Sunday, October 25, 2020

East is east and west is west...

 I was reminded of this line today, and I couldn't remember where I'd heard it before, so I turned to good ol' Google to remind me. It's from the Kipling poem "The Ballad of the East and West." The first stanza is as follows:

0h, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat;
But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the ends of the earth!

What does that have to do with today's post? Precious little, other than that I was at the centre of east and west today, and it so happens that Kipling is British, but that's a coincidence. Given that I'm in England, you might be able to guess where I went today if I'm talking about east and west: Greenwich.

Steak & truffle fries for lunch

Initially, I went to Greenwich Market. My sister-in-law's sister has a stall there, but I forgot that she wouldn't be there today, so I ended up not getting to see her stall, but I did at least get to see a few others stalls and some places around the market, try some yummy food from local street stalls at the market, buy some soap from the market like the kind of soap I was using at home and didn't know where I'd find similar soap here, and be able to go to the Royal Observatory Greenwich, which is the place you go to see the spot marked "where time begins," as I like to call it. 

Whenever you see time with GMT after it, that's Greenwich Mean Time, where the prime meridian runs through, meaning the longitude is 0ยบ, and where, according to Wikipedia was for a long time used by over 2/3 of ships and tonnage as a reference point for their charts and maps. I mean, England was the centre of the universe for so long, right? Well, GMT was superseded by Universal Coordinated Time (UTC) in 1972, but I still see GMT quite commonly used. What's also noteworthy is that the prime meridian itself has also shifted slightly over time as the earth's crust moves, so the line that marks GMT may actually be off now.



The prime meridian through the gate
In any case, we didn't pay to go into the Observatory. There is actually lots to see around it, including the National Maritime Museum, which is free--though currently any museum that's open requires a booking, even if it's free, by way of controlling the number of people in it at any given time for the sake of physical distancing, and there is a beautiful park that surrounds the area. The only thing is that by not paying, you couldn't get in to see the meridian line, so I took a photo of it from through the fence. You can at least see it through a gate, just that you can't step over it and be on either side of it at the same time. 

You would think that it would be a little disappointing not to get to actually step over or straddle that line, but for the very few of you who have followed by blog for years, you might remember how much I enjoy looking behind me when there's some sort of attraction in front of me. At the very least, you get an interesting perspective of the crowd, but sometimes you notice something that others don't see that can be just as interesting if not more, and is sometimes overlooked because a well-known attraction is stealing the limelight. The prime meridian is one of those things. We noticed that a family was going through an open gate with a pathway leading to some unknown destination around the Observatory. I went over to investigate and noticed that the same type of line that is marked above as the prime meridian and that is within the Observatory part for which you have to pay, actually extends down vertically and again horizontally, crossing that pathway. We went through the gate, and sure enough, the prime meridian is marked there as well--and it's completely free. I'm sure the Observatory is worth a visit, but if you're only going for a photo with the prime meridian, why pay all that money when you can get it for free! So I happily got my photo because I took the time to investigate the road less travelled. I should mention that as you might be able to see in the photos (I think you have to click on them to enlarge them) that east and west are marked on either side of the line. I guess that means I was in two of the earth's hemispheres at once!
  
The pathway leads to a garden on one side of the Observatory. There isn't much to see there, but the walk was refreshing with the smells of old-growth greenery after the rain, and the scenery was beautiful as the sun came out and created spots of colourful sparkles, lighting up the trees in all their autumnal glory. The park itself also has some trees with very thick trunks. I can't even imagine how old those trees must be, but I had to get photos of them. There was also a statue there of General Wolfe, who defeated the Marquis de Montcalm at the Battle of the Plains of Abraham. If you don't remember your Canadian history (I forgot who these guys were, too), you can click this link to read more. What's interesting is that while the monument was gifted to the UK by Canada in 1930, it was the Marquis de Montcalm who unveiled it. It seems odd that a descendent of the defeated party would unveil a monument to the victor of that battle! We also walked down to Cutty Sark before we went home. I didn't actually know what that was, but it's some ship. I don't know the history of it to know why it's there or significant, but I honestly didn't have much interest in it. We were just curious what was over there. The boat looks really cool because my landlocked province at home would never house such a thing, so it's neat just to see such a massive boat and with a beautiful design.

I leave this post with photos of those scenes as well as that of the surrounding park--in the past I used to be able to create albums for these things on Blogger when it used Picasa, but unfortunately that is no longer possible now that Picasa is not supported, and Google failed to provide a good alternative to adding albums to one's blog. So I'll put them here in a way that will probably look somewhat messy due to the poor capabilities of this program.








The tree is so massive, it collects pools of water











Monday, October 19, 2020

There's always something new

I went out Sunday morning to pick up a few groceries, and if I've been out on a Sunday morning before, I certainly have never gone in the direction of the grocery store before. There were dozens of people going in my direction, most of them speaking what sounded like an Eastern European language. Shortly before I reached the store, they had all turn off in the same direction. I thought perhaps there was a place of worship where they were going. However, when I came out of the store to return home, I saw several people coming back from that direction, most with plastic bags in their hands, seemingly filled with groceries, and one person even had a full wheeled shopping bag, the kind I also use to carry home a lot of groceries on foot. I also started seeing people going in that direction with those same wheeled shopping bags, and I figured there must be a street market in that direction. As my bag was already full, I decided not to go check it out, but I will another day for sure. And the Eastern Europeans? I think they were actually Roma! I saw a couple of older ladies with fringed scarves around their necks and long velvet dresses with frilly hems, and I saw one guy hawking perfume out of a reusable shopping bag on the sidewalk. Another man had set up a table at a bus stop where he was doing the trick where you have to follow a small object underneath 3 tin bowls, and people seemed to be betting on the results. It was quite interesting!

St Pancras train station is pretty inside

The previous day, we went out to Luton. At home, we've enjoyed watching the show "24 Hours in Police Custody," which features the Luton Police. It's a lower income area and one that seems to attract a lot of immigrants, but what was interesting is that, when we were at the Luton Mall, the people there looked a lot like regular people at home. There are a lot more business people and office type workers where we live, so often times, people are a bit dressed up. But in Luton, it seemed a little bit like home. Anyway, we did see the outside of the police station, and the mall was pretty nice. One of the strangest sites, of all things, was seeing 2 flocks of Canada Geese flying overhead in their typical V formation. I know that there are Canada Geese in the UK, but I've never seen a large enough population of them anywhere to expect to see them flying in formation like that.
Canada Geese


The day before, I discovered Battersea Park. It's a really pretty park with a manmade pond stocked with fish, and as a result, there are many types of birds there that eat fish. People can fish there as well, but they have competition from the birds! I saw a grey heron fly overhead, and when I went there again with my husband on Sunday afternoon, there were Great Grebes, which are another type of bird that eats fish. There are also several other kinds of birds as well. The colours had attracted me to the place the most, as trees are starting to turn during the autumn here, and we were treated to a dazzling view of them on the Sunday afternoon when the sun popped out for few minutes to light up the golds and reds.

Panorama of the duck pond at Battersea Park



Thursday, October 8, 2020

Foods & Fashion, London edition

Foods and Fashion is sometimes an option class that students can take back home at the secondary level--sometimes they're split up into two separate courses, but sometimes they are combined. So I thought I would title this post with this course name as I didn't know if I'd have enough for two separate posts. It's all about me learning about new foods I'm seeing and interesting fashion trends that I see at the moment.

Foods


Aside from the ubiquitous and very affordable prices on a variety of types of clotted cream, or the well-known Marmite, which I have no intention of trying as I'm not really a fan of eating yeast when it's not in a bread product, I have come across a number of other interesting items at the grocery store. One of them is goose fat. I've been too lazy to look it up, but I really have no idea what it would be used for. It looks like it's used as lard would be, lard being made from pork fat. Geese and ducks can have a lot of fat on them, so I guess if one is really interested, goose lard could be used. I'm not sure what the flavour difference is that makes it attractive, but it was interesting to see in the store. I mentioned in a previous post the different flavours you can see here of products, such as rhubarb and blackcurrant, that you just don't see ay home, but there are also some products that you would have to go to a specialty store for at home that you can find regularly here in any grocery store. Macarons and churros are some of them. 

I suppose you can sometimes find them in bakery sections--at least macarons--at home, but here, they're just in the dessert section next to where you usually get yogurts in the dairy aisle. There are many more puddings and flans and other types of desserts in general in the stores as well. Other types of foods that are more common in the grocery stores are water cress, venison steaks, and different fish like mackerel. Honey tends to be expensive, especially because I was buying acacia honey, which I read is really mild. At home, I always got creamed clover honey, which I like for its mildness because it doesn't compete with the flavour of a delicate Earl Grey, for example, but I ended up finding that I can get "set honey" here for pretty cheap. It has a mild flavour and is creamed, but I don't know where it comes from. Food labelling in the UK is quite different from home, and you can't always find out as much nutritional info as you'd like, and some products aren't good at labelling the weight or volume. We also have been trying new chip flavours like "chicken wing" and "piri piri," and I'd also like to try paprika flavoured chips when I get a chance.

Fashion


I think London is known more for its sophisticated and bold street fashion rather than haute couture, and I've definitely been a little self-conscious in terms of wanting to look like a local. I'm not, at least, someone who will be seen wearing my flannel pyjama bottoms in public as pants (no offense if you do this, but you have to admit that it's not a sophisticated look), but I want to try to develop a bit of local fashion sensibility. For my husband, it's easy, because corduroy trousers or khakis and a sweater over a button-up shirt are already his style, and that's pretty common here, but for me, it's a little harder, especially for plus-sized wear. I also don't want to go out and buy a bunch of new clothes either because with all the walking around, I will probably lose some weight, and I'd just have to turn around and buy a bunch of new clothes again.

Anyway, enough of tangential talk. What I wanted to mention was that one of the first things I noticed is that not only are many women wearing somewhat longer, flowy skirts and dresses, but many of them are actually somewhat similar to the Mennonite style of dresses that my grandmother always wore. In the photo of Mennonite teachers that I just hyperlinked, the sleeves are the main difference as my grandmother wasn't into puffy sleeves--they would be fitted--but the main thing is that they be modest and cover the knees. Sometimes she wore sleeves that went down to just above the elbow, but many dresses were full or three quarter-length sleeves. I'm sure she was frequently appalled by the attire of many people as the years went on, but I'm sure she would have been happy to hear about and see photos of the types of dresses I've seen on women and in the stores right now. Not only are they modest, but some of them even have the collars and sashes (what I would call a belt these days).  

She would have thought people had finally come to their senses. She passed away a few years ago, but I sure wish I could have shared this with her. This blue dress is one that she probably would have been happy to buy instead of have to make for herself. My grandfather loved blue, and she loved to wear blue dresses to please him. The styles pictured above are too bright and bold for her preference, but back home when I've seen Mennonites that live in the city, they tend to wear brighter colours, especially the younger generations. I'm sure many Londoners would find my comparison hilarious, but I say it as I see it! I guess you could argue that this dress style is actually similar to shirt dress styles that were worn in the 50s, but that's what my grandmother pretty much always wore, and when I see these types of dresses now, they remind me of her.