Royal Windsor

Today I took the train out to Windsor, with hundreds of other tourists, to see the Queen's official residence. It is a pretty amazing place, I have to admit, at least from the outside.

I think the furnishings are a bit overdone and kind of worn, but I guess that is what happens when things date back to the 17th century.

Speaking of shameless wealth, inside the castle is Queen Mary's doll house. This was built for her in the early turn of the century, and took three years to build. It is lovingly furnished with lifelike miniatures - everything from the books in the drawing room to the tiny brushes and dustpans in the maids closet. I guess it was shown at a couple of festivals before coming to rest permanently in the castle. It is amazing to me that the royals are so wealthy they could commission a three-year dollhouse project that no one probably even got to play with.

Also open today was the Frogmore House, so I made the journey over there to check it out as well. I didn't pay extra for the guidebook, but I surmised it was a country house, a more normal size, with amazing gardens, specimen trees and ponds all around. It was also home to many family photos and a lot of tacky knicknacks. I guess even the royals feel the need at times to purchase dioramas made of seashells and fake bouquets of flowers in glass globes.

It was a bit surreal to see the starbucks and mcdonalds across from the castle on the high street, and to see planes flying overhead every fifteen minutes or so.

Summer London Photos on Flickr

I found my compact flash card reader and got a new battery charger for my camera so now I am back in business. Here is a small set of photos from my first three months in London (with a few snuck in from Edinburgh).

Stop Staring at Me

Enough of the mundane stuff for a while. Today I went to the National Portrait Gallery, one of the many free museums in London. I was in the mood to see some art, but wanted it to be a bit more approachable, and portraits certainly fall into that category.

The whole gallery itself is a pretty remarkable concept. It has been around since 1856, and I guess the first portrait it acquired was one of William Shakespeare. Today it has everything from portraits of the Tudors to photographs of the CEOs of Orange and Vodaphone. Mostly Brits, yes, but lots of others who are influential to British history as well. I saw portraits of David Bowie, Edmund Burke, Mary Queen of Scots, the Queen Mother, Winston Churchil, Lord Nelson, ...I could go on and on. It was a pretty neat gallery but after a couple of hours I had the weird feeling that all the pictures were looking at me. After all most of them are painted that way with the wandering eyes.

The gallery keeps on getting bigger - since 1980 they have been commissioning new portraits of influential folks, and they also sponsor a portrait of the year award (well, BP does) , so there was a roomful of new portraits of all kinds of anonymous figures. Pretty amazing stuff.

Grocery tales

I was thinking about my dishwasher salt today (by the way, it was successful - my dishes are clean at last) and I thought of a few more quirky grocery things that are different from the 'States.

• Butter - comes in a big block about the size of two sticks. No helpful measuring lines to cut off just what you need. There are English and Irish varieties, haven't quite sussed out the difference.
• Milk - comes in very small pint containers - the biggest they sell are about half gallon size. Doesn't last very long - maybe 3 or 4 days according to the sell-by and use-by dates.
• Eggs - at the store, they are not refrigerated. Makes it difficult to find them as they are in just a regular aisle.
• Coffee - sucks. No beans to grind (hello, even Carson City has that) and pre-packaged stuff with nice names and labels but tastes like crap. I gave up sampling and now just stick to canned Italian coffees. Tea is where it is at I guess. There are plenty of Starbucks, Costa Coffees, and Cafe Neros though, so getting a cup around town is not a problem.
  
• Beer - sold by the bottle or in 4-packs. Very rarely do I see bigger packages - Stella seems to be the only one going for 12 packs - probably because it is the French answer to Bud.
• Vegetables - are often packaged, like at trader joe's - and don't last very long.
• Muffins - English muffins are just called Muffins. For some reason that always makes me laugh.

I shop generally at Waitrose, which is a kind of fancy, mostly organic store like a Whole Foods or a New Seasons. Occassionally I also got to Sainsbury's, but only if I am in the neighborhood. It seems like there are a lot of organic foods for sale in general, it must be a food craze like it is in Portland.

This last week I finally succumbed to ordering online from Waitrose's brother - Ocado, which I have to admit was a great experience. I found everything I wanted online, picked a time for the order to be delivered, and it showed up perfectly on time. The guy brought the bags all the way up to my flat, and they were neatly sorted in orange and purple bags telling me which needed to be frigerated. I had signed up for it a month or so ago and never ordered, and I got these great marketing things from them acting like a jilted lover, and begging me to come back. It was very cute, but it never worked until I had back spasms and didn't want to carry anything.

As with most big cities, you have to do your shopping once or twice a week - for a couple of reasons. First, you usually have to carry it home yourself, and second, things go bad fast. I have seen big supermarkets in the burbs, like Tesco, that look more like Wal-Mart type experiences, but I am in no hurry to go and check out that shopping lifestyle.

Streaky, Salty Dishes

A couple of weeks ago, I ran my dishes through the dishwasher and they didn't get clean at all. My dishwasher is a SMEG, which is a pretty high end brand here I guess, and looks pretty neat, as do all my appliances, so I thought it was kind of odd it would go on the blink like that. The soap didn't really come out of the little basket, so I thought it just needed to be ran again.

After two more washings, it became evident that my dishes were not going to come clean. In fact, they got really cloudy and gross, with a gray layer of film on them. I had no idea what was going on, but since I was going to the states, I figured I would deal with it when I got back.

When I got home, I had the wild idea of reading the manual for the dishwasher. In the troubleshooting area, it told me that if my dishes were streaky, it was probably because the salt was low.

Salt, I thought? in the dishwasher??? WTF?

Sure enough, there is a space in my dishwasher to hold salt. It is filled with about a litre of water, and you pour special dishwashing salt in there until it is full, 170 grams or something like that. I guess it lasts for about 20 washings before you have to do it again. I had never seen anything like it before, but when i went to the Ocado website to order my groceries (yes, I am lazy, but I hurt my back, remember?) there were about 5 or 6 different brands of salt. I chose Finish.

I guess I must have hard water. I hadn't really noticed otherwise. Huh.

My first taste of socialised medicine

Today I had incredibly painful back spasms for the first time in my life. I could barely bend over, sit down, stand up or walk at points during the day. Maybe it is because I slept curled up on an airplane for several hours Sunday/Monday, or perhaps it was due to my extremely heavy backpack and suitcase I dragged up and down the train steps yesterday? Hmmm.

In any case, today I experimented with the UK healthcare system. I called NHS direct, which is a nurse intake sort of service. I guess I wasn't considered urgent, because it took the nurse about an hour to ring me back. He was very nice, and recommended that I go to a walk-in centre up the street from me. He said it they could make sure nothing more serious was wrong and give me some stronger meds. What the heck, I thought.

So, I took a painful bus ride up the street to Whittington Hospital. It was your typical hospital waiting room. It was strange that emergency was mixed in with a hospital clinic. I think the main difference was that the walk-in clinic was run primarily by nurses.

About 2 hours later (I completed one book and nearly finished the other I brought), I finally got a dose of drugs to help, then about 15 minutes later saw a nurse who gave me some more to take home. I thought it was interesting that they gave me a box of medicine - prescription strength - without sending me to a pharmacy or making me see a doctor. I guess nurses have more authority in an NHS system.

I also got chastized a bit for not having a GP doctor. The guy who checked me in said something about how I won't likely be able to come back - they usually let you go the first time but after that I have to go to a GP or get referred by one. Something about the fact I have only lived here a couple of months and haven't paid in enough. He talked to fast and I was squirming in pain, so I don't really remember.

but what i do remember was our short religions discussion:

Receptionist: What is your religion?
Me: I don't have one really.
Receptionist: Now you do. It's None.
Me: laughing
Receptionist: I am into necrophila, sado masochism and bestiality. Am I flogging a dead horse? Hell yes!

He claimed he was quoting a book or a movie or something. But in any case, not your typical hospital admitting person!

Welcome to my Next Blog

I moved to London on the 31st of May to take a new job and begin a new adventure in the United Kingdom. Since I got here, I have been trying to think of a way to both remember my experience as well as keep my friends and family posted with what is going on in my life. Since I seem to be doing okay with my other blog, I thought I would give this a try.

Ironically, I leave tomorrow morning to go to back to the states for a week. But when I return, I will hopefully have some interesting things to say. But now, unfortunately, I should get ready for bed. I have to leave my flat tomorrow morning before 6 a.m.