England

Last Thursday, I took a train from Sheffield to Birmingham to meet up with some co-workers for dinner. The train between the two cities, when running direct, is very quick, taking just a few minutes over an hour.

As the evening turns into night, though, the direct trains stop running, and you need to change trains in Derby to get back to Sheffield. I had originally planned to get back on the 21:03 back to Sheffield, which is the last direct train, but by quarter to nine we hadn't even received our main course, so it became obvious to me I was going to be taking a longer trip back.

A few after dinner drinks and I ended up catching the last train heading towards Sheffield, arriving into Derby at midnight. I got off the train and looked up at the train board, seeing what I knew but was hoping wasn't true. The train from Derby to Sheffield wasn't until 00:50, almost an hour from my arrival. All the shops in the station were closed, so I wandered out of the station and decided I would take advantage of my hour in Derby.

Firstly, I should point out that the city name is pronounced DAR-BEE, not DER-BEE. I don't know why, but it is. English very rarely makes much sense, as I was soon to learn... but let's not jump ahead.

Walking out of the station, I surveyed the scene. It didn't look very impressive. Outside the station I could see a few restaurants and pubs, but they were shut down for the night. The only thing open was the Bubble Spa, with a brightly lit store-front with all the windows covered. A spa with paper covered windows open at midnight. I guess there is always the possibility that someone has a late night nail emergency, but I figured it was more likely that the spa was featuring services above and beyond pedicures and exfoliations. I was looking for something different than a full-release happy ending though - treatments for my stress in a pint glass.

I wandered a few blocks away and found a pub that was open. I walked in. Like most pubs, it was long and thin. Like most pubs, the front room was filled with a few tables, some chairs and a bar with draught taps. Unlike most pubs, the back was filled with a dance floor, DJ booth and flashing lights.

"Is this a pub, or is it a dance club," I wondered. I looked around and decided that it didn't matter, as neither the traditional pub nor the dance floor had a single patron. I took a seat at the bar.

A bartender came out from the back room. "Hello there," he said, slight hint of an accent in his voice.

I gestured at the dance floor. "I guess all the dancers must be in the toilet," I joked. The bartender looked at me with a confused look on his face. "Never mind," I said. "I'll have a pint of Carling."

The bartender poured the beer, and with no other customers, we started chatting. He was from Poland, and he picked up pretty quickly that I wasn't from England. "Are you American," he asked.

"No, I am Canadian," I said.

"You must work for Bombardier," he exclaimed. I don't, but it was a good guess. Bombardier is a Canadian company that makes, among other things, trains, and they have a huge presence in Derby, their UK headquarters.

I told him that I didn't work for Bombardier, but rather am a consultant. The bartender told me how he wanted to move to Canada. "I'd really like to move to America, but I think it is easier for me to get to Canada," he said. "I have cousins who live in America."

"Where? I've worked a lot of places in America," I said. That spurred a whole conversation on cities in America. He wanted to get my impression on places he was thinking of moving. California, I told him, was nice but expensive. Florida is good if you can find work, and a lot cheaper than California. As someone in the service industry, Florida is certainly a good choice.

During our conversation, another bartender came out, this one a girl from Russia. She joined the conversation here and there, especially when we were discussing the weather in the UK (they both wondered why I would want to move to the UK, as it was cold and grey all the time) and terrorism threats in the USA (The Russian and I agreed that the USA was no safer nor no more dangerous than other places).

Apropos of nothing, the male bartender said, "you are easy to understand. It is hard to understand people from England when they speak."

"They swallow their words," said the female Russian bartender.

"Swallow their words?" I asked.

"Yeah, they don't finish what they say," the Polish bartender said. "They say half a word then stop. Americans and Canadians speak more clearly."

This wasn't, in fact, the first time I had heard this. A few people who have English as a second language have told me that same thing - I am easier to understand than English people. In some ways, I think it is because many people learn English by watching American TV shows, and thus become used to the American accent. Then again, sometimes I find myself struggling with an English accent, especially when they start speaking quickly.

Just then, another customer walked into the bar and took a seat. "Mate, can I 'ave a pint of Carling," he asked. I listened closely and noticed that in fact, they Russian was right. The last consonant tended to be clipped. It wasn't that the sound wasn't there, just that it was short and quick, like the last sound was spoken at double speed. Add to this the British tendency to abbreviate many words (veg for vegetable, goss for a gossip magazine, brill for brilliant, champy for Champagne), and I can understand how someone could think that the Brits are swallowing their words.

The Brit at the end of the bar continued to swallow his words, clipping the end sounds off them, and also slurring as his words as this obviously wasn't his first pub of the day. He talked at the bartenders, who looked at him confused. I looked at my watch and realized I had to go to catch my train.

"Good luck," I said to the Polish bartender, both wishing him luck in his future dream of living in America, and also in his current problem of understanding the swallowed words coming out of his latest customer.

I moved yesterday from Isle of Dogs to a flat near King's Cross Station in Islington. It's a nice place, right on the Regent's Canal. In fact, my room looks out over the canal, and as I type this, I can look out my window and see ducks swimming down the canal. The water is so smooth that the ducks swimming create a visible and long wake.

To move, I rented a car. I don't have a lot of stuff, but it would have taken more than one trip on the tube, and with the typical weekend shut downs for scheduled maintenance, the trip would have required 3 trains, with 2 changes involving some significant stairs.

While the car made the most sense, I was quite scared with the whole concept. I've never driven in the UK, and only once driven in a car with the steering wheel on the right, and that was on the rather laid-back and traffic free island of Tobago. The car on Tobago was an automatic, and my drive in the UK would be manual. I'm fine with driving a manual car, but I'd never done it when I would have to shift with my left and not my right hand.

I picked up my car from Alamo. It was a Nissan Note, a car I had never even heard of before. It definitely did not look like a North American car.

Most of the cars I see here don't look very North American. They are tend to be smaller, taller with wheels all pushed out to the very corners of the vehicle. The hatchback is king here - probably half the cars on the road have 5 doors.

Despite gripping the wheel with whiteknuckles and shallow breath, I actually settled into driving quite quickly. Shifting with the left hand wasn't at all weird. Despite fears I would constantly be turning into the wrong lane and face oncoming, angry and possibly deadly traffic, I found cornering fine, mostly because you are taking concious action when turning. It was when I wasn't thinking on the straight bits that I would find myself drifting to my left, mostly so that my position on the road would be to the left of the lane. Other than once when my mirror clipped a plastic barrier, though, it didn't cause any problems.

The scariest thing had nothing to do with the side of the road I was on, but rather the fact that London roads are small and narrow. Especially when you have a white panel van beside you, looming over you and casting you in it's shadow, things can get hairy. I would usually just ease off the gas a bit and let the panel van get in front of me, giving me a little breathing room.

Good Christian driving, as James May might say. Letting someone in is something that Captain Slow might do, but not a move for The Stig.

If you are a boy and live in the UK, as I am (a boy) and I do (live in the UK), you will know how the people mentioned in the last paragraph are, and you probably know what happens on Sunday nights at seven on the BBC 2. You will know that Sundays at seven are when BBC 2 shows Top Gear.

Top Gear is a motoring program. Like motoring programs in Canada or the USA, they review new cars. Unlike motoring programs that I have seen in Canada or the USA, they do it in a very different way, for example seeing if you can get away from baddies by driving the car through a mall, or storming a beach with the Royal Marines. (If you haven't seen these clips - go to the BBC site, or find them on Youtube in not in the UK. I would post links to the videos on Youtube, but they tend to get deleted quickly due to copyright infringement issues).

As an aside, I originally would have thought that Top Gear wouldn't appeal to a female demographic, but I have been quite amazed by the number of girls here in the UK who watch the program. I won't go so far as to say that the somewhat childish program about cars has appeal across both genders, because perhaps there is something about the class of women I know that makes them more likely to like boys acting silly in cars.

The show is hosted by three automotive journalists. Jeremy Clarkson writes for the Times, and is considered by most the leader of pack when it comes to the Top Gear trio. Richard Hammond writes for the Mirror, and is the pretty boy of the pack. James May, automotive columnist for the Telegraph, is the bookish, fuddy-duddy of the gang. Clarkson, known as Jezza, and Hammond (sometimes known as the Hamster, but not too often - more often he is teased about his hair and his teeth (which may or may not have had work done on them)) call May “Captain Slow” for both his cautious driving style and the fact that he owns a Fiat Panda.

Often, though, they just want to see how fast the car can go. In these cases, the “tame racing driver” presumably tranquillised after the Monaco Grand prix and transported to Top Gear’s offices at the Dunsfold Aerodrome, takes over the driving and drives the car around the Top Gear test track. The driver, known only as The Stig, is a figure of much mystery here in the UK. His identity is a highly guarded secret, and is the ninth most asked question on the internet. Number one was “Am I pregnant?” Even had a video of the potential conception moment been posted on the web (which it quite possibly could be), I don’t think Google can answer that.

There have been rumours posted on the internet, most recently regarding Bristol-based racer Ben Collins being the driver, but nothing has been confirmed. All I know is that I am not The Stig, so let me confirm that now for the Internet. That’s 1 down, only 6,760,033,985 other potential candidates out there.

Since arriving in London, I have watched as much of Top Gear as I can, which is a whole lot of Top Gear. Not only does the BBC show the show, but it appears in reruns on another station (called, strangely, Dave) about 6 times a day.

One of the parts of the show I like the best is when they travel some place exotic. This often takes the form of a race, where two of the hosts, in some form of presumably fast transport, race against the other host in a car. Often Clarkson drives the car, with Hammond and May taking some other form of transport. Past races have included Clarkson driving from Alba to London while May flew his private plane; May and Hammond on the Shinkansen bullet train racing across Japan while Jezza drove a Nissan; Clarkson driving the long way around to Oslo while Hammond and May took the train, a ferry, more trains and finally a speed boat to try and beat Clarkson; and Clarkson and May driving a car to the North Pole, while Hammond tried to beat them using a dog sled.

Besides of the obvious comic value of these races (that Clarkson seems to win disproportionately), it is also great to see the exotic locations through which the races pass, some of which I have visited, and some of which are on my list of places to see.

They also do cheap car challenges, where they go some place and try and buy a car for some amount of money, and then do an epic drive. The most recent series of Top Gear concluded with May, Clarkson and Hammond being given 15 million đồng to purchase a vehicle tin Ho Chi Minh City, also known as Saigon. It soon became clear to the boys that the amount of money they had wouldn’t buy a car, but could buy a motorcycle. Hammond and May, both bikers, loved the challenge. Clarkson, who thinks of motorcycling as akin to loading a gun and shooting it at oneself repeatedly, was not amused. However, they all ended up getting their bikes and setting off on a 1000 mile journey from Ho Chi Minh to Ha Long Bay. Along the way, they obviously had to fed themselves. May and Clarkson happily ate the Vietnamese cuisine, while Hammond seemed to starve himself until he could find a bowl of Rice Krispies.

I think all of us boys in the UK who sit around and watch BBC 2 on Sundays at seven probably like to think about which of the hosts we are most like. Am I like Clarkson, the witty, acerbic A-type leader with definitive black and white opinions? Am I the good-looking, bass-guitar playing dashing Richard Hammond? Am I the mysterious, never seen, fast as stink Stig?

The answer for me to those questions is a big no.

I have noted that Captain Slow and I seem to share a number of traits. I’m a little bit dorky, a little brainy, not very flashy with a penchant for arcane interests. I don’t think I would have much hope of beating anybody in a car race in London, given the cautious, Christian driving, Captain slow approach I took yesterday to the white panel van problem.

That being said, though, I'm not so sad to find out that I am Captain Slow. After all, he was happy eating the local food and drinking in the local history, and in one case the local drink of vodka and snake blood. I like to think that I am the same type of guy - who will take the chances, try and understand the history and psyche of a place to get a deeper more meaningful experience from it. Even if that means I lose more car races than I win.

So, you can't call me The Stig, but I will take the title of Captain Slow.

"Come on, just one more," they say.

You look at your watch. Ten minutes to midnight. If you ran, right now, to the tube station, you'd be able to catch the last central line out to the DLR, and then onwards to Mudchute, where you live. You look at your glass, empty, and your friends, only half full of beer. "Hmm, maybe another pint can't hurt," you think. After all, your friends aren't full of beer yet.

And, of course, you can always catch the night bus...

A few beers later, after you are most drunk and your friends are full up on beer so you head out. Soho is, as always on a Friday night, crazy.

"You looking for some women?" a woman asks, not the first and not the last to ask as you move through Soho.

"Sure," you think, I'd always be up for a women, but they aren't asking because they have a bunch of women hanging out looking to sleep with pasty, fat Canadians for free.

"£200 for a night," they say. £200, you think, is 80 pints. That is a lot for a woman, especially, you think, when if you drink 10 pints women who used to look... ummm, to be kind... not so good looking would, after 10 pints, look awesome.

So you skip past the women offering the services of other (mostly eastern-European) women and keep walking through Soho. The temptations are not finished, though.

"Coke," the man hiding in the shadows says. Unlike those offering sex, those offering drugs hide in the shadows, quietly offering their wares. You, though, aren't interested in much beyond bed at this point, though, so you keep walking without even acknowledging those offering you cocaine.

Soon, though, something tempts you. The smell, as you get closer to Oxford Circus, gets stronger and stronger. It is the smell of hot dogs.

The hot dogs are boiled to almost being finished. Close to being ready to eat, they are finally slapped upon a grill to finish before being put into a soggy bun to be served. Boiled hot dogs are, to be frank(furter), crappy. But something about frying them on the metal grill prior to serving gives it an excellent taste. The frying give a crispy outside.

Then comes the best part of the Oxford Circus hotdog. The toppings.

"Onions?" they ask.

"Of course," you say. And the hot dog vendor piles on the fried onions, partially brown and partially translucent, the onions add a sugary blast to the meaty taste of the crispy-outer, gooey-inner taste of the hot-dog. Only one thing can make it better, you think to yourself, as you trace a line of mustard along the length of the hot dog. You take your first bite of the dog, and you can only think one thing.

"Oh my god, this is so good. Cook me up another," you say.

Halfway through your first dog, you are given your second dog, and your thoughts turn from getting fed to getting home. Hot dog and a half in hand, you wander over to the nearest bus stop and check out if you are anywhere near a night bus which is heading to where you live.

The night buses take over once the tube, trains and regular buses stop running. The London night buses run out from the centre of London into the suburbs like the arms of a spider. No matter where you are going, you can find your way home, as long as you are starting out in the centre of London. Most of those who are looking to catch a night bus are, whoever, looking to get out from the centre. After all, what other reason other than drinking, dancing and partying at some club in central London can you think of for taking a bus at one thirty in the morning.

You check out the bus stop, and realize that you are in the wrong place. To get to the Isle of Dogs, where you live, you need to head down to Piccadilly Circus and catch the 550. It's not a far walk, and it gives you time to finish your hot dogs and pick up a Diet Coke for the ride home.

Nobody plans to get a night bus, but rather stumbles out of a bar late in the night and wanders to a night bus stop. If you are lucky, the bus arrives soon. If you aren't lucky, you have to wait for 20 minutes, maybe even 30 minutes, until the bus arrives. Tonight, you are lucky. As you are trying to focus your beer-muddled eyes on the schedule, trying to figure out when the bus will arrive, the N550 drives up to the stop. You quickly jump from the schedule out to the street, flagging down the bus.

You walk up to the second floor up the bus, grabbing a seat up amongst the other travellers heading home for the evening.

The bus windows soon fog up with the breath of those riding the night bus. You keep wiping off the windows of the bus to see what is passing you by. At the start, it is the historical monuments of London. St. Paul's Cathedral, the Victorian Embankment and the Bank of England pass by you. Soon, you are in East London, and monuments give way to less impressive edifices. Kebab shops and the occasional Chicken Shack are all that is open, but you pass the closed clothing, stationary, and grocery shop. You sit silently watching the landscape move by you. Other bus riders sit quietly, some chat among themselves. Rarely, you get someone who causes trouble, but that happens rarely. Tonight, you get a quiet bus, other than a couple sitting near the back , the man who is from London and the woman who is from Chicago, the bus is quiet. You watch the scenery pass you by as you, like the rest of the silent bus, listen to the couple from London and Chicago discuss their lives.

Soon enough, after the bright lights and glass towers of Canary Wharf pass you by, St. Edmund's School arrives. You press the red button, and once the bus stops you work your way down to the ground floor before jumping off. A 3 minute walk takes you home and to bed. The night buses has delivered again. You had a good night in the centre, and somehow, without issue, you made your way home.

If you weren't already quite drunk, you might think about raising a glass to the night buses. But as it stands, you really just want to go to bed, and so the night buses are, as usual, unheralded. One hopes, though, that the night buses know that you really love them. Cheers to you, night buses.

Thanks for getting me home, you buses with an N before your number.

200 years ago, on the 12th of February, 1809, Charles Robert Darwin was born in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England. A few decades later, he was wandering about on some islands off the coast of Ecudaor and noted that the birds and turtles differed from island to island, though seemed to share similar traits to creatures from the mainland.

(Note: creatures in pictures below from neither Ecuador, England or the Galapagos Islands, but seeing as I've never been there, I don't have any pictures of them. These are, however, creatures, and as such seem fitting).

In 1859, Darwin published his seminal work On The Origin Of Species. While others had suggested that species evolved, Darwin's work was the first one that grabbed the imagination of the non-scientific community. The book was controversial because it contradicted the religious concept that the world's species were static, created by God in perfect form at the start of time.

Today, the concepts that underlay Darwin's book still underpin the theory of natural selection, the most widely accepted theory of the development of species.

Today, Darwin can be found on the ten-pound note, along with a bird, one of "the flora and fauna that he may have come across on his travels" (lest you forget why he was famous).

In the event you feel like getting down "with a celebration of science and reason" in honour of Darwin, you can find events on the Darwin Day page. Nothing is going on in Sheffield (even though it's only a couple hours from Darwin's birthplace), so I guess I'll just have to celebrate by myself.

Happy birthday, Chuck.

People in Northern England are nice. That’s what I had heard, and my first couple weeks in Sheffield have certainly proved that assertion. When people come into the office, they inquire as to how everyone is doing. They are all very friendly and concerned with what is going on in your life. It has certainly made getting into the swing of working here in the UK easy.

All this friendliness does have one major drawback. It has to do with what happens whenever anyone gets up to head to the kitchen.

“You want something to drink?” they will offer, and they aren’t just being polite.

Nope, whoever is heading to the kitchen will offer, and anyone who wants a drink says, “Yes, please.” The person heading to the kitchen will return a few minutes later laden down with cups and glasses for the team.

The drink most often requested is a cup of tea, and that frightens me.

I was never much of a tea drinker back in Canada. I had tea a few times a year, and mostly when other folks made it. Here in England, though, I have been drinking tea more and more. It is constantly on offer and everyone is drinking it. It is hard to avoid. Not that I mind drinking it too much. A decently made cup of tea with a touch of milk is a very tasty thing.

The problem is that while I enjoy a cup of tea made by others, whenever I make the stuff, it tastes like swill. I don’t know what I am doing wrong. Perhaps I leave in the bag too long, or not long enough. Perhaps the water is too hot or too cold. Perhaps I add too much milk, or not enough, or too soon, or not soon enough.

I don’t know what I am doing wrong, all I know is that my tea doesn’t taste like the tea other people make. It tastes bad, and that is my problem. See, whenever I find myself thirsty at work, I can’t just get up and head to the kitchen, because then I would have to offer to get drinks for the team. They would ask for tea, and I would be forced to make the brown-coloured bog water that seems to result when I put a tea bag in hot water.

Like I said, people in Northern England are nice, so I am sure they would drink the tea I make, put on a brave face and make yummy noises. “Good tea,” they would say, but it wouldn’t be. It would be awful, but they wouldn’t want to offend me, so they would say it’s good. They would think that Canadians can’t make tea. Some Canadians probably can make tea, but I can’t, and I don’t want to be the cause of half of Sheffield thinking that Canadian tea tastes like bitter water.

Of course, now I feel guilty whenever anyone else gets up to get a drink and offers. I can’t say yes, because I never get up and get the tea myself. The Sheffieldites would see me as the greedy type, always taking and never returning the favour.

So instead I sit in my seat, thirsty and frightened, and count the hours until lunch, when I can get out, run down to the deli and buy myself a decent cup of guilt-free tea.