Pub grub

I don't drink alcohol, although it doesn't bother me that others do. Around here, this is a good thing because so much socializing is done in pubs. This is one not far away that you know would be a gay bar in the States:

The food is a bit unpredictable, but they do a nice ploughman's lunch. (That sentence sounds frightfully British to me. I am sure my friends here would roll their eyes or politely look away if I said it out loud.) From descriptions in old English mysteries, I had assumed ploughman's lunch was a dry sandwich of bread and cheese with some pickle. And it may be in some places or maybe once was. It sounded dangerously constipational. But the ploughman's lunches I have run into around here are actually rather nice: real bread, cheeses, fruit, chutneys. Perfect to share with a friend!

My friend Callum tells me that the government at one point decades ago began promoting the ploughman's lunch to encourage people to eat cheese and it caught on in pubs.  Sort of the UK equivalent of the American Got milk? campaign.

Hetton-le-Hole

Okay, so it wasn't St. Paul in Aspic. When I asked for more details, the bursar at St. Acca assured me that someone had been pulling my leg. He suggested that perhaps I was looking for the old St. Paul Priory that had disappeared at the time of the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 1530s. It amazes me that people talk about looking for something that disappeared 450 years ago the way we might speak of looking for a restaurant that went out of business last year.

At any rate, he did give me directions to where the place was located in Hetton-le-Hole about seven miles away. It was a good two hour walk through the lanes, but walking is something people do here without much thought to it. And yes, the name of the place really is Hetton-le-Hole, to distinguish it from Hetton-on-the-Hill (now gone) and nearby Houghton-le-Spring. (And not, I was told firmly, to be confused with Hutton-le-Hole, a village about 6o miles away. Holes apparently were a popular distinguishing mark for naming places in days of yore.) I could find no trace of any priory, although there were the usual charming names for lanes and streets -- St. Bede's Close, St. Cuthbert's Close and my personal favorite, Fairy Street, which almost intersects with Chapel Street. Except for that out-of-place fairy, it does reek of religious houses.

The photo is not of the ruins of the priory -- there are none -- but of St. Nicholas Church. Built in 1901, it was closed because of structural problems in 2004. Two years later the building was almost destroyed by arson. What remains is supposedly being turned into flats. Which is to say, into apartments. 

Hello from across the pond -- which I am informed one does not say, by the way.

I made it safely to Durham, have sloughed off the jet lag and am installed in rather cramped but adequate quarters near St. Acca. I have a bed-sitter in an old house owned by the college. I have a private toilet but there is a shared room for bathing. 

There is even, I am relieved to say, WiFi, the house being used mostly by visiting professors like myself. With any luck, the Kenyan who is using the studio flat will leave at the end of the week and I can get bumped up to the luxury of my own tiny kitchen and a shower. Until then, meals are in the common dining room and the less said about that, the better. It is decidedly not dining at Downton Abbey. I am taking Travis at his word and avoiding foods with improbable names.

Speaking of which, I am struggling a bit with accents. I didn’t realize how dependent I am for closed captioning for the BBC imports we watch. And everyone snickers at everything I say. I am sure I will adjust.

It looks like my friend has the course all mapped out and all I have to do is expound on the videos we did, meet with students and grade papers. It should leave some time to wander around a bit and enjoy the environs.  If I heard correctly, there is a charming village nearby with the unlikely name of St. Paul in Aspic. I must have that wrong, but I was afraid to ask the spelling. Higgins and Pickering would have a field day here.

Leaving on a jet plane

A former colleague of mine has been lecturing in England at St. Acca College in Durham. Because of health issues, she has asked that I fill in for her for the rest of the term. This is fairly easy for me to do because the course is based on a PBS series she and I put together some years ago on legal history. At any rate, I have to depart immediately. I doubt I will have much time to devote to the blog, but I will try to post from time to time so you will know I have not fallen off the edge of the earth.

Stay calm and carry on.
Feel free to carry on wildly, if that makes you feel better.

Beware the Ides of March!

Get your sweet Ides in here!

In memory of the assassination of Julius Caesar, who ignored everyone's advice and got himself killed.  

"Every woman's husband and every man's wife". Thus is Julius Caesar characterized by Curio, according to Suetonius.

Well, yeah, if he looked like that ...

Pi Day humor (Because many times this blog is too serious)

• Q: What was Sir Isaac Newton's favorite dessert?
• A: Apple pi!

• Q: What do you get if you divide the circumference of a bowl of ice cream by its diameter?
• A: Pi a la mode.

• 3.14% of Sailors are PI rates!

• Q: What do you get when you take green cheese and divide its circumference by its diameter?
• A: Moon pi.

• Q: What do you get when you take the sun and divide its circumference by its diameter?
• A: Pi in the sky. 

• The roundest knight at King Arthur’s was Sir Cumference… He ate too much Pi! 

Same box

When the game is over, the king and the pawn go back into the same box.
~ Italian proverb 

Just thinking about the American social and political scene ...

It seems to me that one of the tragedies in this country over the past decade or so has been an unwillingness on the part of many people -- typically those in power, but also those who are not -- to put the other side in a different box.

I do this when I start sentences with words like, "Republicans all..." "The Religious Right..." "Gays need to..."

I think I would be happier if I remembered that we are all in one box ultimately, even though we may be different colors, different shapes, different whatever.

I keep wanting THEM to recognize that about me. I suppose I might try doing the same for them.

Needful thought for the day

If you want to be happy, be.

~ Leo Tolstoy

It's up to you. 

Trap

This is a trap into which all of us can fall if we are not careful. It has little to do with native intelligence or education. I confess that I often assume my opinions are correct because they are my opinions, not because they are based on full knowledge of a particular issue or person or group of people. 

I recall a particularly embarrassing conversation a few years back when I was denouncing a politician for something. The woman with whom I was speaking was on the same political wavelength as I was, but at one point she gently informed me that I was wrong on that particular issue. I  did not know the most basic things about the history of a particular pension plan and so my complaints were off base. 

I hate to think how often this is the case. I am sure, but I am wrong.

Slightly inconvenienced

Therapists talk about people being at greater risk for inappropriate behavior when they are hungry, angry, lonely and/or tired.

I am sorry to say that being slightly inconvenienced is an additional problem for many of us. And notice I said us. Count me in that crowd. Damien has to have a lot of patience with me. We can walk into a fast food place, and if there are five or six people in line ahead of us, I want to leave and find a faster place. It does little good to point out to me that I will waste more time driving around looking for a place than I will by simply standing in line and waiting.

Someday I will grow up. Today is just not likely to be that day.

There's always tomorrow. If I can wait for it.