Out of the Frying Pan

Not "work safe" and might frighten children, anyway

A flash project of mine, reviewed by my prof as "Good. Funny, wise. It is like a poster." (She also says, "Keep working.")

The no-name flame

It has been a while since I've seen a good old flame war. Instead, bloggers admonish and denounce people, but without using names. This might be more destructive than the old bonfires of the Internet vanities.

What happens when someone reads your blog and concludes "S/he's writing about me!"? Chances are good that you've destroyed faith between yourself and the person about whom you are writing. And if you are blogging about a story told to you, count on destroying faith between the person about whom you are writing and the person who confided in you, as well.

The no-name flame is like a fire inside a wall. It is hard to fight and repairs, if possible, are complicated and expensive projects. The no-name flame is a fine method for arsonists.

Thursday afternoon at Coventry cathedral

In the blitz of Coventry on November 14, 1940, a beautiful cathedral was reduced to rubble -- almost.

On the plaque by the statue:

This is a second casting, in concrete, of a statue at Blundell's School in Devon. It was created by an 18 year old pupil, Alain John. The Headmaster, Neville Gorton, later became Bishop of Coventry and on the death of Alain John, an RAF navigator, in 1943 at the age of 23, the statue was recast for Coventry as a memorial to those who lost their lives in the war.

The Statue represents Christ blessing the multitude.

Look closely at the tracery.

Closer...

Photos on a sunny day would be amazing; I settled for taking pictures on the day we were there.

I have some thoughts about what is beginning to happen to the interior here as well as in the new cathedral next door, but they'll keep.

TGIF

From Friday afternoon: the Fountains Abbey.

Didn't work, and...

When a google news alert popped up an article with a factual error, I -- ever the helpful citizen -- emailed the paper. Not their mistake! The governor's press release says...

But that's not what it says, I replied helpfully. "What's this about?" was their prompt response. Um, getting the story right?

Like teaching a pig to sing, it didn't work; the "correction" resulted in widening the gulf between reality and their reporting.

In transit

On a quick car trip from London to Glasgow, we've made stops to introduce Mr T to the eloquent Coventry Cathedral and the magnificently tumbled down Fountains Abbey. Time "bears all its sons away" and all the stones, too, but the latter far more slowly.

Almost anything other than yes...

,,,takes a little longer to spell out.

Defending my life

The image of a "corporate spouse" overseas is that of someone who goes shopping and gets to see interesting things. Though perhaps not quite in the way you think, there's truth in this: I see interesting things and I shop.

I also work about half time for a client in the US, study digital art with a professor at a Colorado university (she graciously invited me to try to do the work by distance learning when it developed that I would miss the first week of studio work), and try to keep alive my own project, which pretty much went on the ropes after the second extension here. On pro bono Web design and development jobs, I'm behind.

In the US, I have almost enough time for my life. Here, life is both simpler and more taxing. Regularly I come up short on both time and energy. There is a cost, too, to living here while having a life that continues elsewhere. You don't stop paying car insurance on the car you're not driving, for example, just because you're now also paying for a transport pass. (Don't try pulling gas prices into this; I'm a two tank a month gal, sometimes less.)

Last night I burnt my palm testing a heater that has been working erratically (mostly not), wondered again whether the stale cigarette smell will ever wash out of my clothing, tried to bite back at fleas before they bit me, and used what's here -- broken pottery and awful forks -- to serve up an expensive dinner to my exhausted husband. Then I went out into the rainy night for a newspaper. One door closed behind me, leaving me in the large center courtyard, but the one in front would not unlock because the managers had forgotten to renew my key code. I couldn't get into the building and, for long moments, couldn't get out of the courtyard.

Every moment I'm not immersed in work, I'm suffused with the feeling that I'm supposed to be both tremendously grateful and Making the Most of This Experience. Sometimes I guess I am and I do.

It isn't all bug bites, chipped dinner plates, and a stale cigarette smell

Today I discovered a Whole Foods Market, right here in River City!

Well, not quite here, but up on the Kensington High Street. Someone with a Whole Foods tag and a broad American accent advised me that "they're establishing their own British Whole Foods culture here!" I muttered, "I was afraid of that." Before the words were out of my mouth he was saying, "No, no! That's a good thing!"

It's nice to know that I won't have to travel all the way to Boulder for diffident service, high prices, and a flower stall to die for. Today I scored a bunch of dahlias roughly the shade my Freda hybridized and grew and felt myself on territory still foreign, but less alien.

Some things can never be changed, or not

By the time I was 35, I had buried both my parents. Lately I've been thinking about how careless I was with their feelings. It must have been terrible for them, but they were unfailingly gracious and gentle.

Only once did my mother say that something I did hurt her: when I was received by the Church. I told her on the phone about my Profession of Faith, maybe because it seemed unimportant to tell her face to face or maybe because I didn't want to face her. Anyway, there was a long pause. When she found words, they weren't blaming or censorious, just an expression of what I now understand was great pain: I'm sorry you did that.

That's all she said, I'm sorry you did that. I don't know whether she ever came to understand that I couldn't not be Roman Catholic. Maybe. I wouldn't change it. Although I am a poor specimen of its membership, the Church is where I belong.

But I wish I had found a way of acting with greater compassion and respect for her feelings in this large matter and in so many others. In judging that I didn't, maybe I also have to judge that I couldn't have. Maybe I was afraid that showing tenderness would make me too vulnerable. Maybe it was fear for my independence. Whatever, they did not live long enough for me to have begun to walk a little in their shoes. Whatever, it cannot be changed, except in one respect.

On the bus today, looking at the throngs on the sidewalk, for a few moments I was moved intensely by the knowledge that each person struggles, each person has wounds or sensitivities, each has aspirations. Each one. And I wanted to treat each person carefully, with tenderness. From what cannot be changed, perhaps I can open myself to greater compassion: for my parents, for myself, for you.

Have I told you lately?

Probably. Somebody has, anyway. Have I Told You Lately is a great love song. (I don't see it, though, as a "first dance" at weddings: 30th anniversary, maybe.)

Hurdling

After you clear the first or second, sometimes the hurdles seem higher and closer together.

Shopping list

Dear Tesco,

Grocers the world over are looking for opportunities to cut costs without sacrificing quality of goods or service. I believe the amount of ink required to print labels for your late-season blueberries could be considerably reduced.

How does abridging the phrase Tangy and sweet with an intense flavour to Pucker up! work for you? A minor redeployment of alphabet would spare 24 little occasions of ink use!

To me, the punctuation in Pucker up! is a plus. But little would be lost in accurate description if, in efforts to maximize savings, you were to omit it.

Faithfully,
Mrs Patricia Out of the Frying Pan of the Front Range

In, but not of, this world

Back at Regent Street today, my helper was a low-key, but efficient and completely charming young man who turned me on to Disk Inventory X, a great donationware disk usage untility for Mac users.

We foreigners have a special wavelength; he's not from here, either. He's also not from "Mac world" in the sense that he pins his future somewhere other than Apple: Greg Holden, singer and writer who claims Bob Dylan as his main influence.

Wah wah Wahaca

Tonight I went back to the little place I visited Sunday. Though less busy, the kitchen would not be cajoled into rolling cheese instead of chicken into enchiladas. Not that they weren't willing to adjust! The plate was a generous helping of chicken - maybe a cup and a half - in between two flat, raw corn tortillas. Tasty sauce, but...

Cheese and onion enchiladas are cheap and easy to make and could be sold at or within spitting distance either way of their other enchiladas. So why not? I was seated by the kitchen and got a good look at the ahem untraditional issued hence. Cheese and onion enchiladas, believe me, would not compromise a culinary ethos of this version of Mexican food. /snark

An interesting encounter

Three hours door to door and more money than I seem to have calculated properly on the exchange rate, I'm back from Apple on Regent Street with doubled RAM (remember "Ram Doubler" back in the day?). But the genius bar couldn't fix the network preferences in 10.4.11. I expected the genius bar staff to be reasonably conversant in Unix: wrong! Anyroad, the recommended "fix" (is this a fix?) is kicking up to 10.5, which box lies malignly in my brief case.

This poor Mac Book Pro 3,1 (yes, that would be the one that doesn't like to be wakened from naps) was bought a year ago with the expectation of its handling email and some light word processing; it has a hard drive sized right for those tasks. It wasn't intended for movies and a CS3 Suite.

Of course, the plan didn't include having to buy a CS Suite for this machine.

Of course, I wasn't really aware of having a plan. Life is a relentless encounter with plans we didn't know we had.

The London Zoo

In Denver, I take quite a lot of pictures at the zoo. Last year, in fact, I had a membership: perhaps not quite as used at the Botanical Gardens card, but close enough. So the idea of zoos does not bother me.

That I didn't enjoy visiting the London Zoo last Friday seemed like an unfortunate confluence between expense (£17 for adults, including the not quite obligatory £1.40 or so contribution to a conservation fund), and awful weather. The zone between people and residents seemed quite small, but other people seemed to be having a fine time.

Looking at the pictures tonight, I have a somewhat different reaction, which is that these simply don't seem like very nice places to keep animals. Other than the first silly photo, these aren't happy pictures.

"Lord, I am not worthy..."

Off I trudged in the rain to church, full of the reluctance and recalcitrance that characterizes my usual demeanor these days: I was mad when they said to me: "Let us go to the House of the Lord."

But ingratitude would have been surpassed by churlishness to turn away from the discovery that St George's Cathedral is reached by four buses that pass the stop on my doorstep. Of course the double-decker squadron -- four in a row -- passed for my review just as I approached the bus stop, but at that point I was committed, which is to say determined to get to where I did not really wish to go, and I hailed a cab for the short ride.

The gathering hymn was "Alleluia! Sing to Jesus", one of a few arrows that fly true across the confused hymnody of the Church. There is a fine choir which today sang the Byrd Mass in F. The homily was tenderly directed at the second reading (Philippians ahem 4). The Mass ended with the singing of Salve Regina (simple tone) and, afterwards, the organist played a marvelous bookend: a kind of fantasia by Vaughn Williams on the melody Hyfrydol (the tune to which the opening hymn is set).

Even though I was hardly in the cranky mood that soon envelopes me after the Eucharist these days, I was disinclined to shake off my habit of sliding past anyone greeting congregants after Mass. But there was no one at the large doorway other than the celebrant and it would have been disrespectful to turn away from this kind looking man.

His comment about the weather was all it took for me to say, "But I'm not from here! We have sunshine!" "Then send it!" he promptly replied. My throwaway comment about the lovely structure (it is, though austere compared to many here) was met with a quick mention of its history: opened in 1848 as the first church to be built in UK after the Reformation, heavily damaged in WWII bombing but walls survived - "Pugin did a good job," he observed.

Pugin! Somehow I had made my way to Pugin's only major church designed in London. If I had known there was one here, I would have wanted to go. In spite of myself, I did go.

In London, say: Wahaca

Today on a tip from Charles Campion's new edition, I descended into the near-bliss of a taste of home: honest Mexican cooking. Drop down from an unprepossessing storefront on Chandos Place (behind St Martin in the Fields) into the surprisingly capacious dining room of Wahaca, which is a fine phonetic approach to a place quite unknown here, I think. (They also have a Flash-ier site than the one I've linked to.)

It's a pretty long menu, heavy on burritos and burritos: only two kinds of enchiladas, neither being my beloved cheese and onion. This isn't the kind of place to ask for any tweaking, but do you know that somehow the elegant waitress sweet-talked the kitchen into holding the chicken. What to my wondering eyes did appear but three cheese enchiladas, lush and steamy and not overstuffed like meatier versions tend to be. Heaven.

Somehow in the middle of London, somebody figured out how to tone down (okay, turn off) the heat and yet celebrate the essential flavors of coriander, cumin, and mild chiles. Okay, the sauce is quite a lot less thick and hot than I make and two rings of raw onion on top is a different approach than I take at home, but the flavor was spot on. A person would be hard pressed to spend more than £15, especially if you swap out spendier drinks for the tasty agua fresca.

The affable young host seated me at the quietest table I've enjoyed in almost two months. It has the capacity for rowdiness, but a properly timed visit could be a refuge from the howls and shrieking common to restaurants here (this is the adults, from whom children of course take enthusiastic cue).

Yesterday at Tesco Metro I found well preserved (!) flour tortillas but, in honesty, with the ingredients and equipment available here to me they won't come to much. It'll make much more sense to ask the patient and generous Mr Out of the Frying Pan to take a dawdle with me across Hungerford (no pun intended, but still hard to ignore) Foot Bridge to a haven of hospitality and the flavors of home.

For sale: a brilliant property in South Carolina

It's 20 acres in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Rolling terrain, a pond, pasture; perfect for a horse farm, small estate or short term investment.

Ashdown Roses is relocating around the corner from the above property, so the gorgeous place is on the market.

It happens that I've never been in South Carolina, but can attest to the magnificent roses grown on this property from back in the days when I gardened. The place sounds lovely, so if you're looking, get in touch through the Ashdown site.

Psssssst... tortillas in London!

Tesco Metro Express on Regent Street. Top shelf, somewhat out of reach of short, fat ladies; staff available to help.

London short stay serviced apartments - a recommendation

It's hard to find short stay serviced apartments in central London: flat out hard to find a serviced flat for a corporate stay or a short let for a holiday

Here's a recommendation. Prestige Apartment Services have been professional, friendly, and incredibly helpful. I recommend them gratefully and whole-heartedly.

The location they found for us is fabulous, right in London. County Hall is on several bus lines, close to the Waterloo and Westminster tube stations and, of course, to the trains at Waterloo. This particular apartment is bright, very clean, and has one of the most important things for me: a reliable, reasonably fast Internet connection.

We looked to a number of firms for help; prestigeapartments.co.uk is the company that came through. Although our short term stay is about business, I bet they'd be just grand for something I've heard of called a vacation.

Maybe you don't know Mrs Out of the Frying Pan and wonder: what's in it for her that she makes such a glowing recommendation? Just this: the opportunity to recognize good service. That's it. And, unlike a lot of reviews you see these days, this one is unsolicited and it is for people I don't know. Any other questions?