Getting Loose

Farewell

It’s now the night before we are to leave tomorrow.

I have very mixed feelings.  I did not know what this experience would bring me.  I tried to be as open as I knew how to allow to emerge whatever was going to emerge.

I come away with an appreciation for heritage.  In American we think things are old at 50 years.  In the British Isles, you have to get a few hundred years under your belt before you are talking about some serious history.

I have an enhanced appreciation for social conventions and customs.  Having tea is a civilizing process as much as it is taking a break. 

I have learned that you do not always have to be in a hurry at break neck speed.

I have learned that you simply cannot do everything, but you can do some things, and that is sufficient.

I have learned on the whole how polite the English people are to each other, and how effusive they are in greeting one another.  I have also experienced their generosity—not in just a monetary way, but also of their time.  Time has always been extraordinarily precious to me, and they willingly share it with you.  That is a luxury that stupefies me.  I need to learn that lesson better than I have.

I have learned how very different the polities and customs are of the Methodist cousins across the sea.  I can see that the United Methodist Church operates far closer to how the Church of England does things, than to how British Methodism does things.

I remember thinking as I walked around from time to time that I may be seeing people who are distantly related to me.  I have roots in England with the Gifford and Anderson and Taylor names.

I have learned how differently at times we use the same language.

I have also learned that I want to come back some day and experience more than I possibly could on this trip.  Maybe get into Scotland and Ireland and France as well.

 I have loved the weather as much as these people may want to complain.  At least it was not 100° F with 100% humidity like Houston.  I think our entire range in England was 78° maximum, and 48° minimum!

I will never, ever, ever forget these wonderful English.

And a Good Time Was Had by All

If there is one thing the English know how to do well, it is tea.  As a subset of tea (and that is hot tea to you Yanks), what they do very well is cream tea.  Tom and Rekha wanted to make sure we had had the experience. 

They invited us over to their lovely house to have tea (or coffee for the slackers).  There was the wonderful tea at a table set for seven, and then wave after wave of food—the quarter sandwiches (with the crusts cut off), the pastries, the jam, the cookies—there was more food than you could shake a stick at!

We also celebrated with them the good fortune of their daughter, Christina, having gotten into Oxford University!  Getting into a particular university is a very competitive affair here in England!  I dare say that Oxford is at the top with Cambridge a very close second.  Their daughter is “reading” (American translation:  “studying”) for her law degree.  Their son, Jonathan, is very interested in theatre.  I‘ll bet that perhaps one of the very best performances he ever gave was staying awake during the tea while the old fogeys were talking and chatting and looking as if he were interested!

Culinary Delights

There are some great restaurants in the Ealing area. 

Here are two at which we have eaten and enjoyed very much:

Papaya

Monty’s

Cool, Clear

Two comments about the water here in Ealing.

This has to be, by far, the hardest water
I have ever come into contact that is used on a regular basis.  It is so hard, that scaling forms in water heaters so easily, and in electric percolators, and even in clean tea cups.  I just have never seen its equal anywhere.

The second thing is the water pressure. 
 It is by far greater than I have ever experienced in any household.  I love that part of it.

Shantini

She pronounces it SHAWN-t^e-knee’, and I went to take communion to her 90-year-old mother.  Florence was deeply appreciative.  Shantini had been in church last Sunday, but did not want to “bother” me with a request to bring the sacrament to her mom, because I was leaving in just a few days.

 

And so she was very surprised when I unexpectedly showed up on her doorstep.

 

She was very gracious, accommodating, and in a few minutes was able to help her mother down the steps for communion.  We all used the Methodist Worship Book for I had brought three copies with me, and we went through the service for Holy Communion in a home.

 

Afterwards Shantini and I got into a very interesting discussion about Sri Lanka, as that is the family home grounds.  Well, while it may be called Sri Lanka (a Sinhalese name), for hundreds of years, it was called Ceylon.  The island (off the SE coast of India), is beautiful, but after having gained independence from England, the two predominant ethnic groups began to undergo civil turmoil.  The Tamils who tended to be the more educated, and who coalesced in the north and east, had been the ruling class for hundreds of years.  But at independence, the Sinhalese became rulers by sheer force of numbers of ballots at the ballot box, and things began to change precipitously.  Ceylon was thrown out, and Sri Lanka (a Sinhalese name) took its place.  One day, a decree was suddenly made that the Tamil language could no longer be spoken, and overnight most, if not all, Tamil students were kicked out of universities.  The world’s first suicide bombers made their appearance in Sri Lanka. 

 

I had no idea about the turmoil, and wished I had made Shantini’s acquaintance much earlier in my stay to glean more of her perspective.  Shantini’s mother kept interrupting her narrative telling her in Tamil that I was a busy man and had other things to do besides learning this piece of obscure history.  But I loved it, and I thirsted for more of the Shantini's story.  Who knows?  Maybe she might have taught me a little of their alphabet--a very distinctive lettering that I've not seen elsewhere.

 

On another day, Shantini took my partner and me through the Southall section of Ealing—it is like the “Little India” section of London.  There one can find a Punjab flavour of India, that very multi-cultural country, and the Southall section conveys a representative flavour of that part.  As an example, here is the largest Sikh temple outside of India in Southall.   While in Southall, we got some mango,tea, and spices.   

 

Shantini was most gracious, accommodating, and had a very infectious smile and a winsome personality.

Accomplished

I’m not sure what to call it.  Genteelness?  Refined?  Cultivated?

English people seem to be into that more than Americans are.

Whatever it is, Gerald and Sue took us to another concert, this time at a desuetude Catholic Church.  An absolutely spectacular 20 year old violinist, Kristine Balanas,
played some Brahms, Prokofiev, and Saint-Saens.   To be at such live performances uplifts one’s spirit.  The church was packed.  SRO.  Thunderous applause.

The Missing I

   
 
 
People in London do not rent apartments or office space or anything else.  They “let” them. 

All over the place I was seeing signs about letting, and it took me a while to figure it out.  At first I thought it was about rest rooms, and that someone had painted out the “I” as a prank.  And I thought, “Man, these English have a fetish about bathrooms!” 

And then I wondered about blood letting, and thought maybe the is the new "old" wave in holistic medicine.

But then I slowly grasped what was really going on.

Urtica Dioica

I had heard of it, but did not know if it really existed or was simply the lore of days gone by.  I had heard of its tea as a good diuretic, which can help to lower blood pressure.  I've even heard of eating contests with it.  But in trying to pull weeds barehanded out by the garage, I got bit so to speak. 

I was trying to pull this weed up by its roots and all of a sudden the intense stinging sensation hit three of my fingers.  I let go and looked around, wondering if some insect had stung me.  There were no stinging insects that I could see.  I looked at the plant I was pulling and it seemed harmless enough.  I looked at my hand and could see a little blood, but man the stinging sensation would not go away.

I went inside to wash my hands, and wondered in my mind if that were a stinging nettle plant.  I had heard of them, but had never seen one as far as I know.  It looked similar to other hairy weeds where I live, and so I really did not give it a second thought.

It apparently gets you by its stinging hairs, whose tips come off when touched, that make the hair become like a needle injecting at least three chemicals into you, one of which is histamine, like in hives.

It tends to be more of an English plant, and that is not found as much in America.

The Mecca of Methodism

You could hardly be a Methodist and come to London and not see Wesley’s Chapel, right?

Well, we did the very thing! 

We even got to take Holy Communion in the Foundery Chapel.  We sat on pew benches which were part of the original ones used in Wesley’s lifetime.  We got a private tour of Wesley’s home and saw the room in which he died.  We saw his grave.  Across the street his mother is buried and next to her is Isaac Watts.  Also in that Bunhill Fields graveyard is Daniel Defoe.  It was all astonishing. 

The Foundery was once upon a time way outside of the city limits, but that is not at all true today.

It was like being at Mecca for the Muslims.

RI

I’ve been a Rotarian for years. 

And I had the most gosh-awful, difficult time trying to figure out where the Rotary Club of Hanwell & Northfields  met in order to attend a make-up meeing.  As it turned out, Google was spot on.  But looking at the addresses of the houses on the street, the address was way off.  On top of that the door was locked and you had to swipe some card to get in.  I couldn’t believe it.

After that after having travelled all that way by the E2 bus and having had to walk an entire block! 

I had to wait for a chap in an electric wheel chair to get into the parking lot and ask him if he knew where the Rotary Club met. 

He pointed right to the building beside which I was standing!

I said, “How on earth do you get in if you are not a member?”

“You see that fence over there?  Go around that fence and there is another door and it is open.”

I could not believe it.  I thought these Rotarians really do not want any visitors.  Where are the signs?  How are you supposed to know this?  Do you have to be an “insider” to know your way around?

Believe me, the parallel was not lost on me as to what visitors face at so many churches!

Once I could run through the hoops, the Rotarians were a congenial lot.  The food appeared home cooked.  There was lots of it for 11£.

I remarked how it was strange to me that they met at night, for in the USA they predominantly meet at noon or some at breakfast, but that I could not think of one who met at night!

They told me they were primarily a social club; they were not trying to make business connections per se.  There were lots of inside jokes. 

I find I have to listen harder with some people to wade my way through their accent.  I find it too easy to tune it out as if I were in a foreign country where unless you are the person being addressed, you tend to let the chatter pass you by.

I had a banner to trade with them from my own club.

“Oh, yes.  Right.  Well you see, we don’t do the banner bit anymore.  But we will make a 5£ donation to the Rotary Foundation in your honour.”

I thought, “Hmmm.  Not bad.”

The speaker spoke of Dechenne's muscular dystrophy.  I had never heard of it.  1 in 3500 boys is born with it, and even fewer girls.  It was a sobering speech.

The meeting lasted almost 2 hours!  But it was very interesting.