The most famous of all the Henges

It was two days after I was invited to speak in London last June before it occurred to me that England is where Stonehenge lives. I have wanted to visit the stone circle since I saw pictures of it as a child, accompanied by fantastic stories of druids, human sacrifice, and stones levitated by magic. Of course, I know now that most all of that is crap made up by some posh Edwardian twit, but I still wanted to go.

Stonehenge on the Salsbury Plain. It's hard to see in this view, but this is
the only thing other than grass and sheep for about as far as one can see.

The great thing about being me is that I only have to mention that I want to see Stonehenge, and the Queen of Internet Research swings into action, unearthing the pertinent facts, culling through the options, and presenting me with a few simple choices. In this case they were, "You want to walk among the stones, right?", and "Sunrise or sunset tour?"* The answers were of course, "Of course", and "Sunset. No wait, sunrise."

The reason people can't walk freely among the stones anymore is that twits feel the need to carve their initials in them, like those on the left. Plus, there is some protective lichen that is killed by people touching it. Apparently graffiti is not a new phenomenon. Craftspeople (it is thought) shaping the stones originally carved marks in the shape of tools, like those  on the right. 

The only way to walk among the stones is on a bus tour, which turns out not to be too bad, because the old guide actually seemed to know his Stonehenge, and the jokes were decent by bus tour standards.

Our guide, Indiana Jones' older cousin.  Wizard's staff not shown.

After a two and a half hour drive from London, we ate breakfast at the George Inn in Lacock (apparently pronounced LAY-cock, unless that was just private joke between our guide and himself). The pub was licensed in 1362. I think the bathrooms were put in the next year.

I think every village in Britain has a 700 hundred year old stone church in it somewhere. 

Then it was off to the grand ditch itself. It was cold and just beginning to rain when we arrived in the middle of nowhere, which is apparently where the Neolithic Englanders liked to put these things. We spent about twenty minutes wandering among the stones. Somewhat like the space shuttle experience, a modern person needs to engage their mind a bit to be as amazed as they should be; amazed I was.

As I wandered among the stones, I heard a strange, high-pitched sort of ringing coming from the far side of a trilithon on the southern side of the enclosure.  I stepped between the standing stones and felt a queer sort of jolt -- as if my body were being stretched to great length and then compressed again. The next thing I knew it was the end of December, and the Mayan apocalypse had passed.

It's the one on the right. You would think they would at least have a sign or something.

It doesn't seem like I missed much while I was gone. Except for all of my internet friends. Hopefully we can all catch up in the coming months.

Happy Holidays!

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* As we quickly realized -- unlike a couple of the people on the bus, a tour that starts or ends three hours form Stonehenge at a reasonable hour is going to see neither sunrise nor sunset in June. It's really more of a morning or afternoon choice.

London on 3 pounds a day

Three pounds a day is how much weight we gained.  There's no telling how much money we spent, but it was a lot. The good thing about dollars being worth less than pounds is that everything seems reasonably priced, as long as you don't think about it.

This is the sort of thing you don't see much in the States. I'm not sure where these old guys were headed, but I really wanted to follow them.

Anyway, we went to Britain because I was invited to speak at a symposium on Computers in Music Performance. Biscuit finds my work with laptop orchestras only slightly less amusing than my work in digital humanities, but she became quite suddenly interested when she found out I was going to London.

I will spare you the details of the symposium.  I've prepared a graphic to illustrate the character of the event (see Figure 1). There was a concert pianist who uses math to create shapes (mostly spirals) from recordings of performances, a guy who uses electromagnets to pluck piano strings or hammer vibraphone bars, and it went on more or less like that for two days. We had a great time discussing a lot of the finer points of music, computers, and performing one with the other. Papers were discussed. Plans were made. Breaks were taken with sandwiches and tea. I loved it. Most people would probably rather have a root canal.

Figure 1. Researchers love figures, and Venn diagrams.

Since it seemed silly to endure 22 hours of plane flights to spend two days in London, we decided to make a vacation of it. Biscuit spent the symposium days napping and wondering how so many people could fit into the British Museum. She also discovered a bar in the basement of our hotel, which seemed to help pass the time. We had a lovely dinner with our host and his family at the loudest restaurant I've ever been in after the symposium ended on Friday. I've always been mystified by my ability to befriend remarkably good people, a group that does not include me.

The next day we changed hotels, moving from the quiet college district to a big tourist hotel at the foot of the Westminster Bridge. It felt a lot like staying at Disney World. It was especially crowded on Saturday afternoon, so we made a forced march back to the old neighborhood in search of a pub we had wanted to visit. We didn't find it, but we did find The Boot, which was definitely the least touristy of anyplace we visited. There were about three people in the place, and they looked like they had been there since it opened. I suspect you would find at least two of them still there at closing. But the beer was well-kept* and the food was English, and we were much fortified for the tube ride back to our hotel.

I don't know if being mentioned in a Charles Dickens story is something I would be all that proud about.

Saturday night we rode the Eye. Biscuit came through once again, getting the Champagne Experience tickets for the sunset ride. It was also the only day that rainy and windy turned to partly cloudy, so we had a pretty good view of London. I had not been looking forward to it, as I'm not a huge fan of rickety tall things, but it didn't really feel at all like riding a ferris wheel or a cable car. In fact, it was hard to tell you were moving at all. Two glasses of champagne took care of any lingering anxiety.

The Eye from our hotel room window, and Houses of Parliament from the Eye, toward the end of the ride. It's around 10:00 pm and still light outside, which is not at all what this southern boy is used to.

In addition to all the sights, which were wonderful, too numerous to mention, and most of which you already know all about, we saw about a million Sikhs in Trafalgar Square, rallying for independence. Then they all streamed out and got on buses for ... I'm not really sure where they were going.

You don't get the impact of "hundreds of thousands demonstrated" on TV. Not only was there a sea of orange in Trafalgar Square when we rode through, there was a continuous stream of orange down every street for a couple of hours as people left the square.

Sunday was our last sightseeing day in London, and we were pretty tired, so we bought 24 hour tickets for the double-decker tourist bus and rode around town most of the day. It accidentally became literary themed pub day, as we hit the William Shakespeare and the Sherlock Holmes. The Shakespeare felt a little like it was next to the train station -- which is was -- but the Holmes was surprisingly homey for a downtown London pub. I was starting to get the hang of this pub thing, and the money. I was able to pay at the Sherlock Holmes without putting on my glasses.

I'm unclear on whether the real William Shakespeare ever drank here, but I think the toilets are the same. It's also the place that I first got to say, "Full English, please." Image from here.

People in London don't seem to be 100% clear on the fictional nature of Sherlock Holmes. The pub is several miles from Baker Street, where Holmes "lived," but the Sunday roast was outstanding.

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* I still don't really know what this means, but they make a point of mentioning their well-kept beers in all of their advertising.

Planes, trains, and ... well, just planes and trains

One morning toward the end of our British vacation, Biscuit asked which had been my favorite day.

I said, "Yesterday. And that would have been my answer any day you asked." In other words, each day had been my favorite as it occurred, and none had completely outshone all the others. For me, this is one of the factors that comprise an ideal holiday, and it endured from the first day right up until the last leg of our return trip.

We started our journey home from St. Ives in Cornwall.* After a lovely Italian dinner, we walked up to our B&B to retrieve our luggage, and met our cab coming up the hill. This was working out swimmingly. Until we realized that we were locked out of the house, and that our host was nowhere to be found.

Crappy phone picture of the town of St. Ives, from what we thought was the beginning of the coastal trail.

No worries. After only about forty frantic attempts, I figured out how to dial an international call from my cell, located our apologetic innkeeper, and within minutes we were back on track. The cab driver was back to get us right away, and we were off to the St. Ives train depot. An easy fifteen minute ride on the spur line had us in St. Erth, and an hour later we were boarding the night train to London.

One might think this an unfortunate picture of the landlord, but it's one of the least barking expressions I've seen on him. He was a lovely chap, and reminded me a bit of Gene Wilder, with a bit of Marty Feldman thrown in. This photo of Cornerways B&B is courtesy of TripAdvisor.

I love the night train! If I could ride it from my house to Europe, I totally would. A cozy sleeper compartment and the motion and sounds of the train provided one of the most restful nights of the trip. While I was roused a few times when the train stopped or started, I always slipped right back into a warm and fuzzy sleep. A wakeup knock from the breakfast-bearing porter lets one know when it's time to rise, dress, and make ready to alight. (Some time on the night train leads one to speak thusly.)

The walk from the night train terminus to the Heathrow Express is less than 100 feet, and another fifteen minute train ride plus one inter-terminal shuttle gets us to Terminal 4 to check in for our 9:30 am flight home. A nine hour plane ride is definitely an acquired taste, but as long as there are free movies, occasional drinks service, and the seats are not too horrible, it's endurable. This flight was endurable. We left about ten minutes late, but made up that and more, so we touched down at the World's Busiest Airport a full quarter hour ahead of schedule.

Crappy phone picture of the St. Erth train depot. This track is for the spur to St. Ives. The grownup tracks are behind us here.

We had a two hour layover scheduled in Atlanta, and with the extra time we cleared customs and security with over an hour to spare. The first time we checked the monitors as we headed to Terminal D, we noticed that our flight had been delayed from 4:05 to 4:15. No biggie. We heard there had been weather here and there.

By the time we settled in at Gate 39, 4:15 had slipped to 5:30, and it was now Gate 27. Oops, Gate 25 at 6:30. Anyone for Gate 31 at 8:30? After five gate changes (culminating back at D39), an alleged departure time of 9:30, and about a dozen gate agents,** they finally told us at 8:30 that our flight was cancelled, and that no one was going anywhere but to a hotel that night.

At this point, it had been around 30 hours since Biscuit and I had strolled up the hill to catch our cab, and almost two weeks since we had slept in our own bed. This was not how we wanted to end our trip. So we politely but firmly worked our way through two gate agents, one customer service rep and one redcoat to get added to the already overbooked Last Plane Out. It ended up costing the airline a few hundred extra Delta Dollars, but we were fortunate that enough people volunteered to stay an extra night in the A-T-L that we could snag the last two seats on the regional commuter jet.

Da plane! Especially crappy phone picture of the plane that carried us across the Atlantic. The thing I like about the 767-400 is that there are only two seats in the outside rows. And if you're willing to part with some money, you can not only avoid sitting in the middle, you can actually sit next to your traveling companion.

Mine was literally the last seat on the plane -- the non-reclining aisle seat in the back next to the loo. The poor unfortunate crammed into the window seat next to me was an actual professional American football player -- the Atlanta Falcons center headed home to spend the weekend with his family. We looked like two gorillas in a Barbie Dream Car, but neither of us even cared. We kicked up all the armrests, folded ourselves up like paper cranes, and tried not to breathe for the hour and a half trip home. We touched down about 10:30 local time, meaning we spent more time getting home from Atlanta than it took to get there from London.

Oh, I guess I did drive home from the airport, so there was one automobile. It was a given that our bags wouldn't arrive until late the next night, but after wearing the same couple of outfits for two weeks, we really didn't miss them. All we really wanted were the cookies and jam that were stuffed in Biscuit's suitcase. It's good to be home, but it sure was nice to be there.

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* I know I'm skipping over a wee bit of the trip. Hopefully I will make it back to the good stuff later.

** I realized toward the end that the gate agents were playing musical chairs, with no one wanting to be the person who had to tell us we weren't going to fly. They would stroll in, check the monitors, make a face, and then either get our gate changed or wander off themselves, to be replaced a few minutes later by the next poor schlub.