Trav'lin' Light--Part 1

The essential theme song for my recent sojourn. And Queen Latifah, whom I totally love, did an album with this song as the title track. Ella Fitzgerald's version is my fave, but I can't find a good recording of it online to link. Without further ado, let's talk travels.

London, England: A Tale In Every Face and Every Place
It began in London. I arrived in late August. Since my digital camera went kaput pre-Slovenia I have no pictures from those days. After hauling my luggage from Heathrow to Camden Town, Sarah, bedecked in a heather gray printed sweatshirt, white jeans and camo hi-top chucks, greeted me with a grin. Heaven to see a smiling familiar face. She escorted me on a quick walk from the tube station to Anna-Helga's flat, my home base for the month. Anna-Helga, native Londoner and a person Sarah once described as having both incredible style and real integrity, was nothing short of wonderful. Sarah doesn't lie.

Trying to recover from jet lag, there was some rest. But the day after, Sarah, Anna-Helga, and I went to romp around London. First we met up with their old school friend Martha, and we had a little picnic in Hoxton Square. We walked around and stumbled on an old watch shop, where one of them had a clock battery replaced. It was a little place that looked like it had been there for ages, walls lined with old pictures I cannot recall, other than that they were definitely yellowed with time. The proprietor was a friendly old guy who chatted with us briefly and got the timepiece issues sorted out in due course. Small treasures like that with real character are their own masterpieces of everyday life.

Our merry party had tea and cake at Maison Bertaux in SoHo, a favorite spot of Anna-Helga's. I spent an evening with Sarah's family too. Her mom made curry puffs and noodles and talked of the nursing profession. We sat and talked with her dad, while watching the Olympics, and he told me yarns of his trajectory from Macclesfield to British Council service across the globe. A day or two after, taking advantage of some rare English sunshine, I also accompanied the Joneses on a great day trip to the Cotswolds. Sadly, no Alex James sitings, but Stratford Upon Avon--home of Shakespeare, and many other towns' small cottage delights, was more than enough loveliness for one day. The doors on the oldest houses there were low enough that even I would've banged my head when crossing the vestibule. And we pulled over roadside for homemade bacon sandwiches and tea. The marvelous day was littered with little churches, stone walls, thatch roofs, fancy candy, and unbelievable locally-grown strawberries.

Did I mention, I also reunited with Kojo! Anxiously I stood on Tottenham Court Road, a "We Will Rock You" marquis looming above me, the madness of London whizzing by, all forgotten, when the man--the legend--emerged from the ephemera just as he had disappeared three years ago after graduation. How splendid to see a dear friend after an age apart.

On another day, I met up with Sarah and her BFF May to go to Notting Hill Carnival. They presented me with an artificial pin-on flower, and dressed in our bright attire, we rode on a packed 31 bus to the festivities. It was a surging mass of people, a spectacular whirl of sequins, glitter, body paint, and ornate headgear. Soundsystems blasted everywhere as we meandered through the maze of bodies, dancing madly too. Foodwise, we situated ourselves curbside licking fingers and smacking lips with jerk chicken smothered in hot sauce on a bed of blackeyed peas n' rice. The crowds grew even larger. And after lying in the grass to recharge, we were ready to head homeward. But the throng was so dense it took us nearly an hour to navigate our way out.

The next day I left for Slovenia for the European Association of Social Anthropologists conference. I will do another post on that as this one is quickly spinning out of control into a tome.

After an offering to the academic gods, I returned to England. I came back to yet another reunion, this time with Pat, my beloved Rotary counselor from Cape Town. She was stopping in London with her husband Roy to visit their daughter Sharon before heading to Bournemouth for a conference. I took a day trip with them to Ashdown Forest, a.k.a. the hundred acre wood of Winnie-the Pooh fame. We took an adventurous romp through meadows, heather, mud, mist, and rain.

Pat, Sharon and Roy looking for Eeyore's gloomy place

The rows of trees lined up like soldiers

Roy found this awesome mushroom

The gray sky, with pregnant rainclouds

Sharon, Roy, Pat, and me: we are at Winston Churchill's house, Chartwell. But we didn't think it was worth paying to go in! There was also a cool vintage car derby going on there.

Back in London there was some other merriment. Here is a picture of a really cute storefront I liked on Oxford Street:

I also went to this great exhibit at the V & A museum. It was The Supremes: The Mary Wilson collection. I took so many pictures of their staggeringly flash/fab performance outfits, it deserves its own post which I'll save for later. But here's a fun non-apparel tidbit from the exhibit:

The Supremes: Special Formula White Bread?

I also went to the London Transport Museum. Sounds dismally boring, but it was great, even if the admission was overpriced. There was an amazing collection of London Underground posters and restored old tube cars. Again, that's gotta have its own post, since I got camera-happy.

John Soane's museum/house was very cool. This famous architect amassed one of the most impressive collections of classical antiquities. The best part is that they're all displayed in this sort of crazy collage of disorder all over the house. It's as if with every new item he just cobbled together places to put it. There was so much sculptural treasure it seemed sprawling from every nook and cranny. There are some cool Hogarth paintings in there too. They didn't allow pictures, and I sure wish they did but here's the exterior:


Cambridge Grandeur and Greenery
One of the more memorable outings was a day in Cambridge with Sarah. We were on a stealth mission like secret operatives, going into the colleges like we were supposed to be there, shirking the stupid admission fees. But Sarah had just misplaced her Cam card, which would've provided us free entry anyway. We were only stopped once, by a rather prickly steward who refused us admittance, even when Sarah insisted she was an alumnus.

Look at the funny creature adorning something in the chapel!

Whoopee! I did the same thing in front of a door in the Cotswolds, but this doorway's a bit taller

Sarah's face says it all

I love Nando's, and guess what South Africans, they have one in Cambridge!

Trinity College

Birds gliding by the spires

Check out the crenellation on that, baby!

Miss Jones lookin' idyllic

This is a dining hall! Imagine eating there on the regular...

I think the sweetest part of the colleges tour was Emmanuel College, since this was Sarah's college. She showed me this wonderful little garden where on one of the last days of term she had gathered with her friends and some champagne and they sat beneath the canopy of tree leaves.

Duck Duck Goose!

Sarah and the sunlight beaming down on Emmanuel

After looking at the colleges, and taking a coffee break to simmer down from the irksome encounter with the steward, we took a jaunt through the meadow all the way to an orchard where we had lunch, tea, and scones. Sheer bliss!

Sarah tucking into a tasty salad in the orchard

Parliament Funkadelic
The rest of the month I was exploring muddy fields, park lawn sunbathing/newspaper reading, updating my wardrobe, and hiding in a broom closet in Parliament. You read me right, a broom closet. Anna Helga works at Parliament and she gave me a rockin' tour. This particular broom closet is of note, as it is where Emily Wilding Davison locked herself in the name of women's suffrage. What a badass. Here's the plaque commemorating said badass:

Anna-Helga holdin' it down for the feminism in the House of Commons

I found the bathrooms there to be rather fancy. I mean, look at the detailing on the stall doors.

I also saw some great films at the British Film Institute, which always seems to have a stellar program. The best was seeing a double feature of Paris Qui Dort and Buster Keaton's utterly hilarious Three Ages while a pianist provided the live soundtrack to these silent masterpieces. Oh how I love silents with live music!

Smell-o-vision
My memory was imprinted with scents everywhere in London. The Camden Coffee Shop is run by a man who took over in 1978 and has been there ever since. A site for java since 1950, its got age-old weighing and grinding machinery that seems to never need replacement. I loved the Kenyan estate pure 250g ground coarsely, the whir of the hardware rending the beans apart to produce a rich aroma that I toted around with me while walking down the High Street.

I recall being sweaty from a run up and down Primrose Hill in the trickling rain, head spinning from exertion and pleasure. I wandered around when the trickle subsided and I was drawn to a cupcake shop, the delicious perfume of baking filling the pastel walls, mingling with the smell of wet pavement. Miniature fairy cupcakes in hand, I bit the sugary icing, silky and smooth against the fluffy cake.

After a trip to Portobello Road Market, I can still remember the rosemary emitting from my shopping bag was sweet and forceful, pan de mie bread alongside, that sister to Dutch crunch. I remember Chamomile tea sipped whilst munching on the top half of the loaf eying shoppers with their Cherbourg-like parade of umbrellas. The crimson streaked nectarines were nestled there at the bottom of my shopping tote along with Brussels sprouts cloistered in their own brown paper sack.

Then there was the great stench of old records. In a Damon Albarn pilgrimage, I went to Honest Jon's. Why is it that music nerds' ass crack or line of their boxer shorts always manages to peek out from their baggy jeans? But I can't disparage them as they played all the records I asked to sample. Roy Ayers' Ubiquity and Everybody Loves the Sunshine albums along with a poster for Coffy lined the walls and I knew I had come home. A selection of stuff I knew I would love. You could’ve just grabbed a few things at random at hit the jackpot. Given my recent shying away from the rock pantheon, this was a welcome haven. This was on point with where my musical mood was. I selected the Ohio players Skin Tight, but then decided against it as I figured I might be better off finding a pressing at Amoeba upon returning to SF. But I did splurge on David Axelrod's The Axe, an Honest Jon’s compilation that was really sweet—and the packaging was gorgeous, and a CD of something entirely new to me—Yusef Lateef, woodwind player extraordinaire. All tight grooves.

In the midst of all this, Anna-Helga had a birthday party where I made some food, had a good time, and met some cool folks. One of those folks was Andrew, who was a great museum buddy. We went to the Tate Modern and he happily gave me the rundown of his favorite pieces. Take that, audio tour!

And on my last night in London we went to the Science Museum's "Lates" where they open the museum at night and have special stuff going on. We saw a dance performance in front of the digital exhibit that feature all sorts of five letter words that were being typed into search engines in real time. We fiddled around with the hands-on exhibits. And we sat at a screen featuring really old science films. We selected one about the magic myxes, Andrew and I, sat side by side with our respective headphones, and listened to the narrator, while watching these strange fungal growths oozing and pulsating in black and white.

In the morning, Anna-Helga and I went out for breakfast and we said our farewells at the station.

I left London with the scent of English roses filling my nose. I would walk outside and dip my sniffer in one all the time. The best time was after-the-rain red roses near Primrose Hill, full of flowery sweetness reviving in vivid color the four year old me dressed in a dusty pink frock inhaling from a rose clipped from the garden of my grandfather. It was tended with love, greenfinger meticulousness honed in the depression-era central valley, made ripe again with the floral magic that beckons to me in my memories. I was enveloped in its otherworldly smell, the upturned petals extending to the circumference of my face . Ah, those sensual touchstones that invigorate anew and wax nostalgic.