Go! Spurs! Go! [and a book recommendation]

How could I not be reminded of London when I saw this football supporters' flag on the wall in my daughter's Austin home?! She and her boyfriend are big fans of Tottenham Hotspur, the north London club usually referred to by a nickname familiar in another sport to folks here in South Texas. I mean, when you root for the Spurs around here, you're usually talking about basketball. But if you can be fans of both types of Spurs, that makes you a real citizen of the world, imho.

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I'd been thinking more than usual about London anyway, before last weekend's visit to Austin. I just finished a really nifty little book by Neil Gaiman entitled Neverwhere. It's a dark and disturbing, yet wonderfully-written urban fantasy set—surprise!—in London. In particular, a subterranean London reached by way of tube stations that are like, but also unlike, their real-world counterparts.

What really makes the story fun is the author's seizing upon the linguistic peculiarities that make up so many of London's place names, especially those of the tube stations. For example, there really is an Earl holding Court (Earl's Court was my local tube stop), a Smith that Hammers out metalwork to order (Hammersmith), a bridge over literal night (Knightsbridge), a group of Black Friars that guard an important secret (obvious, right?), and many more.

Plus some fantastic scenes are set in Harrods and on board the HMS Belfast ... it's just a great— if rather twisted— tour of London.

There is a lot of violence, some rather gruesome, so I can't recommend it for everyone. But I loved it.

Having all those wonderful tube station names brought back to mind made me work my London Underground puzzle again. It was a self-souvenir I bought at the fabulous London Transport Museum. Here's its current iteration, just beginning to be solved, on my puzzle table:

I'm not finished with the London connections, though! There's a BBC mini-series (apparently the first version of Neverwhere, actually) that's sitting in my Netflix queue. I can hardly wait to see all those wonderful, memorable, locations sent up in the service of Gaiman's fertile imagination.

And how did I find out about this book? A couple of months ago I attended a World Science Fiction Convention held here in San Antonio (see my blog posts about it here) and one of the panels was "Fantastic London." I got a lot of great book recommendations for sci-fi and fantasy stories set in my favorite city. Neverwhere was just one of them.

Finally, guess where next year's WorldCon is going to be? I don't need to tell you, do I?

Remembering TFL*...sort of

Although I think about London a lot, and often find things that remind me of my magical time there, I rarely have experiences here in Texas that let me recapture a feeling from my "dream season."

However, I've recently found one. It involves a very mundane activity but I'm enjoying it immensely and I'm sure some of that enjoyment derives from the London memories that it stirs. The activity is just...plain...getting to work. Via mass transit.

I've started riding the bus to work (well, at least part-way; our system doesn't offer the breadth of coverage that London's does so I have to drive about five minutes to catch a bus that drops me off a few blocks from the Library. But it's still fun! And it still reminds me of all the great tube and bus and train rides I had in the UK).

You can see where I get on in the morning on the right above. And the much nicer stop where I wait for the eastbound #90 in the afternoon is on the left. (Believe me, the shade has been welcome on our hot summer afternoons!)

Besides the deep-down satisfaction of re-living, at least on some level, one of my daily London routines, my new habit has some other advantages:

• more regular exercise: the walk of essentially 3 blocks each way from the stop to the Library is not to be sneezed at, and I've actually lost a couple of pounds—that seem to be staying off—since I've started riding the bus (I was very slim and fit while in London, in spite of eating very well)
• more reading time: I love getting to read while someone else drives; I thought I might miss the extra NPR-listening time in the car but that hasn't happened (I just listen to more stories online)
• less gas expended: although I drive a Prius, I'm still saving some gas...and those buses would be chugging up and down Woodlawn Avenue whether I was on them or not
• making new friends: I've made the acquaintance of another St. Mary's employee who's a hard-core bus rider and who's been able to answer my questions and provide encouragement...plus diverting conversation on those walks between bus stop and campus

But my enjoyment of the activity can't be analyzed on a strictly scorecard-type basis. I just like to do it. And I know that a good big reason for that can be traced back to my car-less London days.

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*Transport for London...absolutely essential website for getting around London with minimal hassles

Why can't we have one of these?

A business trip to Washington, D.C. earlier this week made me extra nostalgic for the Tube. And also reminded me how much I'd love having a transportation system like DC's Metro or London's Underground here in San Antonio.

Waiting for a connecting train in DC's Metro Center station

I'd love not to have to drive to work, like a DC friend I saw, who doesn't own a car. Or like how I got around last fall in London. Sigh. Dallas and Houston are just getting their toes wet in the light rail waters. Which means it'll probably be too late for me, at least as a working member of San Antonio society, when/if we finally take the plunge. How much does gas have to cost before Texans wake up and smell the railroad?

The short time I had to spend studying DC's map for connections reminded me, too, of what neat pieces of graphic art these train maps are. London's is more extensive and convoluted than DC's somewhat chunky ribbons, but that's understandable given its much longer history, having been built up from a patchwork of different train companies (as I learned in the Transport Museum). But they're both supremely functional and very attractive, and you can't beat that combination:

London's tube map

Washington's Metro map

I particularly like the way the designers abstractified the Thames and the Potomac on the maps, to make them fit better with the rail lines. Nice touch!

Favorite Fotos: Getting around

More photos from my signs collection, plus a few more, to showcase different ways of getting around (or not) in the UK. There are many reasons I would never want to drive a car in London (crazy drivers, crazy bikers, crazy pedestrians, etc.) but the forest of signs on every corner would be a major one. On the right is a corner near the classroom building, where there's a major concentration of foreign embassies—hence the reference to diplomatic parking.

Parking in general is a major headache, I'm sure, for anyone in London with a vehicle. If you live in Kensington, you might be greeted with another diplomatic notice like the one on the left, and wonder, well, where am I supposed to park, then?! (Click on the graphic to see a larger version.)

Then there's the danger of "clamping," which I assume means that axle-locking hardware that catches some cars on our campus here occasionally....


At least most of the time in London the streets are wide enough for two cars (although a few little "closes" and "mews" and "walks" look pretty tight). In Scotland, when you get off the "A" road near Loch Ness, and you meet an oncoming car, you just have to hope that one of these signs isn't far away:



Fortunately, in London at least, you have other ways of getting around. Although I didn't sample the equestrian method, they do take that into account, at least at some intersections (the sign on the right is at the busy Wellington Arch roundabout). And there's always walking, and to help you with this at particularly busy intersections they have subways (not to be confused with the underground, which is called the subway in New York)—handy under-street walkways. Although, I might think twice about using the one referred to in the sign on the left....

And of course there's the tube and the wonderful bus system, the transportation methods of choice for almost all of my journeys. They can take you to amazing places, like Druid Street, near the Tower Bridge Road south of the Thames.

I can tell you quite a bit about London transport from this photo alone. It's a stop where you don't have to hail the bus (because of the white background behind the bus roundel; if the background is red the sign will also say "request stop" and you need to make eye contact with the approaching bus driver to let him/her know you want to get on). If it was 4 in the morning, you could still get a bus here (the number 188) and during the day you can also catch the 42 and the 78 (and I could consult my handy central London bus map and see exactly where these routes would take me, but even without that I'd know I could either head toward the Surrey Quays or Aldgate). Once you get the hang of it, it's an unparalleled transport system that saves you from having to drive in the crazy, crazy traffic. (Hal wrote this nice piece with more practical info on London buses.)

If you see a number 9 or number 15 (there might be a few other routes, too, but I remember these) on your bus stop, you might get to ride in one of the few remaining old style double deckers like this one:


But most of the buses you see are newer models, although most are still double-deckers, unlike this one, touting its new hybrid engine:

Favorite Fotos: countryside out the windows

Sorry to have neglected the blog the last couple of days, but they were the last ones with all my kiddos at home. Sally had to get back to work today, but Hal and Carey are still around. They went off to work at a neighborhood coffee shop this morning, though, so I have some time to blog now.

I tried several times, on several different trips, to take pictures outside the train, car, or plane windows, with very little success. But I did come up with a few shots that, I hope, will give a little flavor of the lovely English (and Scottish and Welsh) countryside. Everything was so green! and looked so much like it does in movies both actual and those that play in your head when you're reading.

The picture at the top of the post is out of the Oxford Tube bus window on my first trip to that lovely city. This was in September, before fall colors were in evidence. Could you possibly mistake this view for anywhere but England?! Another picture taken on that sunny day is this one, taken a bit earlier in the journey....


.... and this one, a bit further on:


Notice the good view of the hedge of trees in this shot. Here is a more panoramic view of hedge-y countryside, this one taken from the little Flybe jet we took to Inverness. The countryside we're circling is that around Gatwick.


I was fortunate enough to take two trips to Scotland during my time in the UK. Here's a shot from the train window during my earlier journey, in September to Edinburgh. I don't think we were in Scotland yet when this was taken, but unfortunately I don't know what lovely town this is. It might have been Durham; I'd love to hear from someone who could let me know. This lack of info doesn't spoil the enjoyment of the photo, however, at least I hope not:


By the time the following shot was taken, however, I'm pretty sure we were in Scotland. Love those lighthouses!


Another very scenic trip I got to take was to Wales. This one was by car, which certainly added another element of adventure to the journey. On the right is a shot out the windshield as we crossed the Severn Estuary on the M-4. What an impressive bridge! No breath-holding possible for this transit!

We generally managed the driving pretty well, with Henry behind the wheel and me navigating, but some of the roads were very, very scary. Fortunately, however, not very crowded. Below is a shot of a typical minor Welsh road, in the rain. Note lack of shoulders, proximity of hedges (which hopefully would have been soft landings, had we needed to collide with them) and, above all, narrowness of road. At least you didn't have to worry about which side to drive on!


It was also rainy on our trip to Bath in October, but I was still enchanted enough by the view out of our bus window to try and take some photos. I'll close with this view of the lovely countryside near Bath. You can't complain too much about the rain when its result is such a "green and pleasant land!"


Looking through the photos to find these countryside views got me excited about more of my scenic shots, so I'll try and post collections of some of these in the next few days.

What I'll miss (and what I won't)

Last London blog post! I can't believe how fast this magical time has gone, but when I look back over my pictures (which I have started to do, in an attempt to organize and identify) I'm pretty happy with all I was able to see and do.

I thought I'd give you a capsule idea of the pluses and (the few) minuses of living in London, starting with the big plus of UK mass transit. All forms are fabulous—trains, tube, buses, boats. I will really miss not having to drive or even have a car. What a better way to get around!

More things I'll really miss:

• nice public toilets! (see yesterday's post for rhapsodic prose in praise of this phenomenon)
• good food, easy to find and of all descriptions, as well as from all over the world. I was able to sample Bangladeshi, who knows how many different kinds of Indian, Thai, Chinese, Greek, the ubiquitous Italian, probably more that I've forgotten and it was all fabulous. Even the British food was good—anyone have a good recipe for mushy peas, which I discovered as a fish and chips side dish and would love to cook at home? Below you can see a corner near my flat, where you have a good pub (blue, on the left), a terrific Greek place (green) and a fabulous Italian one (red). Not to mention the kebab house and the Thai/Chinese place just out of the frame.
• sub-category of good food: fantastic bakeries!
• friendly, helpful, courteous and gracious British people wherever you turn. They are so incredibly well-mannered, even when you're being an ignorant American. And perhaps it's the Obama effect, but I encountered not an iota of anti-American feeling—quite the contrary.
• free museums of unbelievably high quality. This may turn out to be the biggest thing I'll miss; any museums I visit from here on out will have some pretty tough competition to face. On the right is the Natural History Museum.
  
• BBC TV channels of all sorts, but especially BBC News, BBC Parliament, and BBC 4. Not to mention, of course, all the sports, including snooker and darts! I saw an amazing number of well-produced and fascinating documentaries, especially on BBC 4, in addition to several addictive quiz shows (on the left below is a shot from my favorite—Only Connect, which is insanely difficult, but fun). The Parliament channel (a sample on the right below) was very entertaining, especially after I'd toured the place. (Pop quiz: which House is being shown, Lords or Commons? Hint: you can tell from the color of the upholstery.)
  

The list of things I won't miss is pretty short. It includes:

• sore feet and knees from all the walking (although I must admit my legs have never been in better shape)
• the traffic, which makes street crossing a high-adrenaline sport. The appearance of a pedestrian ahead seems to bring out the hot-rodder in all London drivers. Although, to be fair, they almost always stop for you at the Belisha beacons, without which you just couldn't get around at all.
• sunrise at 8 and sunset at 4. I'm sorry, but 8 hours—tops—of daylight is simply not enough.
• high prices. However, to temper this criticism a bit, I don't mind as much paying a little more when you get top-notch service, which you do here, in every kind of establishment from grocery stores to restaurants to underground stations to public loos. And bless their hearts, the £ is taking a nose-dive so maybe on my next visit this won't be so much of a problem.
  

I'll try to post a "back home in Texas" blog post in the next day or two, in between sleeping and getting Christmas decorations up. Hope you all are enjoying your holiday preparations!

That pesky Prime Directive

Oh, wait, that's what they keep having trouble with on Star Trek. What we saw today was the Prime Meridian, and what a delightful day we had!

It started out with an exciting round of one of my favorite travel games: figuring out mass transit routes! I mean it! I love doing this stuff—it's like a treasure hunt. I should say that I love doing it when you actually end up where you want to go, and we did today, in spite of a boatload of obstacles put in our way by London Transport and their maintenance schedule. We neglected to check this website before leaving, although we were given a heads up by the helpful receptionist at FIE where we met the students who were going with us. (First big lesson learned today: check for disruptions before you leave!)

However, as it turned out, between the announcements on the train (actually understandable and helpful!) and a few well-chosen questions of the considerate transport staff, we were able to negotiate a long, multi-stage trip that involved two different kinds of trains and a set of replacement buses. What an incredibly well-run transit system they have here! Londoner's pride in it is fully justified.


And all the effort was well worth it. This is the view from the top of the hill where the Observatory is located. The handsome quad of buildings at the other side of the grassy field is the Royal Naval College, which I saw close-up later. The steep climb up here was fueled by a delicious lunch at a Greenwich pizzeria (I had soup this time).

The main attraction of course is the aforementioned meridian, although the attached museum is very interesting and they have a neat, real, full-sized camera obscura that's pretty cool. Everyone had to have their picture taken standing athwart the meridian, and one of our wonderful students took this for me. Texas readers, take note of the multiple layers of outerwear: it was delightfully cool today, and though continually overcast and threatening-looking, there was actually NO RAIN!

After the observatory the little group of students I was with headed over to the Sunday market, where I got some good ideas for possible future souvenir purchases. There were some quite interesting-looking items there. And the food looked wonderful; I rather wished we'd skipped the restaurant and eaten as we shopped. That would also have given us the time to see the Maritime Museum, which will have to wait for a future visit.

I did have time for a nice stroll around the College, though, and took this picture of those towers seen from a distance before. As well as this one that I feel already is typically English: a church and trees—there are certainly plenty of both around here!

All in all, it was a very successful day. We proved to ourselves we could navigate the tube system under conditions that won't normally prevail during the week (we hope). At the same time I hope we gave the students without mass transit experience some confidence when they strike out on their own.

And it was such fun being with them! (16 of our 23 went with us to Greenwich.) My opinion may change when classes start Tuesday (just kidding! I don't think it will) but so far they've been perfect traveling companions—friendly, considerate, enthusiastic, supportive of us and each other. I think we're in for a great semester!