Living like rock stars in Liverpool

We’re visiting friends from Philadelphia… old friends who remember our kids in dance leotards and Gymboree dresses and Halloween costumes.

We were some of the Penn pioneers of University City in the 1990s who bought houses in West Philly rather than downtown or in the suburbs. It had some guns and lots of theft but was filled with a mostly harmonious, diverse resident group of families and students and big brownstones that families could grow into. The university stepped in and built a school and created a security force almost larger than most cities’ police departments. The neighborhood did the “g” word and like many university towns, our merry little band of “parents with little ones” broke apart as we moved on to new jobs. But we started our families together there and I feel a connection with that place and the people that is special to me and so even in Liverpool, it feels a little like the good old days, which is what they were to me.

More importantly, I am making a public service message to tell all Americans to come to Liverpool. We’re like aliens here—bless the North, I don’t think tourists ever think to come here. People stare when we talk and try to walk closer to us to hear what we say, and giggle and tell us “Goodbye Americans….safe travels” when we leave the train. It’s good to be a novelty and everyone should come here and spend some money and check out this excellent city with its fabulous downtown shopping at Liverpool One, its Tate Liverpool and its World Museum where we spent most of Sunday checking out the “And the Beat Goes On” exhibit about the rich music scene in Liverpool. The Beatles are certainly the most famous thing to come out of the clubs here, but that’s just scratching the surface I came to learn.
Paid for by the Liverpool Chamber of Commerce.

And yes, Chip and I have been singing “Ferry ‘Cross the Mersey” the whole time we’ve been here.

We also journeyed south to Runcorn where it appears some of my family immigrated first from Ireland before making the big trip to America. We’ve found the Duffy’s in the 1891 census and more digging must be done to try and sort out why my great grandmother fled her husband in the “ought’s” with my grandfather back to Runcorn from America. Was she homesick? Was there another fella? Was it post partum depression? We don’t know. My great grandfather sailed to Runcorn to fetch her and bring her back to the U.S. and their ticket home read, “Coming soon! The Titanic!” Luckily for me, my great grandmother stayed put after that, so I live to tell this tale.

Happy Christmas 2008

The coffee's brewed, the pastries laid out....

The darlings are into their stockings....


The sun's out and that's a gift in itself....

The vicar scurries across the quad of Christ Church for the 11am service...

This fabulous teen attended Christmas service in her fur coat and micro mini while our teens stayed home....

A game of Yahtzee and Christmas crackers during dinner....


Merry Christmas from uz all.

Christmas Pantomime

A few weeks ago, I was subjected to the English tradition of Christmas Pantomime. There is no translation into American culture except possibly regional dinner theater....without the dinner. And what is dinner in dinner theater but the only refuge and diversion from the horrible musical/comedy thing on the stage. From what I gather from the telly, "panto" as it's referred to, is generally set within a traditional nursery rhyme or story, such as Jack and the Beanstalk or Peter Pan, and made into an elaborate campy mess that includes transvestism, audience participation, drum rolls for comic effect and for adult audiences, repeated trips to the poorly cloaked penis joke well (pun intended).



Certainly don't watch more than feels right or you are likely to never want to visit England ever. I will let you in on a well kept giant secret....all washed up American actors come over here at some point to do Christmas pantos for the season, lauded by audiences and the BBC as if they are still major stars. They do nothing to dispel the myth of their relevance in interviews. Henry Winkler, Steve Guttenberg and hold onto your britches...Jimmy Osmond. All starring in their respective pantos this season. Can you believe it? They still get work, God bless 'em.

The thing is...England really does Christmas in a nice way. Every restaurant does Christmas dinners for various groupings, either work related or friends or family--ten or thirty, everybody goes out for a Christmas dinner at some point. Each dinner guest gets a Christmas cracker on his plate provided by the restaurant, and the prix fixe menu allows the party to go on with minimal interruption from the waitstaff. The tradition of hand delivered Christmas cards at these gatherings is one of the dearest things I've witnessed at a holiday. It is something quite old fashioned in the best way to see grown men and women running around a table before dinner to hand out Christmas cards like valentines, simply to wish their friends and family a very personal Merry Christmas. How wonderful it is to return home after a dinner out with your pockets or purse filled with handwritten cards. The sweatshop fashion in which cards are sent in the U.S. without even a handwritten signature, is impersonal and leaves me looking for any sign, even a ring from the bottom of a coffee cup, of some intimate touch by the senders.

So the English happily endure the panto season...where there's the requisite dude dressed up like a lady, the audience yelling "Oh no they didn't!" to which the cast yells "Oh yes they did!" (that goes back and forth about six times until you feel your fingers creeping up toward your ears to plug the bleeding from your brain) and then, there are the unceasing puns about spotted dick, melons, the financial crisis and how long Jack's beanstalk is, and finally, the all too frequent fondling of the guy in the cow costume. I can only equate it with the worst Sonny and Cher Show skit you never saw because it was too scandalous to get by the censors in 1973.

The gallant but violent prince

Audience participation

However, Christmas panto, as performed by Ella and Sammy, was an entirely different show and very enjoyable. It had a lot of violence with a foam sword, it had some singing which was operatic and tragic, and it had many laughs. We enjoyed a wonderful traditional English Christmas dinner replete with mulled wine, gammon, roast potatoes and veg, sprouts and a flaming Christmas pud. Well, it didn't really flame as Perry held back on the rum (who cares about the kids?, I yelled), but we smothered it with brandy butter and enjoyed it anyway.

A beautiful song by the princess

Serious violence with the sword

A wonderful way to usher in Christmas 2008 and a very public thank you to this wonderful family who I keep mostly anonymous to protect their privacy but to whom I want to shout a big "THANK YOU" for taking such good care of us while we've been here. It is good to have old friends who show the love.

Cast members meet with the audience members after the show

The Saturday before Christmas

Shopping and a show in London. No better way for the Hunter family to celebrate than with a pre-Christmas gift to ourselves. Chip might have done without the shopping but being the big daddy of a houseful of women, he's always a good sport about going along and holding the bags. We love him for that, truly.





The Big Man in the Red Suit made his way around the Oxford train station, as the Helen and Douglas Charity Foundation handed out mince pies and mulled wine for travelers coming and going. It is awfully nice to come out from the shadows and publicly acknowledge this very big holiday that's kind of washed out in America with all sorts of inclusive winter imagery, very blatantly ignoring the giant elephant in the room with the fur trimmed, red hat. Who wants to celebrate wind and snow and ice without the promise of gifts? Christmas is a day our particular family celebrates mostly in our hearts with family traditions of cookie making and gift giving and merry making of all kinds. There's a little church mixed in because it's only right to acknowledge the little six pound, eight ounce baby Jesus, as Ricky Bobby would agree. In America, it's all about "winter celebration"....I get it, but I don't really care to celebrate winter--it's very cold and dark and a little depressing. So, Christmas tree, carolers, twinkling lights, Father Christmas and free wine in the train station were ok by us.







Our destination was John Lewis, one of the huge, traditional department stores in London. We had to go there because their television commercials have been so awesome--slaves to the advertising industry, we are. We bought some ornaments, a few gifts and some clothing before heading out on what was a very mild day, down Regent Street, passing Hamleys, the famous toy store ("the finest toys in the world" by their report) and being sucked in the doors by the crowd. Like earthbound starlings, we ebbed and flowed with whatever actions were initiated ahead of us. The flock sucked us past the teddies, the dollies and the various store employees set up like circus barkers, demonstrating the latest toys. As you can see, the little boys were enthralled with a clunking disaster of a toy that lit up, changed direction and made horrible noise like a demonically possessed moon rover. Thankfully, the crowd surged ahead and we were belched out onto the street in short order, our feet never having really touched the floor.





We proceeded down the street to the West End for a comedy show by Bill Bailey. I can't describe him except to say you should google him and you tube him. He was quintessentially British and laugh out loud funny. Eddie Izzard, probably the only guy funnier than Bill and doing his own show half a block away, sat five rows behind us laughing his head off just like the rest of the audience. His own show was scheduled just thirty minutes after our show ended. But hey, I guess it's a job and when you're not working, you go out and have fun like everyone else.




After the show, dinner at Cafe Emm in Soho. Lots of merry making in this very crowded restaurant; fun and loud and food average to pretty good. Olivia and Allison have dined out enough times to have a sixth sense about restaurants, steering Chip and I away from "experiences" in search of fun. Chip and I have dined out enough to almost ruin it for ourselves with the maximizing of the food experience. The girls have a special withering look reserved for restaurant picking, with flared nostrils and squinted eyes, unveiled when faced with a potential restaurant choice that has zero curb appeal...a loser restaurant if you will. They don't overthink it. If a restaurant is empty, has no ketchup on the tables (in their word, "fancy") or serves dishes with ingredients like lemongrass, it is likely sucky. TGI Fridays and Chilis, by this definition, are good restaurants so there is a balance to be struck. But the shared decision is important because they are right more than they are wrong. It's not all about the food when all you eat is chicken fingers and hamburger and you think everyone is watching you. Have we been misled all these years by the priorities of food critics? Are Chip and I losers? Don't answer, we already know.

Last days of school

St Aldates

Today was Olivia’s last day of school for the semester. Tomorrow is Ally’s last day. It’s a half-day so she and her posse are headed to someone’s house to hang out for the afternoon and say their goodbyes. It’s kind of sad around here. Reflection is setting in.

My cabbie in Penzance asked where we had traveled thus far and after I told him, he said, “You haven’t seen much of England then?” I suppose if travel is just the physical act, that statement could be true. But if travel extends beyond that narrow definition, then I think we have traveled much further in our heads than was physically possible in this period of time. I think we got down to the business of just living in England and that became the travel experience itself. It was hard to picture before we left Madison, how this trip would all take shape once we were here, but in the end, we were just ourselves living in England, a lot closer to Europe than Madison. But the kids slogged off to school all week, Chip went to the office, I grocery shopped, cleaned and washed. We were tired or had errands to run on the weekends, just like everybody else. We ran out of milk just like at home. And we became obsessed with all the same things we love at home.

So what stamps would we claim as our favorites if we were in charge of the rubber stampers at immigration? For me, I’d like a stamp for my new found basic grasp of recent English history, politics and a broader perspective of the American election and the banking crisis. Another stamp for having gone green, as I don’t use plastic bags anymore and I compost. Chip gets a stamp for going green also, riding his bike to work every day, a routine he would like to continue when he gets home (forecast for Madison, 10 inches of snow tonight by report...what’s that now, Chip?). The girls get multiple stamps for having sought out and appreciated English music, comedy, fashion and pop culture and managing to figure out the bogglingly different English school system. The girls also get stamps for new vocabulary, “mocks, form tutor, maths, trousers, nang, cheers and mingin” and for friends called Imogene, Poppy and Polly.

These invisible stamps are indelibly marked in the pages of who we are. We’re actually just a bunch of media obsessed American homebodies who managed to get out of the house in between all our television, music, school commitments and reading pleasures and well done to us for that.

Penzance and Land's End

Time is flying and I am panicking about what I've yet to do. Kids have been sick, and now it feels like I haven't been anywhere! I fled Monday for Penzance, where I was sure to see the ocean and hopefully trek to Land's End. The real one. Actually, a five hour train ride is about all I can do alone without entertainment (in the form of Chip or television). Too far to only go for the day but not so far that the umbilical cord can't stretch-perfect. All this time together the past five months has ruined being alone for me. So much concentrated time together has made me dependent on the kids in a way, the kids might characterize, that indicates my need to get a life. I'm going to have some trouble adjusting when we get home and they don't invite me out with their friends. I'm guessing they'll cut me loose faster than Madonna cut Guy that check for 50 million.



I didn't know, but do now, that the Gulf Stream clips Penzance in particular. It creates a tropical microclimate even in December. I stepped off the train to the port in Penzance. Palm trees, cool ocean breeze, blooming flowers...it was weird in the best way.






The Coast Guard kept a close eye on me during my stay. Below, the dawn view from my hotel room with the Coast Guard boat moored just offshore. The owners are wonderful people who let me leave today without paying because they don't accept credit cards and refused to take all my cash (embarrassingly short anyway). I was on the phone to Chip within minutes of their dropping me at the station (just the best people ever) to get him to put that check in the post this morning.




Yesterday, although it was cloudy, it was balmy for December, with temperatures in the fifties. I walked along the beach trail from Penzance to Marazion, the town next door. Suffice to say, Marazion's beaches are picturesque (a dog walker's paradise) and the town way deceptively farther than I thought. I was near dead when I arrived in Marazion, and desperate for a ride, any ride, back to Penzance. I saw an older woman near a bus sign--hallelujah. Twenty senior citizens and I bounced along the coast on the little green bus back to Penzance, shopping trolleys and one ancient husband flying into the aisle as the driver navigated the winding roads at break neck speed. What took well over an hour and a half to walk had a return trip on the bus of about six minutes. I think everyone but me was bound for the Tesco superstore.





I missed the bus to Land's End because it left from the wrong stall at the depot and I guess all the local people knew, but I didn't. After ten minutes, I suspected the worst. The bus supervisor was there, so I said to him, "Was that the bus to Land's End?" He checked his clipboard and said "yes, m' love." I said, "Well, he was in stall B instead of stall C so I didn't know it was the right bus. Hey, you still have tourists out here in December, you know?" He was embarrassed but had no solution for me except to point at the cab stand. I took the cab ride with a disarming Irish cabbie who showed me the sights and took perhaps more of my money than he should have, the naughty old geezer. "I'd like to show you Sennen Bay,if you'll let me." It was beautiful, but I didn't notice any attempt to turn off the meter for the little diversion. In the end, the view of Sennen Bay was worth any extra money he charged. The bus ride back was free (I didn't ask), so in the end I was a spiritual winner even if fleeced out of some of my cash. The cabbie tried to talk me out of our family trip to Ireland...likely because he was run out of Ireland on a rail for his grifting ways.

Land's End is just that. Breezy and green, the views were amazing and although absolutely everything was closed, including the restaurant (the hotel lobby evoked The Shining for me so I didn't stick around in there) I still managed to kill two hours taking pictures, eating a bowl of soup in the cafe and watching the sun set behind the clouds. Oh, and the fleece jackets are SO much better out there! They grow right on the hillside and you can pick as many as you like, in an assortment of colors, blazon, cornflower and chameleon, sizes XS-XXL.




Self portrait!

A river rescue

Oxford Canal

I didn't have my camera for this day and that's always the way, unless you're a photojournalist. I've been following the extraordinary events of my friend's blog, as she has witnessed two accidents and fire/rescue operations within four days. One rescue in the air and one on land. I add to that today, as I crossed the Thames, a water rescue by bystanders of a drowning person. A first for me in my 46 years.

Allison and I shopped all afternoon and she hopped the bus with her bus pass and all the bags as I made the short walk home on foot. I love crossing the river each day. It's always dynamic and radically changes day to day. The river right now is very swollen and the currents are challenging even for the resident swans and geese who maneuver constantly out of the currents just to stay close to the bridge. Hard work for the water birds this week. It was a pretty mild day today as winter goes, and I always check the river for pontoons and rowers as I cross. Generally, just to mutter to myself, "ya crazy sonsabitches..."

My friends, the tramps of Abingdon Road, are the only other daytime residents of the river banks this time of year where they can drink hassle free all day on the benches that line the path. They're a scrappy bunch of guys who mostly keep to themselves, drinking, pontificating in unintelligible garble and hugging. As per my usual routine, I cross the Folly Bridge and look downriver for my rowers and instead see a most extraordinary thing--a head bobbing in the middle of the river about two hundred yards away. Simultaneously, I see and hear two men who work on the pontoon boats below me running as I've never seen grown men run, the "man overboard" run I think, with orange life preservers up the dock stairs, across the bridge and down the tow path toward the drowning man. I then see with closer inspection there are many life preservers already in the water, floating far from the man whose head now appears to be bobbing under as much as over the water. He is smack dab in the middle of the Thames and swirling in the currents. Wait, now there are two heads. Someone's jumped in to save him.

Well, crap. I know CPR. I don't want to go, but this is England and it's possible I'm the only one who might initiate rescue breathing before putting on the kettle. When Olivia's foot was run over, they brought her a cup of tea. I better go down, I think to myself. I walk down the path and note now there is a THIRD man in the water swimming from the other side, quite athletically to the duo of rescuer and drowning man making their way slowly to shore. The rescuer reaches shore and he and another man drag the drowning man up onto the bank and begin pumping the man's belly very hard, probably breaking his ribs and injuring his spleen and liver, but I'm hoping also clearing the water from his airways. I'm still not at the scene but watching it all unfold. Someone from the opposite bank is yelling, "Breathe for him! Breathe for him!" Shut up, lady, I think. Easy for you to say, you're on the other side. I arrive. The athletic swimmer has made it across and is still standing in the water recovering from what was a fantastic but dangerous swim. Everyone's wet and I see that rescuer, rescuer's friend and drowning man are all very drunk. It's 40 degrees. I'm thinking hypothermia all around. They've turned drowning man on his side and he is definitely blue. I'm getting ready to announce my intentions of starting rescue breathing, as I'm simultaneously considering what blood tests I'll need (hepatitis and HIV surely, possibly malaria, leprosy...) once we've exchanged saliva and blood from my kiss of life....when I hear him groan.

PRAISE SWEET BABY JESUS! I do NOT have to put my mouth on his. I bend down, as the rescuers, including the pontoon boat guy, are starting to panic about what to do next. The drunk guy is screaming, "Stay with us, Woody. Don't leave us!" Can you believe it? Even tramps watch too much TV! I hear the sirens and they are close. I bend down and recap the situation for the rescuers, "Look, he's breathing. He's groaning and trying to talk so let's just keep him warm until help arrives." The rescuers call for jackets. I don't give mine. It's a little piece of nothing that would cover no part of this mountain of a man lying on the ground. This guy needs the electric warming blanket of an ICU but it's England and I'm sure they'll put on the kettle at the hospital. And so people offer up their jackets and although he's still blue, he's groaning and moving and that's fine with me.

The police have run the entire distance down the river path which is admirable and I note their fitness. I'm checking out the police? Focus, Julie.... We all start giving our stories briefly. Mine is that I don't think he was under water for very long, if at all but that I'm sure he's swallowed quite a bit during the rescue. I can't account for prior brain damage due to years of drinking at the river's edge, so it will be a challenging neurological assessment at the hospital. I don't think the water did him much harm today. His buddies bouncing on his abdomen is a different story and I hope he lives to tell about it.

I leave after admonishing the student who is not drunk and still standing sopping wet on the river bank, to get someplace warm before he becomes hypothermic. As I left, a mysterious smoking man in a Norwegian knit hat was telling the police, "He was pushed." Entrigue! Better get Inspector Lewis down here right away.

I got back out to the Abingdon Road just in time to flag down the ambulance for the police. I feel guilty for feeling relieved that I didn't have to suck face with the drunk drowning man.

As I said, Allison took the bus and I was supposedly right behind her on foot....twenty minutes later, I walk in. They thought I was still shopping.