Albert Memorial

The other day I walked over to the Albert Memorial in Kensington Gardens, just opposite Royal Albert Hall. The memorial dates from 1872 and celebrates the life of Prince Albert, Queen Victoria's husband, who died in 1861. I first saw the memorial when we went to Royal Albert Hall for a BBC Proms concert at the beginning of August, and I thought it looked amazing, lit for the evening in all its gilded finery. I subsequently read a criticism of the memorial as tacky compared to some of the park's other, more understated statues -- but I have to disagree. It's busy, in true Victorian style, but I think it's pretty awesome.

The main body of the memorial -- which was designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott, according to Wikipedia -- consists of an ornate canopy over a seated statue of Albert. It's flanked by allegorical statues of varies aspects of the British economy, such as industry and commerce, and by four statues representing the continents where Engand had an Imperial presence:

Africa

Asia

Europe

North America

I'm not sure why Australia is missing. It had been colonized by this point, though the different territories there had not yet joined into a single federation. (Maybe it was just a matter of necessity -- the memorial has four corners so someone had to miss out, and Australia, a former penal colony, was perhaps low man on the totem pole.)


Albert himself is in the center of all this, an elevated, gilded statue that apparently once used to be painted black, gazing down from his perch with a dreamy expression and a book at his side.

Dog update

As you may remember, our plan in moving to London was that we would come first and get settled, and then I would return to the states in October to retrieve our dogs, Ernie and Ruby.

England has stringent laws about importing dogs that require a a fresh rabies vaccination and blood test, followed by a 6-month waiting period before they can enter the country. I got Ernie and Ruby vaccinated in late March and then blood tested in early April -- right after we learned we'd be making this move. That means they'll be eligible to enter England on October 5.

Until then, some friends in New Jersey are taking care of them. (Saintly friends, I must add, though we've promised to repay them with tickets to London!)

As the time has grown closer for me to return to the states, however, I've been thinking about our options. I have friends who have moved pets to England through professional pet importers -- at an employer's expense. (If only!) I began wondering if it would be much more expensive for us to go that route than for me to fly home, rent a car, buy dog crates, put myself up in a hotel and run all over New Jersey doing official paperwork.

I researched pet importers and found one in New Jersey that seems very capable. It is expensive -- but probably only a few thousand dollars more than it would cost me to go home and do it all myself. And they're pros. They know what's required.


So we're arranging for this company to finalize the papers for Ernie and Ruby, provide their crates, pick them up in New Jersey and get them to the airport, take them through customs here in England and deliver them to our door in Notting Hill. I just mailed the contracts and all the vaccination certificates and blood test results last week. Early October is still our target date.

I am relieved at not having to fly back to New Jersey and risk getting entangled in official pet-exporting regulations. Sometimes it's best to just pay someone!

(Photos: Dogs in front of a shop on Westbourne Grove, looking like they've been told to permanently "stay!")

Lucretius

"There is no reason to set humans apart from other animals, no hope of bribing or appeasing the gods, no place for religious fanaticism, no call for ascetic self-denial, no justification for dreams of limitless power or perfect security, no rationale for wars of conquest or self-aggrandizement, no possibility of triumphing over nature. Instead...human beings should conquer their fears, accept the fact that they themselves and all the things they encounter are transitory, and embrace the beauty and the pleasure of the world."

-- Stephen Greenblatt in The New Yorker,

summarizing "On the Nature of Things,"

by Roman poet Lucretius

(Photo: Sticker found in New Brunswick, NJ, in June.)

Come Dine With Me

Dave and I have been learning more about British television. We latched onto BBC America, as I mentioned more than a year ago, long before we ever imagined moving to England. Now that we're here, we're expanding our roster of shows.

I mentioned several favorites in that last entry. I eventually watched all the episodes of "How Clean is Your House?" so I gave up on that one, and Jonathan Ross' talk show went off the air. Graham Norton seems to be on hiatus now. Gordon Ramsay just got too foul and mean-spirited for my taste.

Now we've moved on to "Come Dine With Me," which seems to be on every five minutes or so. It's a pretty brilliant concept: Get four (or sometimes five) very different people together and have them host each other for dinner. Each night a new person hosts, and the others comment on their menu selections, the execution of their meals, their personal habits and decor, and their entertaining skills. On top of it all, there's a rather sarcastic narrator who contributes punchy comments when needed -- he's a hoot.

We love this show. Why it hasn't been adapted for American markets I'm not sure. (Or maybe it has and we're just not aware.)

There's a quiz show called "Eggheads" that we sometimes watch, when different teams of challengers take on a standing group known as the "Eggheads," said to be Britain's brainiest quiz show participants. (I'm a fan of Daphne, who seems like a sweet old grandmothery type but has a brain sharp as a tack -- although she can be a little fuzzy on pop culture.)

There's "Heir Hunters," which I sometimes watch in the mornings, about teams of researchers who work to find living heirs for people who die without wills. (For a commission, of course.) The reporter in me likes all that research. Maybe I should get a job at one of those firms?

That's followed by "Homes Under the Hammer," a show about bedraggled houses sold at auction and then restored (or torn down) by their new owners.

Those are our favorites so far. We did find "Hoarders" episodes here, but they all seem to be reruns. And while folks in the states are enthralled by a new season of "Project Runway," it unfortunately doesn't seem to be available on our cable system at all.

(Photo: A colorful row of houses on Lancaster Road, not too far from our flat.)

Table!

Success!

As I wrote yesterday, by the time the movers departed, we'd been unable to get the dining room table through the doorway into the dining and living area -- it was trapped in the foyer, standing on end. I thought Dave and I would be able to resolve the problem once he got home, but the two of us couldn't get it through the door either. The legs were just a little too long.

We'd already taken the door off the hinges, so I was in a state of desperation. I was afraid I was going to have to make a drastic decision. Dave floated the idea of shortening or temporarily cutting and then repairing the table legs, which I ruled out immediately. I was envisioning having to ship the table back home again. (Selling or otherwise disposing of it isn't an option -- as you may remember, my dad built this table, and it was my childhood dining table growing up.)

We ended up calling a handyman, and asking him to remove the two inner strips of the living room door frame. I wasn't sure what this would entail, but the movers said it would be easy -- and indeed, the handyman was able to take them off with no problem. We slid the table through and he returned the door frame to its original state. We then re-hung the door. So all is as good as new, and a major crisis has been averted.

This handyman was AWESOME. He also hung all our artwork (our walls are concrete) and drilled a hole for the television cables in the book shelf, eliminating those unsightly wires. (We had the landlord's permission!) And he only charged £125, or roughly $200, which for the work he performed seemed reasonable.

So now our home really IS a home. Whew!

Stuff everywhere!

The moving truck arrived today, bearing our mattress, our dining room table, and about 28 boxes of miscellaneous stuff. Chaos! Above is how things looked shortly after the movers left -- virtually the only items I'd unwrapped by the time I took this photo were the big artworks. (I wanted to make sure they all arrived -- and they did.)

So far, I've discovered nothing broken or missing. It seems like everything is in good shape. Amazing!

The single biggest problem we've encountered is that the dining table won't fit through the doorway from the foyer into the living room. The movers tried every combination of positions, and we even took the door off the hinges. (Who needs a door there anyway?) But the table, for now, remains in the foyer. I'm waiting for Dave to get home to see if the two of us can figure something out.


Otherwise, though, things look good! Here's the living room, post-unpacking (click to enlarge):


And here are some of our books and tchotchkes, on the built-in shelves in the living room:



Dave, whose first day of work was today, has yet to get home and tackle the kitchen. He really needs to decide where things should go in that space, since it's his domain. I've unpacked all the dishes, but I'm leaving the pots and pans and baking stuff up to him:


It's beginning to seem like home around here! Now all we need are our four-legged "children"!

Home again

We're back in London, after an exhausting plane trip. It wasn't long, but it was early, so we had to get up at 4:30 a.m. to have breakfast and catch the bus out to the airport in Reykjavik. (The airport is about 45 minutes away from town.) So needless to say, both Dave and I are exhausted.

The weirdest thing about our flight: Although we were booked on Iceland Express, our airplane had "IRON MAIDEN Final Fronteir World Tour 2011" painted on it in huge letters. Looking online -- because I know nothing about Iron Maiden or its tour schedule -- I see that the tour ended Aug. 6 in London. Maybe the airline bought or reclaimed the plane from the band and just hasn't repainted it yet? Very odd. (I never had a chance to get a photo, but here's a picture of the exact same plane from Flickr.)

I could detect no traces of heavy metal in the passenger compartment, but my guess is it's been thoroughly cleaned and/or reconditioned.

London survived without us, we were glad to see. And tomorrow we'll have more excitement around here, when our furniture arrives! Finally we'll be able to get back to cooking and enjoying the rest of our beloved stuff.

(Photo: Centerpiece for a sidewalk cafe table, Reykjavik.)