Dispatch No. 21: In Which Elise and I Take in London from the Ridiculous to the Sublime, and I Visit A World War II Airplane Museum

I’m very lucky to have the daughter I have. (I’m also very lucky to have the wife, the son, the daughter-in-law and the granddaughter I have, but this isn’t about them just now.)  Last November, when I found out that I would be coming back to Canterbury, Elise said she was going to come for a visit.  I was happy that she wanted to make the trip, but she was still in school at the time, would be graduating in the spring and would probably just be starting a new job when I left.  But when Elise sets her mind to something, it happens.  She was, indeed, new in her job at a veterinary hospital in Downers Grove where she’s a vet tech (a registered nurse for animals), but she managed to arrange her work schedule so that she could have a week off, saved her money, made her flight arrangements and took off from O’Hare.

As I noted in my last dispatch, Elise’s wifi wasn’t working well, so I didn’t hear from her after she landed in Dublin and was waiting for a connecting flight.  Because she had no idea where I was living, and I had no idea when her train was arriving—or if she had even made it to the train station in London—I spent a couple of hours pacing and checking my phone.  When I finally let my anxiety get the better of me, I took off for Canterbury West, not certain if I’d have to wait there or what I would do.  I just knew I couldn’t wait around any longer.  I had texted Elise a Plan B—meet at Starbucks on High Street—but I wasn’t even sure she’d gotten that message.  At any rate, when I got to Station Road West, there she was in her bright pink coat dragging her purple suitcase.  I didn’t give her a hug—I did later, though—but took the handle of her suitcase and hurried back toward my flat, listening as she filled me in on her trip over.  I think parents have moments when they realize that their children aren’t children anymore, and this was one of those for me.  I sometimes forget that Elise is 27, gainfully employed in the career of her choosing, and completely capable of navigating her way through the world.  She’s no longer a cute, shy little girl; now she’s a confident, pretty, smart and funny adult and a joy to be around.

Before Elise left Illinois, she and I had tossed around some ideas for what we might do after the weekend field trip and decided that we’d go up to London for a couple of days.  The morning we left, we took another walk around the city and went into the cathedral, her first time inside.  When she and Andrew visited in 2007, Elise was still plagued by a fear of being in buildings with high ceilings—altocelarophobia—but unlike me and my fear of heights, she has overcome hers and was able to enter and appreciate the cathedral. (I would like to add here that each member of our family has his/her own irrational fear.  Beth hates bridges, Andrew can’t wear turtleneck sweaters, Katerina is afraid of sharks and alligators—which wouldn’t be a phobia if she didn’t live in the Midwest—and Harper is freaked out by bugs.)

Having left enough unseen for Elise to need a return trip to Canterbury at some time in her life, we took the train into London, the Tube to our hotel, and then the Tube again to Westerminster Abbey where, in the rain, we walked among thousands of small wooden crosses decorated with poppies and the names of soldiers who had lost their lives in battle.  This Field of Remembrance, assembled each year by the Royal British Legion Poppy Appeal, has been a part of Remembrance Day in London since 1928.  There are 380 plots, each honoring the men and women whose service was so vital to the country.  I cannot even guess how many crosses there are on that piece of ground just outside of the abbey, but if 750,000 British soldiers died in the First World War alone, it has to be more than a million.  Needless to say, it’s a humbling and moving experience just to stop and look at the names and the photos.  At least one person, a young man, cried as he knelt next to a plot, and I’m sure he was not alone.  I’ve put some pictures on Facebook of this commemoration. (On a side note, the poppies that Brits sport on lapels in the weeks leading up to Remembrance Day are a reminder of World War I and more particularly of the fields of Flanders where so many soldiers lost their lives.  After the fighting had stopped, the only thing that grew on those battle-scarred fields were poppies, acres of red petals. While we have poppies in connection with our Veterans’ Day at home, the commemoration here is more visible and widespread.)

The drizzle continued for a while after Elise and I left Westminster and went to White Hall and watched the changing of the horse guards.  While I was trying to take pictures, I unknowingly stepped in the way of a woman—an American—who chastised me.  She also chewed out a young woman for doing what I had done, complaining that it was her first time seeing this ceremony, and we were ruining the experience.  I wanted to tell her it was my first time seeing it, too, but then I realized how pointless it would have been to engage in that kind of exchange—I did suggest she step in front of me to take her pictures; she declined—so we left her muttering and crossed over the road to St. James’s Park, maybe my favorite park in the city.  I was wishing I’d brought some bread along because the squirrels will take it out of your hand.  One might even climb up your pant leg, if you don’t mind that sort of thing.  We were followed by the bushy-tailed beggars, but they gave up on us when we didn’t come through and went to find someone else silly enough to be out walking in the rain.  Our path took us through the park to Buckingham Palace and then around to another park that we both thought was Hyde Park, which would have meant our hotel was very close.  It wasn’t Hyde Park, however, so we took the Tube back to Gloucester Road, had dinner at a pub and then called it a day.

When we planned our trip to London, one of the things Elise wanted to do was go to Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum.  We both figured it would probably be pretty cheesy and definitely a tourist trap, but it still sounded like a great idea, so the next morning, off we went.  After a quick breakfast at an odd little serve-yourself diner across the street from the wax museum, we went in and rode the elevator up to the exhibition hall.  I have to admit that I really like this kind of place because I grew up near an amusement park and spent many summers immersed in an ersatz world meant to beguile visitors into spending money doing something they’d never dream of doing—trying to ring a bell or shoot an air rifle to win a stuffed bear, eat funnel cakes or saltwater taffy—if it weren’t in that particular setting.  That’s what made the wax museum such a hoot.  At first, both Elise and I were a little hesitant to have our pictures taken standing next to one of the mannequins, but once we saw everyone else doing it and acting goofier with each pose, we decided to do the same.  Elise was a little uncomfortable in her first photo, standing next to Johnny Depp, but by the time we got to Michael Jackson and a cricket player neither of us recognized, she was as oblivious to the other people around her as I was when I put my arm around Princess Diana, stood next to John Wayne and Justine Bieber, and corrected Albert Einstein’s formula with Stephen Hawking nearby. We spent more time there than I think we thought we would but not as much as I presume the two women from Russia were going to spend; I don’t think there was one figure who didn’t end up with one and then the other of them up close and personal.

Having gone from that artificial world back into reality, we decided to take in one more of London’s weird-ish places, Camden Town.  But to get there, we walked through the beautiful Regent’s Park and then along Regent’s Canal to Camden Lock Market, which is an enclosed marketplace where you can buy nearly anything you can imagine, from souvenirs to clothes to CDs and DVDs, hats, cheese, vegetables, jewelry, on and on.  After Elise found some scarves to take home, we left the market and went out onto the high street.  Camden Town was home to the late Amy Winehouse, and it’s easy to see her in that place once you walk along crowded sidewalks beneath building facades that are 3-D renderings of dragons and shoes and charging horses, and where, like the market, you can be overwhelmed by the variety and quantity of things to buy.   There’s a bit of a surreal feel to it, a bombarding of the senses, but when we stopped in at a pub on a side street for lunch, it seemed like regular old England again

From Camden, we took the Tube to London Bridge Station and wandered through the Borough Market, which, like Camden Lock Market, is enclosed, but this one specializes in food.  Because it was a Tuesday, there weren’t many open stalls, so we just walked on to the London Eye, the 400+ foot high ferris wheel on the east side of the Thames.  The last time Elise was in London, she and Andrew and I rode it at dusk, which was great because we watched as the lights came on all across the city.  This time, she would get to see the place in daylight and see more of it.  London has the same population as New York City, but it’s spread over twice the area.  It’s a low city, in terms of building heights, a fact that becomes evident once you’re at the top of the Eye.  This was my third time on the wheel, and even though I’m not fond of heights, I’m not as bothered as I am in other high places, probably because the car moves so slowly—a ride is one 30-minute revolution—and you are way up there before you know it.  I was glad to see, however, that at least one other person—a young woman whose husband/boyfriend was gallivanting all around the glass bubble shooting pictures—kept one hand on a bar or a railing and looked a little uneasy, especially when the car swayed a bit in the wind, something neither Elise nor I remembered from our last ride.  Once we were back on the ground, we realized we had been unaware of the windiness of the day, a condition accentuated once we were up in the air.

Elise had to catch a very early flight home the next day, so we stayed at a hotel near Gatwick Airport.  It was a nice, quiet way to end her visit, just talking about horses and work and whatever else came up.  As I said at the beginning, I’m lucky to have the daughter I have, and I was more than a little sad saying goodbye at the airport but grateful that we’d had a chance to spend time together, just the two of us.

The only other highlight of the week was a trip with Rich to Duxford to see the Imperial War Museum at the airfield, perfect for a couple of former WWII model airplane builders (only Monogram or Revell kits, of course).  When one of the university lecturers mentioned the place, home to both British and American flyers, both Rich and I were excited about seeing the full-sized versions of those little plastic replicas that hung from our respective bedroom ceilings until they had a firecracker taped to their fuselage and were thrown off the garage roof so that they would explode in mid-air.  At least mine were thrown off the roof; Rich may have launched his in some other fashion.  And we were not disappointed.  When we got to the place, we were amazed at its overall size and the size of the different buildings—mostly old hangars—that housed the various airplanes and other war machines.  In addition to getting to see Spitfires and Hurricane, Lancaster and B-17 bombers, Messerschmidts and Mustangs, we also saw more contemporary aircraft including the Blackbird spy plane, a B-52 bomber, and an SST.  We stayed a good three hours, going from building to building, and were amazed not only at the array, but also at the engineering that went into putting all of those planes into those spaces.  Some, like the models of childhood, were hung from the ceiling and others were parked in a kind of massive jigsaw on the floor.  In the two biggest buildings—the AirSpace and the American War Museum—there were easily 30 planes in each.  It was a great day and one of those places neither Rich nor I probably would have even known about had it not come up in a conversation.

Next on the schedule of big things is Thanksgiving.  The university’s International Studies Department has made it a tradition to host the American students—along with any family members who are here, British students and faculty—to a full meal with turkey and stuffing, pumpkin pie, cranberries, etc.  In 2007, the pumpkin pie, which is not a staple in England, was more like a pumpkin mousse, and the stuffing was rolled into balls and baked.  We’ll see how much they’ve honed their skills on Thursday.  Beth will be here, too, so I’ll have a chance to revisit old haunts with her.  I may even drive so we get to see everything I’m sure we’ll want to see.  After she leaves, it will be less than two weeks before I head home, too, so I think I’ve got two more dispatches in me before I’m spending my time getting loose ends tied up and bags packed. 

Thanks for reading.