Greg Wesson's Esoteric Globe

After walk through the neighbourhoods of Islington on Saturday that lay to the north of my flat, Sunday I walked through the leafier, quieter and poshier neighbourhoods to the south of me - Holborn and Bloomsbury. Former residents include folks like John Maynard Keynes and Charles Dickens. Fictional residents include the Darling family, those whose little children followed one Peter Pan to Neverland. Today, the areas have such notable residents and institutions like Ricky Gervais, De Beers Diamonds and University College London.

I was heading south because I was heading for Covent Garden, a place I normally avoid due to the overwhelming crush of the crowds there.

As a rule, I don’t mind crowds. I like the anonymity of walking through the crowds on a busy business district street, everyone with heads down and walking with a purpose.

Covent Garden is different, though. Covent Garden is full of tourist crowds, people walking slowly and erratically, constantly changing direction or stopping and staring upwards. It totally throws off my pace of movement, and infuriates me endlessly. Bad for the blood pressure.

I put aside my general dislike of the tourist hoards and headed down to Covent Garden to see a giant silver rabbit. The rabbit, created by American artist Jeff Koons for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade in 2007, has since travelled the world as a floating art piece.

The rabbit is in London as part of the Pop Life: Art in a Material World exhibit at the Tate Modern. The exhibition has been in the news over here because officers from the Obscene Publications Unit of the Metropolitan Police removed one of the works of art prior to the opening, a picture of a picture of a naked 10-year old Brooke Shields.

After spying the rabbit, to escape the crowds I headed over to the Maple Leaf Tavern on nearby Maiden Lane. The pub is a Canadian Bar, and thus I ordered a pint of Canadian-made Sleeman India Pale Ale. I was having a quick Canadian pint before heading home to prep for the day. This past weekend (including today, Monday, which is a holiday back home) is a big deal back in Canada.

It is autumn, and that means in addition to the leaves falling from the trees, Canadians will be falling asleep on the sofa with the Calgary Stampeders against the Montreal Alouettes on the TV.

This weekend, back home in Canada, is Thanksgiving weekend. My British flatmate recently asked me, after I announced it was Thanksgiving this weekend, “you aren’t American, what the hell do you have to be thankful for?”

Besides for the obvious answer implied in the first half of the question itself, Thanksgiving is a harvest festival and back in Canada we are celebrating the bountiful harvest that the majority of Canadians have nothing to do with, and don’t even notice because all our food is flown in from California and Chile.

Never mind, as this is the first Thanksgiving that I haven’t gathered with my family in Toronto since my University days, I decided I would have a mini-Thanksgiving feast for myself.

The traditional Thanksgiving dinner would be a large roasted turkey with stuffing, and mashed potatoes with gravy as a side. A turkey struck me as being overkill, seeing as I was only feeding myself, so I decided to roast a chicken. They are both foul, so I figured it would be fitting.

Because I have more money than culinary skill, I bought a pre-seasoned and stuffed chicken.

As a side, instead of mash, I just baked a potato to have along side. Of course you need a little liquid refreshment as well. I wanted to have a nice Canadian wine (yes, there are Canadian wines), but sadly they are very hard to come by over here, so I went with a Chilean sauvignon blanc instead.

It was yummy, and the best part, just like Thanksgiving back home - Leftovers! Chicken for dinner again this evening.

Happy Thanksgiving to those back home in Canada.

- * - * - *

A final note that today marks the tenth anniversary of the death of my Mother from cancer. I have marked the occasion by thinking of the good times we had together, and also sending out positive thoughts to my family back home.

It is a tradition at Thanksgiving to name what you give thanks for in the past year. So today I have concentrated on giving thanks for the years that I had with my mother.

"I still miss those I loved who are no longer with me but I find I am grateful for having loved them.  The gratitude has finally conquered the loss."
Rita Mae Brown

Recently I registered with a new medical practice around the corner from my flat. I should have done it back in February when I moved in, but I am a man and thus blissfully (some would say dangerously) unconcerned with matters of health generally. However, I finally got around to registering and was told that I needed to do more exercise. For some reason (perhaps advancing age or expanding waistline), I decided to listen and have actually been attempting to engage in regular exercise.

To meet my exercise requirements, I have been going out for brisk walks. Most days I just huff and puff along, not really taking in too much of my surroundings. Occasionally, though, I slow down the pace a little bit and take a look around. Today, on my partially brisk, partially leisurely walk, I wandered around Islington, which is the borough of London in which I live.

I started by marching up Caledonian Road. Cally Road, as it is known, is where I live. The southern part of the road, from Pentonville Road (near King's Cross) heading up to Caledonian Road tube station is a somewhat gritty street, mostly lined with shops. I don't mind a bit of grit, though, and the shops sure come in handy when I want the Sunday morning paper or need some dry cleaning done. Plus, there is a barber around the corner from me who charges £5 for a hair cut. That's a damn fine deal.

Just to the west of Caledonian Road tube station, off Market Street, is Caledonian Park. The park is built on the former site of the Metropolitan Cattle Market. The Market, in operation from 1855 until the early 1900s, was located on the site due to the proximity of King's Cross rail station, where cattle were offloaded from trains and marched up York Way. Today the only remnants of the cattle market are the clock tower that stood at the centre of the site, and a few pubs around the edges that date back to the period.

The clock tower is a listed building, and is "Baroque influenced." It was designed by J.B. Bunning, architect to the Corporation of the City of London.

In the 1800s, the area stretching from Regent's Canal (just north of King's Cross station) up to Caledonian Park was known Copenhagen Fields. It was across the Copenhagen Fields in 1834 that a demonstration and march took place to show support for a group of men known as the Tolpuddle Martyrs. The Tolpuddle Martyrs had been convicted of trying to organise a trade union, and for that had been sentenced to seven years in Australia.

On April 21st 1834 (175 years ago this year), demonstrators marched pretty much along the route that I had taken to get from my flat to Caledonian Park, starting at what today is Wharfdale Road (just north of my flat) and ending at the park. They would have gathered on the flats by the tower, though the tower wouldn't have been there at the time.

Today there was no union demonstrations in the park, just a couple kids playing in the play area and another boy playing fetch with his dog. Well, half a game of fetch. The boy would throw the stick, the dog would run after it, sit down by the stick and start gnawing on it. Then the boy would throw up his arms and walk over to the dog, wrestle the stick away, and throw it again. The dog would then bound after it, and upon arriving at it, sit down and start chewing the stick again. In this way, the boy and his dog circled the park.

Judging by the black spot on the grass where a scooter had been burnt a few days before and a lot of posters along Market Road warning drivers that they are being captured on CCTV, so they shouldn't kerb crawl, I'm guessing it probably isn't the nicest area at night.

However, things look set to change. Just north of the park is the Market Estate, a council estate that is getting a big face lift. In 2001, after the death of a young boy on the estate due to a faulty security door, the residents of the estate formed the Market Estate Tenants and Residents Association (METRA), which demanded changes. After 8 years, they are getting the changes they wanted, with a redeveloped estate being built. 175 years separate the six Tolpuddle Martyrs from METRA, but the two stories both show how those who band together to make their lives better can effect change.

Ironically, a lot of the drug activity and prostitution in the area is due to the activity being shifted away from the regeneration around King's Cross station. As I said in a previous entry, I'm part of that gentrification of the area, so I guess I am partially to blame for the Market Estate's woes.

Heading east from the Market Estate one gets into Highbury. Highbury is much poshier than the area around Caledonian Road, with lots of nice row houses and the much larger and less-scooter-burnt Highbury Fields park.

Running south from Highbury Fields is Upper Street. It runs parallel to Cally Road, only a few minutes away, but they feel miles apart. While Cally Road is all discount shops, low-end grocers and betting parlours, Upper Street is gastro-pubs, funky little clothing and furniture vendors and fancy restaurants. On Upper Street is Islington Town Hall. Today, as with most Saturdays, folks dressed up in nice clothes were milling about outside taking pictures, guests of weddings taking place in the Town Hall. You don't get many people dressed up for weddings on Caledonian Road.

That was my walk today. Heading north on the working-class, council-estate-surrounded Caledonian Road, and back down the posh and fancy Upper Street. The two roads are never more than a few minutes away from each other, but feel very different. I like having them both close at hand. It allows me to immerse myself in different atmospheres and experiences depending on my mood, all without having to walk too far from home.

Home.

Stop and think for a moment of “home.”

What did you think of? Did you think of the place you live now? Did you think of the house you grew up in? Did you think of some place you used to live but have moved away from? Did you think of some place you want to live – a house in the country or a cottage on the lake?

Why did I ask you to think of home?

I did this same exercise back in July, and again recently a few days ago, and came up with some interesting results.

Why was I thinking of home?

It has to do with some thinking I’ve been doing recently about my move to London.

I recently posted an article on the website travelblogs.com about existential migration called Feeling at Home as the Foreigner. As I’ve mentioned previously in my entry I am not a Traveller, I am a Migrant, existential migration is a term invented by Dr. Greg Madison to describe the process that some people go through in deciding and executing a voluntary move abroad. It is those who choose migration as a means to find or drive a meaning in their life that they feel they cannot get in their native country.

One of the key themes in Madison’s research on migration deals with the concept of home. Home, Madison says, is not a place, but rather an interaction between a person and their surroundings. The ‘feeling of home’ arises from specific interactions with our surroundings that could potentially occur anywhere, at any time.

When I first read that in statement in July, I sat back and thought of home. The first thing that popped into my head was the Residence Inn San Ramon in California. It is an extended stay hotel in a town just south of Oakland, California, about an hour from San Francisco. I stayed there for 75 days in 2002 and haven’t been back since.

As I mulled it over a little more, I came up with other places that felt homey, at least for a time. My corporate apartment in Denver, the hotel I stayed at for my last two weeks in Paris, my place last November in Phoenix and my parent’s house all came to mind, along with other places.

In each of these places, I experienced a period where I felt comfortable and settled in my work and life. That comfort in my personal life bled over into my physical surroundings. For a time, I felt comfortable enough in a place to call it home, even if it was just a hotel or a temporary corporate apartment.

It was interesting that in all the places I thought of as home, my apartment in Toronto where I lived for 12 years never came to mind.

In the article on travelblogs, I talk about the feelings that drove me to leave Canada in the first place, and my feelings now that I am living in London.

I realise now that I never really felt comfortable in Canada. Despite having a good set of friends and a loving family, I always felt like I was a bit of an outsider. My Toronto apartment never really felt like home to me because I never quite felt at ease in Toronto.

Since moving to London, I feel more at ease with my surroundings. I’ve started to not just reference my London flat as my home, but actually feel it as such. I’ve started to connect with my neighbourhood as well, even going as far as buying a t-shirt with a close up of the King’s Cross St. Pancras tube station just down the street from me.

I am starting to feel like London is home and I feel at ease here. It is not because I necessarily fit better in London, but because I am free to feel like a foreigner here in England because, after all, I am one.

I am a stranger in a strange land. However, at home I felt like a stranger as well. If home is the interaction between a person and a place, then living abroad allows me to match my internal feelings of being foreign with my external environment.

I’ve become a foreigner so that I can feel more at home.

I'm not much of a museum person. Generally when I go into a museum, my primary goal is to see how quickly I can make it through to the other side. For all the time I spent in Paris in 2005, I only made it to one Museum, the Orsay. I never went to the Louvre, frankly the lines scared me away. And in 2006 when I made all those trips into New York, I skipped most of the big museums, only venturing into the Skyscraper Museum down in Battery Park and one visit to the Natural History Museum, which I liked because they had exhibits with mannequins, which is always cool. Plus, dinosaurs.

For this reason, despite living for the last year and a bit in London, a cultural capital with a large selection of museums for all tastes, I haven't really been to many of them. I have been to the London Transport museum (because I am a train geek), the Canal Museum (because I like boats) and a visit to the British Museum (because I felt like I had to).

Today, though, I was out for a walk and found myself outside Charing Cross Station, looking down the street at the National Gallery and I thought to myself, "I need to go to the National Gallery." So I went.

In 2001, in a bid to increase attendance and bring culture to the masses, the Labour government of Tony Blair introduced free admission to many museums and galleries. In London, all the big museums and galleries are free, which means my one visit to the British Museum didn't cost me a penny, though I did drop a pound in the voluntary donation box, because I am good like that.

Today, upon spying the National Gallery, it was this lack of admission charge that had me thinking I would go in.

See, just a few minutes before, I had been wandering through Charing Cross Station, looking for a free toilet. I had hoped that it wouldn't be the case but was not actually shocked to find that the toilets cost money to use. It is a sad fact that most of the train stations have pay-per-use toilets. Only St. Pancras Station seems to have free ones. Perhaps it is to impress those coming from the continent aboard the Eurostar. We wouldn't want the French to think us too money grubbing. At least not until they've exited the train station and tried to take a black cab.

Anyway, Charing Cross wanted £0.30 to use the facilities. Thirty P for a ... pee? Outrageous. Not when there are cleaner and free bathrooms to be had at the museum down the street.

So I went to the National Gallery, walked in, walked down the stairs, did my business, and left.

That is the story of my first visit to the National Gallery. I wasn't inspired by any of the art, or the beautiful architecture of the building, but I did think the toilet very clean and tidy.

Clean toilets. The true benefit of Government subsidised Culture.

Today I travelled to Ascot for the day.

Before you ask, yes, the same Ascot as the one with the famous famous racetrack, which hosts the Royal Ascot race meeting every year, which in turn gave its name to a type of neckwear.

I however, was not going to play the ponies nor was I wearing a cravat. I was off to a business meeting, so I got myself suited and booted, grabbed my laptop computer, my mobile phone, my TFL Oyster card (to pay for the tube) and hit the road.

Oh, I packed one more thing for my trip, a new piece of kit that I just bought.

Let’s come back to that in a minute though.

Back in May of this year, I was asked by the editor of the site travelblogs.com to contribute to an article they were putting together on what not to pack when you travel.

I don’t know why I agreed to offer up my advice on the topic, because I am about the worst packer imaginable. I always end up with a bag full of things I don’t need and never use. When packing, I suffer from a severe case of the “what ifs?”

What if there is a freak snow storm in July in Mexico? I better pack thermal underwear.

What if I go to London and get invited to have dinner with the Queen? I better pack a suit.

What if the atmosphere of the planet drains away while I am visiting Japan? I better pack a self-enclosed space suit and supplemental oxygen.

Despite my inability to pack, I decided to throw in my suggestion of something you don’t need.

I picked something I’d seen a lot of people travelling with, but that I had never travelled with myself. Therefore, I figured, you don’t NEED to bring it, do you?

I knew when I picked the item I chose to write about, it would be controversial. I had met more than a few people travelling in the past few years who have said to me that they could not imagine travelling without this item. This despite the fact that the item in question didn’t exist before 2001, and wasn’t in regular use until a few year after that.

The item I suggested people could travel without was the iPod.

What I wrote was:

I see so many people travelling nowadays with their eyes closed and those white buds in their ears.  That is fine and good for a commuter train rides.  When riding a bus through the wilds of Costa Rica though, you lose something when you throw in your ear buds and select your “groove out” playlist instead of taking the opportunity to watch the scenery, listen to the sounds of travel and most importantly interact with your fellow travellers and locals.  Of course, I could be wrong and this all could be jealousy on my part seeing as I have no mp3 player to speak of…  But I am pretty sure I’m right.

As you can see, I tried to make it a bit of a joke. After all, I’ve already admitted that I pack too much stuff, so I figured I would fluff off the entry with a bit of a light, jokey entry.

My advice on the iPod got posted as one of the 18 Things You Don’t Need On Your Packing List.

Looking at the 18 things, I do agree with some of the things - money belts and water filters aren’t needed on the majority of trips. Some of things I understand, but still bring anyway. I know that you shouldn’t bring jeans - they are heavy and slow to dry, but I always bring them. They are just more comfortable. Some items I disagree with. I only brought one book with me to South America, figuring I could trade with folks along the road or pick up books at English book stores. Didn’t work, and I wound up spending 5 days in Patagonia without a single thing to read.

Among the other suggestions was my iPod entry. I was expecting a few negative comments, but I got a bit of an avalanche of them. Only one person agreed with me, with ten disagreeing, including calling me a “retard” for suggesting it and calling the suggest to travel without an iPod “the most stupid thing, I´ve ever heard, seriously!”

I’m pretty sure stupider things have been said in the entire history of humanity, but I suppose that’s a bit of an objective call, so perhaps I have, in fact, said the most stupid thing ever said.

When it comes right down to it, you don’t actually need much of anything to travel. If you’ve ever backpacked, you’ve probably run into someone who is travelling long term with nothing more than one change of clothes and a passport. That’s all you need, and you really only need the passport if you want to leave the country. In fact, I’ve come across blogs and articles about people travelling with no money at all, so a passport and clothes is about it.

Even with the inspiration of those who travel with nothing and a handy list of 18 things not to pack, I’ll probably still pack too much.

Turning back to my day trip to Ascot today, readers with keen deduction skills will already have guessed what the new bit of kit that I took with me.

It was my brand new iPod.

I bought it last weekend and loaded it up with the 2617 songs that I recently ripped from my CD collection. I put together a few cool playlists too, “Road Trippin’” and “Dance Dance Revolution” among them.

You know what. I liked it.

The iPod came in especially handy when, due to “severe delays on the circle line,” I wound up catching a later train out of Paddington and therefore missed a connection in Reading. With 25 minutes until the next train, being able to sit back and listen to some tunes was much appreciated.

After my meeting, I caught the train back to Paddington. Instead of hopping on the tube of catching a bus, I decided to walk home. It’s about an hour walk, but it is good exercise, so I decided to hoof it. I kept my iPod in my ears, and started the walk down Praed street with my “Car Chase Music” playlist on shuffle.

It made me realise what my life up to this point had been missing.

A soundtrack. Walking along the busy city streets with “Busy Child” by The Crystal Method made me feel a little like Jason Bourne on his way to punch the crap out of some of his evil CIA pursuers.

Therefore, I will admit I was wrong. Travelling with an iPod is fine. It helps pass the time when waiting, which those who travel will know is something that happens often - whether it is on a train platform, a bus station, a ferry terminal or an airport lounge. The music also provides an additional layer of experience to the passing scenery, whether out of a train window or walking the city.

Yes, I will admit I was wrong. At least, I’m pretty sure I was wrong...

...but...

Listening to my iPod today on the train got me thinking about another trip I did my train, but this one much longer than the hour from Ascot to Paddington (via Reading).

I got to thinking about my trip from Paris to Hong Kong, which I did without the benefit of an iPod or other MP3 player.

The iPod would have come in handy a few times. I no doubt would have gone a lot less stir crazy when I spent four days straight on the train between Moscow and Irkutsk, and iPod might have made the train station in Jining seem a lot less depressing and scary.

It would have been a shame though, if instead of spending my time trying to speak with Stan and Ollie or Soonay and Alex, that I put my ear buds in and spent my time lying on my bunk.

Plus, the iPod would have been an absolute life changer for the worse if I spent my time listening to U2’s latest on the train from Beijing to Hong Kong. On that trip, without an iPod to entertain me, I instead sought out some English speakers to chat with. I wound up chatting with a Canadian-born girl who was travelling with a British passport. She told me about the UK Ancestry visa, which three years later led to me moving over here to London.

So, yeah, I was wrong. Travelling with an iPod is fine. Just make sure you take the ear buds out and talk to those around you.

You never know where it might lead.