Day 5 -- Ignoring Battle

I hope the gals got their differences worked out and that Miss Jane's is back in business. I can think of few worse things than the EPJ not getting her coffee. If only there was a coffee machine and someone who knew how to operate it in the courthouse. Oh wait.

Also, to Christopher. I knew I was setting myself up for that by leaving it out. However, in my defence the very statement was, of course, said by Andy and myself several times before, during and after. As it has been/will be everytime we go by Big Ben/Parliment. Remember when Chevy Chase was funny?

It appears the beeb (BBC) is replaying the shadow prime minister's speech to the Tories this afternoon in Birmingham. I think he's called the shadow prime minister, the leader of the opposition regardless. And possibly the next PM of Britain. Unfortunately, I can remember his name right now. Furthermore, I've probably already lost whatever audience I may have had wondering about such matters. The point being: this is a good time to update things.

The big news of the day was that, much like yesterday, I fulfilled an unknown lifelong dream. Today's entry into the history books involved visiting Battle, the battleground there and scarcely leaving the gift shop. Whee. By his own admission, this was one of Andy's more esoteric trips. True, it's not that out of the way and to a major British history buff is one of the more significant places, but I highly suspect the average tourist knows little nor cares of it's existence. If I hadn't learned of it through osmosis from Andy, I wouldn't know all that much myself.

So what happened? Long story short, it's where William the Conqueror defeated Harold in 1066 to essentially start England as we know it. An oversimplification, yes, but that should be good enough to get you a couple of grand on Jeopardy. You're welcome.

It was a typical English day: rainy, cold, windy and just miserable. I admit to having little interest in the sight but this was Andy's big day for the trip so I was glad to go along. However, my shoes were beginning to soak through and there was a lot of walking ahead so I told Andy and my Dad to carry. And like the trooper I am legged it back to the gift shop for the remainder of their tour. Figuring the best place to be out of the way would be to block a fire exit, I proceeded to do just that. The workers didn't seem to mind so I set up camp with my ipod and the latest issue of The Wire.

The only real observation made during this time being that the young, hip and beautiful generally don't come to 11th century battlefields. Judging solely on the basis of the people I had to move my legs for, the median age of visitors there is 82. Maybe 76 on a particularly youthful day. I saw/heard no children though the gift shops was filled with various plastic swords/helmets/shields collecting dust. A hunch that even in the squarest of households the question of "Hey kids, you wanna go look at some really old buildings and a field or you wanna go see if we can drive through this brick wall" is still somewhat of a no-brainer. Somewhat.

So there I sat. And sat. And sat.

Andy said they'd be about 45 minutes. After making it all the way through Supersister's Pudding End Gistern and Neil Young's Arc (about 90 minutes), I was starting to wonder if perhaps a straggler still fighting the battle had taken the two of them hostage. Since I'd finished The Wire and gotten over the disappointment that we wouldn't be in town for the big movie night this weekend--feature presentation Grease, come dressed as your favorite character--I decided I'd go look for them. And then the phone rang. Apparently they had been looking for me for the last hour and had even made 3 trips to the gift shop. The very same shop, I hasten to add, where I had been the entire time and told them I would be. We laughed and then I kicked them both in the shins and we headed back to the train station.

Since it was such a pissy day, we didn't really want to bum around outside a lot so we took in Harrod's and picked up souvenirs for Millicent, Meena (fake name of Millicent's real daughter), Marisol, Madeline, Maureen and the EPJ. I know they'll be excited. Less so when they see what they've got. For any that don't know, I guess Harrod's could best be described as what Macy's in NYC is/was/forever will be. Or perhaps a really big (6 or 7 floors), swank Wal-Mart that sells $30K antique maps and snazzy jewelery that the above mentioned gals needn't get their hopes up that they are getting. Getting into the spirit of things I picked up four magazines and two books for myself. Awesome.

We started out together but somehow or another a sales lady mistook Andy and my Dad as being interested in how cartogriffic their antique map selection was and started in on a 30-minute dissertation of all things mappy. A police mouse was not mentioned. Beforehand, we had decided if any of us got into trouble the others should break away and head for the relative safety of the comparatively small Harrod's magazine rack. So upon realizing she had mistook their smell of disinterest for blood, i.e. money, I wandered off in search of our safe haven. I found it and stayed there until I remembered I was supposed to meet them 10 minutes earlier. Oh, what a laugh we had and then they kicked me in the shins.

That left us with Piccadilly Circus as the only 'tourist' sight we still had to visit. Admittedly, not really anything any of us cared about, but Andy's filming various bits and pieces for Millicent and well, this is one of the biggies. It is London's Times Square which means it is a bright, crowded, noisy, sensory overload that seemed to have a rather large contingent of teenagers out on a school night. Tsk, tsk. Perhaps, as Andy surmised, they were just there to get a first hand look at the road crews on their jobs. If so, they should be well informed.

I had hoped maybe we could go see a movie but the cinemas let us down as nothing of interest was playing. We were tempted by the promise of "London's No. 1 hit comedy, The 39 Steps". It's presumably based on the Hitchcock flick that most definitely wasn't a comedy, but I could find no evidence of such nor any list of stars that would warrant my time, i.e. no Frank Stallone.

Disappointed, we decided that we'd rather go back and watch some dude on the telly tell us how to survive crossing the desert on foot. His crack team of experts working overtime to come up with tips such as: seek shelter, don't taunt a cobra and dig down to see if you can find water. Surprisingly, he didn't suggest running as fast as you can so you'll get out quicker or screaming "Help" until camel-riding nomad comes along.

Moral of the story: don't go to the desert unless you're pretending to be stranded but have a camera crew and all the supplies you need.