After two wonderful weeks in the UK, I’m back in Chicago and ready to shower this blog in photos and happy memories. For the first half of the trip, I worked from the London office while Randi gallivanted around the city during the day and took a trip to Paris with Tash. But we still crammed in a lot, starting almost immediately with the Heath…
Hampstead Heath
Yes, within hours of passing through Heathrow’s pleasingly-efficient biometric passport gates, I was stomping around Hampstead Heath to sate months of longing for a swim in the mixed pond. It was quite a hunt, but the moment we splashed into the water was totally worth it. Joined by the wonderful Abbi, we dried off in the sole summery day of the week with a pitcher of Pimm’s and the first of many pub meals. Bangers and mash: job done.
Public service green screen
The next morning, we kicked off our tour of Dominic-approved British institutions by visiting BBC Broadcasting House. Having fallen in love with W1A earlier in the year, Randi (this blog’s Director of Better) was also excited to stalk any room with the slightest connection to Just A Minute. I highly approve. As you can see, we also had a go at reading the news, during which I spoke the vast majority of words on the autocue in the correct order.
‘Fact’ times ‘Importance’ equals NEWS
On Thursday night, Randi’s friend Maisie joined us and Matt, Laura and the (now engaged!) Caroline and Charles for a traditional night of wine, politics and unflattering photos. (At least of me.) Happily, the brashly well-connected and snappily-dressed members of the group had arrived first and marched right into a private room… I certainly wasn’t complaining.
I don’t think I can caption this group ‘Themes & Sources’ anymore
The following night, a large group of us descended on NewsRevue – well I was hardly going to miss this, was I? – which was its usual excellent self. And also about 90% dedicated to the Labour leadership race, which I’d like to think of as Randi’s pay-off for taking in so much useless trivia about British politics. (Fear not, they also included Donald Trump’s rendition of America Fuck Yeah. It was great.)
Simon offers to show me his Jeremy Corbyn tattoo
Joshua! Simon! More drinks than seems necessary!
Besties
With so much politics, it was only right that we toured Parliament – that absurd Victorian Gothic palace which still gives me thrills of excitement to walk through. You can peer over the balconies of as many staid state and federal legislatures as you want, and they are impressive in their own way, but nothing comes close to the combat fields of the green benches in the House of Commons.
Definitely London
But there are other British traditions which are equally important, and one of them is the cheerful determination to continue a back garden barbecue through the drizzle of a Bank Holiday weekend. So a million thanks to Cat and Matt for sharing this experience, and letting us crash at their new flat after celebrating Cat’s birthday with many fine people (Groupon and non-Groupon alike) at a nearby Leytonstone pub. Not pictured below are Biff and Christa, but rest assured they also made it!
Sheltering with Marielle and Emily
So perfectly English
The morning after, with Cat and Matt
So far this all sounds like a hurried clip-show from the last few years of my life in London, but I also got to try a totally new experience for me: Time Run, an escape-the-room style adventure. Katie, Randi and I were pitted against a team of Regans in an immersive time-travelling game which was SO MUCH FUN. And probably the closest I will ever come to becoming a Doctor Who companion, especially as we kinda failed the prospective companion test by not succeeding in our ultimate quest. But we did solve a whole bunch of puzzles along the way in three exquisitely designed sets, and I recommend booking yourself a Time Run unreservedly.
Katie’s eager to get started on our time-travelling quest
Team Adipose
The other side to the week, of course, was just spending time with my family again. It never feels like enough time, but my mum was generous enough to throw an afternoon tea for the whole extended family in one go, so at least I got to see (almost) everyone. And for all of the running around, one of my favourite memories from this trip will just be sitting alone with my dad, in a darkened room, drinking Old Speckled Hen and listening to Doctor Who soundtracks and other pieces of music we share. It was good to be home.
Set the clocks to BST, crack open a packet of digestive biscuits and start putting the letter U back into words where it belongs: I’m visiting home again!
Randi and I are flying to London tomorrow evening, which is inordinately exciting, because even the simplest things will make me happy. Like a toffee yoghurt. I haven’t had a toffee yoghurt in over a year, and that’s not cool. Before we leave, though, a few Chicago things:
- It was Katie’s last week at work – a seriously sad development, tempered by envy/admiration/longing for her move to New York. (New York! Almost as good as London!) Her farewell party was at Parrots, which I hope I can call a ‘dive bar’ while conveying great affection. Was great to see a bunch of people – Katie has always been great at bringing well-matched friends together – including Aaron from Groupon days gone by. We’ll miss you, Katie 😎
- Our second Common Room play this month: Loving Repeating, a musical based on the life of Gertrude Stein and her relationship with Alice B. Toklas. I had zero idea who Gertrude Stein was, but brushed up in advance (American, lived in Paris, collected art, wrote, didn’t like commas) and enjoyed the production. I mean, it wasn’t my normal arena of interest, but they did a good job incorporating what was distinctive about Stein’s written style into the fabric of the music itself. Also, someone at Common Room tipped us all off that cows = orgasms, and it’s damned helpful to have metaphors pointed out in advance. (I mean that entirely sincerely.)
- We failed to go mini golfing with Todd and Carolyn. In fairness, it was approximately eight thousand degrees outside. So we stayed in and ate pizza and played Fibbage instead. Fair?
- We did manage to go drinking with Ellen and Kannan, swapping our favourite podcasts and evangelising Kindles. We are cool beyond measure.
- We also managed to go bowling
in the 1940sat The Fireside Bowl:
Randi, me, Robert, Marti, Luis and an anti-Soviet missile launching terminal
Rachel takes the stage at Common Room
After a summer hiatus, Common Room is back! If you’re in Chicago, cancel everything else and come along to the next one. If you’re lucky, you’ll even get pulled on stage for the traditional ‘interview with an audience member’ segment, as Randi’s friend Rachel discovered last week.
We also introduced her to the perpetual comedy motion machine which is Improv Shakespeare at the iO. Night of the Living Bed – the fourth production I’ve seen – was as rip-roaringly brilliant as ever and contained a commendable sequence of single-payer healthcare system puns. (Which is more than can be said of the first Republican primary debate… although if you listened closely, you could just about hear Donald Trump praising Scotland’s NHS, which was somewhat surreal.)
Lauri, Randi and me
Sadly, after his final show on Thursday, Jon Stewart is no longer around to make all that nonsense feel better. A logical alternative is to turn to drink, which we greatly enjoyed with Lauri on Friday night. And on Saturday, AJ (of the ‘British, newly arrived in Chicago’ variety) joined us for Fabulation, or The Re-Education of Undine. Having decided to buy tickets after seeing a few scenes at Common Room, it grew increasingly familiar until I finally searched my own brain blog and confirmed that, yes, I actually first saw this play at the Tricycle back in 2006 on a school trip. With great consideration I had avoided spoiling the plot for my future self, a courtesy I will now repeat in case this happens once again, but for the record it’s certainly a very funny and enjoyable play.
Finally, two more authentic experiences I can now check off:
- Being turned away from urgent care because of the ‘wrong’ insurance (not for me – and yes, everyone’s OK)
- Having a debit card cloned and used for fraudulent purchases at McDonald’s (and yes, I got all the money back and everything’s OK)
Whether you measure these things in Celsius or Fahrenheit, it’s unreasonably hot outside. To avoid frazzling to a crisp, I’ve turned indoors for some housekeeping. But housekeeping is hard, so I’ve merrily press-ganged others into service too. First, Randi and I stole Jatherine’s car and joy rode to IKEA so that after a year of living in my apartment I might have somewhere in my room to indulge in extravagances like (a) putting clothes away and (b) sitting down. Then Todd revealed that he (and I quote) “loves” putting IKEA furniture together, so I plied him with Budweiser and basically did nothing for 2 hours, 1 minute and 15 seconds (target time: 30-45 minutes) until I had a chest of drawers. Success.
Even more fun, because it didn’t involve going to Schaumburg, Illinois, was virtual housekeeping. I re-jiggered my home page, added some fancy maps of places I’ve been, and upgraded to Windows 10 on the day it came out because OF COURSE I was going to do this.
And occasionally, I was social: meeting Randi’s work peeps and feeling quietly ashamed for never having read Kierkegaard, celebrating Nolan’s birthday, that kind of thing. But most importantly, because it generated photos, I also went to the state capital of Illinois: Springfield!
The state capitol. The roof is apparently occupied by Cybermen.
I’m proud of this photo because Randi seems tall
Trying to be helpful and give them some warning
“Excuse me, but you’re doing it wrong”
With my bffl, Abraham Lincoln
The original inspiration for this trip was meeting someone who worked for the under-threat-of-closure Illinois State Museum, and wanting to visit while we still could. But Springfield is not the kind of town you head back to in a hurry, so we also took in the state capitol building, the old state capitol building (they claimed it got too small but it seemed perfectly adequate to me) and, most excitingly, the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum. Strictly speaking, only Hoover and onwards got ‘official’ museums from the National Archives and Records Administration, but some of the golden oldies were popular enough to inspire unofficial efforts. And who would begrudge Lincoln his due?
Springfield clings pretty closely to Lincoln in general: they’ve gone so far as to preserve a whole street where he lived in nineteenth century style, though relenting to twenty first century sensibility by adding a warning sign that the paving of this era ‘may be uneven’. (I dread to think of what they would make of Brent council’s paving standards.) But screw museums and memorials: in Springfield, the 16th President is apt to wander into a bar and strike up conversation. Nice chap, and very forgiving. I approve.
Have you ever arrived at a party and realised that no one you know has arrived yet? But there’s a free bar, so you grab a drink and mingle?
Lesson learned: the mingling bit is significantly harder when you’re in Poland, and everybody else is speaking Polish.
Nevertheless, I had a great and productive two weeks in Warsaw. As most people know, the city was almost completely destroyed during the Second World War, but the modern replacement which rose from the ruins is a lot more attractive than the Soviet brutalism you might imagine. Meanwhile, Old Town is quite astonishing as a monument to rebirth and reconstruction.
A baseball player (don’t ask) in Warsaw’s Old Town
Monument to the Warsaw Uprising of 1944
Another reminder of the uprising
MARIE CURIE WAS POLISH
Not sure what this was doing in the middle of Warsaw, but I like it
Only 1444 km away!
Other highlights included ordering French food with Steven (with a horrified “that’s not French…” reaction when it arrived), museums to the Warsaw Uprising and Jewish History, and my artificially-engineered multi-stop journey home on the last night just so that I could try the underground system. (Clean, bright and purple, with trains arriving every few minutes, if you were wondering.) I also enjoyed a walking tour which ended in free vodka shots – and very refreshingly cold they were too!
As a wonderful bonus, Katie and I also spent one of the weekends in Prague. Everybody always says Prague is beautiful, and it didn’t disappoint. After taking an overnight sleeper train – which I will always find inherently joyful and thrilling, especially when there’s no messing about with passports or border controls – we took a walking tour to take in all the main sights. And man, this walking tour was good. Our guide, Karel, was engaging and charismatic, and a perfect introduction to the city. (A city no less charming for the fact that beer is literally cheaper than bottled water.)
Is there anything cooler than a transnational sleeper train?
Welcome to Prague
Not pictured: Weeping Angels descending from Prague Castle to kill us
Scenes of death made us awkward
After a ‘Premium Economy’ upgraded flight back (oh ye gods of yield management pricing), I arrived back in Chicago in time for another Groupon Summer StreetFest. And a heatwave. As April and I laboured over a game of giant Jenga, it felt more like a military exercise…
Beth E . Dubowe-Lawrence on China, Part 3: Chongqing & Chengdu: “Again an awesome adventure to share this with you” Apr 21, 19:13
