London Vignettes

A sample of pictures from our trip to London:

--myself on the south wall of the Tower of London
--A Yeoman Warder tour there with London's iconic Tower Bridge in the background
--Parliament and Big Ben
--Guard at Buckingham Palace
--Inside the Globe Pub
--My oldest son Greg waiting at the subway (2 pictures)
--My son Scott riding the double decker bus (2 pictures--we spent an hour and a half on this bus because we got on at the wrong stop. It should have been a ten-minute ride to our destination had we boarded correctly)
--From the chamber of horrors at Madame Tussaud's
--My breakfast, the traditional English fry-up
--The Rosetta Stone at the British Museum, a discovery which allowed archeologists to translate Egyptian hieroglyphics.











































I fell in love with London even in just the short time I was over there: the historic sites, the vibrant energy of its people, the intimacy of its pubs and always something big happening nearby. But I had to adjust some to its language and customs.

I even had trouble grasping their system of coinage. They apparently do not have any bills smaller than the equivalent of a $5 bill here in the U.S., so you always have a pocket heavy with change. And they have a wide variety of coins. At a Pret-A-Manger, their very popular equivalent of a fast food eatery here, I saw a handmade "Love" nut and candy bar that I wanted to bring back for Wendy. I dropped a large coin in the palm of the clerk, which the boys and I thought should cover it.

"That's two pence," the clerk deadpanned. Two pence (pennies)?? Can anyone explain to me the logic of having a coin the value of two pennies? The British have coins worth one pence, two pence, ten pence, twenty pence, one pound and two pounds. Eventually I just borrowed an idea from my dad's own European travels--I just held out a palm full of coins and let the clerk pick out what he needed.

At least two pence covered part of the bill. I heard the manager there hold up a 20-pound note to the light and say, "This bill is fake." The clerk hurried out to try to track down the person who paid with it, but he was unsuccessful.

Ah yes. Scofflaws in Ole Blighty exist. When visiting the pubs, I remember seeing a sign that said beware of thieves. "They're sneaky little vermin," the sign warned. And in that same pub a rather attractive young lady came up to me and said, "May I pinch your seat." While I blushingly pondered the consequences of allowing such a trivial infidelity, she started taking the stool that Greg was sitting in before he went up to the bar to order another drink. The cad! Sneaky little vermin they are.

So I learned the subtleties of King's English. "Biscuits" are cookies. It's the "way out" not an exit. But I was puzzled at the green signs I often saw of a white figure running at a white block of some type. Finally I asked this young lady. "It's a fire exit," she explained.

What? C'mon now. That's a very poor universal symbol for a fire exit, isn't it? Shouldn't it be red, not green, with maybe flames licking up at the stick figure's heels? Perhaps I would have to start setting the English right on their use of communication and the English language.

I stopped at a restaurant to order some fish and chips for the boys. In England, they don't call it take-out. It's "take-away." Take-away sounds too much like shoplifting to me. Right? When the clerk asked if my fish and chips were "eat in or take-away", I said, "Take-out." A teachable moment, I thought.

The clerk, looking me directly in the eyes and unsmiling, firmly corrected, "Take-away."

Okay, whatever. Have it your way then.