United Kingdom

Last Saturday night, both my flatmates had disappeared for the evening and all my friends were busy, so I was on my own for the evening. I had been at home watching some TV, but got bored and decided to grab a quick drink round about 11 o’clock in the evening.

I wandered over to my “local” for a pint. A “local” is the term people use for the pub they usually frequent. I actually have a couple pubs that I call local. My favourite is actually further down the street past at least two other drinking holes, so technically it isn’t my “local,” but it is small and quirky and often has a very diverse crowd, which appeals to me. Unfortunately, it also closes at 11:00 PM, so last Saturday night I’d already missed the closing bell, so I went to my second favourite local, the pub right around the corner, The Thornhill Arms.

It is a proper looking pub with wobbly tables, stained stools and a few moth-eaten couches on which you can sometimes get a seat, which is all a plus. On the negative side, though is the fact that they do karaoke on Saturday nights. Last Saturday night was beautiful though, clear and warm, so I took my pint and grabbed a seat at one of the picnic tables on the pavement outside. Many other folks were also out enjoying the weather, and I happened to grab the last picnic table.

This picture is not actually The Thornhill Arms, but it has a picnic table and beer, so is illustrative of the concept. In fact, none of the pictures in this blog are of The Thornhill Arms, but they do have beer in them...

A few moments later three men wandered out of the pub, pints in hand, and asked if they could share the table with me. I nodded, and the gents sat down. We started talking, and it turns out they were from Ireland, in town for the weekend for a boozy weekend.

“Is there a strip club around here?” one of them asked me. I replied there was a dodgy looking one down by King’s Cross Station, about five minutes walk away. “Nothing closer?” he asked. I shook my head.

The weather must have put everyone in a joyous mood, because soon there was a lot of chatting with the tables on either side of us. I ended up talking to a Brazilian student who was studying here in London, while the Irishmen were getting directions to a nearby “spa” from two bemused women in their early twenties.

The bartender was a woman in her fifties. She came out of the bar and called out, “last orders, please!” I looked at my watch. It was almost midnight, closing time of The Thornhill Arms. I wandered into the pub to get another pint, surprised that the Irishmen had declined my offer to buy them a round. Apparently they had been drinking since 10 in the morning, and had finally become so saturated with alcohol they could take no more.

I returned to my picnic table, glad to escape the awful warble of a man attempting (but failing) to sing Cracklin’ Rose by Neil Diamond. The Irishmen were arguing amongst themselves whether to try and find the spa that the women at the other table had mentioned to them. Finally, one of them decided that he was off to find it regardless of what the others did, and as he was the one holding the card that had the address to their hotel, the other two were forced to follow.

I chatted a little more with the Brazilian student, but soon he and his party were off, and I was left alone. No matter, I had started the night alone and was fine with just sitting back, sipping my beer and enjoying the warmth of the night.

Finishing up, I must admit that it was so pleasant I decided another pint would hit the spot. Of course, the landlady had called last orders, which meant I missed my chance… Unless there was a chance of a lock-in!

The landlady was standing outside, saying goodnight to a couple of regulars. After they departed I wandered up.

“Any chance of one more?” I asked. The landlady shook her head. There would be no more beer for me that night.

I should have guessed that would happen. After all, the Thornhill Arms has no curtains, and curtains are absolutely required for the lock-in.

A lock-in is the term used when a pub keeps serving after closing time. Generally the publican will close and lock the doors, thus locking in the customers and giving the practice its name. The curtains are necessary because otherwise the police would be able to see that the pub is breaking its license and serving out of hours. With the curtains closed and the door locked, no one from the outside knows.

Usually a lock-in is an honour reserved for regulars, but a few times since I’ve arrived in London I’ve been included in a lock-in. I will refrain from naming the pubs (after all, it is illegal), but I will tell you about my first experience with the lock-in.

It was at a pub I was at back when I lived on the Isle of Dogs. At 11 o’clock the landlord walked over and shut the curtains and locked the door. He then walked back behind the bar, and kept on chatting to the two regulars sitting there.

I wasn’t quite sure what was happening. Was the pub closed and were we meant to leave? I continued to drink my beer and watched the behaviour of the other patrons, the two regulars at the bar and a threesome playing pool at the back of the pub. One of the pool players wandered up to the bar and ordered another round, so once I finished my beer, I figured I was safe to do the same.

The landlord served me without question, and I went back and took my seat, pleased to be included in this strange ritual. It was only much later when I discovered that this practice had a name, and the history of the lock-in. The lock-in dates back to World War I, when opening hours of pubs were changed to keep factory workers from getting too drunk to contribute to the war effort. The tradition continued after the war, and in most cases if things were kept low key, the police didn’t bother to break down the door and arrest everyone inside.

In 2003 the licensing laws in Britain were changed, and pubs and bars could continue to serve alcohol past 11 o’clock at night, depending on the conditions of the license the pub receives (thus why the Thornhill Arms was open until midnight last Saturday night). With this change, the practice of the lock-in apparently has diminished, though I can attest that it does occasionally still happen, as I experience in that pub in the Isle of Dogs.

After I had finished my beer, I decided to head home. The landlord came around from behind the bar and unlocked and opened the door to let me out. I walked out and he closed the door behind me. As I walked away I heard the lock click, the pub still with the three pool players, two regulars and the landlord downing their pints.

From July 8th through 10th the leaders of the G8 will be meeting in L'Aquila, Italy, hosted by embattled Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. The G8 (the Group of Eight) is formed of eight key industrialised nations who meet to discuss issues of international importance and determine key international policies.

With this meeting comes a national shame for Canada, for I know that I will have conversations similar to the one below over the next few days with people here in the United Kingdom.

“Look, there’s a photo of the G8 leaders. Doesn’t Gordon Brown look like an idiot?” they will say.

“The man doesn’t take a great photo,” I will agree.

Pointing at the picture, they will say, “I heard that everyone is ignoring Berlusconi because of the sex scandal in Italy right now. Look at how far Merkel and Sarkozy are standing from him!”

“You’d think Silvio would be a better host, given all the parties he seems to be having for 18 year old models at his residences,” I’ll joke. We’ll all laugh.

“Medevev and Obama are in deep conversation in this photo. Probably talking about nuclear missile reductions,” my UK friends will reply.

Finally, they will point to the two last leaders. “That’s the PM of Japan,” they will say, pointing to the obviously Japanese guy.

Then will come the blow to my national pride. Pointing at the last man in the photo, they will say, “Who is that guy, did the caterer wander into the photo?”

I will reply, too quickly and loudly in a squeaky and hurt voice, “that’s the prime minister of Canada!”

“Oh,” they will say, nodding. “Jean Christian, right?”

My heart will drop with that. “No, Jean Chrétien used to be the Prime Minister. That is Stephen Harper. He’s a Conservative. He is the leader of the minority government.”

“Hmm, I see,” they will say, but they will have already stopped listening; having moved on to checking out the photos of Michelle Obama’s dresses.

I just have to learn to accept that nobody over here knows who the Prime Minister of Canada is. The G8 is made up of France, United States, United Kingdom, Russia, Germany, Japan, Italy, and Canada, though most folks would probably struggle in naming that last one, or its leader.

Everyone knows Obama, of course. I’d be hard not to, given his almost rock-star like status and constant media coverage. Even if McCain had won though, all the Europeans would still know who is the President of the USA. President of the USA is still the most important office in the world, despite the recent ascent of the BRIC nations.

The Brits can all name the European leaders as well. They are after all, part of the big union with them, and all are key trading partners with the UK. Over here we all know the Russian president too, because he keeps cutting off the gas that keeps our heating going in the winter.

Japan, well, I’m not actually convinced that anyone knows the Prime Minister’s name, but he’s easy to recognise because he isn’t a white guy.

Canada, though, always gets overlooked.

The G8 leaders in Germany in Taken on June 7, 2007, courtesy the White House. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper is walking beside Tony Blair on the left of the photo. That the UK PM was pushed out to walk with the Canadian Prime Minister was no doubt a sign that he was on his way out. Blair was ousted as PM less than three weeks later.

This isn't a slight on Stephen Harper specifically, because I bet if Canadian Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff was PM, no one in Europe would know who he was either. Well, probably a couple disgruntled international students at Harvard would be thinking to themselves, "I can't believe that jerk-off Ignatieff who gave me D-minus in my Public Policy course is now Prime Minister of Canada. " The rest of the Europeans, though, would have no idea who he was. That's the place of Canada in the European consciousness today.

In fact, when the international group that would eventually morph into the G8 was first formed in 1975, there were only six of the present nations involved. Russia was excluded because, at the time, they were godless communists who kept threatening to nuke the other participants, which isn’t exactly the best way to make friends. Canada wasn’t included simply because no one thought to invite them. Feeling bad about forgetting his little neighbour to the north, the USA President Gerald Ford, who hosted the summit in 1976, invited Canada along. Once the other national leaders saw Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau show up, they shrugged and said, “Well, I guess if you are here now, you might as well join.” Thus the G6 became the G7.

It is only going to get more embarrassing for Canadians like me, I’m afraid. While Canada used to have one of the seven highest GDPs in the world, it has slipped behind Spain, China and Brazil recently. All three of those countries are lobbying to be included in the group, along with India, Mexico, South Africa and Egypt. If the G8 grows, no doubt our lowly Prime Minister will keep getting pushed to the outer fringes of the picture.

Years from now, when the G15 are meeting in Durban, South Africa or Goa, India, someone will no doubt point to a picture of the smiling leaders and say, “and who is that guy at the end beside the Mexican president? Did the caterer wander into the picture?”

The weather this week is amazing. It’s sunny and in the mid-20s Celsius. Shockingly, this is the first week of Wimbledon, which most Brits swear to me is a sure indication that it is going to rain. I went to Wimbledon last year, and it didn’t rain on me either, though, so perhaps it is just the strange obsession that British people seem to have with claiming English weather is always cold and rainy every summer, even while the sun is shining and people are wearing shorts and sunscreen.

The sunny weather is not only a windfall for Wimbledon’s little lawn tennis contest, but it also comes the same week the Birmingham is hosting their first ever International Food Fair. The food fair, sponsored by a local radio station, offers “visitors a culinary tour of the world right in the heart of the city,” according to the Birmingham City Council’s website. There are over 60 stalls offering cooked food, market stalls and drinks from England and abroad. There is a small stage which hosts local artists to entertain the crowds.

Monarch, the tour company, also created a beach nearby. A little touch of the Costa del Sol, right here in Birmingham, about as far from any beach as you can get in the UK.

Tuesday evening myself and a few coworkers went to the fair to try Hogan’s Cider. Hogan’s is one of the more local of the international offerings, being as they are from Warwickshire, just 40 minutes down the road from Birmingham.

When the weather is warm and sunny, a cool apple cider is always an excellent drink choice. The cider from Hogan’s was very good, sweet with a touch of tartness without being acidic. I’ve often found with cider that the acid means that after a couple I can’t drink anymore for fear of developing heartburn, but not with the Hogan’s. Many a pint was consumed by our little band of drinkers.

To line the stomach a little bit, I went a touch more international than Warwickshire, and got a nice German bratwurst.

Today I wandered down for lunch, and ended up grabbing a couple of burgers from the “Meats of the World” stand. The name alone was enough to attract me, given my love of both Meat and The World, but it was the menu that really drew me in.

I started with a Springbok burger. The springbok is a South African antelope known for its jumping abilities, used both to attract a mate and to make hasty escapes from danger. The springbok is the national animal of South Africa, and the nickname of the South African national rugby team. The British and Irish Lions, the national Rugby team of the UK, is currently down in South Africa taking on the rugby Springboks, so I figured that eating a springbok burger would some how indicate support for my adopted nation’s rugby players.

The springbok is also the symbol of the Royal Canadian Dragoons from Petawawa, Ontario. During the Second Boer War in the late 1800s/early 1900s, The Dragoons were camped in a field. A Boer force attempted to launch a sneak-attack on the Canadians, but the Boers’ movements startled the nearby springboks. The leaping antelopes raised the concern of the Canadian commander, who ordered his forces to the ready. The Canadians, alert and ready for the attack, were able to defeat the Boers, and thus they adopted the springbok as their mascot.

So not only am I supporting the Irish and British Lions rugby team of England, but also supporting the Canadian forces. Supporting both the country of my birth and the country where I live. Sweet.

Back to the burger, the springbok was quite lean and dense, drier and less greasy than a burger made from cows. It was very tasty.

Having made the culinary journey to Africa, I decided to stay in the southern hemisphere and have an Australian offering next, a kangaroo burger. I don’t really have an interesting coincidence or analogy to offer here, other than the fact that England is playing Australia in The Ashes in July and August. The Ashes is a cricket match played every two years between the two countries. The Aussies’ don’t call their cricket team the kangaroos, but we can consider my consumption of the burger some sort of support for the English cricket team, I think.

Kangaroo was tangier and slightly greasier than the springbok, but still leaner, drier and less greasy than a cow burger.

I sat and ate my burgers in the glorious sunshine of Victoria Square. Victoria Square is usually a pretty square surrounded by imposing Victorian buildings, but with the food stalls and beer tent the square had been transformed into a lively piazza, like the restaurant lined squares of an Italian village, giving an international flair to Birmingham’s international fair.

As I ate my springbok sitting on the side of the square’s fountain, I could almost imagine myself sitting on the banks of the Vaal River, eating a springbok burger while watching live springboks hop across the landscape. Chowing down on my kanga-burger, I pictured lunching at Uluru and munching down on a kanga-burger in the hot, Australian sun.

After eating my burgers in the glorious sunshine, I headed away from the square, each step taking me away from the fantasy global food village and into work-a-day reality. I may not have really gotten away to Australia or South Africa, but at least I got a quick lunch-time international culinary trip.

Man, is it bright out there!

On Sunday morning, a bunch of smelly hippies and modern-day neo-druids will be dancing and drumming around Stonehenge while the sun rises at a little before quarter to five in the morning. Stonehenge, the mysterious stone circle in the English countryside is usually surrounded by ropes to keep the hordes of shutter-bug Japanese and loud Italian bus tourists from approaching the stones. On the summer solstice, as well as the equinoxes, English Heritage allows visitors to approach and touch the stones. The summer solstice is one of the most popular times to visit the monument, as the stones are aligned in such a way as the sun rises and sets between pairs of the massive stones.

The hippies will have to get up very early to see the sunrise, and will have a spend a long, long day at the stones in the middle of the countryside if they want to see the sunset. Sunday is the day with the most daylight this year, and it is a long day here in the United Kingdom.

When I was down in the southern USA, I used to tell people about how long the days lasted in the summer in Toronto. I would say, “I remember when I was a kid staying out until 10 o’clock at night, being able to play in the late summer sun.”

As with many childhood memories, it wasn’t entirely accurate. By 10 o’clock at night the sun would have set close to an hour earlier, even on the longest day of the year. That day, the summer solstice, falls on June 21 this year, which is this Sunday. As the days have gotten longer and longer over the past month, I have been reminded how much longer the days are here in the UK.

I will be lying in bed when the sun rises on Sunday morning at 4:43 in the morning while the hippies are drumming. I’ll go about my day, doing whatever I choose to do on my Sunday off. Most likely I will have already be home and be watching TV by the time the sun dips below the horizon at 9:21 in the evening. The solstice in London will see a total of 16 hours, 38 minutes and 23 seconds of daylight.

Toronto will see the sunset less than 20 minutes earlier (adjusted, of course, for time zones) at 9:03 in the evening. Sunrise in Toronto, though, is much later than London at 5:36 in the morning, giving my old home 15 hours, 26 minutes and 45 seconds of daylight.

What many people fail to realise, and I will admit to being one of them before moving over here, is how much farther north Europe is than North America. New York City is at 40 degrees 45 minutes north. Toronto is a little further north at 43 degrees, 38 minutes north. The centre of Calgary, Alberta, Canada is 51 degrees, 03 minutes north.

The centre of London, near Westminster where Big Ben is, is further north than all of those at 51 degrees, 30 minutes north. Rome is further north than New York City, which shares a similar latitude to places like Naples, Italy; Madrid, Spain and Isola Asinara on the island of Sardinia. I was at a similar latitude to Toronto when I was down in Nice, Monaco and San Remo, Italy recently, all which are around 43 degrees, 40 minutes north.

Obviously Nice has much milder winters than Toronto, and New York City does not quite have as mild a winter as Naples. New York and Toronto, conversely, have more humid, hot summers than their European counterparts. The most widely accepted explanation of these differences is due to the moderating effect the gulf stream has on the European weather, though like most attempts to explain the climate of this strange rock floating through space, there is disagreement on with a number of competing theories.

The places that Europe really considers north are places like Oslo and Stockholm, both of which are almost at 60 degrees north. Oslo will be a really bright place this Sunday, when the sun rises at 3:54 in the morning and doesn’t set again until 10:44, giving 18 hours, 50 minutes and 35 seconds of daylight. Now that’s a long day!

I recently took place in a contest to win a diamond worth £5,000. I have no real love of diamonds, but do like money, so had I won I planned to sell the diamond and buy twenty pound notes, or if the pound keeps going the way it does, maybe some fifty euro notes. The nice thing about money is that you can exchange it for stuff, like beer, food and Dr. Scholl's odour eating insoles.

Anyway, the diamond hunt was put on by the Leadenhall Market, which is a market that dates back to the 14th century. Today they still do the market thing Monday to Friday, but augment the income by holding events and being the host to a number of high end shops.

The diamond hunt was a virtual one right up until the end when the actual diamond hunt went out into the streets. The winner found it at the Monument to the great fire in London. The virtual part of the hunt was set up as a crossword. Each day a London based clue was posted, and you had to decipher the clue to figure out what part of London they were talking about.

Some of them I knew, but mostly I had to hunt around on the internet to find the answer. For example, I learned that every May there is a car treasure hunt called the The Miglia Quadrato that ends in Finsbury Circus. One of the clues also had me looking up from London Bridge to notice the clock topped with a golden owl on the corner of King William Street. I've probably walked by that building dozen of times without noticing the golden hooter perched atop the clock.

In a lot of cases, after finding the virtual answer I went out to see the actual location. It was an interesting way to get to see places in London I might not have seen otherwise.

Treasure hunts of a less virtual type of very popular here in London. I've already mentioned the Miglia Quadrato, which is a car treasure hunt. Some other examples include a number of discovery walks and Shoot Experience which offers photo-based treasure hunts. Londonist, a local blog, has a whole category for treasure hunts coming up. Even more cutting edge is geocaching, which uses GPS enabled mobile phones to search around a location.

I must admit, until I did the Leadenhall Diamond hunt, I probably would have dismissed the treasure hunt idea as being a little childish and geeky. Now that I have done the Leadenhall Market diamond hunt, I'm starting to think that a flesh-and-blood treasure hunt would be both a good way to learn about a location, its history, get some good exercise and have a good time.

I'm heading off to Cardiff in a few weekends. Maybe I should download a hunt to see the learn more about the Welsh town. Doctor Who and Torchwood is filmed there. Maybe they have a geeky, sci-fi themed one!