United Kingdom

On February 9th, 1996 at six o'clock in the evening, the IRA announced they would be ending the cease fire that had lasted 17 months. One hour later, at two minutes past seven in the evening, a lorry with a half-tonne bomb exploded in the London's Docklands, just feet from the South Quay DLR station.

There was a warning that had been called in to the police, so most of the buildings had been evacuated. However, 2 men working in a news shop had not left, and Inam Bashir and John Jeffries were later found dead in the rubble. 39 people required hospitalization for injuries related to the blast, mostly from falling glass from the nearby buildings.

The Midland Bank building, South Quay Plaza I and II took significant damage, as did the DLR station and tracks. While most of the buildings have been repaired, part of South Quay Plaza still to this day sits derelict. All told, the damage cost more than £150 million pounds.

South Quay station and the DLR was reopened again by mid-April, despite the bomb exploding under the blast site.

Despite the reopening of hostilities, the peace process continued, slowly, finally ending with the July 2005 IRA's proclamation to pursue a united Ireland solely through peacefully means and the decommissioning of all their weapons, and the 2007 ending of Operation Banner, the British Army's operation in Northern Ireland.

The current South Quay station will soon shut, replaced by a newer, larger station positioned over the water a few hundred feet down the tracks, though the name will remain South Quay.

“The smart thing to do is to stay home and watch the game on TV,” I said to myself on Saturday afternoon. Superbowl is well covered here in the UK, showing on both BBC and Sky Sports. It would be no problem to watch it on my couch. And as the game starts at 11:30 PM local time and I had an 8 o’clock train to catch up to Sheffield, staying in seemed like the smart move.

But this is the RELAUNCH of the Superbowls Around the World blog series. After making a big deal of it in a blog entry I posted, I couldn’t just wind up saying that I ended up sitting on the couch in my apartment watching TV. No, I need to do it right.

So I searched on line and found that a surprising number of places were staying open to show the game. The NFL is actually more widely covered here than I would have expected. In the regular season games are shown on Sky Sports, and the regular season tilt that has happened for the past two years at Wembley is always a big deal.

I choose to forgo the sports bars and their cover charges and head instead to a party put on by the American expat Meetup group. The party, with an expected attendance of 800 people, was to be hosted in Islington. Islington is far from my place in Isle of Dogs, but close to St. Pancras station, where I needed to get my train out the next morning. With the game ending sometime around 3 in the morning, heading back to Isle of Dogs for a couple hours of sleep and then heading back to almost where I just was didn’t make much sense.

Therefore, I decided to splash out and get a hotel near St. Pancras. I headed out to the hotel around 4 pm, and decided to take an afternoon nap, as I knew sleep wouldn’t be something I got much of later in the evening.

I woke a few hours later and looked out my window. I opened the drapes, and wondered if the hotel had somehow moved across the ocean to Canada while I slept. There was snow on the ground. Lots of it.

London and the south-east of England was in the middle of a winter storm, which by its end would dump more snow on the capital than it had seen in 18 years.

The snow, however, didn’t stop those wanting to see the game from heading out. The Superbowl party hosted by the American expat group had over 1,000 people in attendance, watching the game on a projected screen in what appears to be a dance club in its other life.

There were fans of all stripes there, with Arizona and Pittsburgh being represented equally (by the sound of the cheering). A few folks even were actually from those cities represented…

Oddly, there were a lot of people wearing jerseys from other teams, even across other sports, including a guy in a KC Royals jacket. I guess wearing something American sports related was in the spirit of the night.

The expat group had managed to stream the video of the NBC from America, so we had all the American commercials, the American commentators and all the half-time show, including Bruce Springsteen.

In the end, Pittsburgh won what ended up being a very close game. I had been cheering for the Arizona Cardinals as I had just spent 2 months there, so I was slightly disappointed by the outcome, but happy to have actually bothered to go out, rather than staying at home.

Leaving the venue around 3 AM I was hoping to catch a night bus back to my hotel, but never saw one come along, and ended up walking the 25 minutes back to my hotel. I found out the reason for this the next morning as I woke up. The snow had hit London hard. All the airports were closed, none of the buses were running, most of the tube lines were shut or suffering serious delays and many of the trains were running delayed schedules.

The next morning, having stayed in a hotel right by St. Pancras station, I was able to walk to the station and catch my train up to Sheffield. East Midlands, the company that runs the London – Sheffield train, was one of the only companies in London that wasn’t delaying their schedule, and the train left right on time, though mostly empty, as very few people could make it to the station with few tube lines or buses running.

So, had I done the smart thing and watched the game at home (or even the really smart thing and went to bed early), I wouldn’t have made it to work on time this morning (if I could have made it at all). Only through choosing to go out did I ensure that I could make it up to Sheffield. I arrived in Sheffield, in “Northern” England, to find less snow, though they are expected to get it tonight. Luckily my hotel is only a 3 minute walk to the office.

So, I end with a few pictures from last night and this morning of the snowy scenes in London. I hope no one accuses me of bringing the snow here from Canada. I promise you all, when I moved here I really had hoped to leave the snow behind.

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For other experiences viewing "The Big Game", check out the rest of my Superbowls Around the World blog entries

This week just finished marked my first week of work. After 8 months, which included a temporary retreat to North America, I am finally one of those damn foreigners stealing English jobs.

On Monday I headed down to Egham for the day for my "induction," quite a sinister sounding word for something actually quite pleasant. In North America we would call it something warm and fuzzy like a "welcome session," "onboarding" or "orientation." What it all works out to is the usual first day stuff, meeting some folks, signing some HR forms and getting set up to join the team.

I had arrived in Egham about 45 minutes earlier than I needed to be, so I wandered around for a bit. You probably have never heard of Egham, but it is the event of quite a famous and world-changing event. It might be somewhat more recognizable if I said it was also known as "a meadow that is called Runnymede."

In 1215, the Great Charter of English Liberties was signed by King John. The Great Charter, known more famously as the Magna Carta, lists 49 specific grievances that the King agreed to remedy, and demanded that the king proclaim certain rights, respect certain legal procedures, and accept that his will could be bound by the law.

One of the first documents of its kind, the Magna Carta forms the basis of common law and the constitutions of most English speaking countries.

The document is concluded with the phrase, "Given by our hand in the meadow that is called Runnymede, between Windsor and Staines, on the fifteenth day of June in the seventeenth year of our reign."

Today, between Windsor and Staines is the town of Egham, which commemorates the signing of the Magna Carta with a number of statues, including this fountain that sits outside of a Tesco.

After my induction, I headed up to Sheffield to start at my first client. I'll probably be up in Sheffield until at least the end of April, so expect a few more blog entries from there. I didn't see too much my first week, instead using my free time to sleep, as I have to get used to getting up in the mornings again.

It is a nice place, Sheffield. Formerly quite an industrial town focused on mining and later the steel industry, like many places it has tried to rejuvenate itself in the 1990s and 2000s. Today, the city centre is quite pretty, with a number of beautiful old buildings, many open spaces and squares, a number of innovative art, culture and theatrical installations. More on that in future entries, but for now a few photos of the city centre at night.

Leopold Square, home of a number of restaurants, bars, and a hotel in an old boys school

The back of city hall, rounded because it holds the Oval Hall

Grade I listed Town Hall. The building dates back to 1897

Many people have asked if I am taking advantage of my time in London to experience what the city has to offer. I think I am, but inevitably the conversation goes something like this...

"So, what have you seen in London," they ask.

"Lots of stuff," I reply.

"Have you been to the British Museum?" they ask.

"No," I reply.

"I can't believe you haven't been! It's amazing," they say.

"I'm not really a big fan of museums," I offer as half explanation, half apology.

"You should go and see it. It is free, and I think it'll change your mind about museums," they command.

And so I went.

The British Museum was opened to the public in 1759, and was initially based on the collections of the physician and scientist Sir Hans Sloane. Today the museum is one of the largest collections in the world, with over 7 million items in their collection.

The museum today sits in a massive building, parts of which date back to the 1820s. Newer is the Great Court, the central quad covered by a massive atrium designed by Norman Foster and opened in the 1990s.

The museum is probably best known for it's Egyptian artifacts, including what seems like 1000s of sarcophagi and a large number of hieroglyphic panels.

Also well known is the collection of statues and panels from the Parthenon in Athens, known sometimes as the Elgin Marbles. These, though are known due to the controversy of where they should be.

Built nearly 2,500 years ago as a temple dedicated to the Greek goddess Athena, the Parthenon had fallen into disrepair by the late 1700s. Between 1801 and 1805 Lord Elgin, the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire of which Athens had been a part for some 350 years, removed about half of the remaining sculptures from the fallen ruins and from the building itself. Since the early 1980s Greek governments have argued for the permanent removal to Athens of all the Parthenon Sculptures in the British Museum. The British Museum disagrees, arguing that without them the statues would probably be lost, and that by having them in the museum, the ancient Grecian culture and art is shared with the general public.

Beyond the Nile Delta and the city-state of antiquity, the museum has a lot of other collections.

There is more from ancient Greece. The Nereid Monument at Xanthos is a tomb, built around 380 BC by Greek architects and sculptors, for a king of Lycia (in south-west Anatolia). Between the columns stand statues of women, often referred to as "Nereids", from which the tomb takes its name.

There is something about the flowing robes on the statue pictured below that captured my imagination. The robes looks almost silken, even though they are made from marble. For some reason, it reminded me of the song Dancing Barefoot by Patti Smith.

here I go and I don't know why,
I spin so ceaselessly,
'til I lose my sense of gravity...

Also inspiring me, but mostly to make stupid puns, were these statues.

Where are my shorts? I can't remember

What is everyone looking at?

Half a head is better than no head at all!

Following on from the Greeks were the Romans, who also happened to control the land upon which the British Museum sits some 2100 years ago.

This wall is from the Lullingstone Villas, which I tried to visit once before, unsuccessfully, but it still ended up being an interesting day.

Further away from Europe and Northern Africa, there are lots of artifacts from around the world, including China...

...the Aztecs...

...and even the Assyrians (from Iraq).

One more thing I can check off my list of things to do in London. It is a truly impressive collection, and if you are the type of person that likes Museums, you'll probably love this one. Frankly, I don't like museums so I pretty much ran through the place, going through most every room in one hour and 15 minutes, stopping really only long enough to take the photos you see above. Otherwise, I just really wanted to get out and grab a seat some place.

At least, though, in the future, the conversation will be different.

They will ask, "Have you been to the British Museum?"

"Yes, I have," I will reply.

Then they will ask me about something else that I haven't done (probably a West-end show), but at least I can skip that one question.

I once read an article that suggested that deja vu, the feeling of familiarity with a situation or place that you haven't been before, is simply a case of memories being stored out of order. Instead of the usual case where something gets put in your short-term memory, and then if it is judged worthy, moved to the long term memory, a case of deja vu is when something is put in long term memory before short term memory. Therefore, once the memory is put in your short-term memory, your brain finds it in long term memory, but can't link it necessarily to any actual event in time or space. Instead, it just comes across as a weird feeling that you've been here before.

Yesterday, I was out looking at a flat in the west-end. After checking out the place, I went for a walk around the neighbourhood, and after checking it out, wandered farther afield. I walked for nearly 45 minutes before wandering into a pub on Gloucester Street called the Gloucester Arms. I ordered a pint and started looking at the menu. Looking around, something seemed really familiar about the place. The set up of the tables, the weird angle of the one wall, the flat screen TVs mounted high on the walls.

"Do I know this place?" I wondered. It seemed unlikely, I hadn't been out this way in ages. In fact, I hadn't been in this area of town since moving to London.

In August of 2007, though, I was in the area. I stayed at a hotel just a 10 minute walk away, and once I realized that, I knew when I had been here before.

It was here that I had my bangers and mash in August of 2007. In my blog entry for my trip to London, I wrote about the pub meal I had at the Gloucester Arms after being told that food in North America was bad for you.

The next day, I ordered bangers and mash in a pub. I am not certain that 4 sausages with a side of potatoes flooded in gravy is exactly health food, but who am I to argue with the nutritional expertise of a drunken drywaller in a London pub.

I skipped the bangers this time, and order the Chicken Kiev, and reflected on the fact that some times that old familiar feeling is because you have been some place before, it just takes a minute to remember it.