Lullaby and Good Night...I Wish

Sunday Evening/Monday Early Morning --  September 8-early 9th

So nice to be back in the UK.  Shocking to the ears to again her chicken filet pronounced as chicken “fill-it.”  Spent yesterday afternoon resting and watching TV—love the TV commercials here.  Many of them use the cute 3D stop-motion characters and they’re very cleverly done.  Watched a documentary about the Boston Tea Party done by a British lady visiting Boston.  (Yesterday, I came frustratingly close to throwing MYSELF into Boston Harbour, so a little tea would’ve been nothing.)  She was a funny lady who participated in aa mock throwing of the tea into the harbor then felt guilty about it. 

The weather map over here is quite confusing since I can never get Celsius into my head.  It starts with 0 degrees in Scotland and goes up to 5 degrees in London.  So the map looked like what my second-graders used to draw when they did weather maps.

             0

     1      1      1

       2       3

     3       4      4

5   5   5  5  5   5

 

Flipping channels, I ran across a show where these people were describing the Land Rover course—it had gates and little playhouses and some tall wooden mushrooms, and I (silly me) thought that they were talking about a CAR doing the course—but I wondered how it was going to jump the house.  See----jetlag, for sure.  Horses are doing the jumping.  They “grease” the horses’ legs with this white stuff so that if they graze the gate, they slide right on over instead of scraping up their legs. 

Ray spent my TV watching time visiting the Boots chemist—like our CVS pharmacist—who advised him that it sounds like he does indeed have a sinus infection and should go to the Whitechapel walk-in clinic.  So he visited there and found that he does not have a sinus infection, just some irritation from allergies and flying too much recently—back and forth to LA for the DisneyLand Half-Marathon then this trip—just generally abusing his body.  So he is having Cup-A-Soup for dinner and some whiskey and honey to help his scratchy throat. 

Bought some goodies from Sainsbury’s and we are in for the night—a rainy, cool night.

Okay, so Ray was out like a light, so I went to bed and was sleeping soundly when all of a sudden the light goes on and he’s wide awake and up playing Solitaire on the computer, which requires that he make this click with the mouse with every move.  Aaaaaahhh!  So now I am awake again and it’s only 8pm.  He's even playing the peaceful CD music that we brought with us, to no avail.

So here’s a question for you to work on since my jetlagged brain can’t figure it out:  If, as the saying goes, in the Spring with the time change to daylight savings time, we spring FORWARD—which means we LOSE an hour of sleep, then why, when we fly over here and spring FORWARD FIVE HOURS, don’t we LOSE 5 hours of sleep.  Instead we have five EXTRA hours to play with—and by play with I mean EXIST THROUGH until we catch up to the actual time to go to sleep over here.  We don’t gain a day or lose a day, it’s still the same day.  WHY can’t my brain figure this out?????!!!!!

So the Travelodges over here don’t have air conditioning, which I had forgotten, and which, this time of year, you definitely don’t need because it’s very cool and pleasant so we sleep with the window open, but the Travelodges all seem to be VERY noisy places—train stations, intersections.  (Oh, I think there are probably WAY too many commas in that sentence.)  This one is just off a very busy street, which isn’t bad with the swooshing sound of passing traffic, but then every 10 minutes or so, an ambulance or police car goes whizzing by making the LOUDEST sound possible.  I think as I was coming awake just now, I was dreaming that I was sleeping in a bed in the median of the two lanes of traffic.

I just told Ray he HAD to come to bed or I was gonna kill him.  But, of course, neither of us is the least bit sleepy now, so we are up to plan our outings for tomorrow. 

European Adventure...Days 1, 2, & 3--which all ran together anyway

September 6, 7, 8

Off to a great start on our European Adventure!  Yesterday we spent the day driving to Atlanta, seeing my parents, and repacking several times.  Had dinner at a restaurant I hadn’t been to for dinner since a field trip in the 3^rd Grade when we visited the Atlanta Airport Terminal and then ate at Barbecue Kitchen—I do believe this may be the best barbecue ever.  (Dean’s Barbecue in Jonesboro would be the only other contender—how I wish THAT was close to me on a daily basis.)  I KNOW Barbecue Kitchen’s has the best peach cobbler I’ve ever eaten, made by Granny Something-or-Other, I couldn’t really understand the waitress.  Oh my, it was delicious.  She said it hadn’t been good the day before, but today, the granny made it, so it was fantastic.  She was so right.

Woke up early this morning, just out of excitement.  Our flight to Boston was super smooth and on the way we saw Washington, D.C., New York and the Statue of Liberty, and Plymouth Rock.  When we came in for a landing in Boston, this was the first time that we landed over the water, and the pilot came in SO low that I thought we were gonna land in the bay!  It was very exciting.  And very pretty with lighthouses on tiny islands dotting the bay & boats having a great time on this Saturday afternoon.

Heard an interesting job title over the intercom at Boston Logan Airport:  Calling for a Wheelchair-Pusher to come to Gate A19.  Now wouldn’t you think they would’ve come up with something like “Mobility-Impaired Transportation Assistant?”  But really I like Wheelchair-Pusher better.  Simply said. 

We had Sbarro’s Pizza for lunch where at the bottom of our receipt was the greeting:  Thank you very much!  Please a nice flight!     Not please have a nice flight, so maybe they were begging the airlines for a smooth flight for us—I know I say that sometimes—please, a nice flight, please.  J  We have an almost 6 hour layover here in Boston, but after having to run, and I mean RUN, to catch some flights in our recent past, believe me, this is not a problem. 

Later…well, at the end of the 6 hour layover, we were told that there is a mechanical problem on the plane with the cargo door not sealing properly.  Well, yes, I would like to get to London without having my luggage ejected and deposited in the Atlantic Ocean somewhere along the way.  So we wait and wait.  Fix number one didn’t work, so they are trying fix number two.  If that doesn’t work, then fix three involves a two more hour delay while they ship in a part to fix it.  Do you think they have already put the shipping in effect just in case?  Probably not. 

Okay, now it’s two hours past our departure time and they HAVE fixed the door (at least I hope they have) and we are boarding.  But then we sit on the plane at the gate for another 45 minutes!  Good grief.  By the time we are served dinner—which I wasn’t thrilled about anyway so I had already had Fuddrucker’s—it is going on 10 o’clock!  Everyone fed now and lights are down.  I watch the newest Great Gatsby movie with Leonardo DeCaprio—not anywhere near as good as the original, kind of too glitzy with not enough feeling except where it is overacted, in my opinion.  Then I try to sleep, draped all over my seat and Ray and any way I can, but it is no use.  I finally give up and watch Cloud Atlas—interesting but all over the place and I’m exhausted by now so I shouldn’t even be reviewing anything. 

And next thing I know, I have tossed and turned all night without a single second of sleep and I don’t even get to see the very end of the movie because we are landing.  Which is great—but guess?  When we get to the Immigration Check line, it seems that EVERY plane that was landing in London this morning has decided to land at the exact same moment as we did!  So the line is SUPER SUPER long.  I mean almost two hours long!!!  And that is no exaggeration.  We move a bit then stand and merge and move a bit….well, who knows who has taken off with our luggage from baggage claim by now because we certainly aren’t able to get to it.  Finally we get through and low and behold, there sits our two pieces of luggage.  The luggage fairies have smiled upon us. 

 

But the underground train fairies did not.  The trains were packed with everyone and their luggage.  The happy moment of the day was when a little boy of about 5 sat beside me and I told him I liked his Cars shoes and I said that they must be able to make him run really fast because they are red in color, so he talked and talked to me after that and when he got tangled up trying to put on his jacket, I asked if he needed help and he said yes, please.  And then thank you, with a reminder from his mother who was standing by the train door.  Sweet little guy made my day.

So because of the delay after delay after delay, we weren’t able to do our original plan for today, which was to go to Hampton Court and Kew Gardens.  But we will reshuffle some things and reprioritize and try to fit them in later.  So we switched trains a few times and got out to Liverpool Station where we ate at Hamilton Hall (a Wetherspoons restaurant, for Ray) then hopped back on the train and paid extra to check into our Bethnal Green  hotel early.  It’s just your basic Travelodge, but it was so good to lie down when I saw the bed that I actually had tears in my eyes. 

Ray has gone to retrieve our London Passes for use all week, then we’ll probably go to the Sainsbury’s we passed on our walk here to get some supplies.  I’m trying to stay awake until bedtime so that I won’t be jetlagged tomorrow.  We’ll see how that goes.  J