LONDON: Lessons Learned

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When I was uploading this week’s pictures to my computer to organize them for the blog, I noticed that I really haven’t taken that many pictures the last couple of weeks. Part of that is probably because we haven’t been traveling, and another part of that, I think, has to do with the fact that we are really becoming used to all of the novelties of London. I think we’ll have more pictures the next couple of weeks because we’ll be traveling a bit. At the end of this week Gretchen and I are renting a car and driving up to Yorkshire (about four hours north) to the towns of Leeds and York, where my ancestors (on my dad’s side) are from. As odd of a surname as “Killingbeck” is (right after Gretchen and I got engaged, I met Gretchen’s aunt and, when her aunt heard my surname, she turned to Gretchen and asked, “Are you sure about this?”), it is somewhat common up around Yorkshire. And then next week Gretchen and I are going to Barcelona, Spain for a few days. At any rate, in spite of our getting used to many of the novelties of London, we are still learning important lessons.

The first important lesson that we learned this past week is that the Tube is a great way to get around London, except for when you need to be somewhere on time. Mainly when we take the Tube (which is really almost every day), we are going sightseeing or something, and it doesn’t matter if it takes 15 minutes or 30 minutes. However, on Saturday we had been invited to breakfast at 9:30am by a couple of friends from church—Toby and Sarah McAllister, who are ex pats from Australia. (Lots of young Australians leave Oz—what they commonly call Australia—to come to London and work for a few years, gain experience, and travel before starting up their careers in Australia.) Well, getting to their place should have been really easy—we take the Northern Line down to the King’s Cross/St. Pancras (not pancreas), change to the Piccadilly Line, and get off at Holloway Road—it should take about 30 minutes. Well, on Saturday the Piccadilly Line was not stopping at King’s Cross, but we didn’t find that out until we got there. We went outside to try to catch a taxi (to avoid being late), but the queue of people waiting for taxis was really long (and taxis weren’t coming very frequently), so we decided to get back on the Tube. At any rate, we ended up having to take a really circuitous route around north London to get to their flat for breakfast. By the time we got there, it was nearly 10:30am! Yikes! (Thankfully we had a mobile phone with us and were able to call ahead and tell them of our transportation problem.) Breakfast ended up being really good—they made a traditional English breakfast, which includes eggs (over easy), muffins (which we call English muffins in the States), sausage, bacon (which is significantly thicker here), cheese, juice, and baked beans (which is a common breakfast item here).

After eating an enormous breakfast and visiting with Toby and Sarah for a while, Gretchen and I had to head off to our 1:30pm lunch appointment with Peggy, an 83-year-old blind woman from church, who has taken a special liking to Gretchen and invited us over. (Thankfully we were punctual for that one!) Peggy is a very interesting—perhaps a bit eccentric—person. And please understand that I don’t mean that in a bad way at all. When Peggy was younger, she was a rather accomplished artist. She loved to draw and paint. However, as her eyesight worsened, she was no longer able to see well enough to draw or paint, so she turned to sculptures because, she says, she “can still feel the objects and shapes with hands.” So in her house she has this menagerie of dozens and dozens of animals that she has sculpted with clay—lots of dogs, some panda bears, a giraffe, a tiger, rhinos, elephants, etc, etc. It’s really amazing! (I’ll include some pictures.) For Gretchen and I that was sort of inspirational—here’s a woman who has a disability that would prevent many people from doing a lot of things, but Peggy still focuses on what she can do. Peggy certainly isn’t the only person that we know who exemplifies this type of courage, but she is certainly a great example. In addition to sculpting, Peggy is currently taking a creative writing class. To participate in this class, she had to get a special computer with an enormous monitor. With a black background and a HUGE white font (that only displays about one word on the screen at a time), she is able to make out words. Thankfully she is a touch-typist and can type fairly well without seeing the keyboard. For some of the buttons on her keyboard that she did not learn back in the typewriter days, Peggy has put different textures on the keyboard to identify them.

While we were visiting with Peggy on Saturday, she was explaining to us how she has basically come up with an “imaginary world” to help her cope with her blindness. I have to be careful in explaining this—because its not delusional or anything—it’s more of a “game” that she has for dealing with this. She has names (and ascribed characteristics) for the different objects on which she has to rely. For example, her special computer is Mr. Windows; her walking stick is Rover; and her vacuum cleaner is Jeremy. I don’t remember all of the reasons for why she has given them these particular names, but I do remember that her walking stick is Rover because she ascribes dog-like characteristics to it. Essentially, Rover is responsible for “sniffing out” obstacles in her path as she walks—I guess as if it were a seeing-eye dog. And the walking stick collapses into four parts (so she says it has four legs, like a dog). I’m probably not doing a great job of explaining this, but it really did make sense when she was telling us about it. I should mention that Peggy has a great sense of humor. She couldn’t remember my name at first, so she would refer to Gretchen and me as “Hansel and Gretel.” When I offered to help her carry the dishes into the kitchen, she told me to be careful because in the story the old witch pushes Hansel into the oven when he follows her into the kitchen! And now that Peggy does know my name, she still prefers to call me Hansel—which she was doing at church on Sunday and at a service project last night.

One more thing about Peggy, and then I’ll move on. Peggy has lived in London her entire life. She was a teenager/young adult during the Blitz (when the Germans bombed the heck out of London during WWII). Stemming from the trauma of living through the blitz and being very nearly killed on a number of occasions, she is now deathly afraid of thunder and lightning—it’s kind of a phobia, I guess. Unfortunately, judging from the last several months that we’ve been in London, there are lots of loud thunderstorms here. Whenever there is a big storm, Peggy locks herself in her bathroom (which has no windows so she can’t see the lightning (she can still perceive light and dark). She covers her ears to block out the thunder as well as she can, and won’t leave her bathroom or answer the phone until the storm has passed. I’m wondering if something like noise canceling headphones would be helpful for her—do any of you know if those would work to cover up something as like thunder? (Jim Kitchen, I’m expecting a response from you on this one!) Oh, and by the way, I should just mention that Peggy is a great cook—lunch was really good.

This past week has really been a good one as far as being invited over to other people’s houses. In addition to McAllisters and Peggy, at the beginning of the week we were invited over by our friends, Bryan (who is an American attorney working in London) and Kamber, to play Cranium and eat apple pie. Another couple—Rob and Jenny, who are both British—joined us. We ended up playing boys against girls, and I am ashamed to say that Gretchen, Jenny, and Kamber beat us. This past Sunday, while Gretchen and I were waiting at the bus stop on our way home from church, two other friends, Aaron and Erika Lock (Aaron is the British guy with whom I watched football on Thanksgiving) drove up in their car and told us to get in. Then they took us to their house and made lunch for us! They have a Wagamama cookbook (Wagamama is an Asian noodle restaurant chain here—with one opening in Boston soon), and made some really good vegetarian yaki soba. Like we mentioned way back in one of our first blogs from London, we absolutely love the people at church here! It’s a much smaller congregation than we are typically used to, but there are some really great people that we are going to miss.

This past week, another lesson that we learned, is that there is a reason that most pizza places do not offer “chicken and avocado” pizza. Gretchen and I got back late last Friday night from a school end-of-the-year party. I thought they were going to be having a dinner as part of the festivities, but I was wrong—they just had drinks. So Gretchen and I got home and decided to just order pizza from a flyer that had been left in our mail box. Gretchen was smart and got a small pineapple pizza, but I thought that “chicken and avocado” sounded good—I mean, hey, it’s good on fajitas, right?!? Actually, I think that a chicken and avocado pizza could be really good at a place like California Pizza Kitchen, where they experiment with different kinds of pizza, but this place that we ordered from on Friday was not very good. (One of the things on this place’s dessert menu was Tennessee Toffee Pie—Gretchen, who has lived in Tennessee most of her life, says that this is something she has never heard of, and is a patently false geographical indicator! I suppose that’s right up there with the Mississippi Fried Chicken that we saw last week.

Last Thursday, I had to go to school for my last two classes before exams (which are this week—I took one on Monday morning and have another tomorrow (Thursday) morning). After my second class finished up on Thursday afternoon, I was packing up my laptop and thinking, “Wow, I’m sure glad another semester of classes is over…” and then it dawned on me—that was my last class ever (at least as far as formal school is concerned)!!! It was just one of those neat accomplishments that almost slips from your notice. Sure, I still have my bar exam prep classes in January and February, but this was it—my last school classes!

So as commonly happens with me during exam study weeks, I’ve found myself to be incredibly productive in aspects of my life that don’t include studying for exams. For example, I got some new software to organize all of our pictures from this trip. (Special thanks to Necia and Jim Kitchen on this one! They recommended Adobe Photoshop Album—it allows you to tag all of your pictures and then sort them by who is in them, where they were taken, or any other criteria that you want—it’s really great for keeping the thousands of digital photos organized. Currently, you can download the Photoshop Album 3.0 Starter Edition for free from the Adobe site. By the way, that’s a link in case any of you are interested.) I also found time yesterday to go to the Family History Center at Hyde Park to do a little bit of research on my Killingbeck ancestors in Yorkshire. I’ve also found some extra reading time in my schedule and have been reading a book called ISilent Night, which is about the spontaneous 1914 Christmas ceasefire in the trenches during World War I. In addition, last night Gretchen and I went to church and helped out with a service project to sew some skirts and trousers for child AIDS victims in Africa. (I should mention that Peggy was there at the service project, even though she has to take two different buses at night to get there! From now on, Gretchen and I have decided we never have a good excuse to miss a service project.) I think I should try to schedule lots more final exams in my life because I always seem to find so much extra time during exam weeks to get all sorts of other things done!

Tonight, by popular request, Gretchen is having a “Jewelry Night” at our place, just like she used to do back in Atlanta. A bunch of girls/women—mainly from church—are coming over to make earrings, bracelets, and necklaces. So, I am gracefully excusing myself from the house to go study with some guys from school. Two of the other three guys with whom I am studying are BYU alums, so our “study session” could very well turn into a couple of hours of watching highlight videos from this season’s BYU football games and comparing BYU’s stats to Oregon’s stats (their opponent in the Las Vegas Bowl on December 21).

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Photos

Sew what if I
Here I am sewing a skirt during the service project that Gretchen and I went to last night. Mom, you should be proud--thanks for teaching me how to sew! My friend, Aaron Lock, from church, organized this service project to make skirts and trousers for school children in Africa. Apparently these are going to a special school for children with AIDS. By the way, the little colored-in nativity scene on the bulletin board next to me was part of the sharing time activity that Gretchen prepared for the primary children last Sunday.

The Menagerie
These are a few of the animals that Peggy has sculpted with clay in the last few years.

Watch out!
You know, I've always heard that the British are very affectionate toward dogs and horses, but I'm really not sure what this means. Does it mean that you can't foul the dogs or that the dogs can't foul you? And who is out there playing basketball with dogs that needs this warning?

Gretchen and Peggy
I took this picture of Gretchen and Peggy at the service project last night. Peggy has a great sense of humour and a very sharp wit. I don't recall what she said at that moment, but she sure had Gretchen laughing as they put elastic bands into the waists of the skirts that we were sewing. By the way, this is Peggy's "trademarked" visor that she wears everywhere to shield her eyes from lots of light.

Look Familiar?
Hey, Bob and Merry, does this remind you of anything? This picture of a mouse juggling cheese was part of an advertisement next to the escalator on the Tube. While Bob and Merry were here, we had a slight problem with a mouse in our flat. It took us a long time to finally catch this mouse who kept outsmarting us. We set conventional traps, but the mouse was somehow able to set off the traps and then eat the cheese or peanut butter! We tried several types of traps before we finally caught him with one of those adhesive traps that the mouse gets stuck on.

"We all live in a yellow submarine..."
When Sarah McAllister gave us directions to get to their flat for breakfast on Saturday, she told us to turn left at the building that had "a yellow bit on top." We were expecting some sort of yellow stripe around the awning or maybe some yellow discoloration on the roof or something...this caught us by surprise as we turned the corner! But, we have to give her credit--Gretchen and I knew exactly where to turn left! To Toby and Sarah's credit, this is NOT the building in which they live.

They're not just good...they're greeeat!!!
This is a tiger that Peggy sculpted. There's also a camel, and I think that's a squirrel in the back.

Kerb Your Enthusiasm
This was a new one for me. Since we've been here, Gretchen and I have become accustomed to the extra u's (favourite, etc) and the word "tyres" and other minor differences in spelling. But we hadn't seen the word "kerb" until Saturday...

King's Cross/St. Pancras
Most of our traveling outside of our neighborhood is on the Tube, which is underground. We had no idea this building was right above a Tube station that we've gone past dozens of times. I'm not sure what it was, but it looks they are converting it into condos.

Finger Lickin' Good!
It's interesting what things they try to pass off as "American" in other countries. I guess this is pretty close, but c'mon! At least it isn't as bad as in Argentina, where we would see green and yellow Chicago Bulls hats. One of my mission companions had a "Utah Jazz: 1998 NBA World Champions" t-shirt. (For those of you who might not remember, the Jazz lost to the Bulls in seven games that year.) I always wondered how they got the championship shirts and hats printed so quickly for post-game interviews. I guess they just print out both sides and send the "mistakes" to the other side of the world.

What happens in Paris stays in Paris...
...especially if it's your head. I'm not sure that Paris has chosen the best advertising campaign to lure tourists to their city. We saw this ad for Versailles Palace at the Chalk Farm Tube station.

Not Rover
Peggy's specialty with sculpting animals seems to be dogs. She has several different breeds adorning her house. None of them is named Rover because Rover is her walking stick's name.