Sitting at a picnic bench, overlooking the hills, horses, a beautiful wine tasting room and my then-boyfriend-now husband bringing out a picnic complete with a chicken piccata sandwich, my favorite olives, and an engagement ring.

I’m passing through London for a day on my way back to California, and I stop at my brother’s flat in Earls Court. I hold my 3-day-old nephew, Tomasz, for the first time.

We spend the first day on the beach about three seconds away from our hotel room in Nusa Dua. It’s overcast, and the tide is low, so we stay there all day ordering a couple of cocktails and exploring the exposed undersea inhabitants (like star fish that are bigger than the size of my head), laid out under the sun and waiting for the water to come back.

We hit the breakfast buffet the next morning, hungry and happy. Except my husband seems frozen in his seat at the table. When I ask him what’s wrong, he says (careful to move nothing but his lips), “I think I got sunburned yesterday.” And I notice he’s as red as a lobster.

The rest of the afternoon disappears getting after-sun treatments and massages at the hotel spa. Just as I step, blissfully massaged and relaxed into a warm, stone bath full of fresh flower buds, I’m handed a cup of delicious tea. A satisfying tropical rain starts as I sink into the tub.

*** Ramadan is the traditional annual Muslim festival that involves fasting from sun-up to sundown***

Petaling Street and Central Market, usually the human equivalent of beehives, have been practically deserted all day. We’ve had the most amazing chicken rice in the world, gone shopping, seen some sights…then the sun goes down and locals seem to come out from everywhere. Suddenly the world is incredibly crowded, hungry, and looking for a party…Actually alarmed by the sudden change of pace overtaking the city, we find a rooftop bar with a great view of the beautifully lit Petronas Towers and spend a quiet evening taking it in.

I lived there for seven years, but this kopitiam has everything I want to show my husband in one, tiny breakfast nook. The staff are friendly, the food is above-and-beyond delicious, and I swear if we moved back, I’d go there every. Single. Morning.

I order one of just about everything for my husband to try and the whole bill comes to about US$7. It’s so good, we’ve entered into a silent agreement to appreciate this moment of bliss-infused food without words and with hearty, appreciative eating. Everyone who comes in while we’re there takes one look at us and assumes we haven’t eaten for days.

My husband and I hit Bourbon Street – and promptly get pelted with beads from drunk kids on a balcony to let us know we’ve arrived. We’re absolutely enthralled with the place, drink our first real Hurricanes, discover Abita beer and stuff our faces with

oysters at Acme Oyster House. On the way home much, much later, we bump into a couple who are the spitting image of The Dude and Walter. My day is complete.

My speed-demon mother and I are stuck behind a car proudly displaying a DE sticker on it that refuses to drive above the speed limit (despite the fact that everyone else does there). I hear her swear alternately in two different languages for over

an hour at it. But the meal we get when we reach Gargiano is totally worth it: seafood and asparagus tart on a bed of fresh red cabbage, followed by a baked pear with Asiago cheese and walnuts. Mixed seafood salad (of grilled fish with fennel seeds with fennel puree, mashed potatoes and fresh salad on the side – apple torte, to finish, with coffee.

My usefulness-to-humanity factor gets raised a notch when I’m in a bookstore and an American man is grilling the saleswoman on how best to use his transit time on his way back from “Europe” to visit the city of London in 9 hours. Between grinding my teeth, I decide to put my 7 years of constant Tube-travel while living in England to good use, and pull him aside. I tell him everything he has to know to store his luggage, get on the tube (including telling him the exact price of a day ticket), what station he wants to aim for, what to see, what he can walk to and what time he’ll need to get back on the Piccadilly line in time to catch his flight home. I answer every question the saleswomen couldn’t answer because she didn’t actually live in London, but commuted from Reading.

This man is older, and bewildered on a number of levels. He takes vicious notes, and never says thank you.

My husband and I take a weekend just o appreciate the The Hitching Post, a steak house made famous by the movie Sideways, and Pea Soup Andersen’s, a quirky diner next to our hotel.

It’s a busy night at The Hitching Post, so we aim for the bar first. After a glass, two seats become available and we opt to order an appetizer. Some guy sitting next to my husband strikes up a conversation and within mere minutes has ordered us some of the best mussels I’ve ever eaten (***link to Moules Mariniere), and ordered us a glass of the Highliner. This guy looks like he’s in the area on business, and I’ll be honest, I’m suspicious that he’ll start trying to sell us something. But he’s interested in wine, which is what keeps bringing us back to the area, so we have a nice chat and he turns out to be pretty nice.

When we move to our table about 40 minutes later, we find he’s picked up our tab.

We’re driving around and getting utterly lost in the rolling hills and gorgeous scenery. I experience a moment of zen-like bliss in the passenger seat as I let go of every thought and feel the worries of the world release themselves from their stronghold on my shoulders. It takes considerable determination to do this mentally, but the scenic grapevines, farm houses, gardens, horses,

cows, and perfect sunshine streaming through perfect clouds in a perfect sky make it, somehow, seem easier.

Suddenly, I hear my fiance ask impatiently if I wouldn’t mind helping out a little with the directions, as we’re well and truly lost. I snap to attention. Engaged to each other for less than three hours, I suddenly panic as though the whole thing is off if I don’t do my part to navigate. I pull out the GPS which is still charging, my Blackberry for Google Maps (in case the GPS doesn’t load fast enough), and some print outs of the area I made before leaving for the trip. I’m also trying to find somewhere to put my sunglasses, but I’m all confused with wires and paper and technology, and nothing is moving fast enough. I realize I’ve started to sweat under the pressure. He obviously hasn’t gauged how seriou

sly I’ve taken this, because he then says, “What are you doing? Put all that down and LOOK AT ALL OF THIS GODDAMN BEAUTIFUL SCENERY.”

Every time I think about that moment, I get a huge grin on my face.

Looking forward to what 2010 brings…:)

All of your wordly possessions are located in one of those crates.

While working at my first job, back in 1999 on a street called Free School Lane* in Cambridge, I had a boss who took a great interest in my background and where I had been growing up. A former history teacher, she was and continues to be the best boss ever for lending me the phrase, “So, ‘home’ is where you hang your hat.”

I’ve had many “homes” then, in over 35 different countries and across 4 continents. Realistically though, when I feel the pangs of homesickness, they are usually narrowed down to only 3 or 4 specific places, where I have actually lived for more extended periods of time: the small town where my family still lives in Italy; England (both Cambridge and London); Singapore, where I spent my teenage years; and occasionally, my mother’s house which, like me, moves in shape and distance across the globe like ‘Howl’s Moving Castle’.

Growing up, I hated being an expat kid. I had no idea how good I actually had it. By living as an expatriate, you inadvertently get to enjoy the best of what any country offers, without getting bogged down by the financial and political injustices of paying their taxes, voting in their elections, or having to get involved in any “longer term” associations. Most other people you tend to meet are also expatriates with a similar understanding that the duration of your friendship may be long or short, and will depend largely on your ability to keep on moving, traveling, and hanging your hat in pastures new.

Now that I am an adult, married, and living in one flat for longer than 2 years at a time (this is a first for me!), I find that wherever I am, I still think about where I will be next. It’s as though the foundations of my living situation will drop out from under me tomorrow and I will have to drive to LAX and decide on the spot, looking up at the flipping departure board, “Where to now?”.

I am unreasonably lucky to have two passports, which allow me to travel and live in lots and lots of nice places. Including Cuba, which might be a tad lonely since my husband is American. (Or a tad expensive, since Americans can actually visit Cuba, just not spend any money there. The point is, it may be more trouble than it’s worth.) And it doesn’t help that my husband has a touch of wanderlust about him as well, and is completely open to packing up and heading to France or England or Hong Kong for a while.

So the bee in my bonnet is this: Can someone who has spent her whole life moving around actually stay living in one place, and is this nagging feeling about living somewhere else just a reflection of my childhood? With the economy doing what it’s doing these days, it seems the US dollar may not be the wisest currency to be hanging on to. And yet, in the last three years I found myself in a comfortable place surrounded by family (new: I am a proud newlywed to a Californian native, and old: my parents live here now, as well as a brother, sister-in-law, and nephew). So I inadvertently hung my hat in Southern California and it’s grown some roots, but the bee inside it keeps buzzing all the same.

Maybe one of these days I’ll give up thinking that I should be moving somewhere else. One day I might understand that I’m already somewhere else, too. I guess the important thing is that I’m happy where I am, and that should the rug fly out from under me, there’s always LAX, my passports, and that flippin’ destination board.

*Incidentally, the school I worked for back in the day is in the very same building where Watson and Crick built their first model of DNA. For me, it was just an excellent view of The Eagle (one of my favorite pubs in Cambridge).

Andre Organic Lavender

My love affair with the smell of lavender began in Provence when I was sixteen. With plenty of purple fields, gorgeous sunshine and blue skies, I thought I was in heaven at the time, and I swore when I left that I’d go back to live there some day. So imagine my surprise when on the road to Sanford I found a lavender field and the Andre Organic Lavender Shop.

With a particular recipe in mind, I visited this shop in the middle of the Santa Ynez Valley and was amazed at the variety of lavender products I had never seen before. Among them, a Lavender Breath Spray, which packed a strong punch of refreshment and woke us right up and out of our wine haze. Lavender, amongst its many uses is also a known natural anti-inflammatory and antiseptic. So, if a bit powerful, a good lavender breath spray should clear you of bad breath for life!

I was looking, in particular, for culinary lavender. Culinary lavender is collected from the flower buds, picked before blooming, dried, and sifted through carefully for any impurities such as dirt or leaves. The buds are what contain essential oil from which commercial scented oils are derived, and the collection of culinary lavender is a careful process that requires good timing and patience, of which I have neither.

A lavender-essences selling shop in Kent in the UK, has this to offer on cooking with the herb:

“Lavender softens the tartness of acidic fruits. Even just a few drops of cooking essence added to a saucepan of stewed fruit can make a big difference to the taste. The flavour of lavender in savoury recipes is enhanced by being used in combination with coriander seeds.  Fresh lavender spikes make an unusual garnish for meat and fish dishes and the flavour is particularly good alongside fennel, oregano, sage and coriander seed.”

Which plainly outlines what you need to know about cooking with it for both sweet and savoury dishes: Use it sparingly!

The Andre lavender farm grows at least 10 different varieties of lavender, and my nose is not yet fine tuned to distinguish different lavender scents by name. Coming from England I am more used to the scent of English and French lavender, whereas many of these scents seemed to contain a higher level of camphor. There are at least 39 known species of the plant. For my recipe (available below), I chose a “Vera” kind, which was the mildest of their culinary varieties available for sale.

Tending the store was a very knowledgeable and very friendly lady called Barbara, who informed me of their picking processes and the ins and outs of culinary lavender for my cooking. She also cautioned the strength of the culinary lavender buds I purchased. Too much, and your baking will turn bitter, or choose the wrong kind and have the adverse reaction of making anything you’re cooking taste like soap. She did this while, with the patience of a saint, she sifted through a box of lavender buds in front of her to ensure the end product is a pure as possible. So keep that in mind if you purchase anything from there: Each product has been sifted through by Andre Organic Lavender, bud by bud, by hand.

The first time we passed the Lavender Shop on the way to Sanford‘s* wine tasting room, Brian actually refused to stop. I guess it was getting dark and the shop wouldn’t have been open anyway, but it can look suspicious from the outside if you aren’t really looking for it. I put it down to the reindeer outside, which reminds me of Christmas but seems out of place in the month of May. Walk inside and you’ll be delighted you did. Aside from being a very relaxing scent, I’ve never seen a shop so original and so inspired by their craft.

* Sanford Winery, which has undoubtedly profited from its appearance in the movie Sideways, was a little disappointing for us. Although it claims a long history of positive reviews, we didn’t feel particularly at ease in the tasting room, which was newly refurbished and largely impersonal. For the price of a bottle, I’d easily recommend other pinots or chardonnays for less than $15. However, Sanford does have a fascinating series of monthly webisodes if you’re curious about the winemaking process.

(A "hodad" is a 50's term for surfer groupie.)

It started, as it has for so many since, with Guy Fieri’s show on The Food Network.  The show, plus the appeal of seeing something on TV one Saturday morning, liking it, and driving 3 hours to go and see it for myself. It also starts with a literal starvation for a decent burger while living in London (a matter not addressed by English restauranteurs until relatively recently).

A good burger shouldn’t be hard to make. I’m not for over-seasoned beef, over-cooked or processed into perfect looking, 12 cm diameter patties. Good bread, good meat, good salad and good ketchup should be all that is required.  And, generally speaking, the number of napkins used to eat a burger with any kind of social etiquette is directly proportional to the excellence of the flavour. My order of 1 hamburger, 1 side of onions and 1 strawberry milkshake took approximately 11 napkins to consume gracefully, scoring Hodad’s an 11 on a normal scale of 1 to 10. Good job, guys!

The inside of the restaurant is laid back and the walls are plastered with license plates from around the country as well as a sign that accurately reads “No Shirt, No Shoes, No Problem” (hardly any of the men in there had shirts on). I liked it on my first visit because it was sunny outside and there were plenty of surfers who had just popped in for a bite to eat before heading back out to the waves. The second time, the day wasn’t so clear and I noticed that either it was a lot more popular due to reruns of Guy Fieri’s ‘Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives’ and his raving review on the show, or I’d been kind of blind to the neighbourhood the first time. This burger joint is a brilliant novelty stop on your route through SoCal. So by all means, stop by, chow down on their deliciously grotesque looking burgers, and then try something else if you find yourself back in the area.

On my second visit to Hodad’s, there were so many customers the queue went out the building and down the street for the whole block. Although the line moves relatively quickly, Newport Avenue is not the nicest street in San Diego to wait around on: although there are a number of cute souvenir shops, there are also an inordinate number of the homeless (and inebriated, and foul tempered). Nothing of note particularly happened, but as I said, it’s just not the nicest street to hang out on. Instead, I’d suggest passing the whole line and walking straight in to order food to go. They’re pretty quick and you can hop back in your car and head for a quieter beach, or wherever you like.

Hodad’s is located in Ocean Beach and open from 10AM to 10PM alllll summer long.

5010 Newport Ave.
Ocean Beach, CA 92107
View Larger Map

My first (of probably many) trips to Bakersfield was for a fundraising poker night my future brother in-law was organizing for his son’s baseball team. We drove up Saturday night, where Brian gave everyone a run for their money at the tables before losing his $100 buy-in. (So what? Its for a good cause and the taco bar was both home cooked and amazing.) Gladly, I have not yet fallen into the Los Angelean mind-set that everything is too far to drive with too much traffic involved. In fact, I loved the hour-long drive through farms and fields and beautiful landscapes so much, I couldn’t stop taking pictures on the way there, or the way back.

So we’re driving along Highway 126 and I’m literally drooling at all the fresh fruit and veggie stalls since we left all our cash in Bakersfield. Assuming these stalls won’t accept credit cards, we resigned ourselves to redirecting our route home via Los Olivos for a bit of Sunday relaxation. Then I start to see these signs for a “Honey Tasting Room” and decide to make a stop.

MMmmm, honey! Bennett’s Honey Farm & Tasting Room is surrounded by orange trees and farmland, has a teeny little parking lot and a shop where their honeys are laid out on the center table. I tried the Sage (musky aftertaste), Eucalyptus (softer aftertaste), Orange (bittersweet aftertaste) and the Cactus (best of all, chunky and sugary). The shop also had a small display of hundreds of live bees working in a glass case. If you’re like me and generally hate to see bugs of any kind, I still recommend a closer look at the “secret life” of bees. Some interesting honeybee facts:

• Honeybees communicate with one another by “dancing” so as to give the direction and distance of flowers.
• A single hive contains approximately 40-45,000 bees.
• Theoretically, the energy in one ounce of honey would provide one bee with enough energy to fly around the world.
• The honeybee is not born knowing how to make honey; the younger bees are taught by the more experienced ones.
• A queen can lay her weight in eggs in one day and 200,000 eggs in a year.

Great start to our afternoon! Next, our favorite game: punching in “Wineries” into my GPS to see what’s in the neighbourhood. But the only winery to be found within a few miles was listed as the Geissinger Winery. Never heard of it? Who cares, we drove on anyway…and what a diamond in the rough.

As we walked in, I was put off a little by the “Bistro Menu” that claimed “authentic French” fare and started the list of sandwiches with a Turkey Club. Now I’m no expert, but I have been to France often and I don’t recall ever seeing turkey top a menu over there. Not even for Christmas. (They leave that to the British.) The Geissinger wines had beautiful labels that were reminiscent of 19th century designs: painted grapes on a background of musical sheets, and whether intentional or not, the bleeding ink gave it all a soft look and feel to compliment the bizarreness of the names and smells. Most notably, a red that smelled of the ocean even though the tasting notes said “pomegranate and cherry”.

Directly opposite the tasting room is an historic train depot, the Fillmore and Western Railway. With cars permanently stationed housing a creepy antiques store and shameless amounts of Thomas the Tank Engine merchandise, the F&W tourist train still operates year-round. It was getting late for us to take the time to take a ride, but I picked up a flyer and marked a date on my calendar to come back. If anyone is interested in joining us for a ride to “Ichabog” pumpkin patch next October? How about the Wizard Express Murder Mystery Dinner for Harry Potter fans? I’ve had about all I can take or Murder Mystery outings after a night with “Murder on the Orient Express” at the Prince Charles cinema in London, where I think I actually fell asleep…

Last recommendation for this trip: Pyramid Lake. If you happen to be on your way back to LA from Bakersfield, don’t forget to look right as you drive by. Pyramid Lake is located in the San Gabriel Mountains along Interstate 5, approximately 60 miles north of Los Angeles and 50 miles south of Bakersfield. According to FishersNet.com, Pyramid harbors a wide variety of fish species; most popular are the huge 30+ striped bass, but at the very least you’ll see those wacky manmade pyramids from the road.

For Fillmore Visitors, Geissinger can be found here:

365 Santa Clara Street

Fillmore, CA 93015

Ph.(805) 524-5000

Tasting Room Hours:

Mon – Thu:     11:00am-5:00pm

Fri – Sun:         11:00am-6:30pm

Bennett’s Honey Farm can be found here:

3177 E Telegraph Rd (off Hwy 126)

(805) 521-1375

Mon. – Fri.  8 am – 4:30 pm

Sat. – Sun. 9 am – 6:00 pm

For train info:

Click here to find out more about the Pumpkinliners tour we’ll be taking in October and to book tickets.

My new fiance and I have been setting up our own business, which has taken off quite well. But as new pilots of our independent business, we’re in no place to be spending large amounts of cash on a trip, however special the occasion. Hooked on finding the cheapest hotel available, we scoured all the AAA and United Mileage deals we could, and settled on Best Western Pea Soup Andersen’s.

The room itself is just fine. Clean, roomy, comfortable. The bathrooms were kind of strange and only had those tiny soaps and an assortment of oddly sized towels. What’s to complain about when you’re staying in Buellton for less than $100? Most of the other hotels we passed along the way looked like prime locations for a Psycho shot-for-shot remake, and quite frankly, I didn’t want to die.

After a night at The Hitching Post II, we decided to check out this self-proclaimed World Famous Split Pea Soup. Who was this Andersen, and why should he think his Split Pea Soup is the best? Compared to whom? From the hotel, you can literally roll your way over to the restaurant for breakfast, which is kind of what we did, still being full from the night before. Totally deserted on this sunny, bright, Sunday morning in May, we appeared to be the only guests until I noticed a troupe of leather-clad motorcyclists wandering in a similar state of wonder and disbelief. You know, the way the kids look when they arrive at Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory?

As we walked in the door, I flashed my fiance* a melon-sized grin. This place can only be described as a House of Extreme Tat: Wall to wall tacky souvenirs and pea soup memorabilia (is that the right word? I hadn’t experienced it yet, but now I really, really wanted to.) There is a Christmas gift shop, a jewelry gift shop, a sweet shop, and tinned goods piled on every shelf, all over the place. Postcards, t-shirts, magnets, pens, pencils, little boxes of crayons, all emblazoned with the bold alpine font, “Pea Soup Andersen’s Split Pea Soup World Famous Since 1924″. There was even a display reading “Try our famous Cheddar Cheese and Crackers”, but as I had no clue how long it had been sitting there, I backed away slowly.

In the restaurant, I ordered the Travelers’ Breakfast which consisted of a bowl of split pea soup, and a plate of bottomless pancakes (of course), eggs and a choice of breakfast meat. And whaddaya know – it wasn’t half bad. In fact, it was pretty good for a soup I don’t care for and still won’t order anywhere else. How’s that for a review?

Leaving what I thought was the dining room of the restaurant, I noticed a series of other rooms and seating areas, all decorated differently. Presumably they use different rooms for different occasions. And clearly myself, my fiance and our fellow diners who were on a Harley Davidson tour of Central Coast did not qualify as reason enough to be seated in the Room of Chintz. (My own title applied there, at Andersen’s they call it the Pavilion Room.) Everything in this building and in the decor of the hotel next door bears a remarkable resemblance to the colours of a breakfast danish. Which is why I think the Danes are to blame for this cultural sediment.

All in all, I was not shocked in the least to find that Buellton is the setting for the final sequence of Death Proof. The Pea Soup Andersen’s website says it “remains a slice of Americana”, but I would tack a word on to that sentence to ensure its accuracy: “Congealed”.

* The gratuitous use of the term “fiance” is entirely intentional and justified because I am extremely excited about our new state of affairs. If you don’t like it, you’re a Scrooge.

Think I made this up? See for yourself!:

http://www.peasoupandersens.net/

An old video I found with a Split Pea Andersen’s Commercial: See 1 minute 22 seconds to about 2 minutes 22 seconds

I have a bee in my bonnet. It’s called Buellton. Possibly the creepiest town I’ve ever visited in my life. I can’t put my finger on what it was exactly that made me feel weird to begin with, but I can tell you that by the time we made it to the Hitching Post for dinner, I was pretty creeped out. If you want to eat the most amazing steak in the world and be literally scared shitless while chewing, visit The Hitching Post in Buellton, CA. Me and my fiance (of 2 days- hooray!), checked into our hotel, hopped in the car and headed straight for the excitement of the famous “Sideways” restaurant.

We knew there would be a wait, because I called beforehand and they said there would be. Also, if you’re reading this and planning a trip, they won’t take reservations over the phone. So we went anyway and after a few minutes a seat opened up at the bar, so we decided to wait there instead. I read a review on TripAdvisor that said, “the decor very dated” which puts it kind of politely. Overall, I had the sense of the place being a little too worn, as in, not terribly clean. Both the service and the side vegetables confirm that this is a place that is famous for its steaks and wine, and the fact that an unusually good movie was filmed there (for three days), and not much else.

Our neighbours at the bar were pretty friendly. Maybe too friendly. Some guy flat out ordered my husband-to-be a Pinot Noir HIGHLINER, at $14 a glass. He didn’t even start a conversation first, nor pursue one afterwards. (Am I weird to find that creepy? He was sitting right next to us. And no, he didn’t work there.) The menu at The Hitching Post has this to say about it’s oeuvre: “Aromas of berries and sweet Frenchy oak, bright young fruit tastes rich and round, poised to improve over the next 5 to 10 years”, and it was indeed, brilliant. But the feeling of claustrophobia and impending doom persisted.

Sitting down at our table didn’t improve things: On the wall to the far right of my fiance’s head, a gigantic post-modern, Andy Warholesque, slightly-out-of-focus and extremely brightly coloured painting of Saddam Hussein wearing a safari sun hat was grinning at me inanely. At this point, I thought I’d been drugged for sure, which was making the visible flames from the kitchen alarming. But I will also point out that I seemed to be the only person there who was alarmed by anything at all. It had been a crazy two days (did I mention I’m engaged now?!?). I thought, “You’ve had too much wine. With all the excitement, you should just go to the loo, splash some cold water on your hands. You’ll be fine.”

What a fool I was. The ladies room was like some nightmare maternity ward. With pink tiles all over the place, it had curtains for cubicle walls and doors on noisy, rattling chains hanging from the ceiling. I honestly couldn’t tell if this was meant as a sort of tongue-in-cheek joke, or if the owners were tripping when they ordered this. I would have run out of there screaming if it hadn’t been for the food.

You honestly cannot beat a plate of fresh mussels and a steak grilled over an open fire of red oak with a glass of their Highliner. At excellent, and I mean excellent value for money. Double whammy. Will I go there again? DEFINITELY. Will I order food to go? Probably. And it actually turns out that Saddam was really a painting of the owner, who looks utterly charming and friendly here:

More on The Hitching Post II:

http://www.hitchingpost2.com/

For Reservations:

http://www.opentable.com/single.aspx?rid=4495&restref=4495

For more pictures of the owner of the restaurant where he looks nothing like Saddam:

http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&hs=rLz&q=Frank%20Ostini&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi

Evolution | Reversed | Let

A week ago, while in London, thousands gathered at Embankment to take advantage of some pre-planned traffic diversion to get their ideologies noticed. The underlying reason for the march was a call for accountability and responsibility, but its difficult to understand how we set a good example. Where I was marching safely and peacefully, the crowds behind me took to shattering windows and erupting in spates of ill behaviour at police lines, not too far behind.

I arrived in London the Saturday morning of the protest just in time to catch all the hype on the tv over breakfast. I wanted to meet a friend at Embankment, she was late, I took off on the march without her. I wasn’t trying to come across as an anti-capitalist, although I did want to hear what the pro-environmentalists had to say.

But there’s a reason why I bailed out at Trafalgar Square and headed for the relative safety of the National Gallery: There’s just something altogether far too disturbing about British crowds.

With all the efforts gone to to ensure this protest was “peaceful”, windows just had to be smashed, didn’t they? It seems as though the British just can’t get through a day together without breaking something these days. As opposed to the old days, where a stern hold on the elbow seemed to be enough to encourage you to stop your unruly behaviour:

Some fascinating and stunning photographs at The Big Picture on boston.com demonstrate the absurdity of the English stereotype as stiff upper-lipped, tea drinking intellectuals, when in fact they act the same way during a peaceful protest as they do when their football team has lost a game:

The National Gallery by the way, wasn’t much calmer. It’s practically suicide to attempt to see anything in there on a Saturday without getting smacked in the shoulder without bothing to say “excuse me”. (Them, not me. I have a bad habit of apologizing to everyone.) Manners forgone, it was the perfect place to get my hand slammed in a door during a massive herd of tweenagers stampeding from the Impressionists to see Madame de Pompadour. However, I did find a beautiful book on the National gallery in war time, containing photos of the evacuation of their collection in 1939.

The National Gallery In War Time

While the G20 mission endeavours to “commit to maintaining open trade and investment, to avoid a retreat to protectionism, and direct necessary additional support to emerging markets and developing countries”, I can’t help but feel like we should be trying to help them along in our own little (but no less meaningful) ways. Lets keep our hands to ourselves, our protests peaceful, our manners in check, and our galleries nice places to escape to. I’m not 90, I just think that maybe we’re regressing to the level of dumb beasts when it comes to interacting with each other in public. Come on guys, can’t we all just get along?