It is somewhat abnormal, the enjoyment I get out of touring people around my current hometown. Just based on the amount of photos I’ve posted to Facebook since I moved here, I’m sure this doesn’t come as much of a surprise. But besides running my own unofficial tours, I still consider myself to be a tourist in a lot of ways, since this is the kind of city it takes many, many years to really know.
I have been lucky enough to have a few visitors act as guinea pigs as I craft my favourite routes around the city. Since I moved here in September, the fortunate victims have included: Kelly Wyatt (twice and thus Friend of the Year), Steve Marriner, Brian and Mary, Lexie Buchanan and Julia Thompson. Each of these visitors has gotten my special brand of London wandering, whether they wanted it or not. Favourite Thames-side landmarks, museums and galleries, parks and theatre have all been stops along the way.
And now it’s my Mom’s turn. She arrived in London last Friday, the final stop in her three-week traipse around Europe with her four sisters. Before she, and my aunt Mary Lou (ML), flew from Nice to London, they had spent some time in Paris, Venice and Rome, relaxed in a Tuscan villa for a week with day-trips to Florence, Siena, San Gimignano and Pisa, hiked around the five villages of Cinque Terre, and drove through the French Riviera. I was burning with jealousy, even though a similar route with my own sister was some of the best weeks of the Great Backpacking Adventure of 2004.
With guided tours around Italy and France, I was confidant that Mom and ML were well-trained for the kind of excursions I had in mind. The only problem was, with more than two months of sitting in an office (and my idea of footwear more stylish than practical), it turned out I was not. Over the weekend we walked all over the city and I was the only one feeling the pain. And by pain, I mean throbbing feet and legs that tingled as I tried to fall asleep hours later. (On Saturday night I was in bed at 10:30, utterly exhausted.) I know, I know, I brought it on myself.
Mom has been to London many times before, the first time in 1972 when she was backpacking with my Dad, a subsequent three times with me and another one without. Her sister Mary Lou was a London virgin until this past weekend so I was eager to show ML the requisite sites while also reintroducing my Mom to all the nooks and crannies that I’ve come to love.
On Saturday we left Pearl’s right after breakfast with plans to take advantage of a very warm sunny day and check most of the Thames-side sites off the tourism list. We disembarked from the tube at Tower Hill and proceeded to walk around the Tower of London, across Tower Bridge and around Bermondsey. We stayed south of the Thames to explore Southwark, stopping at Borough Market for lunch, Southwark Cathedral, Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre and the Tate Modern. Next we wandered across Millennium Bridge for a visit to St. Paul’s Cathedral then back across the Thames via Blackfriar’s Bridge for a stroll along the South Bank and searches for a patio and a shandy in Gabriel’s Wharf. Sticking to the south side, we passed the London Eye, Waterloo Bridge and the big complex that houses the London Aquarium before crossing Westminster Bridge to see Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey. Next we wandered through St. James Park, where I allowed the ladies to sit on a pond-side bench for 10 minutes, before we saw Buckingham Palace, and the set-up for Sunday’s marathon, followed by a stroll up the Pall Mall towards Trafalgar Square. Here we were overwhelmed with an outdoor concert to celebrate St. George’s Day (England’s St. Patty’s but not as popular) before having afternoon tea at the upstairs restaurant of the National Portrait Gallery. Finally, we dragged ourselves up Charing Cross to catch the bus home, soak our feet and collapse in a pile on the couch.
On Sunday I was rather grouchy but had organized a day that involved less walking and more shopping to cheer myself up. I took Mom and ML through the Columbia Flower Market, down Brick Lane and into the Sunday Up Market before making our way over to Spitalfields. They made some purchases and I got some late birthday presents so the day was a great success. On Monday, I went back to the office, relieved to return to my desk chair, but did meet the ladies for lunch in Carnaby Street before sending them along Regent towards Picadilly Circus then up Shaftesbury Avenue, through Leicester Square and Covent Garden.
ML has departed for Canada, a well-timed flight that has avoided the ash cloud, while Mom will hang out with me and Pearl for the rest of the week. All in all, it has been a really great visit and I do feel that I got to show both Mom and ML the London that I love. However, I am so wiped out that I am grateful for the fact that my next major visitors (my sister Lindsay and brother Kyle) will not be here until the end of July, so I have some serious recuperation time to take advantage of.
Tuesday, 27 April 2010
Tuesday, 20 April 2010
Canada, Watch Out For The Ash Cloud
A BBC weatherman has predicted that a change in wind direction this weekend will blow Iceland’s volcanic ash cloud away from Europe and towards Canada. Northwesterly winds over the Atlantic have blown the plume across the UK and Europe, grounding thousands of flights over the past week, but a wind change in the opposite direction could disperse the ash over northeast Canada.
I am safely on the ground in London so can honestly say I have not been directly affected by the eruption of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull volcano earlier this month. I know the stranded will not agree with me, but I almost wish I had been affected. If I was traveling out of London sometime in the past week I could be taking advantage of a prolonged vacation that would not count as missed work days.
I can hear the cries of disagreement now. Not only from the thousands of travelers inconvenienced or the airline industry which is being hit hard or even the UK businesses that are sorely lacking staff. I have stranded friends and family as well, who are not too impressed with the questionable inconvenience.
Two of my British friends, Danielle and Natalie, are teachers, and spent the last week or two on Easter holidays in New York City and Australia, respectively. When it came time to return to classes yesterday, both were still living it up in their respective destinations, an expensive delay, I must admit. Another friend, Marge, is stranded – the wrong word, I’m sure – back home in Montreal. And a couple more, Sandra and Peter, were hopping around the Scandinavian countries for Easter holiday, and are still up there somewhere. My cousin John has been given the go-ahead to fly from London to Ottawa tonight, but I’ll believe it when I see it. And my Mom and aunt may not make it up to the UK from the French Riviera at the end of this week.
It’s not all bad news for these travelers. If they can afford it, and are comped by their airline, millions of people are being given a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. But the airline industry is losing millions of pounds and euros and dollars every day. According to a report from absence management firm FirstCare, UK absence caused by the volcanic ash jumped from 20,300 cases yesterday from a typical 3,000 on any other day. That damn volcano is costing British businesses an estimated £3 million a day (Read more at my magazine, Employee Benefits.)
When it all started last Thursday, 15 April, with volcanic ash drifting south-east from the volcanic glacier just 120km from Reykjavik, the numbers started off modestly, with merely tens of thousands of passengers grounded across Britain and Europe. As the ash moved southeast into northern Europe, a blanket ban was announced. More than 800 people were evacuated from southern Iceland, where the volcano was erupting in phases. Two days later, most airports across the continent were closed down, though some 5,000 flights were allowed to fly – a mere quarter of the 22,000 planes that are normally in the sky each day.
The UK workforce has been shattered as well. I’m sure my teacher friends are only a tiny percentage of those not able to return to the classroom after the Easter holidays. This week is a good one to be a supply teacher. International conferences have been suspended, postponed or cancelled altogether, as exhibitors and delegates are unable to arrive at their destination. And as I make my usual news week calls, I am finding a lot of HR departments short-staffed due to stranded employees.
And even the sports world is impacted, not that I really care. With the Liverpool Football Club unable to fly out of England, their only option for reaching Madrid for their match is to take the Eurostar from Paris and carry down to Spain from there. Plans for the English cricket team to reach the Caribbean for the International Cricket Council World 20 this weekend will probably see them travel by land and sea to Dubai before being airlifted directly to the West Indies for the tournament.
More importantly to me, the London premiere of Date Night and the world premiere of Iron Man 2 are now tentatively cancelled because their stars can’t reach the UK. So much for my plan to head down to Leicester Square after work tomorrow to worship the goddess Tina Fey or drool all over RDJ (Robert Downey Jr.) next Monday.
Perhaps the saddest, and most ironic, story that the volcanic ash has wrought is of the poor scientist who spent his whole career studying Eyjafjallajokull and waiting for her eruption, only to be away from Iceland last week when it happened. (Though what kind of a scientist would he be if he didn’t know the exact date of the eruption?) As a result, since no planes can fly into Reykjavik, he is stranded somewhere else while his whole life’s work is crumbling and spewing lava back in Iceland.
Though the ash particles are too small to be spotted as they sprinkle down on us (scientists have found ash cloud remnants in Sheffield, up in Yorkshire), the plume is destructive enough to enter into the engines of planes and cause massive failure. The best-known incident involving airplanes and volcanic ash took place in June 1982 when a British Airways 747 flight from London to Auckland encountered ash from Mount Galunggung in Java, Indonesia. All four engines failed but the plane glided far enough out of the plume for three of them to restart and work sufficiently for an emergency landing. No passengers were injured.
So, there is genuine danger associated with the falling volcanic ash. It’s not all free vacations and extended international hotel stays. For me, the most severe effect is waiting for my friends to return and hoping that my Mom, and aunt Mary Lou, make it here this Friday without a detour from Nice to Paris to London on the Eurostar.
Good luck to the Canadian East coast that will likely be affected this weekend. If you’re booked to fly, get out while you still can.
I am safely on the ground in London so can honestly say I have not been directly affected by the eruption of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull volcano earlier this month. I know the stranded will not agree with me, but I almost wish I had been affected. If I was traveling out of London sometime in the past week I could be taking advantage of a prolonged vacation that would not count as missed work days.
I can hear the cries of disagreement now. Not only from the thousands of travelers inconvenienced or the airline industry which is being hit hard or even the UK businesses that are sorely lacking staff. I have stranded friends and family as well, who are not too impressed with the questionable inconvenience.
Two of my British friends, Danielle and Natalie, are teachers, and spent the last week or two on Easter holidays in New York City and Australia, respectively. When it came time to return to classes yesterday, both were still living it up in their respective destinations, an expensive delay, I must admit. Another friend, Marge, is stranded – the wrong word, I’m sure – back home in Montreal. And a couple more, Sandra and Peter, were hopping around the Scandinavian countries for Easter holiday, and are still up there somewhere. My cousin John has been given the go-ahead to fly from London to Ottawa tonight, but I’ll believe it when I see it. And my Mom and aunt may not make it up to the UK from the French Riviera at the end of this week.
It’s not all bad news for these travelers. If they can afford it, and are comped by their airline, millions of people are being given a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. But the airline industry is losing millions of pounds and euros and dollars every day. According to a report from absence management firm FirstCare, UK absence caused by the volcanic ash jumped from 20,300 cases yesterday from a typical 3,000 on any other day. That damn volcano is costing British businesses an estimated £3 million a day (Read more at my magazine, Employee Benefits.)
When it all started last Thursday, 15 April, with volcanic ash drifting south-east from the volcanic glacier just 120km from Reykjavik, the numbers started off modestly, with merely tens of thousands of passengers grounded across Britain and Europe. As the ash moved southeast into northern Europe, a blanket ban was announced. More than 800 people were evacuated from southern Iceland, where the volcano was erupting in phases. Two days later, most airports across the continent were closed down, though some 5,000 flights were allowed to fly – a mere quarter of the 22,000 planes that are normally in the sky each day.
The UK workforce has been shattered as well. I’m sure my teacher friends are only a tiny percentage of those not able to return to the classroom after the Easter holidays. This week is a good one to be a supply teacher. International conferences have been suspended, postponed or cancelled altogether, as exhibitors and delegates are unable to arrive at their destination. And as I make my usual news week calls, I am finding a lot of HR departments short-staffed due to stranded employees.
And even the sports world is impacted, not that I really care. With the Liverpool Football Club unable to fly out of England, their only option for reaching Madrid for their match is to take the Eurostar from Paris and carry down to Spain from there. Plans for the English cricket team to reach the Caribbean for the International Cricket Council World 20 this weekend will probably see them travel by land and sea to Dubai before being airlifted directly to the West Indies for the tournament.
More importantly to me, the London premiere of Date Night and the world premiere of Iron Man 2 are now tentatively cancelled because their stars can’t reach the UK. So much for my plan to head down to Leicester Square after work tomorrow to worship the goddess Tina Fey or drool all over RDJ (Robert Downey Jr.) next Monday.
Perhaps the saddest, and most ironic, story that the volcanic ash has wrought is of the poor scientist who spent his whole career studying Eyjafjallajokull and waiting for her eruption, only to be away from Iceland last week when it happened. (Though what kind of a scientist would he be if he didn’t know the exact date of the eruption?) As a result, since no planes can fly into Reykjavik, he is stranded somewhere else while his whole life’s work is crumbling and spewing lava back in Iceland.
Though the ash particles are too small to be spotted as they sprinkle down on us (scientists have found ash cloud remnants in Sheffield, up in Yorkshire), the plume is destructive enough to enter into the engines of planes and cause massive failure. The best-known incident involving airplanes and volcanic ash took place in June 1982 when a British Airways 747 flight from London to Auckland encountered ash from Mount Galunggung in Java, Indonesia. All four engines failed but the plane glided far enough out of the plume for three of them to restart and work sufficiently for an emergency landing. No passengers were injured.
So, there is genuine danger associated with the falling volcanic ash. It’s not all free vacations and extended international hotel stays. For me, the most severe effect is waiting for my friends to return and hoping that my Mom, and aunt Mary Lou, make it here this Friday without a detour from Nice to Paris to London on the Eurostar.
Good luck to the Canadian East coast that will likely be affected this weekend. If you’re booked to fly, get out while you still can.
Wednesday, 14 April 2010
How Wisdom Teething Forced Me To My First UK Dental Appointment
Among the long list of clichéd stereotypes that any traveler brings with them on their first visit to the UK, the expectations of horrendous teeth seems to be the most prevalent.
From a quick google search online, I found some protestation to the effect that British teeth are not bad, only irregular by American standards, where “American middle class children are normally tormented with gratuitous cosmetic dentistry to make them look like Stepford wives, so that any dental individuality is regarded as strange.” If, by individuality, you mean clear evidence that one has never actually seen a dentist, this Sheffield inhabitant may be on the right track. I have seen some appallingly bad teeth over here, but they are also certainly not the norm.
Ricky Gervais, who played a dentist in Ghost Town, was complimented by an American journalist for being prepared to wear unflattering false teeth for the role. Gervais responded: “These are my real teeth. Do you think I’d wear them all the time if they weren’t real?”
Another online comment blamed Canadians (or at least one Canadian, Mike Myers) by crediting the rumours of bad British teeth to Austin Powers. After shifting the blame to his northern neighbours, the Boston commentor wrote: “Americans are quiet on the subject of teeth since our first president didn’t have any, except made of ivory and held together by frightful metal springs.”
While I can unequivocally assert that this particular stereotype is untrue, it is probably reinforced by the fact that it is incredibly difficult to see a dentist in this country. Dental plans in the UK can be attained in a few different ways (I have recently become an expert on the subject after completing an article on the latest in dental plans for my magazine, Employee Benefits). The NHS, the National Health Service, is the UK’s version of OHIP. Despite accounting for 70% of treatment, NHS dental practices are inundated with queues and patients still have to pay most of the cost. Private dental fees, however, are unregulated, and so can run into the hundreds, or thousands, of pounds.
So, essentially, the options are: Wait in line for hours only to fork out at the very least £16.50 of your hard-earned cash for a basic check-up that barely involves opening your mouth, or see a private and probably very expensive dentist that basically bankrupts you. I went with the first option, unaware of the brevity and unthorough nature of the check-up, because I had no choice.
Since the end of 2009, I have been experiencing sporadic pain in the back left corner of my mouth, presumably the growing pains of one set of wisdom teeth, more than 10 years later than those of every single person I know and still the early birds compared to the other, inactive corners of my mouth. The pain comes and goes so that, armed with codeine-laced pain killers, I can pretend it isn’t happening until it subsides for weeks at a time. The past week has been so intensely painful that I had to cave in and have my teeth checked out.
I asked around about seeing a dentist and, despite my extensive research for my dental plan feature, this is how I learned about the real dodgy NHS-funded practices. I was warned that, if I was offered a next-day appointment, I should hang up the phone and avoid that dentist. I made a few calls and I found a walk-in clinic on Upper Street near my flat. I had walked past it on the weekend and was able to case the place before I made an appointment. It looked clean, modern and respectable, so I arranged to drop by before work yesterday morning.
I was very nervous before my appointment, unsure what to expect and wondering whether all the rumours of British dentists were true. I also, understandably, was dreading hearing the words “impacted” and “infected” to describe my wisdom teething and what that would mean for dental treatment down the road.
Because of my hesitation, I was surprised when I was in with a lovely young dentist after only waiting for 30 minutes. I was even more surprised when she barely looked inside my mouth. I told her about my little wisdom, half exposed outside the gum, and my big pain, then she poked each tooth while announcing its number, commented on my weak flossing, and quickly took an x-ray of each side of my mouth. That was the check-up.
The bad news? The damn tooth is coming in sideways. It should probably come out. And, it typically takes up to eight weeks to get a pre-surgery consultation and another three to four months to secure an actual appointment. The good news? The wires behind my teeth that have been in place since the last round of braces came off (yes, I had them twice) are preventing the tooth from moving too fast. The dentist prescribed some heavier drugs, in case the pain persists. Plus, the whole removal operation can take place in a hospital where it will be covered by government healthcare.
All in all, not too traumatizing. Since the weekend, the pain has subsisted somewhat, though it is still rather difficult to open my mouth wide enough to eat sandwiches, which makes me sad because I am in love with mature cheddar and pickle. And I made it through my first UK dental appointment with minimal emotional scarring. I am still very shocked that a basic dental check-up does not involve any cleaning as I’m used to at home. But that does seem to be par for the course here. (Without getting too graphic, even at my first GP’s appointment I learned that the basic female test we all have taken as a typical part of any annual medical check-up is only included here every five years.)
No wonder Britian, known for its revolutionary healthcare system, can afford to offer these annual medical and dental “check-ups” to everyone. No wonder the country is peppered with less than pearly whites. Simply skimping on the basic aspects of a check-up, like an easy teeth clean, can really cut down costs.
From a quick google search online, I found some protestation to the effect that British teeth are not bad, only irregular by American standards, where “American middle class children are normally tormented with gratuitous cosmetic dentistry to make them look like Stepford wives, so that any dental individuality is regarded as strange.” If, by individuality, you mean clear evidence that one has never actually seen a dentist, this Sheffield inhabitant may be on the right track. I have seen some appallingly bad teeth over here, but they are also certainly not the norm.
Ricky Gervais, who played a dentist in Ghost Town, was complimented by an American journalist for being prepared to wear unflattering false teeth for the role. Gervais responded: “These are my real teeth. Do you think I’d wear them all the time if they weren’t real?”
Another online comment blamed Canadians (or at least one Canadian, Mike Myers) by crediting the rumours of bad British teeth to Austin Powers. After shifting the blame to his northern neighbours, the Boston commentor wrote: “Americans are quiet on the subject of teeth since our first president didn’t have any, except made of ivory and held together by frightful metal springs.”
While I can unequivocally assert that this particular stereotype is untrue, it is probably reinforced by the fact that it is incredibly difficult to see a dentist in this country. Dental plans in the UK can be attained in a few different ways (I have recently become an expert on the subject after completing an article on the latest in dental plans for my magazine, Employee Benefits). The NHS, the National Health Service, is the UK’s version of OHIP. Despite accounting for 70% of treatment, NHS dental practices are inundated with queues and patients still have to pay most of the cost. Private dental fees, however, are unregulated, and so can run into the hundreds, or thousands, of pounds.
So, essentially, the options are: Wait in line for hours only to fork out at the very least £16.50 of your hard-earned cash for a basic check-up that barely involves opening your mouth, or see a private and probably very expensive dentist that basically bankrupts you. I went with the first option, unaware of the brevity and unthorough nature of the check-up, because I had no choice.
Since the end of 2009, I have been experiencing sporadic pain in the back left corner of my mouth, presumably the growing pains of one set of wisdom teeth, more than 10 years later than those of every single person I know and still the early birds compared to the other, inactive corners of my mouth. The pain comes and goes so that, armed with codeine-laced pain killers, I can pretend it isn’t happening until it subsides for weeks at a time. The past week has been so intensely painful that I had to cave in and have my teeth checked out.
I asked around about seeing a dentist and, despite my extensive research for my dental plan feature, this is how I learned about the real dodgy NHS-funded practices. I was warned that, if I was offered a next-day appointment, I should hang up the phone and avoid that dentist. I made a few calls and I found a walk-in clinic on Upper Street near my flat. I had walked past it on the weekend and was able to case the place before I made an appointment. It looked clean, modern and respectable, so I arranged to drop by before work yesterday morning.
I was very nervous before my appointment, unsure what to expect and wondering whether all the rumours of British dentists were true. I also, understandably, was dreading hearing the words “impacted” and “infected” to describe my wisdom teething and what that would mean for dental treatment down the road.
Because of my hesitation, I was surprised when I was in with a lovely young dentist after only waiting for 30 minutes. I was even more surprised when she barely looked inside my mouth. I told her about my little wisdom, half exposed outside the gum, and my big pain, then she poked each tooth while announcing its number, commented on my weak flossing, and quickly took an x-ray of each side of my mouth. That was the check-up.
The bad news? The damn tooth is coming in sideways. It should probably come out. And, it typically takes up to eight weeks to get a pre-surgery consultation and another three to four months to secure an actual appointment. The good news? The wires behind my teeth that have been in place since the last round of braces came off (yes, I had them twice) are preventing the tooth from moving too fast. The dentist prescribed some heavier drugs, in case the pain persists. Plus, the whole removal operation can take place in a hospital where it will be covered by government healthcare.
All in all, not too traumatizing. Since the weekend, the pain has subsisted somewhat, though it is still rather difficult to open my mouth wide enough to eat sandwiches, which makes me sad because I am in love with mature cheddar and pickle. And I made it through my first UK dental appointment with minimal emotional scarring. I am still very shocked that a basic dental check-up does not involve any cleaning as I’m used to at home. But that does seem to be par for the course here. (Without getting too graphic, even at my first GP’s appointment I learned that the basic female test we all have taken as a typical part of any annual medical check-up is only included here every five years.)
No wonder Britian, known for its revolutionary healthcare system, can afford to offer these annual medical and dental “check-ups” to everyone. No wonder the country is peppered with less than pearly whites. Simply skimping on the basic aspects of a check-up, like an easy teeth clean, can really cut down costs.
Tuesday, 6 April 2010
Extended Family Easter Weekend
I will wait until my trip to Scotland in August to fully break down my family tree and my Scottish connections – which account for my love for that country and the history of my ancestors there. Most of those Scottish ancestors have been gone for many generations and the Paterson footprint is fading from the hilly, sheep-strewn terrain. But I still love the country more than anywhere else I have ever traveled (and can hardly believe I will be nearly a year on this island before I venture up north).
In the meantime, though, my Easter weekend away from the big city included some of these Scottish connections, ancestors of ancestors who keep me grounded in the UK. I bussed down to Oxfordshire to spend the four-day holiday with my extended family there. I’ve mentioned Pearl, my cousin and London Mom who graciously put me up when I first arrived six months ago and who, thanks to a mere five-minute walk between flats, looks after me at least once a week still. Pearl and her sister Mary are like city mouse and country mouse. Mary has lived for 40 years in a town called Benson (population 4,464), which is about half an hour from Oxford. There she spent many blissful years with her wonderful husband Garrow, who sadly passed away three years ago. They raised three children – Clair, Colin and Catriona – who are all grown up now.
Everyone (well, almost everyone) reconvened at the Red House over Easter Weekend. The head count was 15 at its highest, but started with a lovely quiet night of just two: Mary and myself, curled up by the fire, watching telly and preparing for the crowds to descend.
Clair, Mary and Garrow’s eldest, traveled down from Yorkshire with her three kids ¬– Oliver (15), Molly (12) and Jesse (9) – on Friday, unpacking in the Red House for a long holiday from school. The youngest, Katie, and her husband Andy joined us intermittently from Oxford with their kids – Kojo (3) and Isla (9 months). And Pearl came down from London on Saturday with visiting Norwegian cousins Kirstie and Henning, along with their sons – Martin (8) and Jonathan (6). The only no-shows were Colin and his wife Naomi, who stayed up in Manchester for the weekend.
To understand how I am related to all of these Brits and Scots (and Norwegians), we have to trace my family tree back three generations. My beloved grandfather Robert (Bob) Kerr Paterson is Pearl and Mary’s first cousin, though they fit better into the age bracket with my father’s generation. The age disparity comes from the fact that Bob’s mother Elizabeth (Bessie) Holmes Paterson and Pearl and Mary’s mother Connie are the oldest and near youngest, respectively, of 10 children born 14 years apart to Mary and James Holmes in Greenock, Scotland. Bessie was whisked off to the colonies, and the life of a doctor’s wife in Ottawa, by her second cousin, Robert Kerr Paterson, 19 years her senior, where she raised another Mary and twins Bob (my grandfather) and Libby. In the midst of WWII, Connie married a sea captain in the merchant navy named John Brown from Scotland’s Hebride islands and raised two daughters, Pearl and Mary. Jeana (another Holmes sister and Kirstie’s grandmother) married William, who was known as Bill. They had two children, fraternal twins John and Liz, who married a Norwegian she met while attending university in Glasgow, relocating to a town outside of Oslo in the mid-60s.
There you have it, a somewhat convoluted branch of my family tree. It would probably be a lot simpler to show you an actual visual tree, but I will save that for the summer and a mini-reunion that will see a collection of Scots on Tiree in early August.
So the various leafs of my family tree gathered in Oxfordshire for a relaxing Easter weekend, a variation of our number taking part in both spur-of-the-moment and planned activities. I visited a nearby farm with the kids to see enormous pigs, baby lambs and friendly alpacas; wandered around Oxford for an afternoon with Katie, who works for the university, as our trusty tour guide (My highlight: walking through the Christ Church dining hall which also acts as the Hogwarts’ dining hall in the Harry Potter films.); enjoyed a Sunday afternoon Easter egg hunt for the kids in the expansive orchard behind Mary’s friends’ cottage; and relished in a 15-head Easter dinner and then Easter breakfast with the entire gang.
As you can imagine, we ate well and we relaxed well. I’m so glad I took advantage of the long weekend and fled the city, and that I was so welcome at the family gathering. While I have seen Mary and her grown kids in individual spurts since I moved over here, it was my first time experiencing the whole family (minus Colin) together. While it did make me miss my own immediate family back in Ottawa (and our traditional Easter dinner at the Gibson’s), I am so grateful to have been included in the same traditions over here.
In the meantime, though, my Easter weekend away from the big city included some of these Scottish connections, ancestors of ancestors who keep me grounded in the UK. I bussed down to Oxfordshire to spend the four-day holiday with my extended family there. I’ve mentioned Pearl, my cousin and London Mom who graciously put me up when I first arrived six months ago and who, thanks to a mere five-minute walk between flats, looks after me at least once a week still. Pearl and her sister Mary are like city mouse and country mouse. Mary has lived for 40 years in a town called Benson (population 4,464), which is about half an hour from Oxford. There she spent many blissful years with her wonderful husband Garrow, who sadly passed away three years ago. They raised three children – Clair, Colin and Catriona – who are all grown up now.
Everyone (well, almost everyone) reconvened at the Red House over Easter Weekend. The head count was 15 at its highest, but started with a lovely quiet night of just two: Mary and myself, curled up by the fire, watching telly and preparing for the crowds to descend.
Clair, Mary and Garrow’s eldest, traveled down from Yorkshire with her three kids ¬– Oliver (15), Molly (12) and Jesse (9) – on Friday, unpacking in the Red House for a long holiday from school. The youngest, Katie, and her husband Andy joined us intermittently from Oxford with their kids – Kojo (3) and Isla (9 months). And Pearl came down from London on Saturday with visiting Norwegian cousins Kirstie and Henning, along with their sons – Martin (8) and Jonathan (6). The only no-shows were Colin and his wife Naomi, who stayed up in Manchester for the weekend.
To understand how I am related to all of these Brits and Scots (and Norwegians), we have to trace my family tree back three generations. My beloved grandfather Robert (Bob) Kerr Paterson is Pearl and Mary’s first cousin, though they fit better into the age bracket with my father’s generation. The age disparity comes from the fact that Bob’s mother Elizabeth (Bessie) Holmes Paterson and Pearl and Mary’s mother Connie are the oldest and near youngest, respectively, of 10 children born 14 years apart to Mary and James Holmes in Greenock, Scotland. Bessie was whisked off to the colonies, and the life of a doctor’s wife in Ottawa, by her second cousin, Robert Kerr Paterson, 19 years her senior, where she raised another Mary and twins Bob (my grandfather) and Libby. In the midst of WWII, Connie married a sea captain in the merchant navy named John Brown from Scotland’s Hebride islands and raised two daughters, Pearl and Mary. Jeana (another Holmes sister and Kirstie’s grandmother) married William, who was known as Bill. They had two children, fraternal twins John and Liz, who married a Norwegian she met while attending university in Glasgow, relocating to a town outside of Oslo in the mid-60s.
There you have it, a somewhat convoluted branch of my family tree. It would probably be a lot simpler to show you an actual visual tree, but I will save that for the summer and a mini-reunion that will see a collection of Scots on Tiree in early August.
So the various leafs of my family tree gathered in Oxfordshire for a relaxing Easter weekend, a variation of our number taking part in both spur-of-the-moment and planned activities. I visited a nearby farm with the kids to see enormous pigs, baby lambs and friendly alpacas; wandered around Oxford for an afternoon with Katie, who works for the university, as our trusty tour guide (My highlight: walking through the Christ Church dining hall which also acts as the Hogwarts’ dining hall in the Harry Potter films.); enjoyed a Sunday afternoon Easter egg hunt for the kids in the expansive orchard behind Mary’s friends’ cottage; and relished in a 15-head Easter dinner and then Easter breakfast with the entire gang.
As you can imagine, we ate well and we relaxed well. I’m so glad I took advantage of the long weekend and fled the city, and that I was so welcome at the family gathering. While I have seen Mary and her grown kids in individual spurts since I moved over here, it was my first time experiencing the whole family (minus Colin) together. While it did make me miss my own immediate family back in Ottawa (and our traditional Easter dinner at the Gibson’s), I am so grateful to have been included in the same traditions over here.
Monday, 29 March 2010
Jetting Around The Continent
No doubt one of the best perks of living in London is the easy access to the rest of the European continent and beyond. Thanks to cheap charter providers like Ryanair, Easyjet and Whizzair, a weekend in Paris, Berlin, Prague, Rome, Athens, Marrakech or Istanbul, are right at our fingertips.
To put this into comparable scope for those Brits that take this for granted, travel within Canada, or even North America, is never cheap. Maybe you will get the odd seat sale via Porter, Air Canada or Westjet, but I have never had much luck with those myself. Instead, to travel between Toronto and Ottawa – a journey I used to make a lot – it takes one hour by air (without factoring in the commute from downtown to the airport), five hours by train (which is never reliable), and anywhere between four and nine hours by car (depending on whether your driver is a speed demon or you are departing downtown on the Friday afternoon of a long weekend).
And all this without even traveling halfway across a single province.
In the EU, on the other hand, this approximate distance can take a traveler from Munich to Lucerne, from Budapest to Krakow, across the French Riviera or from London to the Scottish border. In most cases, you can drive through multiple European countries in less time than it takes you to get from one side of Ontario to the other.
I have already taken full advantage of this travel perk with a few visits out of the UK: to Berlin for a week in October and Malta for a long weekend in late November. Berlin was a packed city tour with friends from Canada in tow, well timed with the 20-year anniversary of the fall of the Wall. Malta was ladies only, at least until we hit the clubs, with days spent soaking in Mediterranean sun, centuries of history, and a truly fascinating blend of Italian and North African culture.
I have also traveled around England, visiting and getting to know family members on my paternal grandfather’s side. In Oxford, only about an hour by bus from London, I stayed with my cousin Katie and her family then popped into the countryside to relax in Benson with her mother Mary. Another weekend, I booked the 2.5-hour train from London to Manchester to visit another cousin, Colin, and his wife Naomi. Colin even humoured my touristy and Beatle-maniacal tendencies by accompanying me to Liverpool for the day.
I continue to dream daily of other destinations. Though, if I hadn’t backpacked around the continent for six months back in 2004, the number of places I want to see would multiply by 20 or 30. I luckily weeded through the mediocre European destinations and have specific spots I want to revisit while I’m living over here.
For instance, I have just returned from one of my favourite cities over here, Prague, where my friend Jane was attending, and presenting at, a conference on biochemistry. The journey by air between London and Prague took just 1 hour and 40 minutes. I had an amazing weekend, though I am hurting on this Monday morning - both physically and metaphorically - from trekking the awkward cobblestones for three straight days and leaving the lovely Prague behind.
It was my third visit to the city, though the first time I have been there in the spring (I visited in summer with my sister during the great backpacking trip of 2004 and briefly in the fall during a media trip for Ottawa Life Magazine that introduced me to the rest of the Czech Republic.). This time there was rain, but there was also glorious sunny afternoons spent without coats. Since it was Jane’s first visit to the Bohemian city, I acted as tour guide as we wandered through the various old and new towns – Stare Mesto, Josefov, Hradcany district, Mala Strana and Nove Mesto – each with their own distinct flavour and tucked in along the bends and curves of the great River Vlatva.
Traveling this time without the budget of a six-month student-backpacking trip or the restraining itinerary of a media trip, I was so glad to take full advantage of both restaurants and bars in all these quarters. Jane and I ate very Czech-ly (i.e. no vegetables) with heaps of beef goulash, bacon and bread dumplings, cheeses, breads, potato soup and very, very long sausages. And we sure took advantage of the variety of bars, microbreweries and jazzy lounges in every corner of the city. Beer (or pivo), at about £1 a pint, is cheaper to drink than water, so we sampled as many types as we could get our hands on: Pilsner Urquell, Budweiser Budvar, Krusowice, and my favourite Staropramen, right from the brewery.
It was a fantastic weekend but I have to complain about one small thing. While I do realize how lucky I am to be so close to all of these spectacular destinations that I can stop in for a short weekend trip, the very brevity of the visits can be quite painful. Sure, it seems daft to whine about a 1 hour and 40 minute flight and I do realize how great it is to depart Prague around dinnertime and be home in London for a respectable bedtime. But it makes me sad to pop into these cities for such short visits and then almost surreal to be sitting at my desk at work the next day. Don’t get me wrong, I am grateful for the mini-holidays and I do miss London when I am away from it. I also have no wish to subject myself to the nomadic existence of a lengthy backpacking trip. That time in my life has passed. I just want to prolong these weekends away so that the memories and events don’t disappear too quickly.
To put this into comparable scope for those Brits that take this for granted, travel within Canada, or even North America, is never cheap. Maybe you will get the odd seat sale via Porter, Air Canada or Westjet, but I have never had much luck with those myself. Instead, to travel between Toronto and Ottawa – a journey I used to make a lot – it takes one hour by air (without factoring in the commute from downtown to the airport), five hours by train (which is never reliable), and anywhere between four and nine hours by car (depending on whether your driver is a speed demon or you are departing downtown on the Friday afternoon of a long weekend).
And all this without even traveling halfway across a single province.
In the EU, on the other hand, this approximate distance can take a traveler from Munich to Lucerne, from Budapest to Krakow, across the French Riviera or from London to the Scottish border. In most cases, you can drive through multiple European countries in less time than it takes you to get from one side of Ontario to the other.
I have already taken full advantage of this travel perk with a few visits out of the UK: to Berlin for a week in October and Malta for a long weekend in late November. Berlin was a packed city tour with friends from Canada in tow, well timed with the 20-year anniversary of the fall of the Wall. Malta was ladies only, at least until we hit the clubs, with days spent soaking in Mediterranean sun, centuries of history, and a truly fascinating blend of Italian and North African culture.
I have also traveled around England, visiting and getting to know family members on my paternal grandfather’s side. In Oxford, only about an hour by bus from London, I stayed with my cousin Katie and her family then popped into the countryside to relax in Benson with her mother Mary. Another weekend, I booked the 2.5-hour train from London to Manchester to visit another cousin, Colin, and his wife Naomi. Colin even humoured my touristy and Beatle-maniacal tendencies by accompanying me to Liverpool for the day.
I continue to dream daily of other destinations. Though, if I hadn’t backpacked around the continent for six months back in 2004, the number of places I want to see would multiply by 20 or 30. I luckily weeded through the mediocre European destinations and have specific spots I want to revisit while I’m living over here.
For instance, I have just returned from one of my favourite cities over here, Prague, where my friend Jane was attending, and presenting at, a conference on biochemistry. The journey by air between London and Prague took just 1 hour and 40 minutes. I had an amazing weekend, though I am hurting on this Monday morning - both physically and metaphorically - from trekking the awkward cobblestones for three straight days and leaving the lovely Prague behind.
It was my third visit to the city, though the first time I have been there in the spring (I visited in summer with my sister during the great backpacking trip of 2004 and briefly in the fall during a media trip for Ottawa Life Magazine that introduced me to the rest of the Czech Republic.). This time there was rain, but there was also glorious sunny afternoons spent without coats. Since it was Jane’s first visit to the Bohemian city, I acted as tour guide as we wandered through the various old and new towns – Stare Mesto, Josefov, Hradcany district, Mala Strana and Nove Mesto – each with their own distinct flavour and tucked in along the bends and curves of the great River Vlatva.
Traveling this time without the budget of a six-month student-backpacking trip or the restraining itinerary of a media trip, I was so glad to take full advantage of both restaurants and bars in all these quarters. Jane and I ate very Czech-ly (i.e. no vegetables) with heaps of beef goulash, bacon and bread dumplings, cheeses, breads, potato soup and very, very long sausages. And we sure took advantage of the variety of bars, microbreweries and jazzy lounges in every corner of the city. Beer (or pivo), at about £1 a pint, is cheaper to drink than water, so we sampled as many types as we could get our hands on: Pilsner Urquell, Budweiser Budvar, Krusowice, and my favourite Staropramen, right from the brewery.
It was a fantastic weekend but I have to complain about one small thing. While I do realize how lucky I am to be so close to all of these spectacular destinations that I can stop in for a short weekend trip, the very brevity of the visits can be quite painful. Sure, it seems daft to whine about a 1 hour and 40 minute flight and I do realize how great it is to depart Prague around dinnertime and be home in London for a respectable bedtime. But it makes me sad to pop into these cities for such short visits and then almost surreal to be sitting at my desk at work the next day. Don’t get me wrong, I am grateful for the mini-holidays and I do miss London when I am away from it. I also have no wish to subject myself to the nomadic existence of a lengthy backpacking trip. That time in my life has passed. I just want to prolong these weekends away so that the memories and events don’t disappear too quickly.
Sunday, 21 March 2010
Weathering Winter in London
Since I consider myself to be a hardcore Canadian, happiest during the chill of mid-February while tramping through piles of snow, I was quite surprised by my own unenthusiastic reaction to my first English winter. I was promised a mild and gentle one, but I didn’t get either. I’m not sure if I’ve become a weather wimp or if it really was just damn cold and near never-ending.
Newscasts have hyped the winter of 2010 as the coldest winter Britain has seen in 100 years, with conditions causing “widespread, persistent and severe” problems. Though I scoffed back in December, I have to admit it has been bad and I have had about enough.
A text from home earlier this week clinched it. The friend reported that it was 12 degrees in Toronto, while we were still bundled up in coats, toques and mittens. Now, as you read this, I must confess, we have been experiencing a taste of spring over the last few days (though tempered with those truly English showers). But it is completely deserved as it comes at the tail-end of an honestly brutal winter.
I have to preface this by explaining to you all that the cold in the UK is very different from the cold in Canada. I’ve tried to explain it to people and the best I can do is this: While the Canadian winter has a fresh and crisp cold that is completely tolerable – even at -10 degrees – the winter nippiness in Britain comes along with a dampness that seeps right into your bones and chills you to your core.
Back in late December, when the chill first arrived, I was the first to scoff at my new friends and neighbours. I was working at the café inside the Virgin Media offices where we were tuned into the BBC all day long. Running up to the holidays, the news was solely focused on the country being besieged by heavy snowfalls. On the national level, I will admit, there was a lot of snow. It came down in the northern part of England and in most of Scotland, resulting in the closure of schools, the destruction of small towns and even a few deaths. One lady left home to pick up her Christmas turkey and only returned home in 2010.
In London, small snowstorms were blown out of proportion. “Blizzards” dropped very temporary snow, but caused traffic jams and transport cancellations around the city. I teased people about their reactions, advising the Brits to visit Canada if they wanted to experience a real winter (Note: Don’t try to one-up the English, even if neither one of you wants to be in the lead on the matter. Apparently, the Americans do it a lot, jousting in a “mine’s bigger than yours" manner that the Brits find quite rude.)
The London snow barely left an imprint. A light dusting was the worse you would see and this happened only when the snow had the nerve to come down without its usual charming wetness. However, unlike Canada, the UK is not set up very well for the season: they have no snow tires and no infrastructure for clearing snow – none on the whole island. I let this fact convince me to lighten up on the frantic news reports and swollen reactions from the general public.
Then the Eurostar broke down due to cold weather en route from Paris and London. Experts found that the failure was due to leaving the cold air in northern France and entering the warm air inside the Chunnel. Headlines leading up to Christmas proclaimed: “Four Eurostar trains stuck in Channel tunnel” and “Thousands freed from Chunnel after trains fail.” Passengers heading home for the holidays were trapped in the Chunnel overnight with disturbing reports of pandemonium reaching London as the air conditioners broke down along with the bathrooms, leaving travelers to urinate on the floors.
While the Eurostar struggled to reassign passengers to new trains and clear up the disaster, I couldn’t believe that something as innocent – and quite common – as some cold air could bring a halt to the fastest train in the world (Central London to downtown Paris in just over two hours). How is it that a country (or two) considered to be on the cutting edge of technology, manufacturing and transport could screw up something like getting a simple train from A to B?
It’s just another example of a continent (perhaps a generalization here, but come on) that is so ill equipped for a little winter weather that the city literally grinds to a halt. When I was heading out to Gatwick on 23 December, the line-ups at St. Pancras spiraled out to Euston Road. I was happy, for once, that I was not on my way to Paris. Instead, I was heading home to Canada for the holidays, looking forward to a real winter, despite the sporadic and chaos-ensuing snow that had recently fallen in London.
And now it’s nearly April. March is meant to come in like a lion and out like a lamb. The first part certainly proved true. We haven’t seen any snow in many weeks now, but the cold chill has pervaded most of the month. In protest, I have started wearing my spring coat anyways along with flats and bare feet. Today, on the cusp of spring, I wandered around Chelsea with my coat unbuttoned and saw daffodils in Battersea Park – all signs of promising weather to come.
Hopefully, by this time next week, when March finally wraps up, spring will have come to the UK for good. And then it will only be a matter of weeks before that glorious London summer is upon us.
Newscasts have hyped the winter of 2010 as the coldest winter Britain has seen in 100 years, with conditions causing “widespread, persistent and severe” problems. Though I scoffed back in December, I have to admit it has been bad and I have had about enough.
A text from home earlier this week clinched it. The friend reported that it was 12 degrees in Toronto, while we were still bundled up in coats, toques and mittens. Now, as you read this, I must confess, we have been experiencing a taste of spring over the last few days (though tempered with those truly English showers). But it is completely deserved as it comes at the tail-end of an honestly brutal winter.
I have to preface this by explaining to you all that the cold in the UK is very different from the cold in Canada. I’ve tried to explain it to people and the best I can do is this: While the Canadian winter has a fresh and crisp cold that is completely tolerable – even at -10 degrees – the winter nippiness in Britain comes along with a dampness that seeps right into your bones and chills you to your core.
Back in late December, when the chill first arrived, I was the first to scoff at my new friends and neighbours. I was working at the café inside the Virgin Media offices where we were tuned into the BBC all day long. Running up to the holidays, the news was solely focused on the country being besieged by heavy snowfalls. On the national level, I will admit, there was a lot of snow. It came down in the northern part of England and in most of Scotland, resulting in the closure of schools, the destruction of small towns and even a few deaths. One lady left home to pick up her Christmas turkey and only returned home in 2010.
In London, small snowstorms were blown out of proportion. “Blizzards” dropped very temporary snow, but caused traffic jams and transport cancellations around the city. I teased people about their reactions, advising the Brits to visit Canada if they wanted to experience a real winter (Note: Don’t try to one-up the English, even if neither one of you wants to be in the lead on the matter. Apparently, the Americans do it a lot, jousting in a “mine’s bigger than yours" manner that the Brits find quite rude.)
The London snow barely left an imprint. A light dusting was the worse you would see and this happened only when the snow had the nerve to come down without its usual charming wetness. However, unlike Canada, the UK is not set up very well for the season: they have no snow tires and no infrastructure for clearing snow – none on the whole island. I let this fact convince me to lighten up on the frantic news reports and swollen reactions from the general public.
Then the Eurostar broke down due to cold weather en route from Paris and London. Experts found that the failure was due to leaving the cold air in northern France and entering the warm air inside the Chunnel. Headlines leading up to Christmas proclaimed: “Four Eurostar trains stuck in Channel tunnel” and “Thousands freed from Chunnel after trains fail.” Passengers heading home for the holidays were trapped in the Chunnel overnight with disturbing reports of pandemonium reaching London as the air conditioners broke down along with the bathrooms, leaving travelers to urinate on the floors.
While the Eurostar struggled to reassign passengers to new trains and clear up the disaster, I couldn’t believe that something as innocent – and quite common – as some cold air could bring a halt to the fastest train in the world (Central London to downtown Paris in just over two hours). How is it that a country (or two) considered to be on the cutting edge of technology, manufacturing and transport could screw up something like getting a simple train from A to B?
It’s just another example of a continent (perhaps a generalization here, but come on) that is so ill equipped for a little winter weather that the city literally grinds to a halt. When I was heading out to Gatwick on 23 December, the line-ups at St. Pancras spiraled out to Euston Road. I was happy, for once, that I was not on my way to Paris. Instead, I was heading home to Canada for the holidays, looking forward to a real winter, despite the sporadic and chaos-ensuing snow that had recently fallen in London.
And now it’s nearly April. March is meant to come in like a lion and out like a lamb. The first part certainly proved true. We haven’t seen any snow in many weeks now, but the cold chill has pervaded most of the month. In protest, I have started wearing my spring coat anyways along with flats and bare feet. Today, on the cusp of spring, I wandered around Chelsea with my coat unbuttoned and saw daffodils in Battersea Park – all signs of promising weather to come.
Hopefully, by this time next week, when March finally wraps up, spring will have come to the UK for good. And then it will only be a matter of weeks before that glorious London summer is upon us.
Monday, 15 March 2010
Whose To Blame For The World’s Worst Hangover?
When we both moved to London within a few days of each other back in September, my friend Marge and I both experienced completely opposite reactions to the London air.
It is well-known that London has the absolute worse air quality in the UK – and probably ranks up there as one of the most polluted cities in the world too. Newcomers complain of headaches, dizziness and nausea – Marge exhibited all three.
But I had none of these symptoms. (Probably because Toronto air quality is worse than Montreal’s, so I had become acclimatized to a certain level of pollution.) Instead, I got a nice blend of the big three when I woke up with my first British hangover.
Now, I am no stranger to the hangover. We are very well acquainted, he and I; maybe even a little too close, in fact. And, of course, the older I get (29 yesterday), the worse the hangovers are. So perhaps my brutal mornings-after over here are just an indication that I am too old to be drinking to excess – or binge-drinking, as the experts prefer to call it.
Though people do drink a great amount in North America, this type of behaviour is very, very prevalent over here. A poll in 2009 of the entire continent found that the UK has the third-highest number of teenagers with an alcohol problem in 35 countries. And a study conducted the same year found that it’s not just the young’uns with the difficulty: more than a third of British adults drink over the safe daily alcohol limit.
There are many reasons for this, of course, but I think the most likely cause of a typical Friday night turning into a drunken disaster is the early pub-culture that characterizes the country. In Toronto, when I go out to a bar on the weekend, I usually venture out well after 11PM, often even later. But you will be hard-pressed to find a pub even open at that time in London. Revelers hit the pub as soon as they leave the office and throw back beer and mixed drinks and shots until the place closes down. Usually, this binge-drinking takes place on an empty stomach, which exaggerates the consequences. An early drinker may get home before midnight (that is, if they manage to catch the right train or avoid passing out in the street), but they will certainly still feel the effects in the morning (I can attest to this).
But let’s return to my investigation into the culprit(s) of the worst hangovers of my life. The aging theory has been likely disproved by the fact that mere days had passed between my last typical hangover in Toronto and the hell I encountered one morning in my first week in London.
I started doing some research. I usually stick to gin and tonics or red wine, not to mention the occasional beer. I thought that, by comparing the proofs of these liquors as they are available in Canada and in the UK, I would find a startling disparity.
But Gordon’s London Dry Gin, which was mixed with tonic water for the first time in 1858, seems to be available at roughly the same proof in Canada as it is in the UK. A 750ml bottle of gin in Canada has a proof of 40%. A 700ml bottle in London has a 37.5% proof. A 2008 Cabernet Sauvignon that I’ve become quite fond of – because it costs £5.99 at most off-licenses – contains 13.5% alcohol in a 750ml bottle, but a similarly-sized cab sauv in Canada is also 13.5% proof. The proof was proving my theory wrong.
Next I looked at my beer consumption, convinced I would prove my theory there. Now, once you’ve spent time with a flavourful golden ale, a sweet and malty strong ale or a well-hopped English bitter, there is no returning to Canada’s well-intentioned Keiths, Molsons and Sleemans – no matter how proud you are of your homegrown lagers.
But besides the delicious taste of home-brewed British beers, the alcohol proof is not any higher. Across the world, a typical bottle or pint of beer ranks between 3% and 12%. In Canada, that lovely green long-necked Keiths offers a proof of 5%, the average for Canadian-brewed lagers and pilsners. My favourite bitters and ales in the UK come in about the same, often even below 5%.
So I guess I can’t place the blame for my cruel hangovers on the alcohol proofs in my beverages of choice. I suspect some of the responsibility falls on my habit of rounding off the night with a glass or two of neat whiskey. But my love for the Scottish liquid gold is a topic for another day.
And this brings me around full circle. I’ve asked around, trying to identify the guilty party, and many have mentioned that perhaps it is my reaction to the pollution in London. Instead of noticing the poor air quality on an average Tuesday afternoon, I feel the pain – in combination with my alcohol-induced headaches – on a Saturday or Sunday morning (okay, afternoon).
Whether one perpetrator is to blame or whether it’s simply a blending of all the details mentioned above, I’m not convinced that the mystery has been solved. But I must leave off for the day and take my focus away from alcohol and hangovers. I only just recovered from yesterday’s masterpiece and I don’t think I could survive a relapse.
It is well-known that London has the absolute worse air quality in the UK – and probably ranks up there as one of the most polluted cities in the world too. Newcomers complain of headaches, dizziness and nausea – Marge exhibited all three.
But I had none of these symptoms. (Probably because Toronto air quality is worse than Montreal’s, so I had become acclimatized to a certain level of pollution.) Instead, I got a nice blend of the big three when I woke up with my first British hangover.
Now, I am no stranger to the hangover. We are very well acquainted, he and I; maybe even a little too close, in fact. And, of course, the older I get (29 yesterday), the worse the hangovers are. So perhaps my brutal mornings-after over here are just an indication that I am too old to be drinking to excess – or binge-drinking, as the experts prefer to call it.
Though people do drink a great amount in North America, this type of behaviour is very, very prevalent over here. A poll in 2009 of the entire continent found that the UK has the third-highest number of teenagers with an alcohol problem in 35 countries. And a study conducted the same year found that it’s not just the young’uns with the difficulty: more than a third of British adults drink over the safe daily alcohol limit.
There are many reasons for this, of course, but I think the most likely cause of a typical Friday night turning into a drunken disaster is the early pub-culture that characterizes the country. In Toronto, when I go out to a bar on the weekend, I usually venture out well after 11PM, often even later. But you will be hard-pressed to find a pub even open at that time in London. Revelers hit the pub as soon as they leave the office and throw back beer and mixed drinks and shots until the place closes down. Usually, this binge-drinking takes place on an empty stomach, which exaggerates the consequences. An early drinker may get home before midnight (that is, if they manage to catch the right train or avoid passing out in the street), but they will certainly still feel the effects in the morning (I can attest to this).
But let’s return to my investigation into the culprit(s) of the worst hangovers of my life. The aging theory has been likely disproved by the fact that mere days had passed between my last typical hangover in Toronto and the hell I encountered one morning in my first week in London.
I started doing some research. I usually stick to gin and tonics or red wine, not to mention the occasional beer. I thought that, by comparing the proofs of these liquors as they are available in Canada and in the UK, I would find a startling disparity.
But Gordon’s London Dry Gin, which was mixed with tonic water for the first time in 1858, seems to be available at roughly the same proof in Canada as it is in the UK. A 750ml bottle of gin in Canada has a proof of 40%. A 700ml bottle in London has a 37.5% proof. A 2008 Cabernet Sauvignon that I’ve become quite fond of – because it costs £5.99 at most off-licenses – contains 13.5% alcohol in a 750ml bottle, but a similarly-sized cab sauv in Canada is also 13.5% proof. The proof was proving my theory wrong.
Next I looked at my beer consumption, convinced I would prove my theory there. Now, once you’ve spent time with a flavourful golden ale, a sweet and malty strong ale or a well-hopped English bitter, there is no returning to Canada’s well-intentioned Keiths, Molsons and Sleemans – no matter how proud you are of your homegrown lagers.
But besides the delicious taste of home-brewed British beers, the alcohol proof is not any higher. Across the world, a typical bottle or pint of beer ranks between 3% and 12%. In Canada, that lovely green long-necked Keiths offers a proof of 5%, the average for Canadian-brewed lagers and pilsners. My favourite bitters and ales in the UK come in about the same, often even below 5%.
So I guess I can’t place the blame for my cruel hangovers on the alcohol proofs in my beverages of choice. I suspect some of the responsibility falls on my habit of rounding off the night with a glass or two of neat whiskey. But my love for the Scottish liquid gold is a topic for another day.
And this brings me around full circle. I’ve asked around, trying to identify the guilty party, and many have mentioned that perhaps it is my reaction to the pollution in London. Instead of noticing the poor air quality on an average Tuesday afternoon, I feel the pain – in combination with my alcohol-induced headaches – on a Saturday or Sunday morning (okay, afternoon).
Whether one perpetrator is to blame or whether it’s simply a blending of all the details mentioned above, I’m not convinced that the mystery has been solved. But I must leave off for the day and take my focus away from alcohol and hangovers. I only just recovered from yesterday’s masterpiece and I don’t think I could survive a relapse.
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