Thanksgiving and Everything After
Full Circle II
Summer
One Year, a Retrospective
British Bureaucracy
Winter
Return
Thanksgiving and Everything After
04 December 2003
Do you know what I had for dinner on Thanksgiving Day this year? Toast. Okay, it was whole wheat and had butter on it, but still . . .
The reasons for this involved a business trip to some corporate outpost in Wales and the fact that Thanksgiving isn’t a widely recognized holiday here in Britain. I wasn’t even aware that it was Thanksgiving until after my sumptuous buttered toast feast, when I went to check my e-mail and found a single Thanksgiving greeting from a friend back in the States. My guess is, most people were too busy watching football, chatting with second cousins or otherwise sated into lethargy with turkey and pumpkin pie to bother checking their e-mail. Which is, of course, as it should be.
As for me, after realizing I had just missed one of my most favorite holidays, I went to bed.
The next night, however, my wife and I went out to dinner. This was, in reality, my Thanksgiving substitute dinner–which had been booked some weeks earlier–at Amberley Castle. It’s not every day you get to have dinner in a 900-year-old Norman castle and the experience was as unique as it was opulent.
Upon driving up to the entrance via the private road, the outer gates automatically swing open, allowing you into the courtyard where the car park is. You walk through arched gates to reach the inner courtyard and then though a formidable set of doors to access the reception hall of the dinning area. Inside, the rooms are tastefully decorated with tapestries thick velvet curtains and the bric-a-brac of medieval England. Jousting lances, shields and broadswords adorn the high stonewalls and one has the sense that they are not reproductions.
We were shown into the library, a warm and cozy room of dark wood, upholstered furniture and a fire. The wine list was as thick as War and Peace and featured bottles of champagne for as much as £1,600. I quickly flipped to the back where I found a suitable South African Chardonnay that didn’t require financing, then sat back and enjoyed the canapés.
To describe the ornate process of dinner would take up too much time. Suffice it to say that in ordering and receiving our pre-dinner drinks, table wine, main course and desert, we rarely saw the same waiter twice. They all seemed to have some highly specialize niche; there was even one waiter whose job it was to take our drinks from us in the library, put them on a little tray and carry them upstairs to the dining hall where our table awaited us.
No detail was overlooked. The china was Versace, the tablecloth and napkins were of the finest linen and the silverware was aptly named. The food was almost too good to be true. I had the lamb, and it all but melted in my mouth; each bite was an experience in gastronomic ecstasy. But amid all this splendor and fine food, the single item that impressed me most was the wine glass.
No, really. It was the most delicate and elegant piece of crystal I have ever seen. The stem was impossibly thin and the bell like a clear sheet of paper. A glass as fine as this cannot help but magnify the quality of the wine; the thin edge seems to make the wine almost evaporate in a burst of flavor as it rolls over the lip. I was so pleasantly startled by my first sip I was literally–not figuratively–taken aback.
After desert (a cheese cake and compote to die for) we retired to the library for coffee, petit fours, an after dinner brandy, and a fine cigar by the fire. It was, from start to finish, a relaxing and elegant affair, as far removed from the strident buzz and heavy fare of a traditional family Thanksgiving dinner as, well, as I am from America.
Though I cannot, in all honest, say I would have traded it all, I might have given up some of it (but not the wine glass) for a bit of turkey with cranberry sauce and a slab of pumpkin pie.
Full Circle II
25 September 2003
Last week, while on holiday in Yorkshire, my wife and I spent a day with a distant relative of my great grandmother Annie Eaves, touring the towns and dale’s of Lancashire where our family of old originated, lived and worked.
David Eaves, it turns out, is a seventh cousin, twice removed, which is closer than I had actually expected. He has done considerable research into the Eaves branch of the family and is extremely knowledgeable concerning the origins and movements of the clan. It was quite an experience, both meeting David and his family, and seeing the area where our ancestors came from. It meant more than visiting locations in the US where past generations settled, not only because it’s in another country, but because it’s so old.
The Harling family has been in America for merely the last 100 or so years; the lands David introduced me to have been inhabited by portions of the Eaves family for the past 8 centuries, and it’s difficult to describe how the weight of those years sink into you when you stand on a footpath that was there when the Norman’s invaded and was, likely as not, walked on by people you’re descended from.
I feel like I’ve come full circle now, having grown up in the States, researching the family tree and wondering what it was like back in the ‘old’ country, and now I’m here, not as a tourist but a resident. It’s something I think about nearly every day.
Without getting too philosophical over it, I think great grand-father John and his wife, Annie, made a good decision in immigrating to the States. At that time, there really wasn’t much for them in Lancashire. Their working class existence involved constant moving from town to town in an effort to keep in work, which made their lives, and our genealogy tour, a bit difficult. In searching out places to visit, we had to narrow the options down to a reasonable few that were near enough to each other to avoid lengthy car trips. Then, as often as not, the visits involved little more than standing on non-descript main streets of tiny, timeless towns where John and/or Annie were likely to have lived for only a few months.
In America, their opportunities were probably more varied and it was certainly less crowded. Over this past century, our branch of the family has expanded to cover an area larger than Britain itself, so, even though none of us appear to have become millionaires, I’d say it’s worked out fairly well.
Speaking for myself, life surely would have been different had I grown up there, yet I was continually struck by the similarities between Lancashire and my boyhood home in Columbia County, NY. From my childhood, I recall rolling hills, fields, water and woodlands criss-crossed with walls made of stone. The beauty of that land is mirrored and magnified in Lancashire and I could see myself growing up here, impecunious perhaps, but nonetheless happily roaming the moors, walking the ancient footpaths, scaling dry stone walls and fishing the becks.
Summer
18 July 2003
It’s raining again, but this is the first time that has happened in weeks. Mostly, the sky has been clear, the sun has been shining and the temperatures have been in the 90’s. It is definitely summertime.
I love to hear the Brits complain about the heat the same way I like hearing them complain about the cold. They are so convinced by their self-propagating myth about how horrible British weather is that they actually seem to believe the mild, temperate weather on this island is at the very edge of human endurance.
I have to say, it is made a bit worse by the absence of air conditioning and central heating but, if those things were really necessary, they’d have them here, wouldn’t they? Sitting in a 2nd floor flat on a sunny afternoon when the temperature outside is in the 90’s may be a little stuffy, but it’s nothing compared to 102 degrees with 98% humidity and three dozen species of blood sucking insects queuing up for a chance at that tasty spot in the middle of your back where you can’t swat them off.
I guess that’s why, in the height of summer, American’s shut themselves away with their AC. Here, they simply wear less clothing, which makes summer that much more delightful, especially when the subject is a nubile young thing with golden skin and long, lanky limbs. When blokes coming home from a construction job clamber aboard the bus wearing cut off jeans and nothing else, however, it tends to be a little less rewarding.
The Brits (and the Europeans in general) take a more casual view toward the human body and regard the Americans as a bit prudish. Topless women are routinely featured in newspapers (well, photos of them, anyway; but if they could find a way to fit a real, topless woman in between the pages, just think what that would do for circulation), topless bathing is legal throughout and frontal nudity is shown on TV after 9 PM. When you consider that these young people grow up with all this nonchalantly exposed skin–rendering it as mysterious and alluring as an algebra exam–it’s not such a wonder to see what they’re wearing, or, more to the point, what they’re not wearing.
They stroll about so unselfconsciously in skirts that look like wide belts and tops you couldn’t make a bar napkin out of . . . . all I can say is, it’s a good thing I’m married. (I know, I know; as if the only thing standing between me and all these young nymphs throwing themselves at me in a sexual frenzy is the fact that I have a wife. But a man can dream, can’t he?)
Another thing I like about summer in Britain is Pims. Pims is a refreshing, alcoholic drink that tastes something like a Long Island Iced Tea but without the unfortunate side effects, such as inability to stand upright and waking up beside women who look like Charles Bronson. It’s a perfect drink to sip while you’re sitting on your patio with a nice cigar. In fact, the sun is beginning to shine again, so maybe I’ll break out one of my few remaining stogies, make myself a tall glass of Pims and sit out on the balcony to watch the birds.
One Year, a Retrospective
05 March 2003
It’s hard to believe that an entire year has passed since that morning I stepped off the plane and, with a camera in one hand and a return ticket in the other, assured the customs agent I was arriving for a two-week holiday.
To say my life has changed since then would be an understatement, so I’m going to focus on those differences that have come about because of my change in location, not my switch from single to marital status (which could, by itself, fill volumes). So I’ve compiled a few observations about what I find different, what I miss, and how I feel I’m adjusting to life in my new country.
Things I Miss about the US:
Real Baked Beans:
They have baked beans here–Beans-on-Toast is a national dish, after all–but they don’t offer much variety. In a US Supermarket, when you go down the Baked Bean isle, there are a myriad of options: Baked Beans, Boston Baked Beans, Barbeque Baked Beans, Vegetarian Baked Beans, Baked Beans with Molasses and Bacon, B&M Baked Beans, Bush’s Baked Beans, etc. Here, you get a bog-standard can of Heinz Baked beans. Period. They’re okay, but they don’t compare to the up-market brands I could buy in the States. And there’s no Boston Brown Bread to go with them, either.
Real Hot Dogs:
They come in a jar here. A JAR! What’s up with that? I tried them once; that was enough.
Clam Chowder:
I love a good clam chowder and am always on the lookout for it when I go to a new restaurant. (The best I have found so far, by the way, is at the Atlantic Café, on Nantucket Island.) In the US, if it’s not the soup-of-the day, it’s usually on the soup menu. And if I don’t see it, I always ask. It took a while for it to sink in, but after months of not finding any, it began to dawn on me that it doesn’t exist here. I can’t imagine why, it’s an island for Pete’s sake!
Fortunately, it’s easy to make. Unfortunately, I accidentally grabbed my wife’s British measuring cups instead of my American set and ended up with four times more than the recipe was supposed to make. It’s a good thing I really, really like clam chowder.
Boston Chicken:
Nature’s perfect food. Nothing beats a take-out meal of Boston chicken with a side order of corn bread, mashed potatoes, gravy, creamed corn and a slab of carrot cake for desert. To be fair, I was missing this even before I left the States. Heady with success, they branched into ham and meat loaf dinners, changed their name to Boston Market, and promptly went into Chapter 11. Just goes to prove the old adage: “Dance with the one that brung ya'”.
Live Music in bars:
I’ve already written about this. Morons!
Post Script: My wife says she heard on the radio that this particular bit of legislation is being rethought. I guess the grass-roots protests had an effect.
Cheap, readily available Cuban Cigars:
Believe it or not, it’s easier to get Cuban cigars in the US where they are outlawed. All you need is an Internet connection and a couple of bucks. Here, all you need is your local tobacconist and a second mortgage. I can’t smuggle them in the way I did in the US because (well, that would be wrong, wouldn’t it–you customs agents can go about your business now, nothing of interest here) being legal, they simply mail them, undisguised, and customs tacks an extra few hundred pounds on them as they cross the boarder. It’s so ironic I find it funny. I do understand that there are cheap cigars on the Continent, and I can legally bring back a few boxes with me when I visit. Soon.
St. Patrick’s Day celebrations:
In the States, the saying holds true that there are two types of people, the Irish, and those who want to be Irish. And that goes double on St. Patrick’s Day. Here, the real Irish tend to keep quite about it and the English certainly don’t want to pretend to be them. It seems, if I want a raucous, daylong drinking celebration that ends with thousands of inebriated people singing and screaming and marching in the streets, I have to attend a Man-U match.
Coin Rollers:
I’m one of those guys who doesn’t carry coins. Whenever I get home, if I have any coins in my pocket, I toss them into a jar on my dresser. When the jar is full, I sort then, roll them and exchange them for paper currency. Here, they use little bags, and it’s just not the same. There is something immensely gratifying about stuffing coins into little paper tubes and crimping the ends; a miniature baggie just can’t provide that level of satisfaction. On the other hand, it bears noting that saving coins here is more lucrative than it was in the States. The lowest paper currency they have is a 5 pound bill, so their coins can be worth the equivalent of $3. A jar of coins in the UK is worth way more than it is in the US.
Things I Don’t Miss:
The Weather:
It helps that I came from a part of the US described by the National Weather Service and home buying guides as having a ‘harsh’ climate, but to me, this infamously damp, chilly, foggy, dreary English weather makes me feel like I’ve just checked into the Savoy after serving time in a Turkish prison. Sure, it can be grey here and it does drizzle a lot more, but the truth is, it rains less where I live now than it did back in the US. Sometimes the rain pounds down spectacularly, but mostly it drizzles, which allows people to go about their business as if nothing is happening. The best thing is, no matter what form it comes down in, I don’t have to shovel it.
Shoveling snow:
This isn’t one of those onerous chores, like ironing, that you can put off until a rainy Sunday afternoon. If it snows, you gotta drag your ass out of bed an hour earlier and schlep outside where the air is so cold it hurts to breathe and start excavating the pile of snow and ice that used to be your car.
SUVs:
Over the past few years, driving in the States was becoming maddening. It seemed I couldn’t drive anywhere without some big-wheeled mutant vehicle that looked like the love-child of a BMW and a commuter bus in front of me blocking my view. These four-wheel drive gas tanks were usually driven by some 5′ 2″ 120 lb Soccer Mom, fixing her make-up and chatting to her therapist on a cell phone, on her way to the Wendy’s Drive-thru window to pick up dinner for her family. Over here, the cars are positively tiny. You can fit a Classic Mini and a Smart car in the back of a Chevy Suburban and still have room left over for your hockey gear. This doesn’t mean the people over here drive any better, but at least when I’m following a 62 Centimetre, 8-stone, football mum, chatting on her mobile while on her way to the fish and chip shop, I can see more than the arse-end of her vehicle.
Bugs:
I’m not sure if this is true in all of Britain but, where I live at least, you can open your windows and doors in nice weather without having to affix industrial-strength screens. In Upstate NY, the bugs are legendary; in all but the coldest of months, you can’t step outdoors without being ambushed by 18 varieties of blood-sucking insects. Keeping them out of your house is a perpetual battle.
Kwanza:
It’s a made-up holiday. I’m not sure why that annoyed me but now I don’t have to deal with it.
Conclusion:
Over this past year, I’ve concluded that the biggest difference between America and Britain, and the rest of the world for that matter, is convenience. Americans are all about convenience; we want it now, we want it cheap, and we don’t want to have to go too far to get it. I can’t be sure, but I’d bet serious money that the drive-thru window was invented by an American.
Twenty-four hour stores are also big in the US, as are wide roads and football-field sized parking lots. In Britain, outside of major cities, everything closes at 5:00. In my office, of the 6 people in my unit, only two drive to work. Seeing a movie takes a bit of planning as there isn’t a 24-screen mega-plex around every corner. Pubs close at 11:00 and, in my town of 30,000 people, if you walk down the street at 9 PM, it’s as deserted as a similar town in the US would be at 3 AM.
Overall life is slower, easier and less hectic. There’s more depth and less flash and not as many McDonald franchises. In the US, if I felt the sudden urge for a wicker basket, lean pork chops and a garlic press at 2:30 in the morning, I could drive to the 24-hour super-store and have them within half an hour. In Britain, I wait until the weekend, and by then realize I didn’t really need them in the first place.
To an American, it may seem like an inconvenient way to live, but in the long run, it saves a lot of unnecessary trips.
British Bureaucracy
06 February 2003
It’s tax time, so I’m spending my evenings perusing the IRS web site and eliciting advice from expatriate forums concerning how to deal with filing from a foreign country. It should be simple, really, but the US government’s 54 page leaflet on foreign earned income is not easy reading.
My wife is amused by all this. They don’t have anything like our annual tax-hassle here; taxes are taken out of their pay checks (the correct amount, it is assumed) and that’s that. They get a sort of W-2 at the end of each fiscal year telling them how much they earned and how much they paid in, but there are no forms to file, and no refunds.
That does not mean there is less bureaucracy, however. As if to prove this, a particularly daft bit of legislation is currently under debate, and I am keeping an amused eye on the rising groundswell of protest over it.
Apparently, in their zeal to reap as much revenue as possible, someone decided it would be a good idea to beef up the already stringent entertainment licensing laws. The aim was to broaden the net so more people would have to pay for entertainment licenses, but what they ended up doing was outlawing everything, including church services.
The new law states, in effect, that any entertainment, for any purpose, at any time, in any place, under any circumstances, is illegal without benefit of a license. And yes, this does include your private home.
If you have a couple of friends over for a dinner party and you trot your nine-year old daughter out to play ‘Flight of the Bumble Bee’ on her cornet for them, you have broken the law, and little Susie will have to go to jail. Likewise, if a drunken pub patron beings spontaneously singing ballads, the landlord will have to jump over the bar and shut him up before someone in authority hears him.
Having enjoyed music at my local pub in the States, and having heard nothing but music in Ireland, I was puzzled and disappointed to find the pubs here devoid of entertainment. The only place to hear live folk music is at a ‘folk club’ where dues are involved, ostensibly to pay for the license. Being folk fans, my wife and I had to give it a try.
The club met in a large hall where we sat in semi-circular rows of chairs facing a microphone, reminiscent of those ‘shake-n-bake’ type churches I used to belong to in another life. One by one, the members got up, sang a song or recited a poem, received polite applause and sat down again. I was reminded of a big family get together, where all the children are expected to do a ‘party piece.’
The people were all very nice, but extremely earnest. There were a lot of beards and wire-rimmed spectacles.
The only music I get to hear these days, aside from the radio (and, yes, we had to get a license for that, as well) is at my bagpipe band practice. In light of this legislation, it makes me wonder how we are allowed to gather weekly at the hall, play bagpipes together for two hours and not need a license.
Although, maybe that’s not considered ‘entertainment.’
Winter in Sussex
07 January 2003
The glitter is gone, the twinkling lights have been turned off, the holiday decorations are packed away and the festivities are over. The nights are long, the days grey and wet and everybody has a cold. It must be winter.
The holidays were a hoot, however, beginning with my office Christmas Do. (Yes, we’re still allowed to call Christmas ‘Christmas’ over here, though the PC Police are beginning to make inroads.) This was my first Christmas here as a living, working UK resident and it was great fun to watch my co-workers shooting off party poppers, pulling Christmas Crackers (a sort of exploding party favor) and wearing silly hats at the dinner table. It was as if they’d forgotten they were British.
From then on it was the usual flurry of dinners, outings and nipping down to the pub. As is my habit, I opted to remain home on New Year’s Eve. I was not, however, able to observe the tradition of watching the ball drop in Times Square, so I had to settle for some really bizarre TV shows, which made little mention of the shift from 2002 to 2003.
As it turned out, that didn’t matter; we weren’t likely to miss it. Another British custom is the setting off of fireworks at midnight on New Year’s Eve. Fireworks are legal here and so, at the critical time, it sounded as if The Battle of Britain had broken out again. My wife and I stepped out onto the balcony where, all around us, we could see and hear fireworks shooting into the night sky.
New Year’s Day found us in London at a concert; another British tradition. The finale featured inspiring songs such as ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ and, of course, ‘Rule Britannia,’ where the female vocalist pulled open a seam on her gown and turned herself into a singing Union Jack. Many people in the audience were on their feet waving little flags (obviously, they’d done this before) and everybody was screaming out the chorus: “Rule Britannia, Britannia rule the waves . . .”
This time, I didn’t wonder that they’d forgotten they were British, only that they’d forgotten they’d lost the Empire.
Seriously though, it was all great fun and an inspiring way to wrap up the season and begin the New Year.
Weather-wise, winter in Sussex couldn’t be much different from New York. We have had some warm Christmases there, but this year, I hear, they were buried in snow and spent a few days digging out, while here we were drenched with rain and spent a few nervous days eyeing the rising rivers. Many did break their banks and there was some flooding but the past two days have dawned clear and cold, giving the waters a chance to recede.
For the first time since my arrival, I have seen snow. About two Centimeters fell the other morning; I took photos. Centimeters! Back in NY they measure snowfall in feet.
So here, as everywhere, with the festive season behind us, there is nothing left to do but get on with it. I have to admit to some dreary days but, despite the almost daily parade of low clouds and the odd sprinkling of snow, it is very green here, unlike in NY, where the intense cold puts everything it doesn’t kill into deep hibernation. Even now, as I rattle my way toward the coast and my office, the meadows, the downs, the forests, gardens and hedgerows are all vivid green, dusted with frost and sparkling in the morning light. That, alone, makes the winter just a little bit more cheerful and easier to endure.
So far.
