Trendy But Casual

At High Speed

This afternoon I'm racing off to Brussels on a high-speed train - my first trip through the Chunnel. (In the old days we took ferries.) And this means a short post here: I have to start the cross-London trek to Waterloo very soon, and I've yet to stuff clothes into a bag, slather myself with make-up and apply blister plasters to every surface of both feet.

So quickly then: I have loads of photos to post, but right now I'll confine it to pictures taken in Borough Market yesterday. I've visited this incredible food market for three days running - on Thursday on the way back from the Globe Theatre where I was getting tickets for Othello and had to take shelter from the torrential rain in Shipps' Tearooms; on Friday when I had to trek back to Shipps to collect the ring I'd stupidly left on the table (can't write with it on, you see!); and yesterday to have lunch at the superb restaurant Roast with my friend Rowena. I had Manx kippers, pictured below. (Manx = Isle of Man = T.Middy's ancestral homeland.)

People who talk about the crummy food in England need to drag their brains (and tired jokes) out of the 50s and get themselves over here: the food is superb. On the way down to London Bridge from one of the many libraries I've been assaulting this week, I wandered through the Exmouth Market, another foodie haven; the street's also home to fabulous restaurant Moro.

Here's Borough market, on the south bank of the Thames, near Southwark Cathedral. Wish me luck in Belgium, home of Poirot, Henin, moules frites, etc ...

From London, with apologies

Sorry for not posting since I arrived, but I've been dashing around - caught in the Great Deluge last Friday, when numerous train/tube stations were closed; visiting small and strange libraries to do research (a local history library in Stepney, which was Dickensian and atmospheric and very useful, and the Zoo archives, to read the 1863 guidebook, among other things); and speeding off to the Isle of Wight for a very productive day of research at Osborne.

This latter day-trip was particularly ambitious, starting at 7:30 in the morning in Shepherd's Bush and ending up twelve hours later in Brighton. It involved, in order: two tubes, a train, a ferry, a train (actually a re-purposed old Tube train); two buses, the ferry again, and three trains.

Today I'm back in London, with blisters EVERYWHERE on my feet and a slight feeling of motion sickness ...

More trains and appointments and adventures beckon - I'll post again this weekend, with pictures.

The Old Country

I'm in England; so is my suitcase, after an overnight stay in Dulles airport - because apparently two hours is not long enough for the baggage handlers there to transfer a bag from one United flight to another. The weather yesterday when I arrived was spectacular - sunny and breezy, the daylight lasting well into the evening. Currently I'm staying with my good friend (and ex-colleague) Liam in Hampton Wick, just across the river from Kingston-Upon-Thames. (Good shops, white swans and houseboats on the river, and - luckily - a Starbucks where I can get wireless access.)

I've already noticed a number of changes in London/the U.K. - unsurprising, as it's four years since I visited last, and it's thirteen years since I lived here. For example, everyone on TV and in the new cabinet has a pronounced regional accent, something that used to be forbidden by law in the old days. (R.I.P. Received Pronunciation.) Broadsheet newspapers like The Times, The Independent and The Guardian have shrunk to tabloid or Euro-tabloid size. At Heathrow, a madhouse as ever, traffic is not permitted anywhere near the runways: it took us nearly half an hour of driving to escape the place. Twenty-five pounds, the sum I was given by United to make up for not having any clothes or toiletries for 24 hours, doesn't go very far at all at Boots the Chemists these days. And Liam is right: The Royle Family is one of the most hilarious TV shows ever. I saw one episode on a plane trip years ago, but he has the whole series on DVD. I know this last point doesn't really qualify as a change: it was just something I missed out during the wilderness years in New York, etc.

Here are some pictures taken in the grounds of Hampton Court yesterday around seven PM. When Liam came home, we took a walk through the fields and then walked into the gardens through an open back gate. This was one of the first palaces I visited on our family trip to the U.K. in 1978 - that day it was raining, and we all got wet trying to escape the maze. But I was instantly addicted to the stately homes and historic places of Britain: during that trip, I drove everyone crazy asking if we could stop at yet another ruin or castle. Too many Jean Plaidy novels, I guess.

If all this pastoral bliss is too much for you, visit Earthgoat, where Grendel has written an excellent post about Holland, and check out those saucy Dutch TV commercials. And if you yearn for literary chat, Guy Somerset, my editor at the Dominion Post, has an opinionated lit blog called Shelf Life. Chatting with one of the higher-ups at the Dom Post during a Creative New Zealand seminar last month, I suggested that Guy would make an excellent blogger. Next thing: Guy has a blog. But is he grateful? Not at all.

Land of the Free

Freedom isn't free: it costs $400. Or at least it costs $330, plus $70 for "biometrics." And on July 30, it goes up to $675.

Yes, fellow resident legal aliens, if you want to apply for US citizenship, this is the month to do it. Unless you want to pay an additional $275. Checks are payable to the Department of Homeland Security.

I'm getting off lightly, actually - the cost of a Green Card is going from $325 to $930. This increase in fees may be the reason for the huge increase in citizenship applications this year.

My Green Card will turn ten years old next May, so it needs replacing. But if/when I become a citizen, how will I get out of all those annoying market research phone polls asking to speak to a registered Lousiana voter?

Tomorrow I'm off to England, so the next blog post will come from London. Possibly from Top Shop on Oxford Street.

Bayou Farewell, and other references

Last night we went out for a drink (several drinks) with my colleagues Dwight and Tom.We went (after dinner at Bacco in the Quarter) to the Bayou Bar in the Hotel Pontchartrain. The hotel, which is on St Charles Avenue in the Lower Garden District, opened in 1927; Walker Percy lived there for a while, as did Tennessee Williams. Big names like Richard Burton and Walt Disney stayed there once upon a time, and Anne Rice was all over it like a rash: she set part of The Witching Hour there. Phil Melancon, pianist and cabaret performer, is the bar’s big attraction three nights a week

The hotel is closing at the end of July for renovations. (I had to switch from Grey Goose to Belvedere after two drinks, because all the former was gone, and they’re not re-stocking.) The renovation is good news for New Orleanians with fond memories of the hotel’s glory days – not such good news for its staff, most of whom are getting laid off (including Kevin, the renowned bartender), and for Dwight, who had booked most of his out-of-town wedding guests into the hotel and scheduled the rehearsal dinner there in August.

But the place certainly needs renovation. The Bayou Bar smells as though the place flooded (which it didn’t) and looks like the victim of too many ill-conceived and half-finished redecorations. According to the hotel's website, the bar was added in 1947, and features canvas murals depicting scenes of Louisiana bayous, birds, and aquatic flowers painted by the noted New Orleans artist, Charles Reinike. Unfortunately, the bar also features shabby furniture, one of those sticking-out-brick feature walls, and a curious window display that involves a crumpled dark tablecloth, a stone urn, and some kind of mini-lantern. In other words, the sort of quasi-European vignette you’d expect to see in a branch of La Madeleine.

We spent most of the time there arguing about Dwight’s bizarre definition of the phrase “greatest movies of all time.” He seems to think this includes Ishtar and Starship Troopers.

However, I wouldn’t mind watching his favorite TV series, Ice Road Truckers. It’s about truckers hauling supplies to diamond mines across frozen lakes in Canada’s Northwest Territory. (Dwight said it was in Alaska, but we’ve already established he has a problem with accuracy and definitions. Perhaps he has it confused with another of his favorite shows, Deadliest Catch, which is about Alaskan fishermen going after king crab.) Ice Road Truckers is the highest-rated original program ever on the History Channel. My idea of a great TV show is Petticoat Junction or Rainbow, but I’d like to check this out.

On the subject of the Greatest Movies, Easy Rider was on TV this morning. I watched it up to the great-line moment (“We’re eatin’ their food!”) and then, as ever, felt all Easy-Ridered-out. We’ve driven many times, on the way to Marksville, past the now-closed diner in Morganza where the restaurant scene was filmed.

But now I must get on with some work.

Meanwhile, in New Orleans

Apologies for the absence of posts: I’ve been on deadline since I got back from New Zealand, working as fast as I can to finish up two big projects before I head off to the U.K. on Tuesday.

In New Orleans, the crepe myrtles are in bloom and it’s too hot to go outside - mid 90s every day, with 90% humidity. The heat index today is 107 degrees.

And there’s this dismal report in The New York Times:

“As of late May, … there were still more than 30,000 families displaced by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita spread across the country in apartments paid for by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and another 13,000 families, down from a peak of nearly 18,000, marooned in trailer or mobile home parks, where hunger is so prevalent that lines form when the truck from the food bank appears … Hardly any of the 77,000 rental units destroyed in New Orleans have been rebuilt … Despite their longing, some evacuees are afraid to return; they must choose between formaldehyde-laced trailers and a city they view as contaminated, poorly protected from floods and more violent than ever before.”

Welcome home!

Home

I'm back in New Orleans, and going through the usual homesickness that follows any trip to New Zealand, especially a long one. While I was waiting to change planes in Los Angeles, I wasted some time looking at magazines and newspapers. The Globe headline was 'Oprah: Only Six Years to Live!' That's when I knew I was back in America.

Now I'm on the other side of the Pacific, I'll miss my niece's cat, Marilyn. Here is a tribute-in-pictures to her fabled beauty: