Durham loses marks for ditching the National Rail symbol
For the second week of our trip, we embarked on Dom’s Complete Railway Tour of the UK (Abridged) using our magical BritRail passes, which grant non-residents an unlimited ride on trains across the country. It does feel like a scheme set up in the glory days of British Rail and then buried under a carpet, as the passes you get haven’t been updated in almost 20 years, but weirdly the merest glimpse of one is enough for a ticket inspector to decide not to bother investigating any further. And so, thus armed, we set off for our first destination. (It’s worth noting that our B&B in Bury St Edmunds was several centuries older than the country I’m writing this from.)
I’m starting to doubt the town is making much progress on the Abbey
Randi and Kuzco
Most photos of us in Cambridge feature rain and ponchos
Our next stop was a rather wet and windy Cambridge: partly for the history, partly so I could pop into the bookshop. After a day of sightseeing and sheltering, we were joined in The Eagle by Mandler and Calaresu – two of my supervisors from uni – who were kind enough to make time for a drink and some catching up. This also proved to be Randi’s opportunity to try fish pie, which she took up with relish.
(Deviation: I do wish ordering at the bar was more of a thing in the US.)
EVERYTHING HAS CHANGED at Caius. No, wait. Nothing has changed.
“Our sprinkles are different to your sprinkles”
Heading up north, we impulsively changed trains for Scarborough – which I’ve never been to before – and spent an afternoon at the seaside. There’s not a huge amount to write about Scarborough – and at one point I may have been over-ambitious in my expectations of the cliff lift “tramway” – but it was very nice to stroll along the beach and see the castle from a distance.
Who needs California?
ConSoc would be proud
Our best B&B was in Durham, because we were hosted by none other than Katie “I live here” Self! The three of us had a great time together touring the city, while also finding time to stuff ourselves with a pretty representative sample of my British food longings: Indian curries, English breakfasts, jacket potatoes and lots and lots of biscuits. It’s not about food being fancy, guys, it’s just about food being great.
Everything looked particularly beautiful here
For comparison, here we are in 2010
Talking of great: bowing to Randi’s repeated requests to see Edinburgh, we headed there next and were equally blown away by how beautiful the city is. Along with the castle, I ticked off a couple of things I didn’t manage last time, including a fantastic walking tour and a hike up Arthur’s Seat.
And of course, I checked back in with my old friend David Hume.
Seems like only one of us is getting older
Pretty stunning
At the summit
Finally, we headed to Windermere in the Lake District, which was a perfect place to walk and relax at the end of the holiday. There were sheep. There were cows. There was a bus which cost £4.20 per-person. Most importantly, though, there were stars at night – and it’s been a while since I’ve been in proper darkness, able to lie down and look up at the milky way.
Sheeeeeep!
Contemplating (mostly about how expensive buses were)
So, that’s it: a condensed account of a whistlestop tour, which hopefully did a good job at selling the country to an American. The tourist board can thank me later.
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.
Beth E . Dubowe-Lawrence on China, Part 3: Chongqing & Chengdu: “Again an awesome adventure to share this with you” Apr 21, 19:13
