And in the end.... the love you give is equal to the love you take.

Our annual mother-daughter trip came to end with a pancake breakfast. After a frustrating attempt to get a hotel room in Harrogate and a long drive to Carrie’s home, we woke to a nice Sunday morning breakfast. Our trip was over. In the days that followed I basked in the warm light of good memories but somehow tried to put a finger on what I discovered on this trip. I already knew that I loved my daughters enormously, think that they are wonderful people and am glad of the time we get to spend together. It was what I learned about England that almost eluded me. As an ex-pat in England traveling is way to understand the country I have lived in for almost 10 years now.

I know I will never be British (although I passed the test and God know I will never lose my accent!) I am unwilling to give up my New Yorkness and Americaness. I can't, those places are in my blood. But will I ever fully understand and appreciate what it means to be British? For me, one of the ways is to understand history and place. This past week, I got a glimpse into the history of the industrial north. What it must have been like to work in a 19^th century factory! To live in grimy, smoke choked cities (wait - aren't I doing that now?). Literature is a source of pride and in the Dales and Moors I saw that farming, the countryside and a rural way of life is still important here. I think above all else a sense of England’s own history is what is at the forefront of Britishness. The English go to great lengths to protect its heritage. It is apparent in the organizations they have built to protect it (National Trust & English Heritage to name but two!) and the numerous documentaries you see on TV like A Picture of Britain and How We Built Britain. There is a huge push to make Britain a homogenous society but I don’t know if that will ever happen. I realize not everyone can afford a week in Yorkshire. There are so many diverse and wonderful immigrants contributing to the making of the new modern Britain. The effort made for foreigners to have some understanding of the Britain of the past is tremendous but I hope in the future there is some recognition and protection of what is now. I struggle with people (some Americans I know mostly) who rarely make an attempt to understand anything about the place they live. Being an expat is not just about London and traveling. It is about discovering what it means to be British. Exploring what is important here: ceremony, history, national pride, good manners, English football (and beating the Germans again!), music, the seaside holiday, pets, politics, malt vinegar, expressions like wanker and all the other little things you learn when you make the effort. Ok, Enough of the soapbox!

All in all I am happy that I had some time to come close to touching the face of what Britain is about and besides our family always gets a big kick out of unusual place names!

And the answer is....James Herriot, Wallace & Gromit and the Bronte Sisters

One of the highlights of the trip for me was the World of James Herriot in Thirsk. Only kidding! I told you it was raining all week!
I was a big fan of the All Creatures Great and Small books and tv show. Thirsk is the fictional“Darrowby” of Herriot’s vet and a lovely town it is. We toured 23 Kirkgate where the real vet and author, Alfred Wight lived and worked. We had a nice audio tour of the 1940’s setting and took hilarious pictures with our hands up a plastic cow! (we kinda forced Carrie to do this!)

I knew Carrie has been a fan of Wallace and Gromit and Wensleydale Cheese so we surprised her with a visit to the Wenseleydale Creamery Cheese Experience ( I think cranberry cheese is her favourite). We had a goofy visit to the factory as we learned about Wallace and Gromit’s favourite snack and all about the cheese making process. Of course, in the shop we sampled many different types of wensleydale cheese and bought some to take home. Very exciting.

Our last act of tourism for this trip was the Bronte Parsonage Museum in Haworth. The Bronte Society has preserved a literary shrine to the Bronte family in a Georgian house on a steep cobblestone road. The museum pays tribute to the various family members and exhibits the work of Emily (Wuthering Heights, who died in 1848), Anne who dies at age 29 in 1849, Charlotte (Jane Eyre who died at age 38 in 1855) and their brother Branwell a painter and drunk who also dies in the house. Their father sadly survives all his children and dies at the age of 84. A very sad family story and the place felt creepy but these are great books and their authors deserve to be remembered.

About 7:30 pm we arrived at the Yorkshire Hotel in Harrogate to discover that we did not have a reservation. I had made a reservation through Expedia and showed the staff at the front desk the confirmation. They never processed it and had no rooms for us. Neither was there an acceptable room in Harrogate anywhere. I became so frustrated that we just decided to head back to London that night. We drove the 3 and half hours to Carrie and Dan’s House arriving about midnight pretty exhausted and slept peacefully!

Castle Howard.... I am ready for my closeup.......

Carrie arrived at the Danby train station (which was actually a shed of sorts!) on time (11:23am) and in the pouring rain. I felt bad that she had traveled so far to be with us and the weather was really awful.

We headed off to Castle Howard just north of York. The property has been on my to-do list for a long time. A visit had just never worked out before. I was now determined to take this opportunity. I have to admit I have grown tired of visiting English Houses long ago but knew I had to see this one. If you only visit one great English house, this is the one. It is a masterpiece by Vanbrugh and Hawksmoor. The vistas over a small lake to the house, the mausoleum and the Atlas fountain are spectacular.

Castle Howard has been the setting for many movies but most famously for Brideshead Revisited with Jeremy Irons in 1981. To our surprise we arrived at Castle Howard to find that Brideshead Revisited was being re-made. There were huge ugly blue cranes blocking the front of the house. It was very disappointing. We were told Michael Gambon was filming that day but we never saw him. While we were on a tour of the house we were made to stand quietly in the hallways until someone shouted cut and we could move on. It felt silly and time consuming. Afterwards, we had a great time feeding the peacocks and ducks outside and trying to take pictures in the rain. We had some lunch and headed out.

Looking for the things to do in the rain our next stop of the day was Nunnington Hall. It is a good example of a 17th century manor house. It was the not the house I thought it would be. I had gotten it confused with the Triangular Lodge. Wrong! As I said before I am really bored by English houses and we moved rather quickly through the house. We challenged the guides to sum up each room in a sentence and they did! We were out of the house in 20 minutes! They really must have thought us crazy Americans.

We returned to the Wellington Inn, had dinner and played trivial pursuit in the pub (I think Carrie won!). I went to bed hoping the weather on Saturday would be better.

Thursday, the rain on the moors stays mainly on the road

Thursday we spent a lot of time driving around the North York Moors National Park. Beth took one of my favourite pictures of this cross on a hilltop. We were driving through Pickering when we noticed a steam train in the station. We just had to stop and have a look at it. It was wonderful to see but we thought there was no point in taking a ride on it in the pouring rain. One of the most interesting things we saw was the White Horse of Kilburn (ok, interesting to us!), a chalk drawing on a hillside in Kilburn. You could see it for miles around. It was created by a teacher and his students in 1857. One of the other little towns we passed through was Coxwold . It's claim to fame is Laurence Sterne, author of The Life and Opinions of Tristam Shandy, Gentleman. I had never heard of this book but Beth had. I will have to read it. It is suppose to be hilarious and a classic of English literature.

We stopped for lunch in Hutton Le Hole, a picture postcard type of village. There is just something about the yellowish mellow stone that draws your attention. It is lovely. We sat down in the pub to lunch just as a brigade of senior citizens came in to have lunch also. There must have been 50 of them. They were just too much, trying to get themselves organized – who would sit with whom, Zimmer frames, complaining about the prices and deciding whether to have a drink (they did!). We ate in a hurry and got out! – It was here that Beth found a clock. We were messing about in a garden store (well, I think it was a garden store – maybe it was just a tourist trap!) when she spotted another railway clock. If you have been to my house you already know we have one that says Paddington and another from Victoria Stations. I really love them. Beth bought a new one that says Kensington on it as a present for her father and me. In the Wynchwood Gallery, I also bought a watercolor by Daisy Barnes . It is a charming little picture of the moors with red poppies in the foreground. We had been seeing enormous red poppies on the side of the roads all week. They were some of the largest poppies I have ever seen in my life. I don’t think any painting will ever capture the real beauty of the moors, the colour and light is too hard to get down but this one will make a nice reminder of our trip.

We ended the day back at the pub in Danby playing Trivial pursuit. There was absolutely no cell phone coverage in Danby and you felt like you were out of touch with the world. I was excited that Carrie was joining us on Friday for the weekend. She had taken her citizenship test earlier in the week (and passed! Yeah!) and couldn’t join us sooner. She was traveling up to Danby by train and I was a little worried about the connections. If she missed us, there would be no way to contact us!

Wednesday, the trip continues with a cow licking our car..........

Have I mentioned that we had rooms at the Wellington Inn at Danby? (population maybe around 100?) The town was tiny but did have a railway station to our surprise. The staff was welcoming; the food good and the pub was cozy. Beth’s twin room had a terrific view. Every day as we journeyed out from our lodgings brought us back onto the moor or through some very picturesque countryside.

On Wednesday morning, Beth and I returned to Bradford’s National Media Museum to see Forces of Nature in the IMAX theatre. We asked the ticket taker which were the best seats for viewing (middle back!) and found we were the only ones in the theatre! We watched volcanoes erupt, tornadoes wreck havoc and earthquakes rumble but being Buffalonians we wondered why the blizzards were not included in the film!

Next to the exploding bird adventure our next encounter with wildlife occurred with what I called the Grassington Cow. We were driving through the Dales (and the town of Grassington) when we were forced to pull off the road by a large herd of cows. I made a mad dash for the camera in the trunk and got back in the car just as the herd began to surround us. We laughed uproariously when one of them began to lick the car. I swear this is true! Beth captured the event on her cell phone.

We would visit four ruined Abbeys on this trip and I think my favourite abbey was Fountains Abbey located in the Yorkshire Dales National Park. Located in a secluded valley it is the only World Heritage Site in Yorkshire. The magnificent ruins of Fountains Abbey date back to the 12^th century. The Cistercian monks who lived there were often called the White Monks because of their undyed wool garments. They were austere, committed to long periods of silence and eight daily services! Imagine that going to church eight times a day! The Abbey was dissolved by Henry VII in his move to destroy monasteries in the 16^th century.

The second abbey we would visit on that rainy day was Byland Abbey. Byland was once regarded as one of the three great monasteries of the north. It must have been huge at one time. I will never forget driving around a corner and seeing the west front entrance where a rose window was once was installed. It really grapped your attention, an outstanding example of Gothic architecture. Again this marvelous abbey was surrendered to Henry VIII in his dissolution of the monasteries in the 16^th century.

Tuesday of the Long Way trip: The exploding bird explained

Beth and I woke to a dreary rainy day. We were going to be on the trail of Lavinia Wood King this morning. We drove from Leeds to the village of Hipperholme about 30 minutes away. Hipperholme was were Lavinia appears for the first time in the 1851 census. Our first stop was the local library. A very informative librarian told us to go to the nearby Brighouse Library. That very afternoon the Calderdale Family History Society was having a meeting at the library and experienced local family historians would be on hand to advice and help! How lucky were we? It was 10:00 am and the meeting was being held at 1:30pm! So off we went to National Museum of Media Museum in nearby Bradford until we needed to head back to Brighouse.

And well worth the visit it was. We toured the museum tracing the history of media, playing various games and Beth had a go reading the evening news. We saw two current exhibits: Celebrating Indian Cinema (mainly movie posters!) and the excellent The Auto chromes of Henry Essenhigh Corke. Photography appeals to both Beth and I so we were intrigued. I learned that colour photography has been around for about 100 years. Auto chromes was the principal color photography process available until the advent of color film in the 1930s. I am not sure I understand the process but it has something to do with glass plates and potato starch. For me it was not so much about the technique but a chance to peer into the lives of people living 100 years ago. Also, in the museum is an IMAX theatre. We were too late for that day’s showing but thought we would return the next day to see a movie.

We returned to Brighouse for the afternoon session of the family history society to hopefully find some information on Lavinia. I have been unable to find her birth certificate here in London and thought maybe I would have some luck in the north. The library was packed with people doing research. When I finally got to the computer and some advice I discovered that I have been on the trail of the wrong Lavinia. I left very frustrated and disappointed. I would have to go back to the drawing board on this one in London. Oh well!

With disappointment in Brighouse, Beth and I decided to drive to the seaside resort of Whitby. Along the way there was the incident of the exploding bird. This was an event we would talk about all week because it was so shocking and we felt awful about the whole thing. As we drove toward Whitby a car driving in the opposite direction (yes, it was a Chelsea tractor!) struck a bird trying to get out of the car’s way. It just didn’t fly fast enough. We were dumbfounded. We had both seen footage on TV of Randy Johnson hitting a bird while pitching for the Diamondbacks. That was something and here we were in slow motion watching this black and white bird explode off a car grill in a spectacular manner. There was a snow storm of black and white feathers. A very very sad end for that bird. The image will stay with me for a long time.

Anyway, we drove quietly onto Whitby while listening to Bill Bryson’s new book, The Thunderbolt Kid on CD. Whitby is an attractive and interesting little town. The residents are rather proud that James Cook started his naval career from Whitby. There is also a Dracula Experience (we passed on that one!). Bram Stoker wrote the story of Dracula in 1897 while staying in Whitby. I have never read the book but apparently it is much different from the Hollywood Film version. I won’t bore you with the other historical claims to fame of Whitby. But we did see the first of the four ruined abbeys we would visit on this trip. Whitby Abbey stands dramatically on a headland on the North Sea. There has been a monastery here since 657. The original was destroyed around 867 and rebuilt after the Norman invasion of 1066. The rebuilt abbey was ruined after the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VII in 1538. What we saw was the last remains of a magnificent building.

The beginning of the We are a long way ...... trip!

Beth and I began the We are a long way from LI, exploding bird trip to Yorkshire last Monday. We began our car trip by driving 3 ½ hours from North London to Leeds. Beth is one hell of a navigator and just terrific with a map. No sat-nav for her! I love spending time in a car with her. We laugh and sing alot and she updates me on new music. This trip it was Kaiser Chiefs, Artic Monkeys, The Fratellis and other groups I have already forgotten the name of! I did disappoint her though when I refused to stop at the Coal Mining Museum along the way. We missed Jeff on this trip and thought about him often while he was away in the states (yes, someone has to fund this operation!). Yorkshire is his kind of driving place. He would have loved the winding hilly roads. We will just have to go back with him!

Yorkshire has long been on my England travel wish list. After visiting Dartmoor in the southwest of England last fall I wanted to see the Yorkshire Moors. Many ex-pats live in the fear of getting transferred without seeing the places they wanted (and planned) to visit. I had not seen a lot of the north of England and thought I had better get a move on before time ran out. It was perfect for the annual mother-daughter road trip.

My preconceived ideas of Yorkshire revolved around books based on the works of Alf Wight (All Creatures Great and Small), Evelyn Waugh (Brideshead Revisited), and the Bronte sisters (Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre). I loved the TV shows and movies based on them. In my minds eye, Yorkshire is the quintessential English countryside. Picture the stone cottages, grazing sheep and green valleys dotted by stone fences. Yorkshire is spectacularly green and beautiful even in the rain (yes, it rained all week!). Beth and I would spent the next 6 days traveling over moors and dales repeatedly saying Oooh look at that, how beautiful and dad would love driving on this road! We really needed a thesaurus to find new words to describe what we were taking in. To set the record straight, moorlands tend to be open areas of boggy coarse grasses, heather, bracken and not much else! We were constantly watching the roads for grazing sheep. A dale is an open river valley in a hilly area. It was lovely to see steam trains chugging through the valleys giving tourist a first hand look at the picturesque landscape. Very charming indeed.

An additional purpose of this trip was to do some research into the Bantin family history. The Leeds/ Bradford area was where my great great grandmother Lavinia King was born (more on that tomorrow). By the time Beth and I left Leeds on Wednesday we decided we hated the city! The buildings were black with dirt and the system of one way streets made it almost impossible to navigate. While in Leeds we stayed at a hotel (Jurys Inn) on the Brewery Wharf. We were given handicapped rooms which don’t work well for non-handicapped people and parking was in an expensive car park blocks away!

For dinner we visited the Leeds Hard Rock Café. I have to admit I love the Hard Rock Cafes. You can satisfy a longing for American style food anywhere on the planet in these restaurants. For me it usually a hamburger! I know it conjours up images of the stereotypical American traveling abroad but I think I am allowed once in awhile! The Leeds HRC has clothing memorabilia from John Lennon, Elton John, Jimi Hendrix, Carlos Santana and others. It wasn’t all that exciting! Beth was pleased to see something from a band called Everclear? After an eternity trying to get back to the hotel, we fell into our rooms exhausted. Tuesday would be family history day and the exploding bird.

Wine Tasting 2007

I’m back! I just returned from my annual mother-daughter England road trip with Beth. Happily, Carrie joined us for the weekend! I think Beth and I decided to call this trip, the I am a long way from Long Island, exploding bird trip. (More about this later!). We began our trip last Monday, the day after the annual wine tasting party in honour of our friends Mark & Kathy who are sadly moving back to the USA this summer. I made a deal with god to have nice weather last Sunday and got my wish. We hosted about 45 people on the balcony and tasted six wines with expertly matched cheeses. Our life size poster of Johnny Depp graced the hallway and thanks to Dan the terrace was decorated with Chinese lanterns! Jeff did a great job on the BBQ and our very generous and wonderful friends brought additional food (We thank them wholeheartedly!). The Majestic wine store on Loudoun road helped us choose wine and by lending wine glasses (we only lost one this year!). The La Fromagerie on Moxon Street also helped. Jeff and I were assisted by a terrific expert in pairing cheeses to our selected wines. My informal exit poll tells me that the favourite wines were the South African Vergelegen Sauvignon Blanc and the California Beringer Cabernet Sauvignon. It was a great party thanks to the people who attended and it was so hard to say good night!

A Midsummer’s Night Dream

Friday night: The Open Air Theatre Regents Park! The production? What else would you expect from a Shakespeare Company? A Midsummer’s Night Dream by Shakespeare. If you have never attended a production of this play, you should take yourself off straight away to one! It is probably one of the greatest English plays ever written. Jeff and I estimated that we have seen this play about four times in various places in NY and England. One of the great joys of living in Buffalo, NY was Saul Elkins summer productions in Delaware Park. However, The Open Air Theatre is a little gem. A great way to spend a warm summer evening. Jeff had booked our tickets on line for this production and I was surprised our tickets were the one I had actually printed out. No standing in line to exchange for official ones! I liked that.

The Open Air Theatre was established in 1932 in a lovely corner of Regent’s Park inner circle. Jeff and I arrived (a bit late!) to theatre patrons picnicking on the lawn, people hovering near the bar (The theatre claims to have one of the longest bars in any theatre in London - stretching the entire length of the seating.) and the smell of BBQ. We had a quick bite to eat (not that great!) and a drink before we took our seats.

The production was very entertaining, even though the seats were a bit uncomfortable. The set is a mock-Greek amphitheatre and was used to great effect with fairies draping themselves here and there. I won’t bore you with the familiar plot but I think this is one of the best Pyramus (Ian Talbot) & Thisbes I've ever witnessed. Thisbe death scene was hilarious. The costumes were well done and added much to the hilarity of this play within a play! Lastly, Hattie Ladbury was a refreshing Helena. She was everything Helena should be – lovesick and goofy!

So there it is, London in the summer (OK, well almost summer!), a great venue, wine and laughter. Life doesn’t get much better that that!

The Mosaic Bench

It's Done! Yesterday in mosaic class at the Hampstead School of Art I finished a project! It is always a great feeling to finish a piece! The best part to me is the last part - the grouting process. You really get your hands dirty when you grout a project. I guess I always liked playing in mud as a child! With Norma's help I grouted the Frank Lloyd Wright piece I have been working on since the beginning of the year. It turned out all right. I am pleased. It is not perfect but then none of my work ever is. As Loretta tells me the artist is always hyper-critical of their own work. I often see the imperfections first. I need to work on that! The piece was based on a window by FLW from the Avery Coonley Playhouse (Riverside, IL) done in 1912. The bench now lives in the guestroom under a framed poster from the Chicago Institute of Art which shows the original window.

The Lure of the Underground

Jeff and I had a rare privilege on Tuesday thanks to Mark L and his generous donation to the ASL Auction this year. Ray O was our wonderful and generous host for a glimpse into the working of the London underground.The visit started at Baker Street station where we rode with the train driver. The driver was a former foundry worker here in London and was responsible for re-casting the 1976 Liberty Bell in Philadelphia as he proudly told us! We then headed on to a private tour of the center for the Jubilee line trains. Not only were we able to see the command center where we watched a huge board showing the Jubilee line (and things were remarkably quiet and calm!) we got to play in the train simulators. The best part of the day was when Jeff and I both had a go driving a train in the simulator. Ray added some fun effects like snow, fog, trees and a workman on the line! Jeff ran them all over and I completely forgot to stop at one station! What an exhilarating day! I felt like I had made a real connection to the inner workings of the city I live in and have come to have a whole new appreciation of the underground.

Indian Cooking Class

On Monday, Kelle, Loretta, Kathy, Polli and I attended a cooking class at the home of Priya S. Priya, an ASL parent of two had donated the cooking lesson to the school auction this year. AS Kathy had worked on the auction catalog we had done a bit of pre-auction shopping and knew we wanted to bid on this class. On auction day it was a bidding war! As you can see, we won! I had always wanted to learn more about the spices used in this cuisine and Kathy had inherited a cupboard full of unfamiliar spices from Karul L. What a wonderful afternoon we had learning about spices and Indian cooking methods. Priya was helped in the kitchen by Keya we learned how to make Dal, Pakora, Sheek Kebab, Gobi Masala, Tandoori Mugrh (chicken), Murgh Malai and a Methai (desert) called Kheer (rice pudding!). Kathy and I even tried our hand at making the lamb Sheek. After all these dishes were prepared we sat down for a lovely lunch and Priya shared a bit more about styles of Indian cooking and Indian culture. The dal and Gobi Masal (cauliflower) dishes were my favourites! The rice pudding was wonderful and I was surprised to learn it was made with a bay leaf and cardamon! I think Priya should open a cooking school! Indian cooking is terrific and I now feel confident enough to try some of these dishes at home. I am thinking of making some dal for the party on Sunday!

Melissa Riva Flowers

Recently at the American School Auction I purchased a flower arranging class for 5 at Melissa Riva Flowers on Allitsen Road in St. John’s Wood. This past Thursday, Kathy, Kelle, Loretta, Holly and I went to school! Melissa was a wonderful and patient teacher as we attempted to make a floral arrangement of roses,Lysanthius, limes and some green stuff which I can’t remember the name of! We had a really lovely afternoon drinking tea, laughing and cutting flowers! We may even go back and take another class!

Trinity Buoy Wharf

Loretta, Kathy, Holly and I went off the other evening to Trinity Buoy Wharf, on the banks of the Thames river near Canary Wharf opposite the Millennium Dome. It is the site of London's only lighthouse and although no longer functioning, it is home to a very cool artist’s colony. The lighthouse was used for training prospective lighthouse keepers and it was here that Michael Faraday carried out experiments on electromagnetism and electrochemistry. Refurbished shipping containers are used on the present grounds for work and exhibition space. Our mosaic instructor Norma Vondee has a studio here. TBW was hosting an Open Studio night and Les Girls decided to go along and see Norma and participate in her mosaic happening! I particularly enjoyed the work of Dianne Davies who did some really lovely printed textiles of birds. Gillian Burrows showed some interesting Canary Wharf paintings with a unique view. I think we all liked different photographs in the Found Gallery. There were some interesting Manhattan shots.

By 8:30 pm we were famished! We headed toward Wapping to hopefully find Wapping Food, a restaurant Kathy and I visited on a previous visit to Norma’s Studios. We could not find it for love nor money. It was getting dark and we were all getting crabby. We stumble onto to the Prospect of Whitby Pub, parked the car and hurried in to order food. Most pubs stop serving food at 9pm and it was 8:50pm. I had always wanted to visit this pub and was finally getting the chance! This is one of the most famous pubs in London. It dates from 1543, built as a simple tavern. In the seventeenth century it had a reputation as a meeting place for smugglers and villains, and became known as 'Devil's Tavern'. A fire gutted the Devil's Tavern in the eighteenth century. It was rebuilt and renamed the Prospect of Whitby, after a ship that was moored nearby. One notorious customer was Judge Jeffreys, the 'Hanging Judge', known for his harshness and in particular for his dealings with the ringleaders of the Monmouth Rebellion (1685) in their failed to overthrow Catholic King James II. The Glorious Revolution saw James II flee to France. Lord Chief Justice Jeffreys tried to follow but was caught, it is claimed, whilst hiding in a coal cellar at the tavern dressed as a coal-heaver. He was taken to the Tower where he became ill and died. A hangman's noose swings over the river, a reminder of those gruesome times. Quite a story. Kathy and I had the Steak & Ale pie which was excellent. After this lovely meal we headed out the door only to look up and see Wapping Food across the road behind a brick wall! They really need to put up a sign!