One of my favorite trivial pursuits while I'm on the road is catching British weather reports and forecasts. They are masterful evocations of ambiguity.
Consider, for example, this recent summary, culled from London's Daily Telegraph:
"General Situation: An area of low pressure over the central part of the United Kingdom will bring scattered showers to England and Wales today. To the north, rain will fall during the afternoon across Scotland.''
Hmmm. Do you reckon this means it's going to rain today, except when it doesn't, all around the country, except in places where it remains dry?
Or consider this Outlook, from the same report:
"Scattered showers will occur across England and Wales on Sunday. Occasional rain will fall across Scotland. Spells of rain will fall across England on Monday. An isolated shower will occur on Tuesday.''
Hmmm again. Scattered showers, occasional rain, spells of rain, an isolated shower - four ways of saying the same thing, all swept into one short report.
Got to admit, it's a marvelous bit of writing in its not-exactly-precise way. And it certainly illustrates the old saying "If you don't like the weather, wait five minutes.''
Showing posts with label United Kingdom. Show all posts
Showing posts with label United Kingdom. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Five Cool Things About London
There are more than five cool things about London, of course - as well as uncool things, like congestion and cost - as this great city offers so many things to savor. Among them:
1. Black cabs. London has the world's best taxis, the old-school, roomy, sturdy, handsome black cabs that navigate the capital, especially central London. With room enough for five passengers, including luggage, and two nifty pull-down seats to go with a three-person couch, they are incredibly spacious. And London may have the world's best cab drivers. They aren't as polite as Tokyo's white-gloved cabbies, but they are funny and they really know the city. Even in the age of GPS, most drivers of black cabs have memorized the maze of streets in this sprawling city and take you almost anyhwere you want to go without consulting a map or, worse, asking you how in blazes to find your destination. They are a capital service for a capital city.
2. World-class food. London and the UK generally, have a lingering reputation for bad food. The reputation is undeserved. London may be the most internationalized city in the world and as such, it has everything, though often at significant cost. Used to be the only reliably good food was Indian. No longer. Gastro-pubs and chefs specializing in modern British cuisine have restocked Blighty's larder. And if you know where you are going, you can even save money. I recommend the Pret A Manger sandwich and salad shops that operate on every other street corner in central London. For five pounds or less, you can eat fresh, tasty, healthful fast food - a real deal. If you don't eat well in London, it's no one's fault but your own.
3. History. I like New York a lot, but I've never understood the reflexive boast of Americans and some others that New York is - all together now - "the Greatest City in the World.'' No it isn't. This is true mostly for people who don't travel the world. As my friend and fellow travel writer Patti Nickell points out, London has everything New York has, plus 2,000 years of history. Wake up, Americans. Especially you, New Yorkers.
4. Free museums. The finest museums in town - meaning some of the finest in the world - often carry free general admission. You will indeed pay to see the temporary, mega-exhibitions by name-brand artists like Rembrandt or Picasso, but the extensive permanent collections of leading museums, usually no. This is another good way to avoid spending a fortune in London, which you can do if you're not careful. But you definitely don't have to.
5. Hidden gems. The metropolis is loaded with them and many of these, too, are free. Central London is walkable - again, costs nothing - and places such as Green Park, St. James's Park, Kensington Gardens, Hyde Park and Regent Park are finely made for browsing and exploring. And, again, there's all that history, often best experienced on foot. In the Seven Dials area, tucked between Covent Garden and Soho, is a historic blue marker on the wall of a building that once served as home to the comic geniuses of Monty Python. In a hidden courtyard near Buckingham Palace, just outside the 51 Buckingham Gate Hotel, is a gorgeous outdoor frieze depicting Shakespeare's characters; just look up, and there it is in all its glory.
It's London's rich cultural layers and manifold opportunities for discovery, more than anything, that make London my favorite city in the Western World.
1. Black cabs. London has the world's best taxis, the old-school, roomy, sturdy, handsome black cabs that navigate the capital, especially central London. With room enough for five passengers, including luggage, and two nifty pull-down seats to go with a three-person couch, they are incredibly spacious. And London may have the world's best cab drivers. They aren't as polite as Tokyo's white-gloved cabbies, but they are funny and they really know the city. Even in the age of GPS, most drivers of black cabs have memorized the maze of streets in this sprawling city and take you almost anyhwere you want to go without consulting a map or, worse, asking you how in blazes to find your destination. They are a capital service for a capital city.
2. World-class food. London and the UK generally, have a lingering reputation for bad food. The reputation is undeserved. London may be the most internationalized city in the world and as such, it has everything, though often at significant cost. Used to be the only reliably good food was Indian. No longer. Gastro-pubs and chefs specializing in modern British cuisine have restocked Blighty's larder. And if you know where you are going, you can even save money. I recommend the Pret A Manger sandwich and salad shops that operate on every other street corner in central London. For five pounds or less, you can eat fresh, tasty, healthful fast food - a real deal. If you don't eat well in London, it's no one's fault but your own.
3. History. I like New York a lot, but I've never understood the reflexive boast of Americans and some others that New York is - all together now - "the Greatest City in the World.'' No it isn't. This is true mostly for people who don't travel the world. As my friend and fellow travel writer Patti Nickell points out, London has everything New York has, plus 2,000 years of history. Wake up, Americans. Especially you, New Yorkers.
4. Free museums. The finest museums in town - meaning some of the finest in the world - often carry free general admission. You will indeed pay to see the temporary, mega-exhibitions by name-brand artists like Rembrandt or Picasso, but the extensive permanent collections of leading museums, usually no. This is another good way to avoid spending a fortune in London, which you can do if you're not careful. But you definitely don't have to.
5. Hidden gems. The metropolis is loaded with them and many of these, too, are free. Central London is walkable - again, costs nothing - and places such as Green Park, St. James's Park, Kensington Gardens, Hyde Park and Regent Park are finely made for browsing and exploring. And, again, there's all that history, often best experienced on foot. In the Seven Dials area, tucked between Covent Garden and Soho, is a historic blue marker on the wall of a building that once served as home to the comic geniuses of Monty Python. In a hidden courtyard near Buckingham Palace, just outside the 51 Buckingham Gate Hotel, is a gorgeous outdoor frieze depicting Shakespeare's characters; just look up, and there it is in all its glory.
It's London's rich cultural layers and manifold opportunities for discovery, more than anything, that make London my favorite city in the Western World.
Sunday, August 21, 2011
Back in Blighty
The last time I was in the United Kingdom, it was shortly before Christmas, and London's Hyde Park was ablaze with decorations and holiday lights. Re-vsiting London this month, I came back to find the city ablaze - this time with arson fires. It was no holiday, except for the gang members and hangers-on who looted, burned, assaulted innocent passers-by and ran amok for three days before finally submitting to a belated beefing-up in the number of police.
My London-born wife arrived several days before me. She said she never felt threatened but was depressed by the scenes of destruction in South London precincts she knew well as a young person - Battersea and Clapham Junction. By the time I arrived, it was all over and the post-mortem of self-examination, anger and courtroom confrontation had begun.
I have traveled to the U.K. maybe 40 times. I know it fairly well but am keenly aware I am an outsider there. Moreover, I come from the United States, which has seen its share of civil strife and violence, so I am reluctant to pass judgment on what is still a fascinating - and, now, safe once again - place to visit.
That said, the U.K. seems to be suffering a social meltdown. It has raised a generation of feral youth with no stake in the system and no belief in the future. Youth unemployment is rampant, many kids have grown up in households where an adult has never held a job, and class and racial barriers to social harmony are formidible. Add to this, the ruling class's amoral materialism and lack of ethics in the phone hacking scandal that has shaken Rupert Murdoch's media empire and forced out top officials at Scotland Yard - London's once-esteemed Metropolitan Police Force - and you have a society facing serious challenges.
And yet, and yet ... Britain, especially England, and its great capital, London, remain marvelous places to visit. Tourists largely escaped the chaos of last week, and when I walked the streets of the capital with my wife and our English friends, I felt perfectly safe. Londoners had already started displaying the resiliance for which they are well-known. Plans for next year's Olympics and Paralympics are continuing apace, and neighborhood broom brigades were already cleaning up the mess.
Serious underlying problems remain, not least the burning anger of working-class and middle-class Brits - some of whom were terrorized in their beds by hooded, masked thugs who invaded their homes, demanding money and jewelry. The call for stiff sentences for convicted rioters are being heard, and the anger behind them is justified. Whether strong prison sentences, coming at a time of severe cuts in social services prompted by global financial weakness, will create conditions for full recovery remains to be seen. It is bound to be a tough go.
As a friend and fan of the Brits, I wish them well. I am a watchful traveler, but I don't plan to drop the U.K. from my travel plans. There will always be an England, and there will always be a London. London has survived the Conquest of 1066, the Great Fire of 1666, a civil war, the Blitz of World War II, the terror campaign of the Irish Republican Army, the subway and bus bombing by jihadists on 7/7 (July 7, 2005) and more. It will survive this.
My London-born wife arrived several days before me. She said she never felt threatened but was depressed by the scenes of destruction in South London precincts she knew well as a young person - Battersea and Clapham Junction. By the time I arrived, it was all over and the post-mortem of self-examination, anger and courtroom confrontation had begun.
I have traveled to the U.K. maybe 40 times. I know it fairly well but am keenly aware I am an outsider there. Moreover, I come from the United States, which has seen its share of civil strife and violence, so I am reluctant to pass judgment on what is still a fascinating - and, now, safe once again - place to visit.
That said, the U.K. seems to be suffering a social meltdown. It has raised a generation of feral youth with no stake in the system and no belief in the future. Youth unemployment is rampant, many kids have grown up in households where an adult has never held a job, and class and racial barriers to social harmony are formidible. Add to this, the ruling class's amoral materialism and lack of ethics in the phone hacking scandal that has shaken Rupert Murdoch's media empire and forced out top officials at Scotland Yard - London's once-esteemed Metropolitan Police Force - and you have a society facing serious challenges.
And yet, and yet ... Britain, especially England, and its great capital, London, remain marvelous places to visit. Tourists largely escaped the chaos of last week, and when I walked the streets of the capital with my wife and our English friends, I felt perfectly safe. Londoners had already started displaying the resiliance for which they are well-known. Plans for next year's Olympics and Paralympics are continuing apace, and neighborhood broom brigades were already cleaning up the mess.
Serious underlying problems remain, not least the burning anger of working-class and middle-class Brits - some of whom were terrorized in their beds by hooded, masked thugs who invaded their homes, demanding money and jewelry. The call for stiff sentences for convicted rioters are being heard, and the anger behind them is justified. Whether strong prison sentences, coming at a time of severe cuts in social services prompted by global financial weakness, will create conditions for full recovery remains to be seen. It is bound to be a tough go.
As a friend and fan of the Brits, I wish them well. I am a watchful traveler, but I don't plan to drop the U.K. from my travel plans. There will always be an England, and there will always be a London. London has survived the Conquest of 1066, the Great Fire of 1666, a civil war, the Blitz of World War II, the terror campaign of the Irish Republican Army, the subway and bus bombing by jihadists on 7/7 (July 7, 2005) and more. It will survive this.
Sunday, July 4, 2010
Independence Day
When my English-born wife was growing up in London, she liked to look at the map of the world in her schoolroom. She was particuarly fond of gazing at the nations tinted pink on the map, signifying that they were part of the British Empire.
One big swath of territory that was not pink was, of course, the United States, which began a painful separation from England and its King in 1776 and completed it nearly a decade later by force of arms. This once-wrenching departure has long since become a subject of good-natured joking between Yanks and Brits, including my wife and I. Two hundred thirty-four years is a long time to nurse a serious grudge.
"You were spoiled brats,'' she told me this morning, with a glint in her eye. "Still are.''
"Yes, and now there are 320 million of us,'' I said.
Things have gone pretty well in the post-pink era between the U.K. and the U.S. Oh, there was the unpleasantness of 1812, when the British Army occupied Washington, D.C. and burned the White House. Talk about sour grapes. But matters haven't been so bad since then, as the Empire has softened into the Commonwealth and America grew up in fits and starts to become great.
The Englishwoman who became my wife arrived on these shores at age 19 the same way so many others did before her: by ship, after a stormy crossing of the Atlantic to New York harbor, in February. She is a whole-hearted traveler who has visited many places I haven't, and may have traveled more miles for pleasure and business than I have. We two didn't meet on the road but we could have, so intrepid a globetrotter is she. She is also one of the few people outside the travel biz who understands that travel writing is a job, not a hobby or a holiday, though its fascinations are many. We have traveled together to far-flung places - Hong Kong, Argentina, Japan, Uruguay, Chile - to nearby places - Canada and around the U.S. - and, of course, back to the U.K.
I think this July 4 - or 4 July, as the British would write it - we'll tune out those stressful times of 1776 and 1812, and the bombs bursting in air. We'll grill some burgers out back and drink some wine. We'll be grateful that the only explosiveness between our two countries in the post-pink era are Independence Day fireworks in the night sky.
One big swath of territory that was not pink was, of course, the United States, which began a painful separation from England and its King in 1776 and completed it nearly a decade later by force of arms. This once-wrenching departure has long since become a subject of good-natured joking between Yanks and Brits, including my wife and I. Two hundred thirty-four years is a long time to nurse a serious grudge.
"You were spoiled brats,'' she told me this morning, with a glint in her eye. "Still are.''
"Yes, and now there are 320 million of us,'' I said.
Things have gone pretty well in the post-pink era between the U.K. and the U.S. Oh, there was the unpleasantness of 1812, when the British Army occupied Washington, D.C. and burned the White House. Talk about sour grapes. But matters haven't been so bad since then, as the Empire has softened into the Commonwealth and America grew up in fits and starts to become great.
The Englishwoman who became my wife arrived on these shores at age 19 the same way so many others did before her: by ship, after a stormy crossing of the Atlantic to New York harbor, in February. She is a whole-hearted traveler who has visited many places I haven't, and may have traveled more miles for pleasure and business than I have. We two didn't meet on the road but we could have, so intrepid a globetrotter is she. She is also one of the few people outside the travel biz who understands that travel writing is a job, not a hobby or a holiday, though its fascinations are many. We have traveled together to far-flung places - Hong Kong, Argentina, Japan, Uruguay, Chile - to nearby places - Canada and around the U.S. - and, of course, back to the U.K.
I think this July 4 - or 4 July, as the British would write it - we'll tune out those stressful times of 1776 and 1812, and the bombs bursting in air. We'll grill some burgers out back and drink some wine. We'll be grateful that the only explosiveness between our two countries in the post-pink era are Independence Day fireworks in the night sky.
Friday, August 21, 2009
Lockerbie's Legacy
The hero walked down the stairway from the plane, his hand raised high in triumph before a nationwide television audience. He was home, and jubilation was proclaimed in his native land.
Some hero. Some triumph.
The hero was the convicted mass murderer Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, found by a British court to be guilty of helping to plan the 1988 midair explosion that destroyed a Pan American jetliner over Lockerbie, Scotland. All 259 people on board died, as did 11 more on the ground who were killed by falling debris. Megrahi, a Libyan intelligence agent, was working undercover at Libya's national airline. The attack on innocent people resulted in years of economic sanctions and international isolation for Libya, ruled since 1969 by the odious Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.
The Lockerbie bombing was one of the most high-profile attacks ever on civil aviation, joining the mid-air bombing of an Air India jetliner, the mid-air destruction of a Korean Airlines plane that was shot down by a Soviet fighter and a handful of others. It was later eclipsed in sheer loss of life by the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States with hijacked jetliners, but remains infamous and is one of the well-remembered events that has joined travel and terror in the public mind. This is especially so in the U.S.; 189 of the Lockerbie dead were Americans.
Megrahi's release this week from a Scottish prison appears to be the result of swirling political headwinds and the complex calculations associated with them. Among these are the frankly juvenile desire of the Scottish National Party government to thumb its nose at British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's Labor government in London; the maneuverings of UK oil giant BP to get back into Libya, start drilling and start making money now that sanctions are no more; and the misdirected intention of the Scottish government to show compassion to a sick man; Megrahi is said to be suffering from terminal prostate cancer.
Yet, it can be argued that compassion has already been shown to him. For one thing, Megrahi got a trial, something terrorists routinely deny their victims. He was treated humanely in prison, another compassionate measure. The American relatives of the dead, robustly and rightly backed by the Obama administration, asked only that Megrahi be kept in prison for the rest of his days; they didn't demand that he leave this world. Not even this scrap of decency was shown to them by Scottish authorities, now scrambling for political cover after the entirely predictable jubilant welcome given to the conquering hero when he landed at a military airport in Tripoli.
Some of the British victims' families were not convinced that Megrahi committed the crime for which he was convicted, and the man, himself, has maintained that he is innocent. Most people who have studied the case disagree, including the Scottish justice minister who freed Megrahi.
The Lockerbie bombing has caused long-term damage to travel and tourism and has poisoned relations between Libya and much of the world. This latest sharp twist makes it that much more harmful. It's an unfortunate turn of events, and the officials who put this man on a jet plane to enjoy a safe flight home should have known better.
Some hero. Some triumph.
The hero was the convicted mass murderer Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, found by a British court to be guilty of helping to plan the 1988 midair explosion that destroyed a Pan American jetliner over Lockerbie, Scotland. All 259 people on board died, as did 11 more on the ground who were killed by falling debris. Megrahi, a Libyan intelligence agent, was working undercover at Libya's national airline. The attack on innocent people resulted in years of economic sanctions and international isolation for Libya, ruled since 1969 by the odious Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.
The Lockerbie bombing was one of the most high-profile attacks ever on civil aviation, joining the mid-air bombing of an Air India jetliner, the mid-air destruction of a Korean Airlines plane that was shot down by a Soviet fighter and a handful of others. It was later eclipsed in sheer loss of life by the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States with hijacked jetliners, but remains infamous and is one of the well-remembered events that has joined travel and terror in the public mind. This is especially so in the U.S.; 189 of the Lockerbie dead were Americans.
Megrahi's release this week from a Scottish prison appears to be the result of swirling political headwinds and the complex calculations associated with them. Among these are the frankly juvenile desire of the Scottish National Party government to thumb its nose at British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's Labor government in London; the maneuverings of UK oil giant BP to get back into Libya, start drilling and start making money now that sanctions are no more; and the misdirected intention of the Scottish government to show compassion to a sick man; Megrahi is said to be suffering from terminal prostate cancer.
Yet, it can be argued that compassion has already been shown to him. For one thing, Megrahi got a trial, something terrorists routinely deny their victims. He was treated humanely in prison, another compassionate measure. The American relatives of the dead, robustly and rightly backed by the Obama administration, asked only that Megrahi be kept in prison for the rest of his days; they didn't demand that he leave this world. Not even this scrap of decency was shown to them by Scottish authorities, now scrambling for political cover after the entirely predictable jubilant welcome given to the conquering hero when he landed at a military airport in Tripoli.
Some of the British victims' families were not convinced that Megrahi committed the crime for which he was convicted, and the man, himself, has maintained that he is innocent. Most people who have studied the case disagree, including the Scottish justice minister who freed Megrahi.
The Lockerbie bombing has caused long-term damage to travel and tourism and has poisoned relations between Libya and much of the world. This latest sharp twist makes it that much more harmful. It's an unfortunate turn of events, and the officials who put this man on a jet plane to enjoy a safe flight home should have known better.
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