities maintain a campus here, as ACU does but I've seen shirts from several American universities and I routinely see groups of students speaking Italian, German, Spanish and some asian languages that I am not able to identify. Higher education is the primary industry of this city.

We had fajitas tonight. We imported some seasonings. However, we bought our sour cream here. I thought the food in Iowa was flavor-deficient... these people sell sour cream that has no flavor whatsoever.

I have to give it up for their cheeses, though. They've got some national pride tied to their cheese making and it's well deserved. We've tried several different varieties and been well pleased. They offer a rating system, from 1 to 7 for the intensity of the flavor. For example a slice of double Gloucester (similar to a really creamy American cheese) is a 1. The Red Leicester we have in our fridge is a 2 and tastes like a good, solid cheddar. Stephen Shewmaker bought a cheese rated at a 7 but I don't know if he's gotten up the courage to try it yet. Apparently, the way they make the 7's is to allow the cheese to cure and age for a much longer period of time. I guess it's like the Glenlivet... 12 years in a musty farmhouse before it sees the light of day.

I'm regaining my love for the Land Rover. The divine Mrs. L drove a Discovery for a couple of years and I really liked it alot. It's offroad capability and it's unique design made it very attractive to me. I may have to find myself an old Series 2 or Series 3 Defender when I get back to the States. That is, if I can survive the culinary onslaught.

Across the Pond

If you've read or re-read any of the old posts you know that I spent a bit of electronic space writing primarily about political things. I stopped writing when I got a promotion at my old job and haven't had the time to pick up the "quill" since. Now, I've got five weeks to spend with wife and family in merry old England (and Germany, France and Wales) and I'm looking forward to recording some of that great experience in this blog. So, if you're still interested... read on.

First, the travel. British Airways loaded us into the next to the last row of a very large jet. Overhead storage on this jet was fantastic. No joke... I could've put Barrett and Ethan in the overhead locker. I didn't, but I could have. The seat in front of the Divine Mrs. L was occupied by a slim, asian girl and apparently was broken. Her seat leaned back so far it appeared as if Susan were her dentist. I'm certain that if the back of the seat hadn't been crushing my wife's kneecaps she could've easily leaned forward over the asian girl and had a quick conversation with her about her flossing habits and her need for more frequent cleanings. The staff were very attentive and brought a bag of candy to the boys. They brought us tiny cans of Diet Coke. They were fairly pushy however, when I attempted to use the lav while the fasten seat belt sign was lit. I wanted to tell the attendant that I was more comfortable taking the risk of being out of my seatbelt over the north Atlantic than I was sitting... needing to get rid of some of those tiny cans of Diet Coke. Thankfully for me and the next person to sit in that seat the seatbelt sign was turned off pretty soon after that.

A couple of quick observations of England... the cars are small and funny looking, the motorways are narrow... like anorexically narrow, the people who are not being paid to be friendly... are not friendly, and lots of them mumble as if pronouncing the words the wrong way wasn't hard enough on us tourists. They also call some things the wrong name altogether. Pants means underwear. Trousers means pants. It's just wrong.

Gas is about $8 a gallon here so they make these extaordinarily small cars presumably to save fuel. It's not that these cars get such great mileage it's that full-sized people are miserable when they're inside the car and the car looks so silly no one wants to be seen in it. I wondered how it is that they've maintained these 800 year old buildings that sit less than five feet from the motorway. I thought to myself, surely, over the course of the past 800 years, someone who's enjoyed a bit too much ale has careened from the motorway and smashed through the irreplacable stonework. What I know now is that some intoxicated pub patron has indeed careened from the motorway but their car weighs only 174 pounds and so it doesn't really do any damage to the heavy rock wall.

The boys each had a memorable and humorous comment yesterday that I feel it appropriate to share. Barrett said, as we pushed through damp streets full of other people who had been walking around as much as we had, "Oxford smells like the fair." The smell of sweaty people is the same whether you're at the West Texas Fair and Rodeo or on a cobble stone street in England. Then Ethan, after we'd visited Christ's Church, an enormous compound of buidings where they filmed the dining hall scenes in the Harry Potter movies, asked "Are we still at Hogwart's?" That's a whole lot of castle wall for one little boy to look at and I admit, they all started to look alike after awhile.

So begins a five week immersion in a culture other than my own. I've not seen one man in cowboy boots. I've not seen one pickup truck with a dog in the bed. I've not seen a single "mesquite smoked" sign anywhere. I've seen men in suits riding bicycles through town. I've seen a grocery store the size of my garage. I've seen a lot of buildings that were old and worn before Columbus got any ideas about the New World. I've seen a TV show called Only Fools on Horses... and that's pretty much all it was. Now, the bells just chimed 11 so I need to get some sleep and you, gentle reader, need to close up the office and go home for the night.