Jet-lagged and lovin’ it

Well boys and girls, I just got in from England, and boy, was it a drag. London was too big. There were too many people. The subway was smelly. Everyone was too stylish. I couldn’t handle the amount of history that was thrust upon my fragile psyche in such a short amount of time. Scotland was too cold, too windy, and too hilly. The golf was too hard, and my caddy could barely speak English, and kept blathering on about pubs and “St. Andrew’s,” which he insisted, somewhat obtusely, was a place and not a person.

Okay, so I’m joking. Great Britain amazed me to no end. First, my parents and I went to London. Then to Liverpool. And then, as a final gust of wind into the intercontinental sails, we went to Edinburgh, Scotland.

One of the more interesting places we went in London was the Tower of London, and not just because of the things that we saw. What interested me about the Tower was how it was presented, because it wasn’t exactly, to use the parlance of our times, a groovy place. People died excruciating deaths there, some for big reasons, some for no reason at all, and many of the deaths were dismissed as necessary, a grisly form of entertainment. Most intriguing was the way Guy Fawkes was depicted, as a religious wacko, instead of how he is normally portrayed in our society, as a good role model for aspiring anarchists a la the movie V For Vendetta. Point is, the Tower of London was a really uplifting place…. not.

More uplifting was Liverpool, a cloudy, dirty industrial town that is completely unremarkable, except for the fact that a little band called The Beatles got together there. My parents and I paid a visit to the Cavern Pub, a place that we mistook for the Cavern Club, which is where the Beatles played around three hundred shows when they were first getting their start. But once we got down to the Cavern Pub (which was directly across the street and, quite fittingly, underground), we weren’t disappointed. Playing guitar there were these two guys from the local college (I assume), and they ruled. They played energetic, howling covers of classic rock songs, and, strangely reminiscent of the seminal Tenacious D, they were both hilarious and drunk. (Typical stage banter, albeit heavily edited: “You can’t play guitar when you’re this drunk… [downs a shot of whiskey and tosses the shot glass over his shoulder]… or can you?” “We’re about to play Jumpin’ Jack Flash now, and we think we’re awesome.”) So that was entertaining.

On our last day in Edinburgh, my dad and I played golf on a true old Scottish links course, down by the seaside, with real, hundred percent non-golf cart caddies, which is an experience like no other. I was struck by how hard the golf is in Scotland, too. I mean, I know that the game began there, but you’d think they’d have made it a little bit easier as time went on. Shot after shot, I was trapped in three-foot high rough, searching desperately for my ball with my ever-encouraging caddy (bless his heart), who after I would hit yet another shot in the rough, would say, “You know, I think it was just your lie that got you on that one.” Eventually, I just had to tell him, “Look, I know you’re trying to be encouraging and all, but face it… I stink.” In the end I overcame my bad luck, and after shooting an abysmal 54 on the front nine, recovered a little with a 46 on the back. And I ended up beating my dad by three strokes, which is always nice.

Anyways, the thing that I enjoyed most about England was, as Vincent Vega would say, the little differences. I once read some essay saying, “England is like America if things had turned out slightly differently.” I both agree and disagree with that statement, because it seems like England is just so, so weird. I mean, when you go into a restaurant and order water, not only does the waiter/waitress look at you funny, but then they bring it to you in a bottle and leave you to pour it into the glass yourself. Want French Fries with your order? Well you’re going to have to remember to order them separately, because that’s just the way they do it over there — and be sure to call them “chips.” (Want actual chips? Those are “crisps.”)

And people my age act differently across the Atlantic than they do over here. It seems like all of the British young’uns are generally skinny, wear tight clothes and listen to bands with semi-ridiculous names like “The Arctic Monkeys” and “Cajun Dance Party.” As opposed to my kind of people, who are slobbish, have no sense of style, and listen to bands with non-ridiculous names like “Kings of Leon” and “Interpol.” I’m not sure if I had a point there, other than to try to say that really, American kids are just British kids plus fifteen pounds, baggy clothes and a different accent.

ANYWAYS, I loved England and its little differences, but the one thing that bugged me was the flight. See, I am terrified of flying. And having to fly eight hours to England and ten and a half hours back (we had an hour and a half flight from Edinburgh, plus an extra hour on the flight from London to Charlotte on account of the jet stream) almost gave me a heart attack. The only comfort I found was, oddly, in the airline food. It made me feel like the airline cared about what we thought. See, if they had banked on our plane plunging out of the air in a blazing fireball a la Lynyrd Skynyrd, they wouldn’t have fed us. But because they thought that the plane was going to land, they gave us food so we wouldn’t complain to the FDA (Is there another government agency that handles these sorts of things?) about being hungry for nine hours.

Also, they gave us French Fries.