Banking follies

The downside to the apparently incompetent RBS staff who neglected to order a debit card to go along with our current (checking) account: not having a debit card.

The upside to the apparently incompetent RBS staff who neglected to order a debit card to go along with our current (checking) account: calling the RBS helpline (at 8:30 PM on a Thursday!) and being promptly helped by a friendly Scottish woman who said, "Just a wee moment," at least three times.

Yup, this was one of those "British people talk funny!" posts.

Two can play at this game: The History of Primary Care in the UK

I hope that many, many years from now, I will be remembered this way too:


This post falls under the "Remind me what you are doing in London?" category. While Danny is off in the archives, I will be working in the Health Services Research Unit of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (henceforth known as The Trop). As many have pointed out, the name of this school is just dripping in colonial history (though to be fair, hygiene and sanitation improvements do more for public health than just about anything). My work will be on a "scoping study" of England, trying to see how general practitioners (GPs) and clinics are providing health-promotion and disease-prevention services. But more on my actual project when I start in August.

For now, I am doing background research on the history of primary care in the UK, how primary care is currently organized, what exactly the National Health Service does, etc. Today I was poking around the website of the Royal College of General Practitioners, which like all good British organizations, keeps great public records of its own history. One of the most interesting things was a collection of letters from the early 1950s, when the College was first starting to take shape. Apparently there were already Royal Colleges of several other specialties, like surgery and obstetrics, but general practice was always considered too mundane or antiquated to share this status. When a group of GPs got together and started floating this idea, they got some really nice letters from other GPs around the country, with very poetic descriptions of why general practice was such an important part of the medical tradition, and why a Royal College of GPs was so important.

From one letter: "It is not popular to insist among doctors that the GP is first and foremost a healer and that his primary aim is to restore wholeness or guide his patients towards health. Health may be undefinable, but is not difficult to recognise if present." And from another: "The general practice of medicine could at this present moment be standing on the threshold of an intellectual renaissance."

Interestingly, this call for the RCGP came about because of the creation of the NHS in 1948. The NHS dictated that GPs were all responsible for a health of a particular panel of patients in their geographic area, but did not allocate any funds for these doctors to meet the needs of their new patients. Underfunded and overworked, GPs started to deliver poor-quality care and became completely demoralized. They could not encourage any high-quality young physicians to go into the field, and there was some question of whether the profession would survive.

Sound familiar??? This is shockingly reminiscent of the "perfect storm" that Cambridge Health Alliance doctor Somava Stout talks about in a recent CNN interview. Lots of new patients getting insurance and entering the patient population (good!), but still difficult to attract young physicians to a career that involves piles and piles of paperwork and will not pay back their student loans in any reasonable amount of time (bad!). I don't think that primary care in the US will spiral like it did in the UK after the NHS came into being, but big changes in reimbursement, plus a culture change around medical education to re-invigorate medical students interested in primary care, are both necessary if we are going to weather this storm. Find out what Primary Care Progress is doing to help!

A summer evening

If you've been there before, you may have been able to tell that today's RPOTD is in Trafalgar Square. We've been enjoying our own quiet neighborhood so much that it was easy to forget that we live in London, a city which is home to not only 7.5 million of its own inhabitants, but 15 million international tourists and 10 million domestic tourists a year (in 2009, at least) (Visitlondon.com, Key Visitor Statistics). Well, if I had forgotten that we live in a major tourist destination, going to Trafalgar Square was a good reminder. But not necessarily in a bad way - it's fun to hear people speaking all different languages, all so excited to be in London, and to think "We live here!"

But anyway, on to yesterday evening, which was much more our pace. We made our first trip to the mixed bathing pond (not to be confused with the ladies or men's bathing ponds), of Hampstead Heath. For just 2 GBP you can spend as much time as you like swimming or sunbathing (cheek to cheek with British elders, youth and families) in these fresh water ponds. The water is chilly, but nothing a lifetime of swimming in Maine didn't prepare me for. The murkiness is a bit off-putting, though; you can barely see your hand 1 foot under water. But what a treat to swim in a pond in the middle of London!

This first swimming trip invited a celebration with a Pimms cup. Pimms is what you get in the summer in England instead of sangria. It's a dark, rather bitter drink, but when you mix 1 part Pimms with 3 parts "lemonade" (which is really Sprite without the lime and a bit more fresh-tasting) and fruit you get a delightful, summery cocktail. You can get it in the states, although it's a bit expensive. Those who came to our Commonwealth party 2 years ago may have gotten a taste!



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Cheeses of England #1: Blue Vein Cheddar

Cheese: Blue Vein Cheddar
Manufacturer: Green's of Glastonbury

Sampled and purchased at the Parliament Hill Farmers' Market on 17 July.  You can't see the blue veins in this photo, but they're there.  I can't find any mention of the blue vein variety on the Green's of Glastonbury website, and this was sold at the market as discounted "ugly cheese," so it may very well be that the vein-ing is unintentional but not wholly undesirable.  It imparts a tanginess that I don't typically associate with cheddar.

In the background are slices from a multi-grain loaf baked by the Flour Station.

A birthday in London

Yesterday, as many of you noted with kind messages, was my birthday.  My 28th, a fact you may want to keep in mind for a brief story at the end of this blog post.  As birthdays go, this was a pretty fantastic one: good food, new friends, and more exploration of what London has to offer.

After sleeping in (helped by the fact that the bedroom in our basement is the most underground bit of the whole place, with only a bit of natural light streaming through a small window), Becca made me breakfast, constructed almost completely from this week's haul from the farmers' market.  Scrambled ggs with red onions and cheddar, with a hearty slice of a London Bloomer with tomato, basil, and buffalo mozzarella.  Ten days in, Becca has mastered the art of cooking eggs on a gas stove.

Next we took the Northern Line to Charing Cross for a short jaunt across the City.  We stopped briefly in Trafalgar Square, hopefully for the one and only time this year (except to look out on it from the National Gallery).  The things that seem like perfect destinations as a 17-year-old tourist have a tendency to get rather stale after a decade, I suppose.  Still, Trafagar Square provided a remarkable contrast to the City on a Sunday: the first full of people and general chaos, the second practically devoid of all human activity (the City is London's financial district; with just 8,000 inhabitants, things get awfully quiet when the banks close - think La Défense in Paris).  By the time we reached Fleet Street after following the Strand, we practically had the place to ourselves.

But before that, our first church in London: St Clement Danes.  Designed by Christopher Wren in the late 17th century, it suffered heavy bombing in the Second World War and is now the central church of the Royal Air Force.  Most of the paraphernalia in the church relates to its current function: memorial plaques, flags of RAF units, and the like.  I was struck by its rather wide central aisle and its rather peculiar position in the middle of the Strand.  I suspect that the more time I walking around the mess of streets that is the City, the less striking things like this will be.

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St Clement also claims to be the St. Clement's mentioned in the famous first line of the English nursery rhyme "Oranges and Lemons", though this claim is hotly contested by St Clement Eastcheap.  St Clement Danes does have this plaque... so I'll leave it for you to decide.

Next it was up Ludgate Hill to St Paul's, all the while dittying "Feed the Birds".  I was intrigued by St Martin, Ludgate (another Wren church), but it's now the home of a Chinese congregation on Sundays, so it was closed to the public.

Tons to be said about St Paul's, of course, but we only stopped in for a few minutes on this trip, so I'll save the full report for a later time.  Instead, I'll try to amuse you with signs we saw walking from St Paul's to the Bank tube stop.

I'm a sucker for puns.  Especially when they involve hummus.

That's a street sign, folks.  Not "Poultry Lane" or "Poultry Road."  Just "Poultry."

A double whammy!  A funny-sounding name on one sign, and an obscure, archaic trade on the other.

After a short stop back in Dartmouth Park, we found our way over to Clissold Park in Stoke Newington to try to track down Curve for a bit of birthday ultimate frisbee.  Another warm, sunny Sunday, another London park full of people.  I haven't decided whether it's because Londoners love their parks so much or because they've been trained to soak in every last ray of sunshine in the summer.

We were just looking for some friendly pick-up, but it turns out that Curve had a match scheduled, so we got a full game in our very first appearance.  Good value.  The other team was a friendly bunch of high schoolers who had been playing together since last summer but had never played a competitive match before.  So it was a relaxed, low-key game with a teaching atmosphere.  The fact that a group of 16- and 17-year-olds from Ilford successfully arranged a game with an adult ultimate team illustrates one of the more endearing elements of English sports culture, its essential amateurish-ness.  I don't mean this in a pejorative way (though one does wonder why it's been almost 75 years since a British man won Wimbledon).  Rather, what I find so great is the idea that, on any given day, two teams, regardless of their standard of play, can get together for a game in a park.  Obviously this has its limits, but the prevalence of giant-killing in the FA Cup shows this happens even at the professional level.  You occasionally see major league baseball teams play their minor league affiliates or or university teams in exhibition games, but never in a competitive setting.  The amateurish nature of English sports promotes a rather friendly atmosphere around matches, especially at the lower standards.  In fact, I'm sure we would have gone to the pub with the other team, if not for the fact that the majority of them appeared to be 16 years old.

Not that appearances are always convincing.  Remember that bit above where I mentioned that yesterday was my 28th birthday?  Apparently I don't look it, at least to 16-year-olds.  Having heard my American accent, one of them asked me, "So, are you here on a gap year?"

That's right.  After eight years of post-secondary education and gray hairs that seem to be multiplying by the week, I apparently can still pass for 18 years old.  So here's a question for you, readers: is this a good thing or not?

After a drink at the pub with the friendly folks of Curve, it was back home, but not before a brief stop at the Happening Bagel in Finsbury Park.  It's no Kupel's, but still pretty tasty and left me picking poppy seeds out of my teeth.

Not bad for a day when we got out of bed at 10:30 in the morning.

Our second trip to the farmers' market

A brief rundown of this week's haul:
- Two loaves of bread (one a London Bloomer, another a multigrain loaf)
- Cherries
- Blackberries
- Strawberries
- Eggs
- Yogurt
- Scallions
- Lettuce
- Onions
- Cucumbers
- Tomatoes
- Carrots
- Broccoli
- Artichokes
- Basil
- Buffalo mozzarella
- Blue vein cheddar
- Wealdon goat cheese
- Cauliflower (with greenish florets)
- Lipstick chard
- Garlic
- Broad beans

Now we need to try to eat it all in the next week!

The food and parks are all well and good, but remind me why you're in England?

Ah yes, the aforementioned professional reasons for spending this year in England.  What is it that a(n) historian does on a daily basis, anyway?  Well, it depends on the day, but I'll describe today's activities to give you some sense of how I'm going to be spending the majority of my waking hours in the next ten months.

First, a bit of historical background (you'll be seeing a lot of this on the blog, I'm afraid).  The Education Act of 1944 (sometimes known as the Butler Act) established a tripartite system of secondary education in England.  You don't need to know what "tripartite system of secondary education" means, but if you're curious, the Wikipedia page I've linked to provides the details.  More importantly for my project (and therefore this blog post), the Butler Act also mandated religious education in schools supported by taxpayer funds.  To be specific, the act requires that "religious instruction [...] shall be given in every county school and in every voluntary school."

So, how do you get from the Butler Act to me spending my day at the London Metropolitan Archives?  Well, as you've probably heard by now, one of the topics I'm exploring in my dissertation is the history of religious education in state-supported schools in England after the Second World War.  England (like much of Europe) is typically understood as far more secular than the United States, but in the area of religion in the schools, the links between church and state in Britain are taken for granted in a way unheard of in the United States.  While religion has largely been banished from American public schools, it is, by law, required in English schools that receive funding support from the state.  So one of the big questions I'm exploring in my dissertation is how Christianity continued to be inculcated in English students, even while few of them went to church on Sundays and even fewer of them endured the traditional form of Christian socialization: Sunday school.

As it turns out, religious education (RE) is one of the few topics for which there is (and has never been) a national curriculum.  In other words, each local education authority (Americans, think: school board) determined on its own what RE would look like in its schools: what teacher qualifications to require, what students would learn about religion, and the like.  So if you're interested in the history of RE in postwar England, you have to look at what was occurring in individual local education authorities.

And that (with only four paragraphs of prelude!) is what I was doing today at the London Metropolitan Archives.  The main archives for the City of London and its surrounding (and ever-increasing) metropolis (see Becca's recent post for an overview of "What is London?"), the LMA holds the records of the Inner London Education Authority, which, from 1965 to 1990, was responsible for education in Inner London from 1965 to 1990 (before 1965, the London County Council held that responsibility; after 1990, each individual borough took over the administration of education within that borough).  Within the ILEA, the Standing Advisory Council for Religious Education (SACRE) was, you guessed it, responsible for the provision of religious education.

So I spent today (and will spend many more days) trawling through the records of the Standing Advisory Council for Religious Education of the Inner London Education Authority, trying to find the evidence that will help me answer a few key questions:

- How did religious education in London change in the decades after the Second World War?
- What forces were responsible for those changes?
- How should we understand those changes within the broader history of religion in twentieth-century Europe, which is typically understood as a history of crises and decline?

Today was a meaty day, as archival days go: the SACRE minutes.  Virtually every page of those minutes could turn out to be significant for my dissertation, so I had to pay close attention.  Or I would have had to pay close attention if I were actually taking notes.  Instead I decided (since virtually every page of those minutes could turn out to be significant for my dissertation) to photograph almost every page I looked at today.  Different historians take different approaches to taking photographs in the archives.  When it comes to sources (like so many other things!), I'm something of a completist: if there's any chance I'll find it useful, I'm making a record of it.  So I basically spent six hours today photographing as many documents as possible.

Even while racing through the files, though, I still took the time to skim through the documents for particularly juicy bits of information.  Today's haul drove home for me a key point about historical scholarship: any number of stories could be told using the evidence from a given set of sources.  I'm expecting to use these sources to tell a story about how the growing presence of religious minorities in London after the Second World War forced members of the Standing Advisory Council on Religious Education to adopt a more pluralist model of religious education.  But you could just as easily use these sources write a history of local government or a history of the relations between the Church of England, the Free Churches, and the Roman Catholic Church.  The basic point here is that historical sources do not speak for themselves.  They're the detritus of human existence and tell no story on their own.  It is only when historians come along and try to make sense of them that they seem to cohere into an intelligible narrative.

And that is a daunting task.  Some time next summer, I'm going to start to systematically work my way through what will by then amount to thousands of photographs of sources.  Some of them as seemingly banal as the one on the left asking the catering manager to bill a lunch to the proper budgeting code.  And others as telling as the letter I found last summer in which a Jewish woman complained to the London County Council that the school that employed her was prohibiting her from teaching religious education on the grounds of her religion.  It's that kind of source that can be more revealing that dozens of policy papers or committee minutes.  But you don't realize the significance of sources like that until you've immersed yourself in the documents and read each of them carefully.

For those of you who followed the hellish-ness that was my preparation for my preliminary exams last fall, I'd point out that what I'm doing now is virtually the exact opposite of what I did then.  In preparing for my prelims, I raced through 300 books, reading the introduction and conclusion carefully and, in some cases, doing little more than glancing at the body of each book.  The whole point was to grasp as quickly as possible what each historian was trying to say.  Here, I need to take my time with the sources.  They might be trying to tell me something, but it's ultimately up to me to put all the pieces together.  But for now, I'm just trying to find all the pieces.

THE HEATH

First, RPOTD:


Aaron may have our panini press, but you will never quench my love of hot, melted cheese sandwiches. I've discovered that one of the joys of being home during the day is that I can make a fresh lunch every day if I want. And while a sandwich may not seem that exciting, a hot sandwich of farmer's market produce that has spent a few minutes under the grill is simply delightful. Also, the gas grill/broiler makes for a pretty cool photo:

Not as cool as Danny's photo of shakshuka cooking, but still not bad.

Okay, on to the topic of this evening's post, which is the makeshift backyard of north Londoners, Hampstead Heath. I'm trying not to let this blog become just a list of reasons why London is super awesome (I'm sure the longer we live here the more we'll find faults), but with Hampstead Heath it's hard to say anything less than glowing.

800 acres, miles of running trails, panoramic views of central London, a running track, an outdoor pool, 3 swimming ponds (!) and multiple wildlife ponds, countless rolling hills and small wooded copses, plus everything in the acres we haven't yet explored. It's clean (minus the dog poop) and breezy and attracts everyone from teenagers to elderly dog-walkers. Listing all of this is not enough...simply put, being just a few minutes inside Hampstead Heath makes you feel that you are in the English countryside. It is the perfect place for evening strolls or early morning walks. Our first (of many, I'm sure) evening walk last week afforded these sights:










A much-used, dog-friendly swimming hole; view south to central London; view north to Highgate; a particularly picturesque tree.











And tonight, it was the perfect place for a picnic! Lucky for us, Hampstead Heath is just a half a mile from our flat, making it our makeshift patio. And especially lucky is that there is an excellent wine shop ("Corks"), and it's sister gourmet food shop ("Forks"), right on the way. With the last serving of our food from last Saturday's farmers market, here's what we came up with:




















And around 9pm, we were treated to this beautiful sunset. The photograph doesn't do it justice, but there were pink clouds everywhere. Now on to Danny's birthday weekend!

What is London?

I've decided that all of my posts will start with a random photo from somewhere in London, just to give a flavor of what we experience as we go about our humble business. Here is one from yesterday, from the neighborhood of Canonbury, in Islington:

Incidentally, we were in Islington to have dinner with Danny's very kind and generous adviser, who took us to Ottolenghi. While the restaurant isn't strictly vegetarian, Yotam Ottolenghi is the main vegetarian recipe contributor for The Guardian, so he clearly knows what he's doing. It was truly delicious.

But on to the main point of this post, which is to explain exactly what I mean by "Canonbury, in Islington", which is in London. I thought a geography/terminology primer would be useful before we write too much about different parts of London.

First, lets start with the collection of islands that lives to the north of France. All of these islands are collectively referred to as the British Isles. Within the British Isles are the country of Ireland and the "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland," or UK for short. Great Britain is mostly a geographic designation, meaning the areas on the main island: the countries of England and Scotland and the principality of Wales. The UK is what gives rise to the main political body, as parliament contains representatives from Northern Ireland, England, Scotland and Wales. In other words, David Cameron is the prime minister of the United Kingdom, rather than of England or of Great Britain.

All that being said, I tend to throw around terms like "England", "UK" and "Britain" very loosely. I'll try to be specific when it matters, but generally I just mean "This strange new place where I currently live."


Okay, on to the nitty gritty of London. London is divided into 32 boroughs, plus the very small City of London in the middle of it all. Each borough has its own local government that oversees things like libraries, schools, public housing, etc. Within each borough are multiple, charmingly-named districts that roughly correspond to a postal code (or occasionally two). Shall we talk about the wonder that is London postal codes? I think we shall. When we went to the bank to update Danny's old account with our new address, all we needed to provide was our address number and our 6-character postal code. The first 3 letters/numbers of the postal code designate the district, and the last 3 essentially give the street name. What this means is that you can find yourself on google maps by simply typing your house number and your postal code, not even the city or the country. It's remarkable.

So to sum up, we live in the district of Dartmouth Park (postal code NW5), which is on the northern edge of the borough of Camden, in the city of London, in the country of England, in the constitutional monarchy of the United Kingdom, which can all be summarized in 7 characters.

This post is dedicated to my dad, who has instilled in me a love of postal codes.

The Eccentricities of Cricket, first in a many-part series: Ian Bell's broken foot

England batsman Ian Bell broke his foot fielding in Saturday's Saturday's one-day international against Bangladesh.  It's a tough injury for a player who has spent almost two years out of England's one-day team.  Bell's set to have a cast for over a month, which means he'll almost certainly miss the entire Test series against Pakistan.  For England, Bell's injury left them a batsman short in Saturday's game - they ended up five runs short in their chase of Bangladesh's total and lost to the Tigers for the first time in international cricket.

Mundane details, I know.  So rather than bore you with more details about England's prospects for the rest of the summer, I'll share two key elements about cricket that Bell's injury (or, more precisely, his return to the field following his injury) reveals.  For those of you who weren't following at home, Bell, left foot newly-ensconced in a cast, limped out to the middle to join Jonathan Trott for the 50th (i.e. final) over of England's innings (don't worry about the terminology or apparently incorrect use of plurals... you'll pick it up as we move along.  I promise.).  So what do Bell's last-minute would-be heroics tell us about cricket?

First, cricket games last a long time.  Bell hurt his foot in the 10th over of Bangladesh's innings.  Given that the match started around 11am, his injury took place no later than noon.  When he came out to bat at the end of England's innings, almost 90 overs of play had occurred.  Throw in a lunch break, and you're looking at least 7 hours.  In the meantime, Bell went off to hospital, got an x-ray, and got a cast put on his foot.  And probably had a substantial tea, just for good measure.

So, Bell was out of commission for almost a full working day but arrived back at the ground in time to play in the same game that was going on that morning.  Cricket is famous, of course, for the length of its games, but the funny thing here is that this was actually one of the short versions of the game, approximately one-fifth as long as five-day Test matches.

I've given a lot of thought of what draws me to cricket, and I've come to the conclusion that the length of its matches is one of its real charms.  You might think the length would just lead to boredom.  And, to be fair, there's lots of time in many matches where it doesn't seem as if much is happening.  But what cricket (especially first-class (i.e. multi-day) cricket) rewards is not just skill.  You might be able to hit a cricket ball farther than anyone else in the world, but if you're just as likely to swing and miss as you are to make solid contact, you won't last long as a batsman.  Cricket rewards consistency and concentration, the ability to toil and grind your way along to victory.  Again, "toil" and "grind" aren't words likely to attract the uninitiated.  But at the end of a Test match, you can almost always be sure that the better team won.  And there's something rewarding about that.  I suspect that my assessment of own athletic ability (I see myself, on a good day, as ploddingly competent) has something to do with why I like cricket as much as I do.

Second, cricket has no substitutions.*  You may well have wondered why on earth Ian Bell would have to bat with a broken foot.  Well, in cricket, the eleven players on the team sheet are the eleven players who decide the outcome of the match.  There's something comfortingly symmetric about each side deciding on its best players and those players battling it over several hours (or several days).

One of the most important consequences of the lack of substitutions is that all the bowlers (the equivalent of baseball pitchers) have to bat, and all the batsman could, in theory, be called upon to bowl at any time in the match.  While specialization in batting or bowling takes place, it's not nearly to the degree that it does, say, in baseball.  There are some bowlers who are comically inept at batting, but there are also plenty of others who make real contributions with both bat and ball.  If you're an NL fan who detests the DH because of the imbalance it creates (DHs who never pickup a glove, pitchers who take batting practice half a dozen times a year), I think you'll see the point I'm getting at here.

So the larger point I'm getting at here is a rather simple one: cricket sets one team of 11 players against another team of 11 players, with the better team nearly always winning.  There's a purity to it that's lacking in other sports.

Just to show that I'm doing more here in England than musing about cricket, here's a picture taken yesterday in Waterlow Park.  So, now I've written about cricket and taken some cricket photos.  Now I just need get myself into a game, right?

*Yes, there are exceptions.  There was the ill-advised experiment with supersubs in one-day matches a few years ago.  And there are provisions for substitute fielders, as Ricky Ponting knows well.

Parks of London #1: Waterlow Park

First, a photo of my breakfast this morning:

All from the farmers market! I haven't seen cherries at the markets I've been to in New England, so this was pretty exciting. This was also my first time trying homemade, organic yog(h)urt (ingredients: cow's milk, probiotic cultures). It tasted kind of like...cheese. By which I mean, it was delicious.
Anyway, back to yesterday's London adventure, which was a visit to Waterlow park, a lovely park between us and our very posh neighbor to the North, Highgate. Waterlow park has everything a great urban park should have: bodies of water for waterfowl and other wildlife, organized sporting areas (in this case, tennis courts) as well as open fields for football kicking and disc throwing, well-manicured flower gardens as well as untended wildflowers, sunny knolls for reading and relaxing as well as shady wooded groves for the paler of us, and an abundance of walking paths to hold it all together. Waterlow park is also home to a small cafe and the Lauderdale house, which hosts jazz concerts, plays and art galleries. In other words, it has just enough to bring all members of a community out to enjoy a beautiful English weekend. We saw lots of families with young children (including what looked like a girls youth soccer team and their coaches having a 3-legged race), as well as old friends meeting for a cup of coffee. As I said, it was lovely.

We were there to people-watch and to remember how to throw and catch the disc, but I was immediately charmed by the rather large population of waterfowl. Thank goodness Danny got me the RSPB Guide to British Birds (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds). We were able to come home and identify all the ones I didn't know already.

This is a male tufted duck (note the tuft in the back of the head), apparently the commonest diving duck in Britain. It was, in fact, a very good diver. There were several families of tufted ducks on the various ponds of the park - the largest one had 9 ducklings! But as they were practicing their diving, it was very difficult to get all of them in a photo at once.

We also saw several families of Coots (right), which were the aggressors of the ponds. As confirmed by the bird guide, coots are very territorial, and they were constantly chasing off the other ducks on the pond. The chicks, however, were adorable and noisy.

And just for good measure, here's a picture of a juvenile Moorhen (below), one of Britain's more awkward-looking birds. Don't worry, I'm sure I'll post some pictures of the adults in the future.


Want more pictures of baby birds? Of course you do. Here's one of some mallards we saw in Montreal in June:
The ducklings proceeded to attempt to fly off the bridge, but since their wings were so small they just flapped helplessly and plopped into the pond below. It was quite endearing.

And lest you think we only care about waterfowl, here is probably the cutest thing we saw in the park all day:
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, in London, families play cricket in the park. I'll leave the heavy blogging about cricket to Danny (he's working on a doozy right now!), but let me just say that it is truly adorable to see five year olds have the patience and hand-eye coordination to play the refined, slow-to-progress game of cricket.



So in summary, Waterlow park is a great place to watch birds and people interact with their environment and their peers, a great place for the community to come together. We plan on returning for an outdoor performance of Othello, an evening bat-watching walk, and an afternoon of jazz in the garden. And of course we'll have to see how our little ducklings molt into their adult feathers!

The evening after this trip to the park we hosted our first house guest! David, who is now a world-famous musicologist, joined us at one of our local pubs to watch the world cup final. In the words of the woman shouting in the pub, vamos España!

Our first home-cooked meal

After a successful first trip to the Parliament Hill Farmers' Market, we were pretty psyched about pulling it all together for our first home-cooked meal in London.  Becca tends to provide the creativity in our meals, so I left the menu planning in her able hands.  Here's what she came up with:

On the left are broad beans sautéed in butter with shallots and garlic.  On the right, broiled (or, as the British say, grilled) potatoes - note the Isle of Wight ketchup.  All washed down with Tuborg.  This was our first time cooking broad beans, and they may have benefited from some parboiling.  But still, it's hard to go wrong when you have shallots sautéed in butter, isn't it?

Not a bad accompaniment to the third-place Germany-Uruguay game.  Speaking of which, that Diego Forlán is something else, isn't he?

Welcome to London!

Note to self: I have many barrels of fossil fuel to thank for my very enjoyable flight to Heathrow. My father-in-law pitched in frequent flier miles to get me a "club world" class ticket, and boy what a difference it made. 2 yummy meals, 4 podcasts, 1 "Glee" pilot and plenty of legroom after takeoff, I was comfortably landing in London, where Danny was going to meet me at the airport, and we would head off into the sunset (or Tube, whatever) to start our England adventure together.

I was very excited about getting to the international arrivals gate at Heathrow, ever since it was so positively displayed in Love Actually. However, when I arrived there were very few loving family members and friends there to greet the weary travelers, just two rows of men in suits holding name cards and looking bored. And no Danny. This was not that surprising, because we were 15 minutes early and Danny was coming from a conference. I waited with 100 pounds of luggage, and finally a very eager-looking Danny arrived. He had his zune and headphones in hand with "God only Knows" cued up to recreate this scene. What a romantic!

With this welcome, how could the year be anything but spectacular? Stay with us to find out how it goes!