30 September, 2005 | Comments

So I am a student once again. Yesterday I paid my tuition and received my library card and attended a welcome reception where people were drinking alcohol and eating pretzels and pretending to have a good time, even though it was at the end of a very long day and we all just wanted to go home.

I have received three college degrees in the past ten years and each time – bedecked in cap and gown – I have vowed I will never return to school again. But this is absolutely the last time. As a PhD candidate, I am at the top of the academic heap. Where else can I go from here? [Well, I could be one of those people who has three PhDs and is unemployed and lives in an apartment full of cats and old newspapers, but I think not.]

People keep pointing out that the PhD years can be an extremely isolating and lonely time. I was feeling bummed about this and mentioned it in an e-mail to a friend. What she wrote back put everything into perspective for me:

“Rarely do we give ourselves permission to read book after book after book as part of our work. We tend — or at least I often do — to think that we are being leisurely when reading, like we’re treating our self to something secret and naughty when we should be doing the laundry or looking for a real job or trying to find a man or something. So it’s great that you have this tremendous opportunity to immerse yourself in literature and theory, without guilt because it is your job to do so. Oh the joy of it.”

Thanks, Anita!

29 September, 2005 | Comments

Today was the first day of school for me and I’m knackered. On my way home, a gang of teenage hoodlums got on the train. They were clearly drugged out of their minds. One boy started shouting that he was going to shoot everyone and the whole thing would be recorded on CCTV. He spit on a member of the train’s crew, who promptly threw him and his friends off the train. And might I mention that the leader of this pack was wearing a NY Yankees ball cap? As a former Bostonian, I draw great pleasure from this fact.

The first part of Channel 4’s Elizabeth I is on television now, starring Helen Mirren and Jeremy Irons. It’s quite good so far. Helen is wearing the de rigueur red wig, à la Little Orphan Annie. Ah, the joys of British television. This is network television, mind you, what’s called “terrestrial” over here. Not too shabby for Thursday night!

And what are you watching tonight, my American friends? Joey, perhaps? Hehe.

28 September, 2005 | Comments

Most foreigners picture Scotland as a quaint storybook land filled with kilt-wearing bagpipe players. Uh, think again. According to a just-released United Nations report, Scotland is the most violent country in the developed world. Scots are three times more likely to be assaulted than Americans. And while the U.N. excludes murder in this statistic, a soon-to-be-released study by the University of California claims that Scotland has a higher murder rate than the United States, Israel, Uzbekistan, Chile and Uruguay. I wonder when this statistic will make it onto the Visit Scotland website?

So-called experts blame this staggering level of violence on the “booze and blades” culture in the western part of the country, specifically Glasgow. There are calls for stabbing to be considered a public health issue in this blood-spattered region. A consultant at Glasgow Royal Infirmary said: “People carry all sorts of weapons, some of them quite horrific, ranging from small pocket knives that they think can’t inflict a fatal injury, which is entirely wrong, up to machetes, bayonets, swords.”

CSI: Loch Ness…coming soon!

27 September, 2005 | Comments

To bash British food is to engage in a tiresome international sport. French President Jacques Chirac provoked an international food flap this summer when he joked “One cannot trust people whose cuisine is so bad.” Yawn.

I do not wish to bash. Rather, I marvel at the uniqueness of the British palate. Bacon and eggs for breakfast with toast…smothered in baked beans? Uh, well, okay. Spreading corn all over my tuna salad sandwich? Sure, what the hell. Eating potato chips flavored like lamb with mint sauce? Um, no thanks.

To a Yank, the Brit taste in chips – or “crisps,” as they’re called – is actually hard to fathom. Behold a few of the flavors of crisps that Marks and Spencer produces: Honey Roast Wiltshire Ham, Roast Beef and Onion, and Roast Chicken and Herb.

Not to be outdone, Walker’s makes their own line of gaglicious offerings: Prawn [shrimp] Cocktail, Worcester Sauce, Heinz Tomato Ketchup, Marmite Yeast Extract, Pickled Onion…and this is just their regular line. Walker’s also makes a line of what they call “posh crisps” including flavors like Chargrilled Steak and Peppercorn Sauce, plus Slow Roasted Lamb and Mint. How do they get lamb flavoring into a potato crisp? With something called “lamb powder.” Upcoming new flavors include Roast Pork and Creamy Mustard Sauce crisps and Sausage and Ketchup crisps. STOP THE MADNESS! I BEG YOU!

Before you ask, no, I have not sampled any of the aforementioned crisps. Nor do I intend to.

Though you may find pizza-flavored Pringles on American supermarket shelves, in general, Americans do not seem willing to eat crisps with “main course” flavorings. Rather, Yankee crisps are of the nacho cheese/salt/vinegar/BBQ/onion/salsa/sour cream varieties. I’m sure one day America’s junk food pimps will push bacon cheeseburger-flavored Fritos and hot dog-flavored Ruffles on the public. But let’s just be grateful that day hasn’t come yet.

26 September, 2005 | 2 Comments

You knew I’d find a Sylvia Plath landmark nearby – it was only a matter of time! Turns out there is not one, but two Plath sites within a couple blocks of where I’m living. I think they’re actually located in Holborn, not Bloomsbury, but that’s a minor technicality. In Queen’s Square there is St. George-the-Martyr church, where Plath and Ted Hughes were married on Bloomsday, June 16th, 1956. It was rather difficult to take a photo of this church because it’s in a square that’s densely populated with large buildings and trees. Plus, the people at the pub next door kept staring at me, wondering why anyone would want a photo of what is, in all honesty, a very unremarkable church.

Nearby, Plath and Hughes spent their wedding night at 18 Rugby Street, in a flat belonging to one of Hughes’s friends:

In his collection Birthday Letters, Hughes included a poem called “18 Rugby Street”:

We walked across south London to Fetter Lane
And your hotel. Opposite the entrance
On a bombsite becoming a building site
We clutched each other giddily
For safety and went in a barrel together
Over some Niagara. Falling
In the roar of soul your scar told me –
Like its secret name, or its password –
How you had tried to kill yourself. And I heard
Without ceasing for a moment to kiss you
As if a sober star had whispered it
Above the revolving, rumbling city: stay clear.

25 September, 2005 | Comments

I finally know why I can hear so many sirens from my flat. The Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital is the next block over. There are also two other specialist hospitals near it. I hadn’t wandered around there before because the whole street is full of scaffolding and cranes and doesn’t look very inviting. The sign on the hospital is just about the saddest sign I’ve ever seen. You have to look pretty hard to see it in this photo:

In April 1929, J.M. Barrie gave the copyright to his children’s classic Peter Pan to the hospital. According to the hospital’s website, Barrie stipulated in his will that the amount of money Peter Pan brings to the hospital shall remain a closely guarded secret.

24 September, 2005 | 2 Comments

I wanted to see a play on the West End today, but by the time I got around to purchasing tickets, there wasn’t much to choose from. My choices were A Few Good Men starring Rob Lowe and The Woman in Black, a ghost story that has been performed at the Fortune Theatre for the past 15 years. Well, I didn’t come all the way to London to see Rob Lowe in anything, so I settled on The Woman in Black, which I thought might be cheesily fun. After about 20 minutes I knew the play was awful, but it was awful in a campy way, which made it bearable. There were a lot of empty seats (shocker) and the people in the crowd were behaving as if they were at the cinema, loudly chomping on Maltesers and opening bottles of soda. Most of them seemed bored as hell. I’m not even scared! a tourist from Japan sitting near me complained loudly during intermission. In fact, the scariest part of the whole experience was the upper circle of the Fortune Theatre – the bleacher seats, if you will, which still cost me £14.50. This section of the theatre was so steep that one clumsy move could have sent me tumbling down a flight of stairs and possibly over the railing into the seats below. I’m not kidding. The sign outside said “A truly nerve-shredding experience.” If they were talking about the theatre, I agree.

View of the stage

22 September, 2005 | Comments

Next stop on the tour of my neighborhood is Tavistock Square, a stone’s throw from Gordon Square. Tavistock is bigger than Gordon and buzzing with traffic, though it’s still verdant and inviting. Walking around the square this afternoon, it was hard to believe that on July 7th, a suicide bomber exploded a bomb on a double-decker bus here. This terrorist act occurred next to a peace garden featuring a statue of Gandhi, a Hiroshima cherry tree and a Holocaust memorial. The uninformed visitor would have no idea that such a horrible event had taken place here only a few months ago. There’s a small sign directing people to leave flowers in Russell Square, but that’s it. It seems that in America, the location of such an act would be piled high with flowers, stuffed animals, candles, notes – and tourists. It’s interesting to observe the different ways in which societies mark such a tragedy.

21 September, 2005 | 5 Comments

Over the next few weeks, I’d like to take you on a tour of my London neighborhood. I’m fortunate enough to be living in Bloomsbury, a bookish and academic region of central London. Members of the Bloomsbury Group (Virginia Woolf, Lytton Strachey, et al) met, lived and worked here. Other writers such as W.B. Yeats and Charles Dickens also called Bloomsbury home at some point in their lives. The University of London is located here, as is the British Museum. Bloomsbury is dotted with leafy squares and filled with students from around the globe.

The first stop on our tour is Gordon Square. I walked around the square this afternoon with my camera.

Virginia and her sister Vanessa Bell lived at no. 46, the central meeting place of the Bloomsbury Group, seen here:

21 September, 2005 | 3 Comments

I wanted to ignore this story, but the tabloid papers and newscasts here have their knickers in a twist over coke-head Kate. It’s impossible to walk by a newsagent in London without seeing lame headlines like “Kate’s Blown It.” It appears the stickpin supermodel has now been dumped by H&M, Burberry and Chanel. The head of London’s Metropolitan Police has personally ordered an investigation into her Class-A drug use, and now she might lose custody of her daughter. What do I have to say about this? Good!

20 September, 2005 | 1 Comment

As an American in London, perhaps it is hypocritical of me to decry the abundance of Yankee celebs on these shores. But I’ll do it anyway. First there’s news of Monica Lewinsky attending a master’s program at…gulp…the University of London. The British papers have yet to run with this story, thank goodness. The disgrace to womanity everywhere told the NY Post: “Maybe I’ll meet my husband there—get married and have some kids!” As if that is not stomach-churning enough, it appears that Mariah Carey also hopes to jump across the pond. Today comes word that the woman who gives “trashy” a new meaning is shopping for real estate and plans to become a true Brit. Bloody hell.

19 September, 2005 | 1 Comment

I’m falling apart. I’m used to riding in cars, not walking for literally miles each day. I lived in NYC for over 4 years, so it’s not like I’m a newbie where city life is concerned. But it’s been a while. My body is not cooperating. My back hurts. I attempted to break in a new pair of shoes while shopping on Tottenham Court Road and now I have blisters on my feet. Nasty blisters. I visited the ubiquitous Boots yesterday to buy bandages and antiseptic cream for my feet (limping up and down the aisles, boo hoo). I took today off. I didn’t even go outside. I’m waiting for my feet to heal. It’s not that I don’t like walking. I love it. Walking around a city makes you feel so much more connected to it. I love it, really. But my body still needs to be convinced.

19 September, 2005 | Comments

This past weekend, an interesting article ran in the Guardian Unlimited by Lionel Shriver, author of We Need To Talk About Kevin (an excellent and chilling novel). In “No Kids Please, We’re Selfish,” Shriver explores the plummeting birth rate in Europe, largely due to the fact that a large portion of educated, financially independent (mostly white) women are choosing not to reproduce. One woman she interviews states: “Many western cities will be largely black/ Hispanic/Asian in 50 years’ time. Does that bother me? Well, I vaguely regret the extinction of gene lines that in their various ways played a part in the establishment of western civilisation. But the gene lines coming in from the developing world will have their own strengths, energies and qualities.” A provocative read.

17 September, 2005 | Comments

It’s been a long road to London.

When you’re 32 years old, it’s not easy to leave everything behind, to create a new life in another country. There was the one-bedroom apartment that had to be emptied, with only a 5×5 storage unit available to hold what couldn’t be parted with. There was the car to be sold and the furniture, the pieces of my life doled out to grateful friends, to Goodwill. Wading through a decade of junk was exhausting and often immobilizing; again and again, the same question crossed my mind: How did I accumulate so much stuff? And do I need any of this to be happy?

There was the job to leave behind. There were the friends and the family and everything that was familiar.

It was a struggle to untangle myself from my life in Boston and move abroad. It was much more difficult than I ever thought it would be, but I have no regrets. Not for a second. Would I rather be at Harvard, at Yale, at Columbia? No way. From the time I decided to go for my Ph.D., there was no doubt I wanted to do it in London. I lived in the city during the 1996-1997 academic year, when I received my MA in literature from the University of London (specific college to remain nameless, thank you!). I always knew I wanted to return for my Ph.D., though I never thought it would be possible. And now here I am, set to begin studying at the same school next week, eight long years later.

There is no city in the world like London. From the very first time I visited this city, it bewitched me. Make no mistake: I completely romanticize this place. But I feel at home here. I can walk around for hours with no particular place to go. I can just be. I never felt this way in New York or Boston or anywhere else I’ve ever lived. And now I’m set to begin this project, my Ph.D. I’m nervous and excited. I’m excited for obvious reasons. I’m nervous because I’m going to be a student once more, because I’m starting over again only this time I’m in my thirties. I’m a real adult now, not someone who’s just playing around. I’ve made a big commitment. I’ve changed my life. Will it be everything I hope it will be? We’ll see…