The People Upstairs and the Green Belt

They must have wooden floors up there; no brown, one-millimeter-thick, industrial carpet softens the noise. It’s a couple living above us. The wife worked for Imelda Marcos and stole half her shoes: tap shoes, golf shoes, combat boots, a pair of cleats, steel-toed construction boots, ballet point slippers and some wooden clogs. At least I assume some such footwear magnifies the pounding of her feet. Her husband has two peg legs, obviously. They have nightly square dance lessons and step aerobics throughout the day. Some times they go to the store, buy a bag of apples and bring them home to drop, over and over again. There’s an awful lot of vacuuming too.

Chris and I went on a day hike through “Happy Valley”, along the North Downs Way and back up through another valley to the train station. The London green belt is in zone 6. This means you can swipe your tube card and take a commuter train out to a valley, where there are cows and birds and wide-open views. The walk was lovely, just long enough to tucker us out, but not so long as to make anyone (Chris!) grumpy (“I hate hiking!”). We had perfect weather, warm with long periods of sun. Chris got to pet a lot of dogs out on their walk, and he even got to pet three horses. We walked past a field and called the horses over. The enormous beasts eagerly trotted over and looked for apples in our hands. Chris held out his hand and let the horse’s big lips cover his whole fist. Chris didn’t have an apple. Then we pet them. I was nervous that the horse would bite Chris’s hand off, and then we’d have a problem. So I took pictures to distract the horse, and myself. They were sweeties though, and did not bite off Chris’s hand, or his face. They just waited patiently to be stroked. Horses are big.

Our guidebook was very detailed. “Walk one meter, turn left and walk fifteen meters, pass to the left of the cattle-guard. Walk 200 meters with the field to your right and a wood to your left”. Our guidebook was so detailed we got confused. We assumed that the cattle guard in front of our face must not be right, or else it wouldn’t require such precise directions. Soon though it turned the hike into a scavenger hunt! We eagerly sought out the table with two benches, or the metal cattle barrier, we knew what sort of landmarks waited for us up ahead. I suppose because we were just in the suburbs of London, the hike did not follow a single path, instead a trail was cobbled together from all of the green spaces. We passed through an old village and stopped at a church that was written in the Domesday Book. The parish was founded in 1076. America was founded seven hundred years later. Woah.

The Newcastle

We rode the Megabus to Newcastle. What’s so mega about a Megabus? Not much, perhaps the length of the journey, or the mega-deal of the unmegacious prices. We left at four, after Chris finished his shift, (and after we loaded up on the café's goodies). The bus lumbered through the dusk, past the suburbs of London, into night, and we swayed to a wheezing halt in downtown Newcastle at eleven pm. There we had a fabulous visit with the fabulous Gerry and Adele. On Saturday we clambered aboard the train to Durham (a ten-minute journey) and enthusiastically showed Chris our old streets, shops and homes and investigated the new development (restaurants and bars) down by the river. The day was beautiful and mild; we admired the architecture, the cathedral, the castle, the bridges and the cobbled streets. We glared and scoffed at the unfortunate university buildings that came into the world in the sixties, a decade of concrete, clunky shapes and no respect for natural light. Gerry and I argued is the Union building the most hideous, or the library? I guess the library at least has beautiful books inside; you should never judge a book by its library!

Chris had to head home to London the next day to be back in time for work, but I got to stay a little longer—it was my “reading week” and I had no classes. After hanging out in downtown Newcastle, Adele and I flung ourselves about the room as we perfected every Wii challenge. The Wii is the first video game thing since Tetris to claim my attention for more than fourteen seconds. The next day we wandered along the coast, to the end of a nearly endless pier, through the mud to a Collingwood monument, and had a perfect cup of tea before going to the cinema.

If you haven't seen "True Grit" you should, unless you don't like movies. In that case, I'm sorry, there's nothing we can do for you. Then watch it again, because it is beautiful and extremely re-watchable. On Wednesdays Chris and I can go to the cinema--that's what we call it here in Engerland--for half price (a mobile phone deal), and a couple of weeks ago we saw "Black Swan". The music swirled around my head for the next ninety-nine hours. I'd like to thank my brother for shattering my be-a-ballerina dreams, and my parents for never signing me up for ballet lessons.

This is a test

Not the sort of test that comes with a grade and disappointed red comments (those will be in May), rather it’s to test the brokenness of a system. I’m not sure if a website can break. Does a website even exits, really? But if the stock market can crash, like a train or a truck, then a website could crack. Has my blog given up its bloggy ghost, or will it exist, forever, somewhere…And does it exist if nobody reads it? Well, you’ll read it right, dad? Hi.

We live in Queen’s Park. Not in the actual park, that closes at sunset and would be a daily annoyance, but in a “studio” across the street. We have a wall of rattley windows that look out over the peaceful, green park to the brick houses beyond. Our studio is one room posing as three rooms. Under the windows we have a bed and a nightstand, and across from the bed slumps a slack-jawed wardrobe. This is the bedroom. At the foot of the bed we have a table with two chairs and across from them a very impressive fireplace. Three times a day this is the dining room; the other (infinite?) times of the day it is a study. A foot-wide strip of wavy linoleum delineates the third room, the kitchen, from the living areas. Our cupboards are hideous, but our oven is hilarious, and the fridge makes a gentle snoring noise. It has a little cold. Ha Ha. The bathroom is down the hall, it barely warrants a mention.

Chris makes sandwiches for a massive café in Leicester Square. He also gets to eat these sandwiches every day for lunch. I read seven thousand books a day and don’t get to eat any yummy sandwiches. Peanut butter does not compare to smoked salmon and cream cheese, or a hummus salad wrap. The museums in London are free, so Chris and I have visited quite a few. Maybe we will see them all by the end of our year. We have already learned about dinosaurs, the history of medicine and space travel, we’ve admired statues, paintings and someone’s bust made from his own blood. I hear the London Transport Museum is quite good.