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Just to let the faithful bloggers know, I have arrived home! I'm not tired at all, but I expect the jet lag to hit like a ton of bricks!

Goodbye England!

Today is my last full day in London, and then I head for home tomorrow morning. Thanks to all who kept up with my travels on this blog!

Tube Strike

This doesn't affect me much since I am so athletic that I walk to and fro work every day (pauses for compliments, general well-wishing), but it is a big issue for my collegaues who now need two hours to get to work one way. Yesterday people left at 4:00 to catch the last trains before the strike began at 6:00 p.m., and it is scheduled to linger until Thursday I hear.

Pork Faggots, Steak and Kidney Pie

Yes, this is what I have been eating this week. I have long loved steak and kidney pie (the Duke of Perth pub restaurant in Lakeview usually has them on the menu) but I had to try faggots for the name alone. It turns out they are related to haggis and other offal-based culinary creations--basically pork liver, pork, and traditionally pork cheek, rolled into what looks like Swedish meatballs (and sort of looks and tastes like a gamier Salisbry steak when it comes out of the oven). Very tasty!

Letters! I get Letters!

Give yourself a quality point if you have that old song running through your head. I received a letter from my friend, to whom I will give the blog-alias la Marquise de Niegebourger. Yay me! Who's a big winner?! It took exactly ten days to arrive here, not nearly as bad as it could have been. No one mentions receiving post cards from me, which makes me think I wasted $25+ on this since I am pretty sure they must have made it to the USA but not met American postal regulations and so remain undeleivered. Not so much a big winner there. But I also checked my blog traffic, and despite the dearth of comments here the blog is in fact being read; some people are actually tracking it on "Catholic Blog Tracker," which is ironic since technically this blog is arguably really part of the "Anglican blogosphere," except that in general I find almost all religious blogs so catty that I do not link to them or even read them much, Amy Welborn as always an exception. But thank you for writing, Madame de Niegebourger, and I hope you all get postcards from me eventually!

Posts Not Publishing?!

I'm feeling very cranky, a post I made yesterday, which Blogspot's dashboard still shows as posted, is not appearing. This fachachta blog doesn't even work as a diary that only I read if the posts don't actually post.

London Zoo

Very pleased with the London Zoo (except for its misleading Tube posters, which sent me to the wrong and more expensive stop!). The Reptile House was all that I could hope for, king cobra, taipan, black mamba, numerous green mambas, numerous spitting cobras, etc. An American western diamondback rattler that did not come out, as well as a sidewinder (whose cage inexplicably contained an empty Budweiser bottle and an old pack of Marlborough cigarettes, as if Americans were such addicts we smoke and drank in the hottest desert!).

New Amy Welborn Blog

Amy Welborn, the Queen of Catholic Blogging and my own inspiration in blogging about a mixture of Important Issues and everyday life in an always interesting way, is in the process of transferring to a new blog. I still check Amy's blog almost every day, and while I sometimes am irritated by her treatment of LGBTQ issues (Amy's dismissive "whatever" comment about the gay couple who write the HBO show Big Love was especially annoying recently), I still love her to pieces. The new title is Charlotte Was Both, an allusion to Charlotte's Web I will leave you to find on your own. Alas, Amy mentions that she chose this title and wanted "no allusive Latin" in the blog title, which made me blush and despair that anyone reads this blog!

Bonus points to any of you familiar with Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope, from whence the title of my blog comes. A must-read for any Anglicans, especially those of us who enjoy taking ourselves too seriously!

Manchester

Went to a meeting in Manchester in the north of England yesterday, it was a great treat and gave me a taste for train travel a bit, so I might pop off on further journeys. The August Bank Holiday is coming up, a 4 day weekend that will give me lots of travel opportunities.

Birthday Thanks

Thanks to you for your birthday wishes! I spent the day at Buckingham Palace, the first day it was open to the public as the Queen is at Balmoral for the rest of the summer. I am too much of a statistician not to be somewhat wan that 36 is "officially" the LATE 30s, and I have already been kicked out of the 18-34 demographic last year. But I cheered myself with the realization that THIS is the ageI should be when I am ordained deacon! Assuming we have our summer synod as early as we intended this year. The palace was lovely, 19 state rooms, like the White House only larger. My orignal destination was the Victoria and Albert Museum, a place which I did not see when last in London and one which has the seductive benefit of being free. Watch for the V&A in next weekend's postings.

My London Address

Some of you have asked about my London address, and as far as I can tell this is it in its fullness:

International House, Room 301
1-5 Lambeth Road
London SE1 7DQ
England

First Impressions

These posts seem hurried and incoherent, but I will try to be succinct. London is lovely, and I feel somewhat familiar with where I am going. My walk to work takes about 45 minutes (50 today!), so I am getting at least 90 minutes of good exercise a day simply walking to and fro work, not to mention any interesting diversions. The prices are as terrifying as I feared they would be--the numbers are exactly the same as on American price tags, but I have to remember these are pounds and not dollars! The exchange rate is £1 to $2.25; I am very bitter about that 25 cents, because it means £4 is not $8 but rather $9, £8 is not $16 but rather $18, etc. I am being quite frugal, and so far am cheered to note that bananas cost about the same in both London in Chicago, so I am getting my potassium!

Je suis arrive'

In London, not Paris, but you will be impreseed to know that I was reading French on the plane. I am here, the trip was easy, the accomodations are rustic. More to come!

Departure Day!

When next I blog I will be in London! Wish me luck, I am not encouraged by distressing stories about how heavy rains in London are cancelling flights and closing Tube stations.

The Blog Turns 10!

Charming Wall Street Journal celebration of the world's past decade of the blog. This is my first real attempt at blogging, so I am arguably ten years late to the party, although I dabbled in a Yahoo 360 page that contained a pseudo-blog a year or so ago. I must say that I have found the past few blogging days more challenging than I had imagined. I certainly include links to other interesting online articles, per the WSJ the original intent of the nascent blog, but I also find myself buried under the avalanche of my own self-expression, blogging about too many things at once and about none of them very coherently (in writing as in speech, perhaps?). Other than a nifty Latin phrase, this blog might seem to have little structure or theme, but I will try to hew more closely to "the nexus of religion and social policy" (I must say, I do like how that reads!).