London and New Years Eve — Saturday 31 December 2011 (and also a little bit of Friday 30 December)

Conor came to Bedford on the 30th and was about as excited as I had been to see Josie and James and be with fun people again (he was with family that he likes but has a hard time spending too much time wit and his teenage cousin doesn't seem to like him, which didn't help). We sat around, talked, and went to see the new Sherlock Holmes, which was pretty much amazing. I kept seeing bits and pieces from the books, and had to keep myself from expostulating on them during the movie.

On Saturday, we went to Wokingham, where one of James' school friends was having people over to his house, via London. 

!!!

I've been on the underground! They don't actually say "mind the gap" on it, though. They do on the overground trains, but not all the time.

We didn't have to be at Ben's house until "sometime after 4", so I took a bus tour (really expensive, but worth it) while everyone else, who had already taken at least one bus tour, went and watched arthur christmas. 

I would have taken nicer pictures if the bus would have stopped, and I would have taken more if I hadn't run out of battery. 

This is next to Buckingham Palace. The gold thing next to the biggest tree is what I was aiming for, but the bus was moving.

Westminster Abbey, I believe.

St. Stephen's Tower and Big Ben with the House of Commons, and everyone else on the bus taking pictures in the foreground.

No fellow photographers in this one.
Actually, this was just the first of many Bens that I met on New Years Eve.

I think that's more of Westminster.

The House of Lords, I think. And what appear to be portable arena speakers, probably for new years eve.

I have no idea what this is; I just like the red and white on the building.

Looking down the Thames at the London Bridge (I think; you can't really see it and I couldn't really hear the guide) and the London Eye (the ferris wheel on the right), with old London on the left and new London on the right.

I think this is the War Museum, located in Bethlehem Hospital (aka Bedlam, the insane asylum).

If the picture above didn't show Bedlam, then this one does. This might be related to some gardens, though.

Big lion on the riverbank

I think this is westminster again.

House of Commons and House of Lords, left to right.

I don't know who the statue in the front is, but the one in the background is Abraham Lincoln. This is across from parliament, and a lot of prime ministers, generals, and world leader-ish people are in it, like Nelson Mandela (senior quoter; I forget the quote, though) and Winston Churchill.

The buses were everywhere. I wasn't walking enough to be in danger of getting hit by one, though.

A war memorial. I forget which one.

Lord Horatio Nelson, atop his massive pillar in Trafalgar Square. As I was told at least twice, he's actually looking towards where his ship is still docked in Portsmouth. 

Nelson's ship, just smaller and in a bottle. I didn't know what it was when I took the picture; it was explained on one of the many times we passed it later.

Trafalgar Square. As alluded above, we went by it at least four times. The screens are for the fireworks, and the national gallery is in the background.

I was amused to see something calling itself a "Texas Embassy", even if it was just a restaurant.  

Incidentally, the Oceanic House, current home of the Texas Embassy, is the former home of the White Star Line. This is where you bought tickets for the Titanic.

I don't know what the spire is, but that's the national gallery and the back end of trafalgar square. Again.

Trafalgar Square's very clean fountain. I think you can normally go right up to it, even.

I mainly took this picture for the serious statue with the fairly serious bird on his head. If you look at the base of the statue, Terry Pratchett readers will see a familiar name. Who knew that anyone actually had the name Havelock?

A church smack in the middle of London, possibly St. Martin's  (M-something, I think), definitely the parish church for a branch of the military. The pitting is from the Blitz. 

The statue in the middle of the street is a dragon and marks the entrance to the City of London. The queen actually can't go in without being accompanied by the Mayor of London, and she can't wear her jewels. She also has to defer to the Mayor and walk behind him instead of beside or in front of him, as she would normally do as a head of state.

Not a church, but the most ornate civil court building ever. The guy who designed it wanted to build cathedrals, but this was as close as he got.

St. Paul's Cathedral. Burned down three or four times, didn't fall down during the Blitz in spite of Hitler's express command to destroy it. The people's church of London.

Tower Bridge. We actually drove over it, but the batteries in my camera kept giving out, the horrible things.

HMS Belfast, I think. Also the Tower Bridge.

What I wanted very much to see, but either didn't drive past or didn't hear in time to take a picture or had already run out of battery, follows:

Original Twinings store (saw it, still had battery, bus was moving too fast)

Shakespeare's Globe Theatre (saw off in distance as we crossed a bridge; no battery)

Tower Bridge (I was ON it!)

Plague/Great Fire monuments (bus went too fast, and no battery)

Women of (one of the World Wars) monument (short notice, fast bus) 

Sherlock Holmes museum (bus didn't drive past it. And okay, I did pick up this little obsession after watching the first Robert Downey Jr. movie, but it's been fuelled by the books! Wanting to see the museum has nothing to do with the fact that I just saw the second movie and loved it; I saw the second movie almost equally because I loved the first one and because I love the books. If it's full of deerstalker hats, I will be sorely disappointed and will actually go to the effort of writing nasty reviews. I might even demand my money back. Nowhere in the first collection, last collection, and the first three novels does Conan Doyle even mention a deerstalker.)

Once it got dark, I got kind of bored and nervous about missing my stop. I hate asking for directions in big cities because I'm afraid the fairly friendly-looking person on the street will actually be a nefarious criminal and will peg me as a helpless tourist, which in fact I am, so I always go into shops and ask salespeople discreetly. 

I found my stop without difficulty, however, and knocked around Victoria station (although NOT Victoria Coach station, as I discovered the next afternoon, trying to find it in the dark and the rain) until I got a text from my movie-going friends that I should meet them at the tube stop where our train connected to Wokingham. That was an adventure, although riding the underground by myself felt pretty cool. It was just that the station was consumed by holiday chaos, and it took us some time to figure out which exit had an overground train station. 

After a very long wait and a longer train ride, we got to Wokingham (pronounced, by the way, as WOKE-ing'm, with no relation to ham or stir-fry skillets), where James' friend Ben Ireland met us at the station. He's one of many Bens (alluded to under the picture of St. Stephen's Tower without all the photographers), all of whom go by their last names. We met Ben Watkins, his best friend since early childhood (the farthest apart they've ever lived was on opposite sides of a fairly small town when they went to university) later, and we never met Ben Taylor. 

It was a pretty casual new years eve. We hung out with mostly guys, since I guess all the girls were unavailable and had all fallen out with each other shortly before anyway (bullet dodged!), and ate garlic bread and chilli (for everyone but me) and what had been thought to be a margarita pizza (plain cheese, but if you ask for cheese pizza here, you get weird looks. I picked up on the margarita thing pretty quickly) but was in fact a holiday chestnut pizza. It was pretty good. We stayed up late, cheered when someone's watch phone said 00:00, and eventually straggled to our respective sleeping places. 

Year complete. 

It's weird, writing this up four days into the new year. 

Oxford — Thursday 29 December

I went to Oxford! Home of one of the oldest universities, around which the town was built (hence the massive number of pubs in the town), a bunch of museums, and the original Inklings club.

The first thing in the morning was me planning out my trip, which I had supposed would be solo, since Josie (former flatmate) and James (her boyfriend) would be busy seeing James' aunt and cousins, and possibly an uncle. However, James' dad got sick and called off lunch, so I had the privilege of overhearing a conversation I would never hear in America: 

"James, would you like to go to Oxford today?"

"Sure, why not?"

I'd looked up bus fares (there's one from bedford every half hour; it's £11.40 for a return and £10 for a single), so James' dad was nice and drove us to the bus station. It was pretty crowded, but I had a bit of a "we're going to oxford, we're going to oxford, we're going to OXFORD!" mantra running through my head.

First thing off the bus. You know the old school that is constantly referred to in popular culture?

I found it.

We drifted around the corner, and I was instantly drawn in to a fleamarket thing, which had at least three booths with cheap books. One had paperbacks for £1, but they were lame. Another had paperbacks for £2 or 3 for £5. 

I got four of those. £7 is kind of cheap for books at the bookstores; I got four for the price of one! And what books... 

Seeing as I was looking for The Eagle and Child pub, home of the first Inklings, the very place where Tolkien submitted portions of The Lord of the Rings to his companions, including CS Lewis (author of one of my favourite book series to this day), I was hoping to find a cheap standalone Lewis. I found Voyage of the Dawn Treader and The Horse and His Boy, which are both great, and Voyage of the Dawn Treader is possibly my favourite of the Narnia series, but I already have that one. Unfortunately, no other Lewis books could be found, and the only Tolkiens were individual LOTR books, which I also already have. I thought about taking a Thomas Hardy (author of Tess of the D'Urbervilles, which is an extremely well-written book that I hate and haven't finished; he also frequented The Eagle and Child, although I don't think he was with Inklings), but since I don't like the one book of his that I have read part of, I decided against it. 

In the end, I had picked up Wide Sargasso Sea, a sort of prequel to Emily Brontë's Jane Eyre, which is one of my favourite books; I also love Wide Sargasso Sea in its own right, and a Sherlock Holmes compilation with a story I've not seen (A Study in Scarlet with The Sign of the Four, the latter of which I already have, but this was £2! And I haven't seen A Study in Scarlet anywhere else. Don't judge me for my Sherlock Holmes obsession; besides, I only have one more of the full-length stories to find.). Having two books, I wanted a third (only £1! I've missed second hand books... Oh, how I've missed them) and was contemplating some other fancy, dead authors' works when I rounded the corner of the stall and found Terry Pratchett books. 

You know, the ones with the weird covers? The british editions of the celebrated (knighted for services to literature, actually) british author? Yeah... I was helpless against their siren song of awesomeness. I would have got all of them if I had unlimited money and a greater weight limit on the plane back; as it was, I went with The Colour of Magic (the very first discworld novel, which I already have, but not with the u!) and Wyrd Sisters (which I hadn't read). I did turn down Guards! Guards!, Reaper Man (quite possibly my favourite; it came to Sunderland with me and has been read twice), and a whole slew of early ones, all of which I have. Wyrd Sisters it was. So far, it's pretty good, and I would have finished it on the bus if I hadn't gotten quite carsick and had to shove my head between the seat in front of me and the window.

Anyway, the rest of Oxford, in pictures!

There was some lovely architecture.

Big old buildings with plants and latin everywhere.

And spires. If you could put a point on it, people did.

I believe that this is a monument for some anti-Catholic martyrs from the Reformation. The inscription on the ground wasn't helpful, and the writing on the monument was hard to read and had too many roman numerals (what's D, anyway? I was good up until the D. M, CCC, X, L, and I were fine, but D? Bah.) for me to tell when this all went down, but a bunch of people, probably at least three, were burned on that spot (holy cow, that very spot, shivers) a long time ago because of the corruption of Rome and something about the holy, true, and possibly great and good Church of England.

 Then, I saw it. It was across several lanes of traffic, but we made it without dying.
The Eagle and Child. My personal mecca. And it wasn't just for me; I have about a million ties to Inklings. My group of friends in high school, with whom I am still close (actually, my closest friends and one of my favourite and most influential teachers), had an Inklings club that sort of emulated C.S. Lewis and JRR Tolkien in that we met in coffee houses, annoyed the staff, and talked books, others or our own. We also named ourselves after them. Then I have two fairly good friends at Whitworth who named their theme house Inklings after Lewis and Tolkien's club. I had to go. I would never have forgiven myself if I hadn't.

GAH! So much excitement!

This picture actually took quite a while to take; these two guys kept standing right in front of me, and walked around me when I turned around to have the picture taken from the other side.

THERE IT IS I'M RIGHT THERE GRIAUDNGEUDWGLFL

Pretty sure this is an actual page of notes or manuscript; it wasn't labeled and the pub was super busy, so I was trying to get my pictures and get out of the way. Also, was standing WHERE THEY STOOD right then...

There you go. 

WHERE. THEY. STOOD.

We were planning on eating there, but it was so busy and Josie was so hungry (I was, too, but I was so excited that I kind of forgot that I was hungry, and I suspect that James was pretty hungry as well, but Josie was the most vocal and had been hungry since half an hour into the two-hour bus ride) that we started hunting for food. We ended up at a little cafe that showed promise, although we were sorely disappointed. 

ANYWAY, I'm working on not dwelling on negatives in life, and it didn't really ruin the day, so we'll talk about something else.

Like this sign that I saw on the way to the Museum of the History of Science.

So, Oxford has these beautiful grounds, and I figured out how. Who wants to be a student at a uni where you're not allowed to flop about on the lawn?

I believe that some of Harry Potter was filmed at Oxford, and I believe it. It would give a proper sense of age, grandeur, and scholasticism to a place like Hogwarts.

James and Josie and a really, really old vine that covered at least twenty feet of building horizontally.

Gorgeous grounds; do not touch.

Museum of the History of Science. The fencepost columns all had rather startled-looking busts, presumably of scientists. I forgot that I had taken some pictures in Sunderland, so I couldn't take pictures of these guys. Sorry.

I wish I read Latin. I can pick out a few words, and the Vs tend to stand in for Us, but I really have no idea what they're going on about.

Disclaimer: most of the museum was actually quadrants and astrolabes. I wasn't too enraptured. However, I'm a scientist, or close to it, so I dragged my lovely friends through it. Lucky for them, I'm not that big on museums, and this was the only one I wanted to see.

Einstein Blackboard!

Explains the blackboard, or at least the point of the equations. Basically, Einstein derived, I think in that basement or at least in the building, or at least in the city, the equations that show the universe's expansion.

I love old periodic table things.

The basement of the museum had the chemistry and physics stuff; the two were quite closely related for a long time. When you get down to atoms, they're still related.

Latin, again. I'm guessing that the sign is almost as old as the room.

After this, we ambled around, contemplated walking tours, all of which were full or expensive, and tasted some fudge (all the fudge here is toffee and/or vanilla. I've only seen chocolate fudge of any kind in the fancy store we found the samples at, and they didn't have chocolate out for sampling. Jerks.).
We went through a covered market; the first stall had, quite literally, pounds and pounds of Stilton. I don't mind the smell so much as I used to, but it was really, really strong here. We also found the restaurant that Josie had really wanted to visit, but she was somehow completely full. Which is too bad; I was looking forward to it. Ah, well.

We got back without incident, other than me getting carsick on the way, but I kind of brought that upon myself by reading without having first medicated myself. Then we spent the evening rather nicely, just chilling with the cats and tea and Man v. Food, which was a vegetarian's nightmare.
Oh, and the Sparks (James' last name is Sparks, by the way) have TWO cats that like having attention paid to them! They don't like being picked up or cuddled, but they're so cute... Tinky (full name Tinky Winky, named by the then-5-year-old neighbour kid whose cat gave birth to the litter of five; Dipsy and Lala were renamed by their respective families) is black and Socks (the kid ran out of Teletubbies) is a grey tabby with white front toes, back feet, and chest.
Not gonna lie, I was really excited when I saw a grey tabby. He's stripier than Pete, with fewer spots; he's also much less chill and doesn't like having his tummy rubbed. Also, he's much skinnier and has a much longer tail with no kinks in it.
Still.

Conor's coming down from his family's in Oxford tomorrow afternoon (we didn't see him today because they live a ways out of the city centre and we're seeing him tomorrow and over new years), but I probably won't post until I'm back in Sunderland, so probably after 2 January. 

Happy New Year, everyone! This is the year the world ends, so live it up!