Another Milestone

My brother in Japan called last night (already today for him) to be the first to wish me happy birthday. He commented that now I would be able to go and get a free flu shot. This was a reference to the fact that I am now eligible for Medicare. My “Medicare-approved PPO plan” (Blue Advantage) has been inundating me with mail, including a reminder that among the preventive services I can get for free are not only pneumonia, Hepatitis B, and flu shots, but also bone mass measurement and colorectal screening. How’s that for depressing?

At this point I guess I’m ready to admit to being “middle-aged,” but I am not yet ready to be considered elderly. My grocery store has parking spaces (next to the handicapped spaces) reserved for Senior Citizens. I have yet to use one. Some years ago I saw a woman of my acquaintance, youthful, fit, and dark-haired (the last perhaps artificially) getting out of her car parked in one of these spaces. I remarked on her choice, and she said indignantly, “Well, I am 65 years old!”

I was actually rather surprised, since I hadn’t thought of her as “old,” and I hope that people would feel the same in my case, but I am not about to throw in the towel yet. Yes, I’m a bit arthritic, but walking is good for me; it certainly won’t hurt me to walk a few feet farther. When you see me parking in a Senior Citizen space, you will know I have one foot in the grave.

Public Conveniences

An inevitable part of traveling is visiting public restrooms, and when we travel abroad, most of us inevitably compare the public restrooms with what we are familiar with at home, which in my case is the United States. Public restrooms here vary greatly in the degree to which functions are automated. Among the automatic features that are possible are automatic toilets (activated by an “electric eye,” these often flush more often than needed if not adjusted properly), automatic faucets (controlled by a thermal sensor that can be rather frustrating for those with cold hands), automatic soap dispensers (rather rare but quite a luxury when they work properly), automatic towel dispensers (sometimes one wears oneself out waving in front of their sensors), and automatic hand dryers (again, it can be a challenge to keep one’s hands positioned in the “sweet spot” to keep these going).

Other, less savory, variations include the absence of toilet paper, towels, or soap; toilets that won’t flush; broken hand dryers (coupled with absence of paper towels); faucets that won’t stay on long enough for one to wash both hands at once and consequently have to be held down with one hand while futilely attempting to wash the other single-handed (whoever designed these instruments of torture evidently never heard the proverb “One hand washes the other”). And of course there is great variation in the general cleanliness of the restrooms, degree of luxury, etc.

Travelers abroad, however, face additional variations, including some challenges, such as pay toilets. The current price to “spend a penny” at Victoria Station in London is 20p (though you do get a Dyson Airblade to dry your hands), and in Paris I encountered an even more insidious entrapment: if you haven’t paid to get into a stall (because someone held the door for you), you are (apparently) locked in and can’t get out! Surely this must be a violation of the fire code!

Travelers to Japan invariably comment on the sanitary arrangements there, where toilets range from essentially a hole in the floor to Toto Washlets (some with remote controls) that bathe your bottom with warm water and dry it with heated air. The other feature of Japanese restrooms that is commonly remarked on is the notable lack of privacy in men’s rooms, where maids are apt to come in and go about their business oblivious of men doing theirs, or where the urinals are often open to public view (as in the Kyoto train station).

Our most recent trip, however, was to England, where we encountered not only the typical variation in automation but also certain other quaint features not usually seen Stateside.

One of these, of course, is the persistence of toilets with elevated wall-mounted tanks, activated by a pull-chain. Although we may have seen these in more than one location, the one pictured here was in a restroom at Stonehenge.

Another phenomenon frequently encountered is a restroom carved out of a tiny space. The one shown below, in the Bridge Coffee Shop in Bath, can perhaps best be appreciated by realizing that the photo was taken from the corridor outside the room since the space inside was too small for taking a picture.

It was probably not the smallest restroom we encountered. Shown below is the sink from another tiny one, in Café Loco in Oxford.

In contrast to the restrooms we encountered at tourist sites in Japan, many of which were so loathsome that one just resolved to “hold it,” most of those we used in England were quite nice. For example, the “public convenience” located near Magdalene Bridge in Cambridge was very attractive and sparklingly clean, as can be seen below (even if the utilitarian stainless steel toilets were reminiscent of those seen on planes and trains).

At another public convenience, this one in Reigate, Surrey, I experienced, for the second time (but the first time functioning), a fixture made by Wallgate that combines a lavatory (with soap) and a hand dryer in a single wall-mounted unit, shown below.

English pride and self-respect are clearly invested in these public restrooms. At 1 Royal Crescent in Bath, a restroom had been wedged into a tiny outdoor building, with the evident intention of making the best of a bad situation. It wasn’t deluxe but certainly served the purpose, so I was amused by the apologetic notice posted above the sink (below). Note also that hot water is supplied from a small “on-demand” boiler installed just for this purpose.

At an preschool we visited in Reigate, the “adult” restrooms were for some reason closed, so we used the ones designed for the children. Not surprisingly, the size and height of the toilets and sinks were adapted for their tiny users, but I was amused by the label on the soap dispenser.

Almost as entertaining as the restrooms themselves, however, were the signs that labeled them. On landing at Gatwick the first time we visited England (in March 2008), even before we reached Passport Control or Customs, we availed ourselves of restrooms, and I remarked that women in England seemed to be stuck in the 1960s, wearing crinolines under their puffy skirts. (Like the Venus de Milo, they are also without arms.)

We never saw this particular icon anywhere else, though we did notice considerable variation in the icons used. The typical U.S. icons, which are also prevalent in Britain, are shown below:

At the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, however, I commented that the women appeared to be wearing overcoats:

The public convenience in Cambridge showed a variety of different icons:

But perhaps the most charming were those on the children’s restrooms at the preschool we visited:

It would probably surprise no one that fascination with public restrooms is not uncommon, but I was amused to find that interest in restroom icons is also widespread. A Google Images search for “restroom icons” turns up many intriguing variations, including the jaunty ones at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York, removable “wall art” for weddings, and a priceless version from Austin Neon that alludes to a “can’t hold it any longer” condition.

A Beef and Ale Tour

We just returned from nearly three weeks in England, which, aside from the travel to and from, were almost unalloyed pleasure. Among the pleasurable experiences was the food.

If you are one of those who still subscribe to the myth that English food is bland and unattractive, I can only suggest that you give it a chance. We found it almost unexceptionally outstanding. Although the village where our daughter and son-in-law live is no larger than our town, the grocery options are much more varied, especially in the area of fresh produce. In comparison to most parts of the United States, the English are much more committed to local produce, organically grown, and fair-trade products. As on our first visit, we were amazed by the variety and quality of prepared sandwiches available from M&S Simply Food (the grocery subsidiary of Marks & Spencer). Using free-range chicken and eggs, organically grown produce, and other high-quality products, these sandwiches are tasty and attractive—quite unlike anything available at a comparable price in the States. Other prepared foods we sampled were equally outstanding, including some incredibly cheap (£1.50) frozen pizzas from Tesco.

We experienced a variety of restaurant and takeaway cuisine: the obligatory fish and chips a couple of times, Chinese twice, excellent restaurant pizzas twice. My son-in-law made us a great prawn curry. And at the venerable Falkland Arms pub in Great Tew, Oxfordshire, we lucked into a special event and enjoyed spit-turned (rotisserie barbecue) lamb baps (sandwiches on large, soft round rolls) with salad (quite a variety, including a delicious potato mayonnaise) for just £6. For our road trips, we made sandwiches at home, including the quintessentially English (Cheddar) cheese and (Branston) pickle.

I seemed to luck into salmon (both plain and smoked) quite a few times, but what became a theme (to the point that I made it a crusade) was beef and ale (or steak and ale) pie. I ended up sampling the versions of five different pubs, all different, all excellent, and all, as the photos below demonstrate, very attractively presented.

The first version was the Steak and Tanglefoot Pie at The Black Horse in Horley, Surrey (near Gatwick). This is “a local pub owned and run by a centuries-old independent family brewer,” Hall & Woodhouse in Dorset, “one of the few remaining regional family brewers,” which has “brewed Badger ales and offered a warm welcome since 1777.” Among their ales is Tanglefoot, which is used in the pie.

The next version came from The Waiting Room, the bar/restaurant of our hotel, the Premier Inn at 26–30 York Way, London (near King’s Cross and St. Pancras rail stations). If I recall correctly, it claimed to use Ruddles County ale (a product of Greene King Brewery). As can be seen from the photos, accompaniments varied, usually including some mixture of vegetables plus potatoes in some form. From the offered selection (chips, jacket potato, boiled potatoes, etc.), this time I chose “Dauphinoise” potatoes, which were described as being in a cheesy sauce. Sort of like au gratin potatoes, but much better! (Recipes I found online vary widely; some do not include cheese, but all include heavy cream and are very rich.)

Version number three was the British Beef and King’s Ale Pie served at the Tiltyard Café at Hampton Court Palace in East Molesey, Surrey. It marked the first and last appearance of mushy peas as a side dish.

From the audio guide at Hampton Court Palace we learned that meat pies are as much a cooking method (alongside roasting, baking, and boiling) as a way of serving meat. In medieval times, when food was eaten directly from the table, or perhaps from a wooden trencher or a slab of bread used as a plate, the pie crust served as a dish for meat cooked in a stew. The meat and vegetable mixture was prepared separately, in a large cauldron, and then ladled into the prepared crusts and baked. Diners would break the top crust and eat the contents of the pie, leaving the crust uneaten. Since it was just a flour-and-water mixture, it would not have been very tasty, anyway. In contrast, the pastry of all the pies we had was a delicious short crust, and we devoured every last crumb!

Next came the Beef and Ale Pie from the Queen & Castle (a Beefeater pub), Castle Green, Kenilworth, Warwickshire.

The final version, and perhaps the best, was the British Beef and Ale Pie offered by The Prince Regent (a Greene King pub, as most in Cambridge seemed to be) at 91 Regent Street, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire. This was the first time we’d had a pie that was not individual and self-contained. My husband and I presumably got the two halves of a single pie, and it was quite possibly the best of the lot.

In most cases, it seemed appropriate to accompany these dishes with ale; in Cambridge, where the University is celebrating its octocentenary, we couldn’t resist the offer of Cambridge Octocentennial Ale.

Senior Moment

I had an experience at the grocery store yesterday that really threw me for a loop.

I had just dashed in on my way home from Rotary to pick up a couple of items, including a twelve-pack of Yuengling, and was at the express checkout. As I swiped my debit card, the cashier, dragging my beer over the scanner, said, “Are you over 60?”

What?! I haven’t been carded for alcohol in a looong time, but this was my first reaction, followed by the immediate realization that surely the drinking age hadn’t been raised to 60 while I wasn’t paying attention!

Belatedly it dawned on me. The supermarket I patronize has changed hands several times in the last few years. Grocery stores in general are struggling in competition with Wal-Mart and other superstores, and this store, originally owned by a local family company, has been lucky to survive at all. The most recent new owners had just celebrated a Grand Reopening last week (to coincide with the Grand Opening of a new Publix), boasting hundreds of price reductions and other new features, including a senior discount (2½%) on Wednesdays.

Although it took just an instant for the penny to drop, and I immediately gabbled that yes, in fact I’ll be qualifying for Medicare in just a couple of months, I was so rattled by this blip in my routine that I momentarily forgot my PIN and had to actually think before punching in the numbers, usually a purely reflex action.

As they say, getting old is not for sissies—but it does have its perks. Now I just have to figure out how I’m going to squander the fifty-two cents I saved with the discount.

Walking and Wishing

Gardenias are in bloom here in Fairhope. I love the smell of gardenias, and every one I pass makes me nostalgic about the house we briefly owned in Atlanta. We lived in that house only eight months, so were there for only one summer, but I took full advantage of the gardenia bush by the back door, bringing in fresh blossoms each day to scent the house. I keep saying that someday, when we get around to having our yard landscaped, I want a gardenia bush (possibly over the objections of my husband, who doesn’t share my love of the fragrance).

I’d love to have a gardenia bush closer by, but as I walk I am even more wistful about another beauty beginning with the letter g, my new granddaughter, who is an ocean away. We will be visiting in July, and I look forward to meeting her then. Until then, I’m dependent on photos, which make me painfully aware of the opportunities I’m missing. My daughter recently sent fresh pictures, and I must share some here. I couldn’t choose between these two taken at one month, so you get both.

With her handsome daddy

In a moment of astonishment.

As a bonus, here’s one with her beautiful mother, at age two months:

Presto, Change-o, Part 2

I believe I have previously mentioned that a neighbor of mine, a nationally known watercolorist, had torn down his house and was building a new one on the site. He and his wife have been living in a rental house nearby during construction. Today as I walked past the house, he was out in the street talking to a contractor.

I commented that the house was really shaping up nicely (my last walkthrough was a week or two ago), and he said, yes, they had just a week left to go.

As I looked again, surprised that it was so near completion, I was even more surprised to see that the front yard was covered with grass and a gravel driveway. I said, “Whoa! I just walked past here yesterday, and my head must really have been in the clouds because I didn’t even notice that the landscaping had been done.” (In fact, I later realized that what I had noticed yesterday was someone carrying a large triple sink into the house.)

He said, “Oh, it’s all been done in just the past two hours. It really makes a difference, doesn’t it?” Indeed.

The current trend in landscaping is certainly one of the most dramatic changes in home construction I’ve observed in my lifetime. I well recall a new house in our old neighborhood in Mobile. When construction was complete, a few shrubs were planted around the foundation, and grass plugs were dotted across the prospective “lawn.” The site was hilly, and the first good rain washed all the plugs down into the gutter. By this method it can take years to establish a lawn (and weeds get a firm foothold in the process).

Nowadays, landscapers arrive and roll out sod like carpet. By the time they are finished, the house looks as if it had been there forever, although sometimes even the sod isn’t permanent. A few years ago I was surprised to see landscapers removing the practically brand-new sod in front of the new house across the street from us and laying fresh sod. When I inquired, I learned that the owners had discovered that the original sod contained traces of some unwanted strain of grass that they considered a contaminant, and so they wanted it eradicated and replaced (presumably at no additional cost).

“Manufactured homes” are commonly denigrated, and even prefabricated house components haven’t entirely caught on yet, but readymade lawns are very much in fashion.

Color Shift

The house painting mentioned in my previous post got me to thinking about house colors. When we moved to our present neighborhood in 1980, most of the houses that were not brick were painted white, including ours. Ours is still white, but it is in a distinct minority. As I was walking yesterday, I took an informal survey and realized how few white houses there are left; most are now grey or cream or some pastel earth tone (ranging down to a light brown), with a few pale blue or yellow and a few dark green, grey, or brown. (Of course, it’s also true that a lot of the formerly white houses are themselves gone, demolished to make way for larger, more colorful replacements.)

The first time we had our house painted, I tentatively suggested a color, with white trim, to accentuate the modest ornamentation of the trim. My husband balked. The painter declined to express an opinion, saying it was our house and our decision, but after my husband put his foot down, the painter expressed relief, saying that, as far as he was concerned, “That’s a white house.”

Meanwhile, our neighbors on one side painted their house a deep barn red. The neighbors on the other side went with royal blue. New owners with saner heads have since prevailed, and both houses are now grey. When we give directions to our house, we say, “It’s the third house on the left, a two-story white house with a red mailbox on the house.” In those days, though, it was even easier: “We’re the two-story white house between the red house and the blue house.”

So what is it with all this color? There was a time when one might have green shutters on a white house. More daringly, one might have a red front door, like the bright-red tie setting off a man’s conventional starched white shirt. Which brings back memories of a time when all dress shirts were white. When, in fact, all linens (sheets, tablecloths, even towels) were white, a time when the term “White Sale” was literal. Women’s clothes were colorful, men’s drab. Carpet colors were bland and “neutral.” The preferred interior wall paint color was “Antique White” or “Eggshell.”

Have we become a more colorful people? Or are we more desirous of distinguishing ourselves from our neighbors? Or perhaps paints have improved? Or air conditioning? Many of the original houses in our neighborhood were built as vacation cottages, used only in the summer. Since they were cooled only by natural ventilation, it would have been practical to paint them white to reflect as much sun as possible (perhaps no one noticed that the dark roofs were defeating the purpose). It might also have made sense not to waste thought or money on a color when white paint was perhaps less expensive and certainly easier to match for touch-ups.

Rumination on the whole idea of color, though, suggests other lines of exploration. A few points:

• Our remote ancestors dressed very colorfully, or at least as colorfully as they could with existing technologies. In a time when vegetable dyes produced mostly “earth tones” that faded quickly, the most prized colorant was “Tyrian purple,” derived from the glands of the Murex (a marine mollusk). This deep-red color was so valuable that it was reserved for royalty, nobility, or elected officials in ancient civilizations.
• Color continued to be used lavishly throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, but during the period of the French Empire, when fashions harked back to the classical era (ancient Greeks and Romans), most clothing was white. The reason for this was that most of the models of classical garb were statues that, though once colorfully painted, had faded to their natural marble color, giving the impression that the ancients had worn only white.
• The discovery of aniline dyes, which were more permanent than vegetable dyes, allowed even common people to wear brightly-colored garments, including printed calico.
• The paintings of the Old Masters depicted people in richly colored garments. With the advent of photography, the colors of clothing were reduced to black and white. I suspect that this creates an effect similar to the faded marble statues: surely our grandparents and great-grandparents wore colors other than black and white and grey, but who can tell?
• Color photography returned color to our lives, but many early color prints are now faded and yellowed, giving us, again, a false sense of the colors we wore.
• Black-and-white TV again reduced us to grayscale: when I first met my husband, he wore nothing but black pants, white shirts, and black ties. Ironically, TV news anchors were wearing pale-blue shirts because these looked better on black-and-white TV. Color bloomed again in the 1970s when color TVs became more common.
• HD TV is taking color appreciation to new highs. Will this result in more color or less? I would be inclined to think it might actually be less. When color TVs first came out, they were such a novelty that we turned the color dial up high and enjoyed the richness. Later we realized that faces didn’t need to be orange and dialed the color back to a more reasonable level. As HD allows us to appreciate subtler colors, these may rebound. Time will tell.

Presto, Change-o

Regular readers of this blog (yes, there are a few) will recall that I am not noted for my keen powers of observation, but I was still rather startled, on today’s walk, to see that one of the rental houses around the corner from us was suddenly pale lime green. There are two of these houses, both fairly small cottages, both stucco, and they do tend to change color occasionally, but I could have sworn that, as recently as yesterday, this one was still indigo (its mate is still salmon-pink).

Yes, the house is small, and the relatively smooth surface, which can be painted with a roller, makes painting a relatively simple job, but it’s still hard to believe this was an overnight transformation. Admittedly, I didn’t walk past the house Thursday or Friday (though I did drive past), and I do vaguely recall that when I passed yesterday my attention was diverted by some people from the management company in the driveway (I thought perhaps they were showing the house, which is currently vacant), but I just can’t believe that the change in color, which was so dramatically remarkable today, could have been overlooked all those other times I passed, even if I was lost in thought.

It is experiences such as these that make me wonder how much else I am overlooking on my walks (and in life).

It’s a Girl!

Although the ultrasound technicians had very confidently predicted, based on an initial sonogram, that my new grandchild would be a granddaughter, I wasn’t about to buy anything pink until she actually arrived. I’d heard enough stories of surprises (and disappointments) as a result of such predictions. So when my son-in-law called last Monday, March 30, saying “It’s a girl!” I was both thrilled and relieved. And it turns out he wasn’t being entirely tongue-in-cheek, as he and my daughter were privately reserving judgment as well, though they’d only just managed to come up with a boy’s name before they headed for the hospital.

Unlike my labors, my daughter’s was neither short nor easy—twelve hours before she went to the hospital, and twenty-four grueling hours after arriving—and in the end, instead of a calm midwife delivery in a birthing suite, she delivered “in theater” (in an operating room) with surgeons standing by ready for the presumed-inevitable cesarean section. Miraculously, she was finally able to deliver naturally, and, as you can see, the result was adorable.

She has nothing but good things to say about England’s National Health Service, as she received attentive, competent, caring care at every juncture. On the ward after her delivery, as the attendants were about to leave, she said, “I think I’m blacking out.” When she next opened her eyes, her bed was surrounded by nurses, interns, midwives, and residents, including several who were supposed to have just gone off shift.

She is also very grateful for the UK’s paternity leave policies, which have allowed her husband to stay home for two weeks to help her get settled in with their new daughter. As you can see from the photo, they are bonding very well!

Racing the Calendar

On Wednesday I reported the beginning symptoms of what has developed into a pretty bad cold. On Thursday I was more or less functional, but Friday was the dripping, sneezing, stay-close-to-a-box-of-Kleenex day. Yesterday was the weak, achy, stay-in-bed-most-of-the-day day, and today is the sore, tight throat day.

Since my husband and I are scheduled to fly to the Pacific Northwest on Tuesday, for visits with family in Oregon followed by my attendance at the Microsoft MVP Global Summit in Seattle March 1–4, I sincerely hope that tomorrow will see a dramatic reduction in symptoms.

I’ve been steadily grinding through the mountain of details that have to be taken care of to prepare for a ten-day absence, and I think I’m pretty much on track to get everything done, but this virus has definitely thrown a monkey wrench into the works, constraining all my excursions—to the grocery, to the library for used paperbacks for the trip, to the post office, to the drugstore for more cough syrup—into what will undoubtedly be a very crowded Monday.

Since I haven’t emerged from the house any farther than the front walk to bring in the newspaper, needless to say I haven’t been out walking, but I’ll have plenty of opportunity for that in Portland, Astoria, and Seattle—details to follow.