Friday, May 25, 2001
Back at Work, Back at the Office
This morning, off to Oakville. Spent some time in the morning scanning family photos to be added to the family tree, and had a much-needed shower. Last night we stayed up to watch three back-to-back episodes of Whose Line is It Anyway? Arguably the only truly funny (as in belly-laugh funny) show on television at the moment, and the only American comedy show I have any patience for these days. Took the time in the morning to register chateauvolterra.com on behalf of my father-in-law. Turns out volterra.com is already taken, which is a pity. Will have to do some research into getting an .fr domain name. Thursday, May 24 2001
First Full Day Back Home
Great. Woke up at 4am. Was fully awake, so I decided not to fight it and got up. Decided to start work on the family tree, based on all of the voluminous documents I now have in my possession. I ended up downloading a free copy of Legacy Family Tree 3.0, which turns out to be a very versatile program for documenting family history. It outputs to the standard GEDCOM format, and produces decent Web output (which someday I'll place on the captmondo.com site). Over the course of the day - while taking brief breaks from work at the end of work, I found some interesting details. Turns out I may have some distant American cousins about my age who live (or at least were born in) Chicago, as well as finally having some hard facts about the Australian and South African relatives I have long heard about, but have never had any real information about until now. Will definitely make an effort to track them down and contact them once I have everything written down and organized. Think I have also been able to figure out the Okill connection on my father's side, finally linking my paternal grandfather to the people listed in the Okill family bible in my possession. When I have finished inputting all of the info I've got, this is going to be a pretty massive family tree, which is both broad (tons of cousins listed) and relatively deep (dating back to the late 1700s). Will have to start routing through my mother's and father's family photos albums (and the trays upon trays of slide images my father took over the course of 30+ years), looking for images of distant relations I can scan and add to the site. Due to jet-lag, and the fact that my machine is still recovering from that damned virus earlier in the month (I had to download a bunch of programs to replace those that got corrupted), my day at home doing work was rather unfocused. Did manage to get some significant work done, and re-establish connections with everyone at the Oakville office, but am certainly not up to par as yet. Hopefully by tomorrow will be back in stride. I did have a talk with Dusty P. at the Californian office, chatting about my father-in-law's yacht and his order for the waterproof LCD screen from SeaView Displays. Told him about the opportunities about selling waterproof marine displays in the south of France, but we both agreed that convincing anyone of the necessity of traveling to St. Tropez on purely business purposes is next to nil. ;-) After I told him about the chateau and the vineyard, Dusty decided to send the unit direct to my father-in-law, and get payment afterwards - there's certainly no problem about payment. This is also handy, since Josef requires the unit before June 15th, which is when he plans on saying the refurbished S.Y. Audacious to the Isle of Wight. After the phone call, I managed to track down a couple of photos of the good ship and sent them to Dusty for interest's sake. Hopefully I can get a couple of photos of the unit once it is installed on the boat, and we can use them on the SeaView Displays Web site. Vanessa was truly ecstatic to be home. She truly looked forward to heading to school in the morning, and played about back with all of the local kids in the afternoon. I managed to resist the strong urge for a nap in the afternoon, and managed to stay up the full day. Man, it's great to be home. Wednesday, May 23 2001
Final Day of Vacation: Air Transat, Thy Name is Sardine Packer!
At 4am we hoisted ourselves out of bed. Ugh. We finished off the last-minute packing, got Vanessa up and dressed, and schlumphed ourselves downstairs -- where Josef, already up, was waiting for us with packed sandwiches and tea/coffee. So at 4:35 am we zoomed off to Nice Airport. Kudos to EasyJet -- the flight to Luton left on time, no muss, no fuss, grabbed the seats we wanted easily (which actually had some leg-room), and the plane actually got in early. Only gripe is the £3 paid for a truly mediocre large tea and coffee. Despite that, if they flew out of Toronto, I'd use them. Once at Luton, we made our way to the train station, and somehow squeezed us and our baggage on a largely full train. For much of the journey I worried about the possibility of trying to get out of the train with all of the extra people, but thankfully most of the passengers got out in London's central train stations, and we were able to get out at Gatwick Station with much less fuss. We arrived at Gatwick with several hours to spare. We ended up having a large, relaxing breakfast at the Garfunkel restaurant there. While waiting for the meal to arrive, I took the opportunity to buy a Noddy and a Pingu book for Vanessa, as I was beginning to get tired of re-reading Madeline In London and Franklin's Baby Sister. I also took the opportunity to buy a couple of audio books: Starkey's Elizabeth: The Struggle for the Throne and Picard's Dr. Johnson's London. After breakfast, we went through inspection and entered the duty free zone. I led a restless Vanessa away while Erika was offered small samples of exotic scotches. Vanessa found a little British girl to play, colour and trade stickers with. When Erika got back with a large bottle of Grand Marnier (a gift for our house-sitter), and a bottle of Ardbeg scotch, which neither of us had run into before. I went in and got myself a cheap Sony Walkman, batteries, a bag of licorice allsorts and a copy of The Economist. Then we made our way to boarding dock. This time the plane was a 767 that gave us 3 seats in a row. My knees were continuously up against the back of the seat in front of me, relieved only when, through a complex procedure, I could re-fold my legs stretched out underneath the hair in front of me. From this point I swear that comfort will get at least as much precedent in determining which air carrier I fly with in the future. Never again will I fly Air Transat if I can help it. They showed two in-flight movies during the flight: Miss Congeniality and The Family Man. I had no real interest in either movie, and so I entertained Vanessa while Erika watched (save for an hour when I managed to fitfully nap), It's interesting watching movies sans sound: Sandra Bulloch was continually stumbling around in her movie, and Nicolas Cage wore a constant semi-puzzled expression in his. Customs back home went like a breeze, and we were lucky in catching a limo with no waiting to take us directly home. Home at last! We schlepped everything inside, immediately started on laundry, and ordered from The Goof for take-out Chinese "comfort" food. Vanessa go a new burst of energy when we got home, and played out back with the neighborhood kids. We all eventually conked out early: Vanessa at 7pm, and us at 8pm. It was great to sleep in our own beds again. Tuesday, May 22 2001
Getting Lost in Provence
Another gorgeous non-rainy rainy day. (It was predicted to rain all week long. ;-) This morning the Murphys left to continue their trek across southern France. There was talk about taking the SY Audacious out for a short cruise, but it turned out that the ship was in the middle of an overhaul that would keep it in port. Erika took Vanessa out to pick enough oranges from the garden to make orange. These are semi-wild orange trees, so there's lots of pulp, the seeds are big and the juice is bitter. Makes for great marmalade, but even with a lot of sugar, it proved too bitter for Vanessa's taste. Still, how many kids get the experience of making their own orange juice from scratch? After breakfast, we headed out down the path that led to the "beach". For much of the long journey down, we stopped to admire the wild flowers and butterflies that crossed our path. After meandering along the path for a long time, and still only half-way down the hill, we opted for taking a shortcut that appeared along the trail. Unfortunately it was rough going, as the path was strewn with lots of brambles and other prickly shrubbery. Vanessa was short enough to walk under them, but I had to be ever vigilant, especially since I had a backpack on and therefore couldn't conveniently step sideways through the brambles. The "beach" was really a small tidepool hemmed in by a short stretch of gravel. We had a great time dipping our feet in the Mediterranean, and watching the fauna in the pools (a small hermit crab, a "regular" crab, limpets, small gobi-like fish, etc). One piece of what I though was floating debris turned out to be pumice, which briefly fascinated Vanessa (a floating rock?). We found a good place to sit: a tree that had washed up to shore, and promptly had butter-cookies and bottled spring water to snack on while watching the waves come in. Vanessa enjoyed herself afterwards by soaking in the sun-warmed puddles. Vanessa got scratched up a bit when she stumbled, and after cleaning her up and consoling her, we decided to head back. We had seen two couples meander along a path that ran parallel to the shore, and we figured it led back to the main path we followed part-way down the hill. And we didn't want to head back up the prickly short-cut. It turned out that the shore path did not lead back to the Chateau, but towards the town in-land. Thanks to Erika's French we got pointed in the right direction, and managed to got a lift from a kind woman who was staying at the camp-ground just down the hill from the Chateau. I trudged up the long drive to the Chateau, with Vanessa more asleep than awake riding on my shoulders. So, we were briefly lost in Provence, though we agreed that if you had to be lost, there were few less beautiful place to be lost in. Vanessa and I crashed right out in our beds. Erika did too, but she couldn't sleep. So while Vanessa and I slept, Josef "kidnapped" Erika and took her on driving tour of the area. This included the 7km stretch of beautiful white sandy beach just outside of St. Tropez, which we will have to come back to some day. In the evening, we headed out to the town of St. Tropez to have dinner. We had a brief chance to stroll along the docks while Josef gassed up the car and found a parking space. So we looked at the yachts, admired the multicoloured buildings, and glanced at store windows purveying goods like shoes and handbags in prices well in excess of my monthly salary. When we meet up with Josef again, he escorted us to a favourite cafe of theirs in St. Tropez called Cafe des Arts by Place des Lices. The meal was okay, but I had arguably the best Vanilla ice-cream (which I'd swear had a touch of cloves in it), and a couple of complimentary shots of the local grappa. Vanessa had long since finished her meal by this time, and ended up playing in the square just outside of the restaurant, dancing to the music filtering from the cafe's speakers, and having games with some of the local boys, occasionally shrieking out in fun. Then we headed back, and promptly crashed right out. Monday, May 21 2001 - First Full Day in France
Got up in the morning and peered outside. Overcast, cool, with ocassional gleams of sun. When I got to the kitchen downstairs, I was told that the weather was predicted to be like this, and worse, for the week (thankfully this forecast turned out to be way off the mark). Believing the prediction, I went outside and snapped numerous phots of the place, thinking this might be the best weather I'd get during our time there. - saw Audacious - visited Lothar and Nicole Saturday, May 19 2001
Woke up early again, but this time I decided not to fight it and so I got up, and decided to sit down and expand much of this journal from point form in an effort to get as much down as I could remember before we are gone. Our expedition for today was a production of The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse as presented by the puppet players at the Warehouse Theatre in East Croydon. To get there we hopped aboard the tram (a light rapid transit service) from Beckenham Station. As it turned out, we went one stop too far on the service, and subsequently had a devilish time trying to find out where the theatre was. We did track it down, still in good time for the show, thankfully. Turns out that it was not a puppet show, as advertised in the What’s On in London magazine, but “children’s theatre”, with two women dressed up as mice in a very small set. I believe that this was Vanessa’s first taste of live theatre, and as we got there early, she (and we) got a front-row seat. She enjoyed it, though she didn’t play along when it came to the sing-along musical numbers, and seemed a bit spaced out at times (either from latent tiredness or from the shock of seeing two grown women dressed up and pretending to be mice). A fun show, and Vanessa clapped enthusiastically at the end. Originally we had planned to find the major park in Croyden and have a picnic there, but when we emerged from the theatre an hour later, it had turned cold and threatened rain, so we had a “train picnic” instead. Upon arrival in Beckenham, Erika bought a nice bunch of flowers for Wylda from the train station. Flowers in hand, we headed back, and then crashed out for the afternoon. When we got up, Wylda gave us some farewell presents: a small set of bath toys for Vanessa (which she immediately put to use), and a painted Wedgewood plate depicting a British milkman. Let’s just say it’s not the sort of thing we would have bought ourselves, but still it was a nice gift. ;-) My cousin Philip turned up shortly before 6pm, and then we all headed to The Carvery, a local buffet-style restaurant (and part of a chain of such places). Vanessa chowed down on prawns, cucumbers and some Yorkshire pudding, Erika preferred the salad bar (pickled herring, shrimps, pasta salad with shrimp and various seafood dishes), and I went for the more traditional fare: slices of ham, turkey and roast beast, plus potatoes, English sausages, and of course, gravy. Philip is arguably the shyest person I’ve ever met – he doesn’t really like parties or meeting people; his main interest in life is apparently sports, primarily cricket and football – and even though he’s a full 6 years older than me, he seems younger than me. I understand he is still working for the civil service, though I gleaned much of that information having conversations with his mother over the course of the week. Outgoing he isn’t, and he seemed distinctly uncomfortable during the dinner. The family resemblance between him and his father is strong though, though his once reddish hair, like his father’s is now thinning, and his father’s bald patch is slowly emerging. He was eventually driven back to his own home by his parents, after we had been dropped off back at “base camp”. On the whole, a relatively uneventful day, but one which allowed us all to get some much-needed rest, which will be needed for the trip to France on Sunday. Friday, May 18 2001
This day started out as another chill, grey day threatening rain, though thankfully the weather held out, and by the afternoon things had cleared up and the sun had come into its own. I awoke at an early hour, mostly with my head still swirling with all of the information about my family that had come to light the previous evening. Almost got up, but decided in the end to go back to sleep, and to jot down the information I had learned later. When we all did get up, I got a call from my cousin Kenneth, who offered to take us out for the day to lunch and to Lullingstone, where we could see the ancient ruined Roman villa on display there. We gladly accepted, what with all of us getting a bit sick of continually heading into London by this time. Erika got on the phone after that and made the arrangements to have a cab take us to Luton airport on Sunday, and managed to have our flight from Nice to Luton switched to an earlier time – necessary in order to ensure that we could catch our flight out of Gatwick. The cab company that Erika initially called – one which Cec and Edith had recommended to us – wanted to charge us £95 to drive us to Luton. Thinking this more than a bit steep, Wylda made a call to a second company, and got us a cab for almost half that rate (£55). A lesson there – we think the fellow at the first company either didn’t want the job, or upon hearing Erika’s North American accent decided to charge us as much as he thought he could get away with. All I can say is £95, yow! In the morning we headed back to the local park. We took along several slices of bread with us, and Vanessa fed the ducks, coots and pigeons that quickly swarmed around us all. After the bread supply dried up, we headed back to the play-yard, where Vanessa repeatedly went down the various slides and I twirled her around on a mini-roundabout.
Kenneth dropped by at 11:00, taking us for a nice ambling drive through the countryside of Kent. He ended up making a number of wrong turns on our journey, which extended our trip, but we enjoyed traveling through the narrow lanes, taking in glimpses of the magnificent hills and valleys dotted with small farms. We initially ended up at a very enjoyable restaurant-come-pub at Ainsford. Vanessa, who had been complaining about her stomach for the last half of the trip, was promptly sick in the place, undoubtedly due to a case of travel weariness and car sickness. After a trip to the washroom (and after having a meal of fries) she was much happier. We all had a hearty lunch there, and we chatted mainly about Kenneth’s children, and what they were up to, and about the fact that it was his wife’s (Nannette) birthday the following day, and about the tree he was planning on buying for her garden. I passed over the presents we had for his children at that point, which included an Overkill t-shirt for his 16-year old son, a jade and gold pin for his daughter Jennifer, and the two remaining Canadian $5 gold coins as future heirlooms.
After the lunch, we piled into the car again and headed to the Lullingstone Roman ruins. This part of the trip had special significance for me, since I had visited this same place some 16 years ago during my last visit. The ruins are completely covered by a large building, and I believe during the last trip they were still working on the excavation at the site. All that work is done now, and we ended up taking a quick tour around the complex, the ruined walls once housing a bath/spa complex, with hot water baths once flowed. The size and scale of the place was impressive, especially when considering how old it was (1st-3rd century AD). Of particular note are the mosaic floors lining much of the central part of the building, depicting the Rape of Lucrece, and which are endlessly reproduced. Vanessa had the thought that maybe bears still inhabited the place, but they were nice bears so we shouldn’t worry. At the gift store accompanying the ruins, I picked up some nice marmalade (recommended by Kenneth) for John and Wylda, a Lullingstone tea-towel which I know my mother will appreciate for sentimental reasons, and I caved in and bought myself a book on the Roman invasion of Britain.
When we got back, Erika and Vanessa had the opportunity to lie down, and I went with John and Kenneth to the local NatWest bank branch to finally cash the money order from my Mother. Considering that I had been sent a money order, I was surprised at how much fuss there was in getting it cashed. In the end, John deposited it into his chequing account, and then he withdrew the same amount as cash and handed it over to me. The only way I could have cashed it would be if I had my own account while there in Britain, which is impossible for anybody spending time over there on holiday (you have to be resident in Britain for a year in order to qualify apparently). Anyways, it was good to get that taken care of.
For dinner that night we had been invited over by Bill and Mimi, who are neighbours of Cec and Edith's a couple of doors down from them. He is a classical music lover and quite the reader, with one wall of their living room lined floor to ceiling with books of all types that I cast an admiring eye over. She is originally from Texas, and she came over for a visit some 20+ years ago, and never left. She did us proud with a multi-course meal of salad, cooked ham, potatoes, peach pie and ice cream. Near the end of dinner the conversation turned back to that of my late father and of the family, where I picked up several more anecdotes. Of particular interest is the fact that I learned that most the Robertses and Okills are buried at Childwall cemetary near Liverpool. Edith remembers heading there many times as a little girl every Easter – and thoroughly hating the experience – where she had lay flowers at several graves. There’s apparently a crypt there for a “Sir so-and-so Okill” whom she was told she was related to, but she no longer remembers exactly what relation he was. Her eldest brother Ted is buried there, who died as a young child, before she was born, of meningitis.
My grandfather on my father’s side was a very Victorian old grump, and Edith related a story of how he once had caught her admiring herself in a bikini – and this was two weeks prior to her getting married to Cec – and swearing a blue streak at her for wearing such a thing. She was similarly chewed out for wearing nail polish on another, earlier occasion, and there was no way she could wear lipstick in the house. Sounds like someone I would have deeply disliked, and am rather glad the “grumpy old cuss” isn’t around anymore. He sounds like he was a master carver though, and I’ll have to head to the navy museum in Liverpool to see some of his remaining handiwork, as he made many of the glass cases in the museum. One of the best stories involving him and his children is the one where he fell asleep in his chair one day, and my father got some chalk and wrote the words “Pongo” – spelled in reverse letters – on the soles of his slippers. Not to be outdone, the young Edith managed to fill the heel of his slippers with buttons. So when the old man finally woke up, he staggered out of his easy chair stumbling about with his shoes filled with buttons, and writing “Pongo” all over the floor in the process. This got the children run out of the house, who later had to be escorted safely inside by their mother.
My paternal Grandmother sounds like a wonderful, cheery old lady, and everybody who knew her had a good word about her. She was apparently had a keen eye for the horses, and often won betting at the local horse races. This woman sounds like she was a real character, and a devoted mother to her surviving children.
We left shortly after 9pm. Upon leaving, Edith gave me a kiss and told me that I reminded her of my Dad, and I told her that I would really miss her since she reminded me a lot of my Dad (i.e. his character and mannerisms) as well. Upon getting back to Beckenham, we all promptly fell to our beds.
Thursday, May 17 2001
Another typical English day: cold, rainy and wet. Yuck. A good day to do something indoors, so we opted for going to the Science Museum instead of doing a trip down the Thames and then to the London Zoo. In the end, this arrangement worked best, as my cousin Howard decided to take the day off of work and meet us downtown at the Science Museum, which is much easier for him to get to than the Zoo. Umbrellas in hand, we emerged from Victoria Station and snagged a taxi which took a very winding, but in the end efficient, way to the Museum. While getting a tantalizing glimpse of the galleries devoted to the development of the steam engine, we headed to the basement to the "kiddie" section of the museum, which was full of hands-on activities -- and full of myriad young school-children on a school field trip. Fun for Vanessa, but exhausting for Mom and Dad. At 12:30 we met Howard and his wife Jane upstairs in the foyer of the building -- the first time I had met her (or she us for that matter). In the pouring rain we hopped into another cab and went to Chelsea, to a restaurant that Edith had recommended to Howard called The Chelsea Kitchen, just down the street from the Peter Jones store where she once worked. We ended up sitting at the remaining table – a tight squeeze – in the non-smoking section of the restaurant, right next to the kitchen. The food was unremarkable, though cheap and cheerful, which was appreciated. I made an embarrassing faux pas, asking Jane what field of nursing she was in. Howard had previously dated a nurse prior to marrying Jane… Jane, like Howard, also works as a lawyer, and also in the civil service, though at the county level rather than the national level. After the lunch, Erika took Vanessa back home, while I went with Howard and Jane down the street to visit the Peter Jones store. The purpose was to get some Portmerion-ware as a gift for my mother, and it also just happened to be the store where Aunt Edith had worked at as a director before her retirement. I would have liked to have bought my mother a vase, but I thought it too likely to break, so I ended up choosing a nearly-unbrteakable Portmerion tea trivet instead. There were several floral patterns available, so I let Howard have the honour of picking which one to get (then I could say they he choose it when I gave it to my mother). It was here I learned that Jane painted china as a hobby, and I invited her to send us samples if she would like to. Shorlty thereafter, I took my leave of them both, and decided to trudge around in a rainy London. I knew I was close to the train station, and amazingly enough, by dead reckoning I managed to navigate my way back without the need for a cab (or Underground). - went to Orpington to have dinner with Cec and Edith Wednesday, May 16 2001
- British Airways Eye After coming off of The Eye, we had an early lunch in a cafeteria in the old Greater London Council building. As there was a "half-price"-type theatre ticket outlet just outside, we discussed the possibility of seeing a show over lunch, since Wylda had agreed to baby-sit for an evening. We were interested in seeing the new Pet Shop Boys musical we had read about, but it was only open as yet to preview audiences, so we figured getting in would be near impossible. We agreed that there didn't seem to be much of a point seeing any of the various Broadway-originated shows, and neither of us are interested in Andrew Lloyd Webber. (After avoiding Toronto's version of The Phantom of the Opera for nearly a decade, why quit now?) Erika's not a fan of Shakespeare, and besides, the only notable production is a marathon of Henry V + the two parts of Henry VI. I love Shakespeare, but I’m not a masochist. One show caught my eye: Stones in His Pockets. This is a two-man show where two actors play an entire Irish village and a film crew that has arrived to film a bodice-ripper period film. I had heard about the touring company that had come to Toronto a couple of months ago, and had wanted to take Erika to it because it sounded like fun, but she was in the middle of Death to Smoochy at the time and weekends were precious. The reviews were good, and in fact it is a recommended production in the What’s On in London magazine we had with us, so I went and got the tickets (which were, by the way, full price, not half – the show was booked pretty much solid). - London Aquarium (shark cam) Tuesday, May 15 2001
- Covent Garden www.hamleys.compaper theatre store opera singers - met howard at lunch - british museum Monday, May 14 2001
Today, we visit London. Since we had building up about "going to London to see dinosaurs" to Vanessa, we decided that our first expedition to the city would be to go to the Natural History Museum, where they have an animatronic T-Rex. We got the train station at Beckenham, and found that a train left for Victoria Station every half hour or so. This would be Vanessa's first actual train ride. Thankfully, the train that arrived turned out to be a relatively new one -- I remember the grungy, awkward old trains I had borded on my previous trip in the mid-80s, and am glad that they seem to be a thing of the past. Once we got to Victoria Station, we got in the line for cabs, and were whisked off to the museum.
The interior of the building is stunning, pure Victoriana, which contrasts strongly against the dinosaur bones and exhibits of other extinct creatures in the large entrance hall. Vanessa kept asking whether or not all of the feircesome-looking bones "were dead", and I assured her that they were. It was harder to convince her of this point once we headed towards the dinosaur section that came with many animated creatures. Vanessa was genuinely scared at first, but once we explained to her that they were nothing more than fancy puppets, she began to relax, and she too waved to the small but lethal-looking dinos that Mom and Dad cheerily waved at. Then, we got to the T-Rex animatron. This is quite impressive -- at a guess 12' tall, roving eyes, a good roar, a dry-ice machine by his (non-moving) feet, and a lot of neck movement made for a convincing show as he tried to eat an ocassionally twitching prey dinosaur. Too convincing for Vanessa's benefit, and she promptly wanted up in Mommy's arms, and looked away from the robotic beast. While I took pictures, Erika stood near the exit with Vanessa, calming her down and explaning that it was just a big fancy puppet. Vanessa eventually got up the nerve to have a good lok at it, but I think she was still pretty happy to head out into the main exhibit hall where the majority of the dinosaurs were comprised of the very dead, fossil variety. It is certainly a good dinosaur collection, and I found it interesting that many of what I thought of as the more impressive exhibits came from the badlands of Alberta, in Canada.
After the dinosaur exhibit, we headed over to get an early lunch. We had a filling lunch, and Vanessa had a dinosaur-shaped gingerbread man as a treat. While there, she charmed a Greek man who works there, and he told her he would have to take her to the opera and various other places. This was all in good fun, and Vanessa shyly accepted the compliments on her cuteness. He eventually gave her a little plastic dinosaur that she really enjoyed. We also headed to the adjacent store, where we got a demo of a remote-controlled 2' high dinosaur. Vanessa -- and I -- were fascinated by it. (It was, unfortunately, a little bit on the big side to carry home. ;-)
We then headed to the insect area, (called the "Creepy Crawleys" section), which the guidebook I had recommended as one of the preferred spots to take the kids. Once we got there, we saw why: lots of hands-on stop for kids to do. Buttons to push, knobs to turn, doors to open and lots of things to see. I mugged in front of a giant animatronic scorpion while Vanessa ran around the area, looking at all of the cool bugs and playing with all of the things she could interact with. One of the hits with her was a house where you opened up various cupboards, doors and other areas and found little displays of the bugs that commonly inhabit many British homes.
One of the things that Erika and I found fascinating was the leaf-cutter ant exhibit. The basic setting is a large glass case that contains two "islands" set in a moat of water, and a twig connecting the two. On one island, a sacrificial plant. At the other, the ant colony, where you can see the ant colony in a pexiglass container. Streams of ants headed to the other island, and came back with bits of leaf, which was then fed to a type of fungus, which is what the ants actually eat. This being the age of the Web, there is an Antcam, which shows a steady stream of the ants as they walk along the twig harvesting their food for the day.
Then, we headed over to the mammal area. The main hall is something to behold, especially when you see the life-size stuffed(?) elephants appear tiny against the massive size of the full-scale model of a blue whale beside them. An interesting section of the museum, though very stuffy (the Victorians were not known for their ventilation systems), and as Vanessa was beginning to get tired, we breezed through this section and soon headed out the door. Got a cab back to the station, thence to Beckenham, then the ladies went to bed.
- letter from my Mother arrives: £400 for us, £150 for her brother
I spent time talking with John and Wylda about family history. I was not disappointed. I had heard that my "Uncle" Jimmy Stuart (actually a distant cousin) had done quite a bit of research in this area before he died in the 80s. Little did I know that my Uncle John had a complete copy of this information, that included family trees, extensive notes, along with occasional obituary notices and relevant articles that my Uncle had save. There were plenty of stories too, such as the time Uncle John visited his Aunt Noreen, and asked her how often they visited a local church. The answer: "Once a year. For the christenings." (Noreen came from a family of twelve). There were also names and birthdates (though no addresses), for relatives I had heard about that lived in South Africa and Australia. Other interesting tidbits I hadn't known before included:
We were met by my cousin Kenneth at the airport. Without ever seeing him before, Erika immediately noticed the family resemblance, even without the “Roberts” sign he held up for us. He drove us away from Gatwick to where my Uncle John and Aunt Wylda live in Beckenham. It was interesting to see Kenneth again, after a decade in a half. He must be in his late-40s/early-50s, and much of his hair has turned white, though he still has a very youthful appearance. Both of his children (Jennifer, 20, and Jonathan, 16) are currently in the middle of taking exams, so we most likely will not see them until the weekend. During the drive, I found it surprising at how much the scenery reminded me of that of Southern Ontario: similar plants, trees, and more farmland than I expected or remembered. If it weren’t for the fact that we were driving on the wrong side of the road and we were surrounded by all of these squat-looking euro-vehicles, I could easily set the scene back home. After a half-hour drive from the airport, we were dropped off at my John and Wylda’s flat in Beckenham. The faces may have grown older, but the warm, friendly personalities I remember from previous visits has not. They have loaned us the use of their flat for the duration of their stay, and are themselves staying with good friends of theirs who live down the street. After the introductions and hauling our baggage up a flight of stairs, the S-R’s all collapsed into our beds for a much-needed couple of hour’s rest. After waking up, we drove down to the nearby park – which would have been a short walk for us, but a necessary drive for my Uncle John, who once-red hair is now very white, and who is looking a little bit frail. Vanessa enjoyed the children’s playground, and tried out pretty much every slide and device on the grounds, before migrating over to the duck pond (actually, the river which flows through the town, The Beck). After feeding the squirrels with some bread (the ducks, geese and coots were literally swimming in bread thrown by previous visitors), we decided to head off for dinner. We ended up in a Beefeater’s Pub (which is a chain of pub-like restaurants) that my Aunt and Uncle liked. I treated everybody out for the dinner, and we all nattered away about family and British politics and old British sitcoms. Before turning into bed, Erika again remarked about the family resemblance between myself and my mother’s side of the family, remarking that much of my looks must come from that side of the family. I have to admit I was surprised as well by the strong resemblances I was seeing, especially with my cousin Kenneth. Saturday, May 12 2001
Day One of the Vacation: Flying to Britain
Well, here I am on board the Air Transat flight, packed in like a sardine -- though I have been in tighter seats previously (though this is only a matter of degree). Vanessa has a window, Erika has the aisle seat beside her, and I have the aisle seat in the middle row beside them. As I write on my Palm Pilot, have now been in Montreal just over an hour -- apparently the weight of the baggage was rather lopsided, and it took some time to re-adjust everything. As I write now, it is almost midnight, our time. Vanessa is still awake; she got her second wind. She was well on her way to falling asleep, when we landed in Montreal, which woke her up. Still have about 6 1/2 hours to go, once we get back in the air. Am seated next to a nice old gent by the name of Al. He's a widower in his 80s who originally hails from London, but emigrated to Canada in the 50s. He is a WWII war veteran, who was in much the same area as my father (Egypt and the "Trans-Jordan") at the same time. Al was in El Alamein, and pointed to his little red and black Desert Rat pin. He told me a several stories about life back then, including a couple that my Father had also related. One of these was a cruel form of entertainment featuring scorpions, a ring of gasoline and a match. The scorpions would end up stinging themselves to death in this ring of fire. Other stories including catching malaria (ditto my father), and touring in Baghdad (again ditto my father). He's visiting his 80+ year old sister in London. God speed, Al. As I write, Vanessa is asleep on my lap (Erika and I switched seats a while ago) -- finally! Through the window I can see the distant layered blue curvature of the Earth, with the clouds a wispy ripple far below. Chocolat is the in-flight film, which Erika is watching. Picked up two bottles of Beefeater gin for my Uncle Cec, and a lego airplane set for Vanessa when she wakes up.
This morning, off to Oakville. Spent some time in the morning scanning family photos to be added to the family tree, and had a much-needed shower. Last night we stayed up to watch three back-to-back episodes of Whose Line is It Anyway? Arguably the only truly funny (as in belly-laugh funny) show on television at the moment, and the only American comedy show I have any patience for these days. Took the time in the morning to register chateauvolterra.com on behalf of my father-in-law. Turns out volterra.com is already taken, which is a pity. Will have to do some research into getting an .fr domain name. Thursday, May 24 2001
First Full Day Back Home
Great. Woke up at 4am. Was fully awake, so I decided not to fight it and got up. Decided to start work on the family tree, based on all of the voluminous documents I now have in my possession. I ended up downloading a free copy of Legacy Family Tree 3.0, which turns out to be a very versatile program for documenting family history. It outputs to the standard GEDCOM format, and produces decent Web output (which someday I'll place on the captmondo.com site). Over the course of the day - while taking brief breaks from work at the end of work, I found some interesting details. Turns out I may have some distant American cousins about my age who live (or at least were born in) Chicago, as well as finally having some hard facts about the Australian and South African relatives I have long heard about, but have never had any real information about until now. Will definitely make an effort to track them down and contact them once I have everything written down and organized. Think I have also been able to figure out the Okill connection on my father's side, finally linking my paternal grandfather to the people listed in the Okill family bible in my possession. When I have finished inputting all of the info I've got, this is going to be a pretty massive family tree, which is both broad (tons of cousins listed) and relatively deep (dating back to the late 1700s). Will have to start routing through my mother's and father's family photos albums (and the trays upon trays of slide images my father took over the course of 30+ years), looking for images of distant relations I can scan and add to the site. Due to jet-lag, and the fact that my machine is still recovering from that damned virus earlier in the month (I had to download a bunch of programs to replace those that got corrupted), my day at home doing work was rather unfocused. Did manage to get some significant work done, and re-establish connections with everyone at the Oakville office, but am certainly not up to par as yet. Hopefully by tomorrow will be back in stride. I did have a talk with Dusty P. at the Californian office, chatting about my father-in-law's yacht and his order for the waterproof LCD screen from SeaView Displays. Told him about the opportunities about selling waterproof marine displays in the south of France, but we both agreed that convincing anyone of the necessity of traveling to St. Tropez on purely business purposes is next to nil. ;-) After I told him about the chateau and the vineyard, Dusty decided to send the unit direct to my father-in-law, and get payment afterwards - there's certainly no problem about payment. This is also handy, since Josef requires the unit before June 15th, which is when he plans on saying the refurbished S.Y. Audacious to the Isle of Wight. After the phone call, I managed to track down a couple of photos of the good ship and sent them to Dusty for interest's sake. Hopefully I can get a couple of photos of the unit once it is installed on the boat, and we can use them on the SeaView Displays Web site. Vanessa was truly ecstatic to be home. She truly looked forward to heading to school in the morning, and played about back with all of the local kids in the afternoon. I managed to resist the strong urge for a nap in the afternoon, and managed to stay up the full day. Man, it's great to be home. Wednesday, May 23 2001
Final Day of Vacation: Air Transat, Thy Name is Sardine Packer!
At 4am we hoisted ourselves out of bed. Ugh. We finished off the last-minute packing, got Vanessa up and dressed, and schlumphed ourselves downstairs -- where Josef, already up, was waiting for us with packed sandwiches and tea/coffee. So at 4:35 am we zoomed off to Nice Airport. Kudos to EasyJet -- the flight to Luton left on time, no muss, no fuss, grabbed the seats we wanted easily (which actually had some leg-room), and the plane actually got in early. Only gripe is the £3 paid for a truly mediocre large tea and coffee. Despite that, if they flew out of Toronto, I'd use them. Once at Luton, we made our way to the train station, and somehow squeezed us and our baggage on a largely full train. For much of the journey I worried about the possibility of trying to get out of the train with all of the extra people, but thankfully most of the passengers got out in London's central train stations, and we were able to get out at Gatwick Station with much less fuss. We arrived at Gatwick with several hours to spare. We ended up having a large, relaxing breakfast at the Garfunkel restaurant there. While waiting for the meal to arrive, I took the opportunity to buy a Noddy and a Pingu book for Vanessa, as I was beginning to get tired of re-reading Madeline In London and Franklin's Baby Sister. I also took the opportunity to buy a couple of audio books: Starkey's Elizabeth: The Struggle for the Throne and Picard's Dr. Johnson's London. After breakfast, we went through inspection and entered the duty free zone. I led a restless Vanessa away while Erika was offered small samples of exotic scotches. Vanessa found a little British girl to play, colour and trade stickers with. When Erika got back with a large bottle of Grand Marnier (a gift for our house-sitter), and a bottle of Ardbeg scotch, which neither of us had run into before. I went in and got myself a cheap Sony Walkman, batteries, a bag of licorice allsorts and a copy of The Economist. Then we made our way to boarding dock. This time the plane was a 767 that gave us 3 seats in a row. My knees were continuously up against the back of the seat in front of me, relieved only when, through a complex procedure, I could re-fold my legs stretched out underneath the hair in front of me. From this point I swear that comfort will get at least as much precedent in determining which air carrier I fly with in the future. Never again will I fly Air Transat if I can help it. They showed two in-flight movies during the flight: Miss Congeniality and The Family Man. I had no real interest in either movie, and so I entertained Vanessa while Erika watched (save for an hour when I managed to fitfully nap), It's interesting watching movies sans sound: Sandra Bulloch was continually stumbling around in her movie, and Nicolas Cage wore a constant semi-puzzled expression in his. Customs back home went like a breeze, and we were lucky in catching a limo with no waiting to take us directly home. Home at last! We schlepped everything inside, immediately started on laundry, and ordered from The Goof for take-out Chinese "comfort" food. Vanessa go a new burst of energy when we got home, and played out back with the neighborhood kids. We all eventually conked out early: Vanessa at 7pm, and us at 8pm. It was great to sleep in our own beds again. Tuesday, May 22 2001
Getting Lost in Provence
Another gorgeous non-rainy rainy day. (It was predicted to rain all week long. ;-) This morning the Murphys left to continue their trek across southern France. There was talk about taking the SY Audacious out for a short cruise, but it turned out that the ship was in the middle of an overhaul that would keep it in port. Erika took Vanessa out to pick enough oranges from the garden to make orange. These are semi-wild orange trees, so there's lots of pulp, the seeds are big and the juice is bitter. Makes for great marmalade, but even with a lot of sugar, it proved too bitter for Vanessa's taste. Still, how many kids get the experience of making their own orange juice from scratch? After breakfast, we headed out down the path that led to the "beach". For much of the long journey down, we stopped to admire the wild flowers and butterflies that crossed our path. After meandering along the path for a long time, and still only half-way down the hill, we opted for taking a shortcut that appeared along the trail. Unfortunately it was rough going, as the path was strewn with lots of brambles and other prickly shrubbery. Vanessa was short enough to walk under them, but I had to be ever vigilant, especially since I had a backpack on and therefore couldn't conveniently step sideways through the brambles. The "beach" was really a small tidepool hemmed in by a short stretch of gravel. We had a great time dipping our feet in the Mediterranean, and watching the fauna in the pools (a small hermit crab, a "regular" crab, limpets, small gobi-like fish, etc). One piece of what I though was floating debris turned out to be pumice, which briefly fascinated Vanessa (a floating rock?). We found a good place to sit: a tree that had washed up to shore, and promptly had butter-cookies and bottled spring water to snack on while watching the waves come in. Vanessa enjoyed herself afterwards by soaking in the sun-warmed puddles. Vanessa got scratched up a bit when she stumbled, and after cleaning her up and consoling her, we decided to head back. We had seen two couples meander along a path that ran parallel to the shore, and we figured it led back to the main path we followed part-way down the hill. And we didn't want to head back up the prickly short-cut. It turned out that the shore path did not lead back to the Chateau, but towards the town in-land. Thanks to Erika's French we got pointed in the right direction, and managed to got a lift from a kind woman who was staying at the camp-ground just down the hill from the Chateau. I trudged up the long drive to the Chateau, with Vanessa more asleep than awake riding on my shoulders. So, we were briefly lost in Provence, though we agreed that if you had to be lost, there were few less beautiful place to be lost in. Vanessa and I crashed right out in our beds. Erika did too, but she couldn't sleep. So while Vanessa and I slept, Josef "kidnapped" Erika and took her on driving tour of the area. This included the 7km stretch of beautiful white sandy beach just outside of St. Tropez, which we will have to come back to some day. In the evening, we headed out to the town of St. Tropez to have dinner. We had a brief chance to stroll along the docks while Josef gassed up the car and found a parking space. So we looked at the yachts, admired the multicoloured buildings, and glanced at store windows purveying goods like shoes and handbags in prices well in excess of my monthly salary. When we meet up with Josef again, he escorted us to a favourite cafe of theirs in St. Tropez called Cafe des Arts by Place des Lices. The meal was okay, but I had arguably the best Vanilla ice-cream (which I'd swear had a touch of cloves in it), and a couple of complimentary shots of the local grappa. Vanessa had long since finished her meal by this time, and ended up playing in the square just outside of the restaurant, dancing to the music filtering from the cafe's speakers, and having games with some of the local boys, occasionally shrieking out in fun. Then we headed back, and promptly crashed right out. Monday, May 21 2001 - First Full Day in France
Got up in the morning and peered outside. Overcast, cool, with ocassional gleams of sun. When I got to the kitchen downstairs, I was told that the weather was predicted to be like this, and worse, for the week (thankfully this forecast turned out to be way off the mark). Believing the prediction, I went outside and snapped numerous phots of the place, thinking this might be the best weather I'd get during our time there. - saw Audacious - visited Lothar and Nicole Saturday, May 19 2001
Woke up early again, but this time I decided not to fight it and so I got up, and decided to sit down and expand much of this journal from point form in an effort to get as much down as I could remember before we are gone. Our expedition for today was a production of The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse as presented by the puppet players at the Warehouse Theatre in East Croydon. To get there we hopped aboard the tram (a light rapid transit service) from Beckenham Station. As it turned out, we went one stop too far on the service, and subsequently had a devilish time trying to find out where the theatre was. We did track it down, still in good time for the show, thankfully. Turns out that it was not a puppet show, as advertised in the What’s On in London magazine, but “children’s theatre”, with two women dressed up as mice in a very small set. I believe that this was Vanessa’s first taste of live theatre, and as we got there early, she (and we) got a front-row seat. She enjoyed it, though she didn’t play along when it came to the sing-along musical numbers, and seemed a bit spaced out at times (either from latent tiredness or from the shock of seeing two grown women dressed up and pretending to be mice). A fun show, and Vanessa clapped enthusiastically at the end. Originally we had planned to find the major park in Croyden and have a picnic there, but when we emerged from the theatre an hour later, it had turned cold and threatened rain, so we had a “train picnic” instead. Upon arrival in Beckenham, Erika bought a nice bunch of flowers for Wylda from the train station. Flowers in hand, we headed back, and then crashed out for the afternoon. When we got up, Wylda gave us some farewell presents: a small set of bath toys for Vanessa (which she immediately put to use), and a painted Wedgewood plate depicting a British milkman. Let’s just say it’s not the sort of thing we would have bought ourselves, but still it was a nice gift. ;-) My cousin Philip turned up shortly before 6pm, and then we all headed to The Carvery, a local buffet-style restaurant (and part of a chain of such places). Vanessa chowed down on prawns, cucumbers and some Yorkshire pudding, Erika preferred the salad bar (pickled herring, shrimps, pasta salad with shrimp and various seafood dishes), and I went for the more traditional fare: slices of ham, turkey and roast beast, plus potatoes, English sausages, and of course, gravy. Philip is arguably the shyest person I’ve ever met – he doesn’t really like parties or meeting people; his main interest in life is apparently sports, primarily cricket and football – and even though he’s a full 6 years older than me, he seems younger than me. I understand he is still working for the civil service, though I gleaned much of that information having conversations with his mother over the course of the week. Outgoing he isn’t, and he seemed distinctly uncomfortable during the dinner. The family resemblance between him and his father is strong though, though his once reddish hair, like his father’s is now thinning, and his father’s bald patch is slowly emerging. He was eventually driven back to his own home by his parents, after we had been dropped off back at “base camp”. On the whole, a relatively uneventful day, but one which allowed us all to get some much-needed rest, which will be needed for the trip to France on Sunday. Friday, May 18 2001
This day started out as another chill, grey day threatening rain, though thankfully the weather held out, and by the afternoon things had cleared up and the sun had come into its own. I awoke at an early hour, mostly with my head still swirling with all of the information about my family that had come to light the previous evening. Almost got up, but decided in the end to go back to sleep, and to jot down the information I had learned later. When we all did get up, I got a call from my cousin Kenneth, who offered to take us out for the day to lunch and to Lullingstone, where we could see the ancient ruined Roman villa on display there. We gladly accepted, what with all of us getting a bit sick of continually heading into London by this time. Erika got on the phone after that and made the arrangements to have a cab take us to Luton airport on Sunday, and managed to have our flight from Nice to Luton switched to an earlier time – necessary in order to ensure that we could catch our flight out of Gatwick. The cab company that Erika initially called – one which Cec and Edith had recommended to us – wanted to charge us £95 to drive us to Luton. Thinking this more than a bit steep, Wylda made a call to a second company, and got us a cab for almost half that rate (£55). A lesson there – we think the fellow at the first company either didn’t want the job, or upon hearing Erika’s North American accent decided to charge us as much as he thought he could get away with. All I can say is £95, yow! In the morning we headed back to the local park. We took along several slices of bread with us, and Vanessa fed the ducks, coots and pigeons that quickly swarmed around us all. After the bread supply dried up, we headed back to the play-yard, where Vanessa repeatedly went down the various slides and I twirled her around on a mini-roundabout.
Kenneth dropped by at 11:00, taking us for a nice ambling drive through the countryside of Kent. He ended up making a number of wrong turns on our journey, which extended our trip, but we enjoyed traveling through the narrow lanes, taking in glimpses of the magnificent hills and valleys dotted with small farms. We initially ended up at a very enjoyable restaurant-come-pub at Ainsford. Vanessa, who had been complaining about her stomach for the last half of the trip, was promptly sick in the place, undoubtedly due to a case of travel weariness and car sickness. After a trip to the washroom (and after having a meal of fries) she was much happier. We all had a hearty lunch there, and we chatted mainly about Kenneth’s children, and what they were up to, and about the fact that it was his wife’s (Nannette) birthday the following day, and about the tree he was planning on buying for her garden. I passed over the presents we had for his children at that point, which included an Overkill t-shirt for his 16-year old son, a jade and gold pin for his daughter Jennifer, and the two remaining Canadian $5 gold coins as future heirlooms.
After the lunch, we piled into the car again and headed to the Lullingstone Roman ruins. This part of the trip had special significance for me, since I had visited this same place some 16 years ago during my last visit. The ruins are completely covered by a large building, and I believe during the last trip they were still working on the excavation at the site. All that work is done now, and we ended up taking a quick tour around the complex, the ruined walls once housing a bath/spa complex, with hot water baths once flowed. The size and scale of the place was impressive, especially when considering how old it was (1st-3rd century AD). Of particular note are the mosaic floors lining much of the central part of the building, depicting the Rape of Lucrece, and which are endlessly reproduced. Vanessa had the thought that maybe bears still inhabited the place, but they were nice bears so we shouldn’t worry. At the gift store accompanying the ruins, I picked up some nice marmalade (recommended by Kenneth) for John and Wylda, a Lullingstone tea-towel which I know my mother will appreciate for sentimental reasons, and I caved in and bought myself a book on the Roman invasion of Britain.
When we got back, Erika and Vanessa had the opportunity to lie down, and I went with John and Kenneth to the local NatWest bank branch to finally cash the money order from my Mother. Considering that I had been sent a money order, I was surprised at how much fuss there was in getting it cashed. In the end, John deposited it into his chequing account, and then he withdrew the same amount as cash and handed it over to me. The only way I could have cashed it would be if I had my own account while there in Britain, which is impossible for anybody spending time over there on holiday (you have to be resident in Britain for a year in order to qualify apparently). Anyways, it was good to get that taken care of.
For dinner that night we had been invited over by Bill and Mimi, who are neighbours of Cec and Edith's a couple of doors down from them. He is a classical music lover and quite the reader, with one wall of their living room lined floor to ceiling with books of all types that I cast an admiring eye over. She is originally from Texas, and she came over for a visit some 20+ years ago, and never left. She did us proud with a multi-course meal of salad, cooked ham, potatoes, peach pie and ice cream. Near the end of dinner the conversation turned back to that of my late father and of the family, where I picked up several more anecdotes. Of particular interest is the fact that I learned that most the Robertses and Okills are buried at Childwall cemetary near Liverpool. Edith remembers heading there many times as a little girl every Easter – and thoroughly hating the experience – where she had lay flowers at several graves. There’s apparently a crypt there for a “Sir so-and-so Okill” whom she was told she was related to, but she no longer remembers exactly what relation he was. Her eldest brother Ted is buried there, who died as a young child, before she was born, of meningitis.
My grandfather on my father’s side was a very Victorian old grump, and Edith related a story of how he once had caught her admiring herself in a bikini – and this was two weeks prior to her getting married to Cec – and swearing a blue streak at her for wearing such a thing. She was similarly chewed out for wearing nail polish on another, earlier occasion, and there was no way she could wear lipstick in the house. Sounds like someone I would have deeply disliked, and am rather glad the “grumpy old cuss” isn’t around anymore. He sounds like he was a master carver though, and I’ll have to head to the navy museum in Liverpool to see some of his remaining handiwork, as he made many of the glass cases in the museum. One of the best stories involving him and his children is the one where he fell asleep in his chair one day, and my father got some chalk and wrote the words “Pongo” – spelled in reverse letters – on the soles of his slippers. Not to be outdone, the young Edith managed to fill the heel of his slippers with buttons. So when the old man finally woke up, he staggered out of his easy chair stumbling about with his shoes filled with buttons, and writing “Pongo” all over the floor in the process. This got the children run out of the house, who later had to be escorted safely inside by their mother.
My paternal Grandmother sounds like a wonderful, cheery old lady, and everybody who knew her had a good word about her. She was apparently had a keen eye for the horses, and often won betting at the local horse races. This woman sounds like she was a real character, and a devoted mother to her surviving children.
We left shortly after 9pm. Upon leaving, Edith gave me a kiss and told me that I reminded her of my Dad, and I told her that I would really miss her since she reminded me a lot of my Dad (i.e. his character and mannerisms) as well. Upon getting back to Beckenham, we all promptly fell to our beds.
Thursday, May 17 2001Another typical English day: cold, rainy and wet. Yuck. A good day to do something indoors, so we opted for going to the Science Museum instead of doing a trip down the Thames and then to the London Zoo. In the end, this arrangement worked best, as my cousin Howard decided to take the day off of work and meet us downtown at the Science Museum, which is much easier for him to get to than the Zoo. Umbrellas in hand, we emerged from Victoria Station and snagged a taxi which took a very winding, but in the end efficient, way to the Museum. While getting a tantalizing glimpse of the galleries devoted to the development of the steam engine, we headed to the basement to the "kiddie" section of the museum, which was full of hands-on activities -- and full of myriad young school-children on a school field trip. Fun for Vanessa, but exhausting for Mom and Dad. At 12:30 we met Howard and his wife Jane upstairs in the foyer of the building -- the first time I had met her (or she us for that matter). In the pouring rain we hopped into another cab and went to Chelsea, to a restaurant that Edith had recommended to Howard called The Chelsea Kitchen, just down the street from the Peter Jones store where she once worked. We ended up sitting at the remaining table – a tight squeeze – in the non-smoking section of the restaurant, right next to the kitchen. The food was unremarkable, though cheap and cheerful, which was appreciated. I made an embarrassing faux pas, asking Jane what field of nursing she was in. Howard had previously dated a nurse prior to marrying Jane… Jane, like Howard, also works as a lawyer, and also in the civil service, though at the county level rather than the national level. After the lunch, Erika took Vanessa back home, while I went with Howard and Jane down the street to visit the Peter Jones store. The purpose was to get some Portmerion-ware as a gift for my mother, and it also just happened to be the store where Aunt Edith had worked at as a director before her retirement. I would have liked to have bought my mother a vase, but I thought it too likely to break, so I ended up choosing a nearly-unbrteakable Portmerion tea trivet instead. There were several floral patterns available, so I let Howard have the honour of picking which one to get (then I could say they he choose it when I gave it to my mother). It was here I learned that Jane painted china as a hobby, and I invited her to send us samples if she would like to. Shorlty thereafter, I took my leave of them both, and decided to trudge around in a rainy London. I knew I was close to the train station, and amazingly enough, by dead reckoning I managed to navigate my way back without the need for a cab (or Underground). - went to Orpington to have dinner with Cec and Edith Wednesday, May 16 2001
- British Airways Eye After coming off of The Eye, we had an early lunch in a cafeteria in the old Greater London Council building. As there was a "half-price"-type theatre ticket outlet just outside, we discussed the possibility of seeing a show over lunch, since Wylda had agreed to baby-sit for an evening. We were interested in seeing the new Pet Shop Boys musical we had read about, but it was only open as yet to preview audiences, so we figured getting in would be near impossible. We agreed that there didn't seem to be much of a point seeing any of the various Broadway-originated shows, and neither of us are interested in Andrew Lloyd Webber. (After avoiding Toronto's version of The Phantom of the Opera for nearly a decade, why quit now?) Erika's not a fan of Shakespeare, and besides, the only notable production is a marathon of Henry V + the two parts of Henry VI. I love Shakespeare, but I’m not a masochist. One show caught my eye: Stones in His Pockets. This is a two-man show where two actors play an entire Irish village and a film crew that has arrived to film a bodice-ripper period film. I had heard about the touring company that had come to Toronto a couple of months ago, and had wanted to take Erika to it because it sounded like fun, but she was in the middle of Death to Smoochy at the time and weekends were precious. The reviews were good, and in fact it is a recommended production in the What’s On in London magazine we had with us, so I went and got the tickets (which were, by the way, full price, not half – the show was booked pretty much solid). - London Aquarium (shark cam) Tuesday, May 15 2001
- Covent Garden www.hamleys.compaper theatre store opera singers - met howard at lunch - british museum Monday, May 14 2001
Today, we visit London. Since we had building up about "going to London to see dinosaurs" to Vanessa, we decided that our first expedition to the city would be to go to the Natural History Museum, where they have an animatronic T-Rex. We got the train station at Beckenham, and found that a train left for Victoria Station every half hour or so. This would be Vanessa's first actual train ride. Thankfully, the train that arrived turned out to be a relatively new one -- I remember the grungy, awkward old trains I had borded on my previous trip in the mid-80s, and am glad that they seem to be a thing of the past. Once we got to Victoria Station, we got in the line for cabs, and were whisked off to the museum.
The interior of the building is stunning, pure Victoriana, which contrasts strongly against the dinosaur bones and exhibits of other extinct creatures in the large entrance hall. Vanessa kept asking whether or not all of the feircesome-looking bones "were dead", and I assured her that they were. It was harder to convince her of this point once we headed towards the dinosaur section that came with many animated creatures. Vanessa was genuinely scared at first, but once we explained to her that they were nothing more than fancy puppets, she began to relax, and she too waved to the small but lethal-looking dinos that Mom and Dad cheerily waved at. Then, we got to the T-Rex animatron. This is quite impressive -- at a guess 12' tall, roving eyes, a good roar, a dry-ice machine by his (non-moving) feet, and a lot of neck movement made for a convincing show as he tried to eat an ocassionally twitching prey dinosaur. Too convincing for Vanessa's benefit, and she promptly wanted up in Mommy's arms, and looked away from the robotic beast. While I took pictures, Erika stood near the exit with Vanessa, calming her down and explaning that it was just a big fancy puppet. Vanessa eventually got up the nerve to have a good lok at it, but I think she was still pretty happy to head out into the main exhibit hall where the majority of the dinosaurs were comprised of the very dead, fossil variety. It is certainly a good dinosaur collection, and I found it interesting that many of what I thought of as the more impressive exhibits came from the badlands of Alberta, in Canada.
After the dinosaur exhibit, we headed over to get an early lunch. We had a filling lunch, and Vanessa had a dinosaur-shaped gingerbread man as a treat. While there, she charmed a Greek man who works there, and he told her he would have to take her to the opera and various other places. This was all in good fun, and Vanessa shyly accepted the compliments on her cuteness. He eventually gave her a little plastic dinosaur that she really enjoyed. We also headed to the adjacent store, where we got a demo of a remote-controlled 2' high dinosaur. Vanessa -- and I -- were fascinated by it. (It was, unfortunately, a little bit on the big side to carry home. ;-)
We then headed to the insect area, (called the "Creepy Crawleys" section), which the guidebook I had recommended as one of the preferred spots to take the kids. Once we got there, we saw why: lots of hands-on stop for kids to do. Buttons to push, knobs to turn, doors to open and lots of things to see. I mugged in front of a giant animatronic scorpion while Vanessa ran around the area, looking at all of the cool bugs and playing with all of the things she could interact with. One of the hits with her was a house where you opened up various cupboards, doors and other areas and found little displays of the bugs that commonly inhabit many British homes.
One of the things that Erika and I found fascinating was the leaf-cutter ant exhibit. The basic setting is a large glass case that contains two "islands" set in a moat of water, and a twig connecting the two. On one island, a sacrificial plant. At the other, the ant colony, where you can see the ant colony in a pexiglass container. Streams of ants headed to the other island, and came back with bits of leaf, which was then fed to a type of fungus, which is what the ants actually eat. This being the age of the Web, there is an Antcam, which shows a steady stream of the ants as they walk along the twig harvesting their food for the day.
Then, we headed over to the mammal area. The main hall is something to behold, especially when you see the life-size stuffed(?) elephants appear tiny against the massive size of the full-scale model of a blue whale beside them. An interesting section of the museum, though very stuffy (the Victorians were not known for their ventilation systems), and as Vanessa was beginning to get tired, we breezed through this section and soon headed out the door. Got a cab back to the station, thence to Beckenham, then the ladies went to bed.
- letter from my Mother arrives: £400 for us, £150 for her brother
I spent time talking with John and Wylda about family history. I was not disappointed. I had heard that my "Uncle" Jimmy Stuart (actually a distant cousin) had done quite a bit of research in this area before he died in the 80s. Little did I know that my Uncle John had a complete copy of this information, that included family trees, extensive notes, along with occasional obituary notices and relevant articles that my Uncle had save. There were plenty of stories too, such as the time Uncle John visited his Aunt Noreen, and asked her how often they visited a local church. The answer: "Once a year. For the christenings." (Noreen came from a family of twelve). There were also names and birthdates (though no addresses), for relatives I had heard about that lived in South Africa and Australia. Other interesting tidbits I hadn't known before included:
- that my Aunt Audrey's first name is actually Gweneth
- that she had (past tense) an older brother
- additional, "lost" relatives, mainly distant cousins, some of whom are younger than me.
- found out that both of my maternal grandparents were cremated, their ashes scattered (hence no memorial to track down).
We were met by my cousin Kenneth at the airport. Without ever seeing him before, Erika immediately noticed the family resemblance, even without the “Roberts” sign he held up for us. He drove us away from Gatwick to where my Uncle John and Aunt Wylda live in Beckenham. It was interesting to see Kenneth again, after a decade in a half. He must be in his late-40s/early-50s, and much of his hair has turned white, though he still has a very youthful appearance. Both of his children (Jennifer, 20, and Jonathan, 16) are currently in the middle of taking exams, so we most likely will not see them until the weekend. During the drive, I found it surprising at how much the scenery reminded me of that of Southern Ontario: similar plants, trees, and more farmland than I expected or remembered. If it weren’t for the fact that we were driving on the wrong side of the road and we were surrounded by all of these squat-looking euro-vehicles, I could easily set the scene back home. After a half-hour drive from the airport, we were dropped off at my John and Wylda’s flat in Beckenham. The faces may have grown older, but the warm, friendly personalities I remember from previous visits has not. They have loaned us the use of their flat for the duration of their stay, and are themselves staying with good friends of theirs who live down the street. After the introductions and hauling our baggage up a flight of stairs, the S-R’s all collapsed into our beds for a much-needed couple of hour’s rest. After waking up, we drove down to the nearby park – which would have been a short walk for us, but a necessary drive for my Uncle John, who once-red hair is now very white, and who is looking a little bit frail. Vanessa enjoyed the children’s playground, and tried out pretty much every slide and device on the grounds, before migrating over to the duck pond (actually, the river which flows through the town, The Beck). After feeding the squirrels with some bread (the ducks, geese and coots were literally swimming in bread thrown by previous visitors), we decided to head off for dinner. We ended up in a Beefeater’s Pub (which is a chain of pub-like restaurants) that my Aunt and Uncle liked. I treated everybody out for the dinner, and we all nattered away about family and British politics and old British sitcoms. Before turning into bed, Erika again remarked about the family resemblance between myself and my mother’s side of the family, remarking that much of my looks must come from that side of the family. I have to admit I was surprised as well by the strong resemblances I was seeing, especially with my cousin Kenneth. Saturday, May 12 2001
Day One of the Vacation: Flying to Britain
Well, here I am on board the Air Transat flight, packed in like a sardine -- though I have been in tighter seats previously (though this is only a matter of degree). Vanessa has a window, Erika has the aisle seat beside her, and I have the aisle seat in the middle row beside them. As I write on my Palm Pilot, have now been in Montreal just over an hour -- apparently the weight of the baggage was rather lopsided, and it took some time to re-adjust everything. As I write now, it is almost midnight, our time. Vanessa is still awake; she got her second wind. She was well on her way to falling asleep, when we landed in Montreal, which woke her up. Still have about 6 1/2 hours to go, once we get back in the air. Am seated next to a nice old gent by the name of Al. He's a widower in his 80s who originally hails from London, but emigrated to Canada in the 50s. He is a WWII war veteran, who was in much the same area as my father (Egypt and the "Trans-Jordan") at the same time. Al was in El Alamein, and pointed to his little red and black Desert Rat pin. He told me a several stories about life back then, including a couple that my Father had also related. One of these was a cruel form of entertainment featuring scorpions, a ring of gasoline and a match. The scorpions would end up stinging themselves to death in this ring of fire. Other stories including catching malaria (ditto my father), and touring in Baghdad (again ditto my father). He's visiting his 80+ year old sister in London. God speed, Al. As I write, Vanessa is asleep on my lap (Erika and I switched seats a while ago) -- finally! Through the window I can see the distant layered blue curvature of the Earth, with the clouds a wispy ripple far below. Chocolat is the in-flight film, which Erika is watching. Picked up two bottles of Beefeater gin for my Uncle Cec, and a lego airplane set for Vanessa when she wakes up.
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