A bit about the weather during this last trip (I apologize in advance):
For a week or so before heading off to the U.K., the weather here in Madrid featured persistently gray skies, cold temperatures, rain. Day after day. Not very user-friendly. The day before I left, it gave way to blue skies, sunshine. Cold, but nice.
Thursday morning -- the plane takes off, sun beginning to poke its way into view in the eastern sky. We head north, clouds cover everything. We arrive in London to find gray skies, cold temperatures, rain. Weather that remains pretty much the case for the next three days.
Sunday morning -- I drag myself out of bed at an early hour to catch a train north to Stoke-on-Trent. The clouds are gone leaving blue sky, the sun slowly pulling itself into view to the east. As it's Sunday morning, most sane British humans are home in bed, few trains are running. Those of us foolish enough to attempt travel in a northerly direction get herded onto buses which take us from London to Northampton, where further transport awaits. From there, I find myself on a beautiful, sleek train moving through towns with names like Rugby, Nuneaton, Tarworth. One other traveler shares that coach with me, tranquility reigns. I get out my walkperson radio/DVD player, put on A Charlie Brown Christmas, pull out a Spanish magazine, pass the trip happily. As we move north, clouds creep into view. The sunlight dims, then disappears. Showers start up. We pull into Stoke-on-Trent to find gray skies, cold temperatures, rain.
Sense a pattern?
But. Next morning: clouds give way to sunshine, and that's how the rest of my time in Stoke goes. Clear skies. So nice. Cold, yes -- people bundled up, cheeks red, the mornings revealing ground and cars covered with thick, heavy frost -- but with plenty of sunshine.
Enough with weather blahblah.
High points of my time in the Midlands:
My friend Dermot taking me to an old pub/restaurant not far from Stoke for a delicious, satisfying meat 'n' potatoes style lunch, the place filled with English types, mostly young couples and groups of old folks. And one 30ish Japanese couple with a mighty active young child, a boy -- happy, curious, providing loads of entertainment.
Spending Sunday afternoon in Stoke's ceramics museum -- an interesting place, way more interesting, it turns out, than the term 'ceramics museum' might indicate.
Dinner with five of Dermot's friends at an Indian restaurant whose decorative scheme featured framed prints of Salvador Dalí paintings, along with other, more typically English, scenes (as the in-house sound system pumped out Indian techno-pop). We were a rambunctious bunch, too rambunctious for our waiter, whose low opinion of us was confirmed when we spent half an hour at meal's end playing a game in which everyone writes the name of a well-known personality on a piece of paper, sticks it on the forehead of the person sitting next to them (so that everyone but the person wearing the name knows who they are), who then asks yes/no questions of the rest of the group until each has figured out the name stuck to their forehead. Way funnier (and more frustrating) than it sounds. Two 20-something Brit males who arrived to dine went a bit wild upon spotting us paper-foreheaded types, trying to paste cloth napkins to their foreheads in mocking imitation. When it became clear their commentary had no effect on us, they turned their attention elsewhere. The waiter's low opinion of us never seemed to waiver.
A field trip to Manchester, an hour north, taking up most of my second day visiting Dermot. A mighty interesting city, a blend of industrial and modern post-industrial. Lots of energy, good fish and chips.
Stoke-on-Trent, by the way, was home to John Tolkien, eldest son of J.R.R. Tolkien, where he worked for over 30 years as a parish priest. Dermot made a point of taking me past a street named Tolkien Way, an address with some serious cachet these days. (And speaking of Tolkien, I don't think I've ever seen a film get the kind of reviews that The Return of The King is getting. I may have to experience the bugger for myself later today.)
Written two days ago:
4 p.m., Dec. 16, London -- Sitting in a café on The Strand, sipping a cappuccino, the day outside slowly giving way to twilight. Around me the minutes pass in a wash of sound and motion, people and traffic passing by without pause outside the café's windows. The sound of many vehicles blends with that of passing footsteps and voices in conversation, in a way that strangely resembles the ebb and flow of ocean surf.
Inside the café, Christmas music drifts through the air -- sometimes pleasantly jazzy, sometimes teeth-grindingly hopped up, brassy, difficult to tune out -- along with the smells of coffee and the sounds of customers coming and going, staff at work, counter transactions. Life going on all around, ceaselessly.
This day started for me at 6 a.m. in Stoke-on-Trent. A two-hour train ride south had me in London by 10:30, an amazing transition of darkness giving way to rolling countryside and towns whizzing past (flashes of church steeples, dark rows of tired looking homes), daylight slowly revealing a dramatic mid-December morning, turbulent skies looming over fields blanched with frost.
And then London -- packed Underground trains, streets and stations filled with rivers of people striding intently on to their day. The loudest sounds: the fast-moving footsteps of many, many people, voices talking into cellphones, discussing meetings, deals, papers that will or won't be signed.
Stashed my luggage, hoovered down a plate of pretty good breakfast food at a greasy spoon near the station, gravitated to the South Bank. Checked out an overhyped Dalí exhibition, passed the rest of the afternoon wandering about, watching people, activity.
rws 8:49 AM [+]