The Jerome K. Jerome Sequel: One Girl in a Boat

Bridges Crossed: 5/12 (Westminster, Hungerford, Waterloo, Blackfriars, and Millennium)[1]

Train Stations: 4/10 (Waterloo, Paddington, Euston, King’s Cross)[2]

The weather in the Kingdom has been sparkling as of late. 

On Thursday evening there was a party for MPs and their staff, held in the big Westminster Hall that Henry VIII used to play tennis in when it rained, in honor of the Queen’s Jubilee. The 6 quid ticket gave you entrance, one small drink and as many bags of crisps as you could eat—we wouldn’t want the taxpayers complaining about any extravagance. The highlight included a band consisting of MPs who were surprisingly good. They covered popular British and American songs clear as a bell—but when they paused singing to speak to the crowd, their thick Welsh and Scottish dialects were nearly incomprehensible.

This weekend I took the train to Henley-on-Thames. Henley is an adorable river town about an hour from London, just north of Reading, and the home of the last known operating Blockbuster video store. From what I observed, the store was thriving.

I tramped all over the countryside, sticking chiefly to the river, stopping at one point to take a nap in a particularly soft grassy valley. The river was packed with boats. The locks had lines of boats idling on both sides. The passengers carried on joyfully however, passing drinks in nets and dancing on the decks. Henley itself is marvelously preserved. I’d decided to go there on a whim, based on a TimeOut London posting that said, “Henley is one of those dainty old market towns where the Thames is a thing of joy.”[3]

Drinking cider at The Argyle that evening, a local 'character' informed me that reading in a pub was “no way to get pulled,” and then proceeded to give me a thorough history of the pub and the town. I did learn from him that Henley was one of places that Jerome K. Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat stopped. This classic is not very well known in the States, but it is one of the earliest examples of hilarious travel writing, and not to be missed, in my opinion. The three stop a great many places along the Thames so I think I can be excused for not recalling their exact adventure at Henley.

At one point in the day, I did see three young men in a rowboat and had I been a bit quicker with my camera, you would have been able to see them too. A day of sunshine and rambling made me slow-witted, I fear.

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[1] Due to the vast number or bridges that cross the Thames in London, I have limited my goal of bridges to twelve: all the bridges fit for pedestrians between the Albert Bridge and the Tower Bridge. For those of you have crossed more Thames bridges and would care to challenge my limitations by calling me a sissy or a namby-pamby, I would welcome a spirited glove slapping.

[2] Also given the vast number of train stations in London, I am again limiting my goal to the major stations, i.e. those operated by Network Rail: King's Cross, Fenchurch Street, Euston, Charing Cross, Cannon Street, Paddington, Liverpool Street, London Bridge, Victoria, and Waterloo. The above challenge also applies.

[3]http://www.timeout.com/london/aroundtown/features/10334/Perfect_day_trips_from_London.html

The Perks

Access

My personal security pass for Parliament makes me feel great—I mean it. It says, in a silent way, that I belong here. I’m an insider and even though I’m totally lost and yes, I need directions… someone somewhere thought that I should have clearance.

You know how heist or spy movies always include sequences of people going to their top-secret workplace (the same place that the criminal or the spy will later infiltrate with their cunning and outrageous spy gear) and they need to do an eye scan and a voice imprint, etc. just to enter? I love that kind of stuff. And well… that isn’t Parliament, but it is still highly securitized and people need passes and pin codes to be able to wander about, so I frankly feel awesome with my pass. The many, many men with huge guns and funny bell shaped hats don’t see me as a stranger when I’ve got my pass; I’m someone they are protecting.

Appreciation

I told someone that I greatly admire once that I was incredibly nervous about a new job (not this one), and he said: “If they didn’t think you could do the job, they wouldn’t have given you a desk.” That sentiment has soothed me on numerous occasions. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed in new situations, but hey, someone else thinks that you can do it, and why should they be wrong? Desks are valuable commodities.

Not only do I get my own desk in Parliament, I get my own office. So you can imagine how confident I am feeling.

Today MP told me that she loved my brief on the rights of temp workers so much that she asked her Constituency Manager if they could get me to come work for them for real. Not to let a compliment like that go unused, I told her that I would love that.

Amusement

Today MP got me a special ticket to sit in the gallery during Prime Minister’s Question period. For those who don’t know, every week that Parliament is meeting the Prime Minister spends a half hour on Wednesdays fending off angry questions from the opposition and getting softballs from his own party (“Mr. PM, would you say that you are doing a great job or the greatest job?”). The Labour party (the Queen’s Loyal Opposition), got him quite worked up today and he shouted that they were “Muttering Idiots!” The Speaker asked him to withdraw the word “idiot” for being unparliamentary.

I originally saw the PM when he came to speak at my school this spring and I was quite impressed with his poise at some awkward audience comments. Now I can see that compared to several hundred members of the opposition party jeering you on a weekly basis, a few NYU nerds ain’t nothing.

While PMQ was fantastic, it compounded for me the realization that compared to the US Capitol—and especially compared to the Oregon State Capitol—Westminster Palace is not necessarily for the people. In order to see Question time, I and everyone else needed tickets approved by an MP. In addition, there are wings all over the building where you can’t go without a security pass, committee rooms are small and don’t give much room for an audience, and the “public gallery” in the Commons chamber puts you behind a huge pane of bullet-proof glass. To enter the palace just as a tourist you have to go though scanners and get a time stamped picture taken.

This may just be a cultural difference where Americans feel that Congress belongs to them and they paid for the Capitol building maintenance with their tax dollars so they should be allowed to tramp all over the place. And to me, as an American, that seems perfectly fair.

Here is the video for the PMQ that I sat in on today. For me, this is almost as fun as going to a Timbers game. The PM gives his "Muttering Idiots" comment right around 26:07

The Pilgrimage

The train from Waterloo took only an hour to get to Alton and the bus to Chawton was simple enough, so I can't say that it was necessarily the Odyssey, but to see the place where many of her marvelous characters were born was magical. 

I know it is a cliche these days for an unmarried woman of little fortune and few prospects to claim approbation for Jane Austen, but her novels have been a guide of personal conduct since 11 year-old Deborah read Pride and Prejudice for the first time. The effects of Mr. Knightly and Captain Wentworth on a young impressionable mind are quite destructive—men these days just can’t compete with these literary heroes who are so discomposed by, and yet devoted to, Ms. Austen's strong, funny, stubborn heroines. What young woman doesn't identify with Elizabeth, Elinor or Anne? 

At the museum there was a quote by Winston Churchill about having P&P read to him while he was very ill: 

"[N]ow I thought I would have Pride and Prejudice. Sarah read it to me beautifully from the foot of the bed. I had always thought it would be better that its rival. What calm lives they had, those people! No worries about the French Revolution, or the crashing struggle of the the Napoleonic Wars. Only manners controlling natural passion, as far as they could, together with cultured explanations of any mischances."

This clear window into calm lives is also why I soak them up over and over again. Throughout the day I was re-reading Persuasion and felt imbued with a sense of principled politeness. The museum was very well done and I took the liberty of making several turns about the garden while I was there.

Her tiny writing desk where at least four of her novels were written and revised is situated in the dining room. Allegedly the door to the room had a squeak to it that was never mended because it warned Jane that someone was coming while she was writing.

To leave gray, noisy London for a while and see a bit of the English countryside by train, bus and foot was needed. I walked the few miles back to the train station in Alton after going to the house, because I felt that that was a very Austen-ian thing to do. Walks are often major plot devices, as any reader of Sense and Sensibility should know.

In the charming (if for only being nondescript), town of Alton I drank hard cider, had a Cornish pasty, and finished Persuasion at a pub called the Railway Arms. It's very easy to get around the country by train, so I'll probably be taking numerous trips like this on the weekend. 

If any of my dear readers have any suggestions, please pass them on. Jane Austen's house was first on the list because I am such a fan, but I have the intention of going the Brighton, Bath, Stratford-upon-Avon, and Yorkshire. I've been all over the continent in the past, but this is my first time in Great Britain, so I would really like to explore it properly.

FAQs

I've reproduced some questions that a good friend of mine, T-pain, sent me:

1) How many crumpets have you actually consumed?
Fourteen

2) How many times have you gotten lost in Westminster abbey?
Several times without much incident, but once I ended up in the Members’ lobby, and I was reprimanded severely. I protested that I was lost and wondered if perhaps the guard could help me find my way? All she would say is “You’re not supposed to be in here.”


I do fear/hope that I may someday discover a crypt or medieval dungeon underneath the palace, but so far I’ve only once accidentally walked in on a yoga class.

3) Any MP crushes?
It’s tricky for me to distinguish yet if a man is actually cute, or if I just enjoy his accent. So, yes, crushes, but it’s also not popular for men to wear wedding rings here, so I try not to let my imagination run away with me. Also, the majority of English men--MPs included--don't seem to have chins.

4) Have you located your very own awesome pub?
Last night I had several pints of Strongbow at the Wellington Hotel, which I very much enjoyed. There is also a great little pub under Waterloo Station appropriately named “The Hole in the Wall,” that I certainly will be going back to.

5) Weirdest thing you've discovered about the parliament system?
So far an almost complete lack of lobbyists. It’s eerie; my MP seems to have so much time to help her constituents and make up her own mind.

6) Have you made any program friends?
There are five other American interns and they are all perfectly lovely. I’ve started getting to know the staffers in the neighboring offices (even though they are mostly Torys).

8) Any wild adventures outside of work?
Wild? Not really, but I did just buy a ticket to see The Taming of the Shrew  in July at the wildly historical Globe Theatre and I feel pretty good about that. 

9) Favorite London moment thus far?
Today I went to the Tate Modern and waited in a queue for 30 minutes to see Damien Hirst’s For the Love of God in a tiny, pitch-black room. Totally worth it. I’ve always been an admirer of his and this piece is iconic.

10) Has it hit you yet that you're in London working for a MP???
I assume that is a rhetorical question. 

The Palace

"I get that you're a porous sponge, and that's lovely, but I could throw you in grease or I could throw you in water or oil or vinegar or some other kind of pond… any kind of pond, and you could soak it up. The question is, where do you want me to throw you?" –My MP

The Palace of Westminster is magnificent. There are halls of books, halls of statues, halls of busts, halls of portraits, staircases to nowhere… it’s obviously dripping with history. How lucky I am to have this opportunity to conquer this rabbits’ warren!

The young lady who was put in charge of orienting us got rather lost, prompting the question of how long she had worked there? Two years. She mentioned that there is minimal signage in the Westminster Palace, because they don’t want terrorists to be able to find their way around. Yet again, terrorists make everyone’s life a little bit more difficult.

My MP (I'm just going to call her "MP") was delayed in her district on Tuesday, and as I found out later, I’m her only London staff. She keeps her four full-time staffers in her constituency, whom she is stalwartly devoted to (the constituency, not her staff, although she likes them fine).

Waiting for her to get into town, I got tickets to the House gallery and watched the debate on the Queen’s Speech, in particular on the Government’s international policy. The Queen’s Speech is a yearly speech, much like the State of the Union Address, except she doesn’t write it. The Queen’s Government uses it to present their broad policy plan, and the Queen’s Loyal Opposition spends the rest of the year criticizing that plan. It’s great fun to watch, and probably quite fun to participate. The rhetoric gets spirited and they mingled their insults across the aisle with the standard courtesies. A pamphlet informed me that the aisle in the House of Commons gallery is exactly two sword-lengths apart to discourage dueling.

MP is a warm, absent-minded (seeming) woman. I know I’m not the only one to think so at first because at least one person per committee thought that she was a guest speaker instead of a Member of Parliament. There are hundreds of peers, and she also just doesn’t seem like the average politician—she seems like someone’s aunt. This is all the more chilling when she turns to you and says, “Time to stop being the good guy,” with a big smile and hard eyes.

Over the course of the day I learned that she is very funny and intensely strategic. She also told me several times to “trust no one.” Moreover, MP would rather not perform any activity unnecessarily, including putting a key in the internal post to avoid walking to the other side of the Palace to deliver it by hand. (Naturally, I offered to take it, but she doesn’t want me to waste any energy either). She calls me “Lass,” and winked at me during the committee hearing. She is going to make this blog 35% more interesting—just you wait.

Case in point, other than accompanying her to multiple health committees and disease receptions, my first real task was to pinch milk packets from the Parliament cafeteria. I was directed to do it surreptitiously, but not sneakily. “Walk in there confidently, like you have a right to them, but don’t make a spectacle of yourself.” Whether you're stealing creamers or doing something actually meaningful—that’s just great life advice.

Photo Journal: The Touristy stuff

The weather has been perfect since I've arrived.

Outside the Tate Modern. I can't wait to go.

The London Eye

The Millennium bridge

Behind the bus is the building that I'm staying in.

along the south bank

The British are such cheerful people.

Buckingham Palace

Obligatory Guard photo

London Bridges

I felt out of it all day until I sat by the river Thames at sundown with a cup of Earl Grey.

My flight was uneventful, which is exactly how you want flights to be. The absolute last thing that you want on a flight is an event. It was quite nice actually. They gave out fuzzy socks and I drank a couple beers and watched Game of Thrones. Except for occurring at thirty thousand feet, it could have been any other Friday night for me.

My housing is steps away from the National Theatre and the London Eye, near Waterloo station. The suite is very Ikea-esque, it even smells like Ikea (like wood glue, not like meatballs). I’ve only met one other fellow intern: Billy from Philly (you can’t make these things up).

Forcing myself to not sleep all day after the red-eye flight, I walked down to St. Paul’s Cathedral on one side of the river and then back up the other side to Waterloo Bridge. I would like to cross them all eventually, although there is at least one that is closed for construction.

Bridge Crossings count: 2 (Millennium Bridge, Waterloo Bridge.)

In places where I can blend in physically, my travel MO is to keep quiet. Without words, I can pretend to be native but as soon as I open my mouth, the jig is up. Sometimes it is up even if I don’t talk though. At a grocery store today, the cashier said, “Are you from the States? You all have the same credit cards.”

After less than one day of being here, I have already overheard two separate conversations regarding how “British” someone is or isn’t. This interests me because only GOP primary candidates and Sarah Palin discuss the relative degrees of one’s Americanism (and it usually hinges on how white and rural and conservative the people in question are). So naturally, I was curious about the possible factors of the British Quotient (BQ), but the discussions were light on substance. The UK border control stooge, who scrutinized my visa, told her colleague that she was “more British than the Queen, ” but didn’t offer any proof. A couple near me at lunch was adamant that one of the pair was just being British when he didn’t want to accompany her to some event.

I am quite literally dead on my feet. Luckily I haven’t a thing to do until 5pm on Sunday.

Suitcase Follies

Well, I'm all packed and ready to go. The act of packing is overrated. It actually took more of my time to tell my bank about my travel plans (so that they wouldn't put a hold on my debit card) than putting my clothes in a suitcase. My newfound flippancy for this act shows my age or possibly just cynicism.

Planning for trips and packing used to be a special ritual for me involving a great deal of lists, and now it's merely a chore.

"'Beyond the Wild Wood comes the Wide World,' said the Rat. 'And that's something that doesn't matter, either to you or me. I've never been there and I'm never going, nor you either, if you've got any sense at all.'" -The Wind in the Willows

The Stuff-Watcher

Today was my last day at work until I come back in the fall. This week I have two final exams, two group projects and one small paper due before I can concentrate on my international move. No big deal--I can do this. I just need to remember not to multi-task; that’s when I get into trouble. I think that it is somehow more efficient to study for several tests at once or write a paper while reading an unrelated article, but it never is. No good comes from this style of “time management.” 

The library is bulging with students today. They pounce on open desks like cheetahs with designer clothes. The undergrads dress up for the library like it’s the place to be seen; and it probably is.

A fellow scholar has asked me to, “watch her stuff,” [1] while she is gone “for ten minutes.”[2]

This is a social norm that I don’t really understand. From what I’ve observed, the primary factor in choosing whom to ask to be the guardian of your stuff is simple proximity. Random chance dictates that the stuff should be watched to avoid the likes of me as anyone else.

Lucky for her, I’ve got my own stuff.

Am I really being asked to step in if someone else were to help themselves to her laptop? The request for stuff-watching (SW), places an un-asked for burden on the SW-er. The implicit suggestion is that if any stuff goes missing, the SW is the prime suspect. Perhaps the best person to ask is the one who looks the sketchiest, and ask them loud enough for less sketchy persons to take on a role as secondary stuff-watchers.

If someone were to come help themselves to the stuff, what would I say? They could easily plead that they know the person—and how would I, the dedicated yet unknowing SW, be the wiser? How far am I really willing to go for someone else’s stuff? I don’t even know if it was hers to begin with. A brilliant con might be to ask someone to watch some stuff that isn’t yours and then come back later to take it.

I sit with trepidation, terribly anxious that someone might be slinking up to burgle her even now.

And now, to be perfectly honest, I don’t even recall what she looks like.

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[1] Girl. Primary interview. 5^th floor, west. May 7, 2012, 16:43.

[2] Ibid.