--You know how you often go on vacation, or take a trip
somewhere, and it feels like you stayed one
day too long?Well, we didn’t have that experience with our Londonadventure.
Oh, it was certainly time to come home…But it felt natural and true, like one more day would be too
much, and one less wouldn’t be quite enough.We got out of there exactly when we should’ve, and don’t
usually synchronize things so well.We
accidentally got it right.
We were dreading the flight back, but it wasn’t bad at all.Our shuttle showed up at the hotel as scheduled, we got to
Heathrow with time to spare, and there were no issues whatsoever.It was shockingly stress-free.
They were offering eighteen(!) movie choices on the airplane, and I
was interested in exactly one of ‘em:Juno.But that channel – and ONLY that channel – wouldn’t work.I thought about asking one of the sashaying “attendants”
about it, but knew nothing would come from such an exercise.
So I read, instead.I finished
the last thirty or so pages of one book, took in a lengthy REM
interview in Q magazine, then polished off 228 pages (out of 244) of
the Mark Everett autobiography.
We were in the air for about seven hours, and except for the time I
was eating my “chicken casserole” (not bad at all), and later my
“snack” (a box containing grapes, crackers, a shot glass of
lemonade, an unrecognizable candy bar that may or may not have been
Icelandic, and half a sandwich that smelled like August feet), I had
my face pressed into some kind of reading material.
British Airways offers up free beer and wine on their flights, but I
had no interest.I’ll give
you all the details in the coming days, but I think I got my fill of
alcohol for… at least 24 hours.Holy
crapknuckles.
We got home last night around 11:30,
all of us feeling like we’d been beaten with a trash bag full of
orange juice jars, and the boys free-fell into their beds.Toney and I had a couple of Yuenglings (it was almost
the next day) and watched cable news, to see if the world still
existed or whatever.
And believe it or not, I have to go back to work today; just one
night, then I’m off until Sunday evening...So I’m not going to try to start the epic story of our trip
right now.It’s going to take
some time to get the pictures organized, and all that jazz.
So I’ll hit you today with a few Quick Differences between Englandand
America,
as I see it, right off the top of my tiny Duke
head.And let’s get started, shall we?
CoffeeOurs is good, theirs is bad.The
whole time we were in the UK,
we had one cup of bad coffee after another.It was one of those deals where you hope for the best and
prepare for the worst.And it
always turned out to be the latter, never the former.
It was a curious combination of both strong and tasteless.I know that seems impossible, but it’s true.It was really muddy and thick, like that pressed crap Eninen
drink, but it had the general flavor of dirt clods, with mild but
distinctive underwear afternotes.
I don’t really like Starbucks, but they were serving up the only
drinkable cuppa joe in town.The
coffee I drank this morning, here at the Compound, tasted like heaven
in a Deadwood mug.I’ve never
written fan letters to a corporation before, but Dunkin’ Donuts
might be getting one from me shortly.
BeerOurs is good, theirs is especially good.We visited plenty of pubs, and Toney and I had a lot of “cask
ale.”
People often say the Brits drink their beer warm, but that’s not
exactly true.The cask ale, or
real ale, is kept in wooden barrels in the cellar of the bar, is
pumped into a glass (using a literal hand pump), and served at the
temperature of the basement – which is usually pretty damn cold.
None of it’s pasteurized, or even finished fermenting for that
matter, and is about as fresh as it gets.At first it seemed kinda flat to me, but very, very tasty.After a while, though, I came to appreciate the lack of
carbonation, and fizz.
I usually had my first pint in the early afternoon of every day, and
kept ‘em coming until bedtime.During
the last couple of days, knowing the end was near, I kept ‘em coming
a tad too quickly, perhaps.I
found myself getting a little queasy when a British Airways flight
attendant offered me a can of Heineken.Not a good sign…
I’ll have all the details later, but we must’ve visited upwards of
ten pubs (including one where Dickens supposedly drank when he was
eleven), and sampled six or eight different cask ales.We kept going back to two in particular:Fuller’s London Pride and
Timothy Taylor’s
Landlord.Man, that’s some good shit.
DrivingIt seems like the British drive like Sunshine cooks:wide-open or off; there are no other settings.
One night, just before dark, I walked to a grocery store near our
hotel, and very nearly got my apple peeled by a guy driving a
motorcycle like Evel Knievel approaching the ramp.Scared me.
And one day, near Covent
Garden,
Toney and the boys crossed a road, and as soon as they got to the
middle a black cab came careening around a corner on two wheels, and
almost hit the oldest Secret.That
also scared me.
So we started getting really nerdy with it, and using the crosswalks
and the traffic lights, and all that stuff.
It felt like we were the only ones (jaywalking seems to be the norm),
but I didn’t care.Cars and
motorcycles and bicyclists seemed to come from every direction, and
there was no way to predict any of it.
Not to be overly dramatic, but it felt like every corner was Death
Waiting to Happen, in London.We did a lot of walking, and I also got in a lot of
sphinctercize.Holy fuck in a
bucket!
ToiletsThere are no tanks; where are the tanks?It’s just a bowl sticking out of a wall, with a flush handle
mounted above it.There’s
also not much water, which can lead to striping and tears.
Well, to be more precise, there’s not much water before
you flush…But after you
flush, it’s like freakin’ Niagara
Falls.Hit that lever and you’ve got a recreation of the earliest
moments of the Jonestown Flood going on, with the added bonus of human
waste.
And the urinals (pronounced your-eye-nals) are completely waterless,
and shaped like a seashell.Needless
to say, the Secrets and I began referring to them as peeshells.No flushing, no water, the pee just somehow goes
away.I don’t really understand advanced urine displacement
technology…
BreakfastDo you like sausages, especially the kind that are white and
scary?Well, you’d be in luck
in London.‘Cause they eat those things like the Russians are in Surrey.
We had breakfast in the hotel restaurant three or four times, and I
never fully warmed to it.The
scrambled eggs weren’t bad, and the Canadian bacon was OK, but I
can’t endorse much beyond that.
Sweet-ass pork ‘n’ beans?For
the morning meal?No thanks.Poached eggs with runny yolks are blecch.White sausages are not even an option.And where’s the potatoes?They
eat beans, but not potatoes?!
After the first few days we started visiting a really good bakery
around the corner, for a cup of their horrible “Americano” coffee
and a kick-ass pastry.It
was much cheaper, and more enjoyable.
And I’ll get to the rest of the things I’ve got jotted down here,
in the next few days.We had a
blast, and you guys will be reading all about it (if you'd like) in excruciating
detail.It’s good to be back,
and the number of comments blows my mind.I’ll have to set aside a full day to read them all…
