York

Here are some photos from our recent trip to York (last weekend-- I am getting way behind on my blog posts).



The cathedral, York Minster, is absolutely enormous (it should really be called York Monster). I know it's a cliche', but it still beggars the imagination that people could have constructed such a thing so long ago, back before power tools and hydraulic lifts. Here is a shot from the interior:



We did the hike up to the tower: 289 steps. Excellent view from the top, although in fact there isn't all that much to see except the outskirts of York, which are not tremendously interesting (the view from St Mary's church in Cambridge has a lot more in it). The catacombs were fun too, since they had some intriguing materials on the two other churches that were previously there on the same site.



It was also fun to clamber around the old city walls, which give you a nice view of the church grounds and of the city surroundings. Sections of them make you feel rather voyeuristic, since you wind up looking into everyone's back garden. The weather was fantastic; we really lucked out on that front.



We also visited the Viking museum, which is rather kooky (features a sort of trolley ride in which you get carted around from exhibit to exhibit). It was interesting, though, and I felt as though I did learn a few things.

York has lots of restaurants-- there didn't seem to be any problems finding places to eat. Here is one place that we decided not to sample:



This fine establishment is actually a chain of restaurants, believe it or not. A new "Slug and Lettuce" may be coming to your neighborhood very soon!

Netball

Yes, another odd British sport, however a very important one, since it's the first one that has presented me with an opportunity to photograph my daughter in action on the pitch. I have bucketloads of sports photos of Ethan, but this has been my first chance to get some of Lydia.



Netball is essentially basketball with no dribbling and no backboard behind the net, plus a collection of other rules that restrict where players can go. At Lydia's level, there are five players on the court: Goal Attack, Goal Shooter, Goal Defense, Goal Keeper, and Center. The offensive players have to stay "up" (e.g. towards the section of the court that has the net they are shooting on) and the defensive players have to stay back. At this level they actually wear jerseys that have their position on them ("GA", "GK", etc) which made it much easier for clueless parents to figure out what was going on.



Because you can't dribble, it means that when someone on your team has the ball, you have to be running around constantly in order to give them a passing opportunity. I don't think the year 3 girls had quite figured this out, though, so there was a certain amount of standing around every now and then.



Interestingly enough, height doesn't really seem to make all that much difference. In fact the best player on Lydia's team was also the shortest. The key skill that they are all working on trying to figure out where to stand in order to intercept passes in the air (tricky business).

At Lydia's age they don't play against teams from other schools, so this was "House" netball, with teams drawn from each of the houses at St Faiths (Bentley, Latham, Chaucer, and Newton). The girls were very enthusiastic and energetic, so it was a lot of fun top watch. Very well attended, too: tons of parents turned out for the matches.

Premier League Football

Football in this case means soccer, for all you guys back over on the other side of the Atlantic, and the Premier League is the top pro football organization here in England; some of the best players in the world compete in the Premier League.

Before coming to England, I had sort of assumed that the world of American sport (the NFL, major league baseball, the NBA) would have English sport beat when it came to media hype, drama, histrionics, and general hoopla. In fact I have to say that the Premier League gives American sport a run for its money.

The first thing that's interesting here is that it's not strictly English football being played; the Premier League teams draw players (and managers) from all over the world. There is almost nothing more portable than a really good football player, and because of the huge sums of money involved, you get people from virtually everywhere playing on Premier League teams, even at the less well known clubs. There is small element of this in American baseball (e.g. players from the Caribbean countries and from Central America), and in the NBA (where you have a few players now from Europe and South America), but by far the bulk of the players are American. The international element adds an interesting swirl of tensions and conflicts that you don't seem to see in American sport.

A second big difference is that because of the runup for World Cup qualifiers, you have various National teams trying to grab players away from Premier league duty so that they can play in qualifying matches and other "friendlies" for their home countries. This of course adds an interesting level of unpredictability, since you never know when player X is going to suddenly disappear from the roster for a given match (since he's off playing for his national team). There are also huge rows between the Premier League managers and the national team managers when it comes to injuries. Just about every week you read about a situation where a national team manager will "call up" an injured or recuperating player (against the wishes of his Premier League team manager), resulting in orgies of finger-pointing and angry accusations.

A third difference is that you have inter-league play, where the English teams will occasionally have matches with the top teams from Europe. American baseball has inter-league play, but it's pretty tepid stuff: it doesn't change the game in any huge way, and it does count for much. Here the inter-league games are typically quite important, since there is a separate "Champions League" (encompassing all of Europe + Russia + the UK) that the top teams want badly to win. Inter-league games are almost always very unpredictable, since you can have two powerhouse teams going up against each other having not faced off for years.

Finally there is the trading and the exchanging of players between teams, which happens at an astonishing rate, and continues on very late into the season. The amounts of money involved are staggering: for a top player, just the transfer fee along can run into the 10-20 million pound range. What's even weirder, there are cases where one team will actually loan a player to an opposing team for some number of weeks or months (don't think I have ever heard of that in the USA). This season one of the most talked-about transfers involved Robbie Keane, a top-flight striker from Tottenham Hotspur. In this bizarre tale, his club traded him to Liverpool for 20 million pounds, then Keane wound up sitting on the bench at Liverpool for several months (the Liverpool coach was apparently having a dispute with his bosses about control over transfers, if you can believe that), whereupon he was finally traded back to Tottenham again for the same amount of money. Hard to believe.

In spite of all the complicated comings and goings of the players, though, the league provides amazingly good watching. Ethan and I have been very happy with the events of the past month, which has seen a resurgence on the part of Liverpool, our favorite team. Liverpool had a fairly strong start to the season, then entered a period of "doldrums" in the middle. They just had a hard time winning games; it seemed that every match was a draw, even the ones at home. This was in part due to the fact that a number of their good players were injured. At the start of March, it looked as though the season was already wrapped up: the mighty Manchester United had what looked like an insurmountable lead in points, end of story. Then Liverpool had an absolutely incredible run: they beat Manchester United solidly (in Manchester, which is quite a trick), thumped Real Madrid (one of the top teams in Spain), and finally resounding walloped Aston Villa (probably the 4th best team in the Premier League) five to nil, all in the space of a couple of weeks. Man U proceeded to lose to Fulham (one of the weaker clubs), and although nobody would have believed it, the two teams are now virtually dead even. Much of the credit goes to Liverpool's top player and captain, Steven Gerrard, who has been absolutely unstoppable-- I have never seen anyone play as well as he has in these past few games. The lead for the Times article was "Steven Gerrard the Red Destroyer Leads Rout of Mighty Real Madrid", and for once I think the hyperbole was entirely justified. Fun stuff-- I wish I could bottle it and take it home with me to the USA.

Bear-napping

Here is picture of Lydia with the class bear, whose name I think is Pugsie. This poor creature has an eye patch, which gets him (her?) a lot of sympathy and many extra hugs. Lydia seemed to think it was cold, so she's bundled the bear up a bit. Very suitable for Cambridge in March.

A Different Sort of Pint

Very foggy today, a pea-soup sort of stuff (appropriate for a Friday the 13th I suppose).

After I dropped off the kids at school today, I hopped back on my bike and cycled down Long Road to Addenbrookes, the hospital complex that sits in the southern part of the city. It's an absolutely gigantic place, and it seem to be growing bigger by increments as you watch (lots of construction going on). I picked the wrong entrance by mistake and had to zoom around the inside for a while to locate the blood center. The receptionist told me that when they are done constructing the latest clinic, the complex will be the biggest medical center in all of Europe. Yow.

Giving blood here in the UK turns out to be very much the same as donating in the US; you have the lengthy questionnaire asking you about your sexual and pharmaceutical habits and quizzing you about any illegal/risky things you may have done in the past. In the US, there is a long list of drugs that they ask you if you are taking, but only a couple here in the UK. Of course, there was the usual hemming & hawing and checking with supervisors when I disclosed various bits of my medical history (the one that always seems to wind them up is when I tell them I have a slight heart murmur). For a while the nurse made threatening noises about having me go and get examined by a doctor first, but eventually they relented and decided to let me go ahead and donate.

The one thing that seems different here is that you have to wait 16 weeks before donating again-- in the US, you can donate a pint every 8 weeks if you want. Not quite sure why there is such a big difference.

Field Hockey

The "sport of the moment" for Ethan at this point in the term is field hockey, which is maybe not quite as interesting as rugby, but still fairly fun to learn about.

All sports (with the possible exceptions of Ultimate Frisbee and soccer) have too many nitpicky rules in my opinion, but field hockey seems to have arbitrary rules by the bucketload (especially compared to ice hockey). For example, you can't hit the ball with the back (rounded) part of your stick, even accidentally. It's nearly always a foul if the ball contacts your foot. In fact it's even a foul if the opposing player shoots it and it bounces off your foot accidentally (people sometimes do this on purpose to try to create a "set piece" opportunity). While in possession of the ball, you can shield it from opposing players, but you can't dribble "backwards" at the same time (ice hockey players do this routinely). If you are a lefty, you are basically out of luck-- there are no left-handed field hockey sticks (or rather they exist, but it's illegal to use them in a game). Still, in spite of all the rules and the weird "hardware", it still seems to be fun for the kids.

Lots of injuries in field hockey; the St Faiths mom who handles first aid is much busier than during the rugby season. It's easy to see why, too-- field hockey balls are absolutely lethal (5.75 ounces, same weight as an ice hockey puck, but harder), and when you have a group of boys flailing around with wooden sticks, sooner or later someone is going to get clobbered.

In ice hockey, most passes and even some shots can be accomplished with "wrist" or "flip" motion of the stick, but in field hockey in order to do anything but a very short pass you have to wind up and whack the ball with a full swing, with predictably random outcomes. Defending against the shot is considerably more difficult, mainly because of the length of the sticks. In ice hockey, if I am directly in front of an opposing player who has the puck, in most cases there isn't enough time for him/her to to get off a full slapshot, since I can simply reach out with my stick and poke the puck away during his/her windup (my stick is long enough). With the shorter field hockey sticks, that type of defensive move is almost impossible-- if the guy in front of you winds up for a shot, you get the out of the way in a hurry (if you know what's good for you).

In terms of strategy, field hockey is actually quite similar to soccer; typically a team will try to bring the ball up the side and then cross into the center, as opposed to driving right down the middle (unless you have a player who is especially good at dribbling). There are both "short corners" and "long corners" (starting point for short corner is on the baseline halfway between the goal and the true corner). Corners are a significant scoring opportunity, since the defense has to clump up into the goal prior to the corner-- they aren't allowed to roam around in the box as in soccer.


This last weekend St Faiths hosted a field hockey tournament, which was a fun experience for Ethan. Ethan scored a goal (treat for him, since they usually play him back on defense, where he doesn't get a lot of shots), and the team came in second overall, which was a very good result. Here are some photos. Ethan driving with the ball:



One of Ethan's teammates winding up for a pass/shot (take cover!):



Team photo at the end of the tournament:



Unlike rugby, which is rather hard to practice on your own, field hockey is (unfortunately) easier to fool around with at home. Ethan likes to keep his hockey stick & ball in the living room and practice dribbling around the coffee table; this has caused a fair amount of parental nervousness (particularly when you are in the kitchen cooking and you hear a "whap" from the living room).

Meanwhile: I still have not had a chance to take any photos of Lydia playing sports this year (once again proving the rule that the older kid gets tons of photographic coverage while the younger one languishes). I am hopeful for next week, however, since Lydia has told me that there is going to be a house "netball" match. Another weird British sport to learn...

Signs of Spring?

Here is a picture I took a week or so back:



You can't really make it out from photo, but it was taken along the side of Queen's Road just outside St John's college. I ran by the same spot again today and in fact it's even more lovely-- the crocuses are in full bloom now.

On the other hand, supposedly we may get snow tomorrow (???), so keep your fingers crossed.

More Books

The recent selections we've had in my book club have been quite good. Latest:

"My Cleaner" by Maggie Gee
"Mister Pip" by Lloyd Jones
"The Road Home" by Rose Tremaine

It also looks as though the club is going through a sort of schism-- part of the gang want to move the meeting back to the small branch library where it began, and the remaining members want to keep the meeting place where it is. I'll just have to wait and see how it turns out (I don't have any strong opinions-- both locations are within biking distance of our house).

I am hoping that we will read some good non-fiction stuff at some point in the next few months, since my "diet" of non-fiction has been rather thin lately. I am reading "Dreams of My Father" by Barack Obama on the side, but I'd still like to find something else. My last really good non-fiction selection was Dan Koeppel's "Banana: The Fate of the Fruit that Changed the World" -- don't pass it up if you happen to see a copy.

Brussels

This past half-term break our family went on a trip to Brussels. It was an entertaining jaunt-- just a couple of days, but we had a nice time.

Amy bought us tickets for the Eurostar train, which turned out to be a very pleasant way to travel indeed (beats flying hands down). The tickets were for a mid-day train, so we had a leisurely breakfast and were able to get packed without hurrying. At around 10:15, however, Amy checked the web site for the local rail company (the one that runs the Cambridge to London line) and found all sorts of scary-looking delay notices, so we kicked into high gear and got to the train station early. It was just as well we did, since there was a huge line almost running out the door, and by the time we got through it and out onto the platform the train was almost about the leave. Amazingly, we all managed to get seats relatively close to one another, in spite of the crush, and we arrived with plenty of time to get organized. The Eurostar leaves from St Pancras station, which is newly refurbished, modern, gleaming, and generally nice all around. The ride was uneventful; Lydia worked on her latest sewing project with help from Amy while Ethan and I spent the time reading. Once in Brussels, we took the subway and then walked the last half mile or so to the apartment complex where we were staying. Dinner at a strange little neighborhood Indian restaurant (we were not in the mood to spend a lot of time hunting for haute cuisine).



Brussels doesn't really feel like your typical European city (whatever that is). There is a fair amount of new construction, and in fact virtually all the buildings in the area where we stayed were new-ish. It is clear that when it comes to building things for the EU/EC, the folks in Brussels have no compunctions whatsoever about getting out their bulldozers and "starting fresh". On the other hand, the very inner part of the city is quite lovely and clearly very old, so it just depends on where you are.



For the first day, after a short breakfast of fruit and toaster waffles (purchased from the local grocery store-- good but very sweet), we hopped on the subway and headed into the main part of town. Amy booked us a city tour that featured a very short walking segment (100 yards or so) followed by an longer stretch riding around in a bus looking at the various parts of the city. The tour started in the very inner part of the city, right near the so-called Grand Place, then headed for a large loop to the north, came back around, and did another loop over to the east part of the city. We had a combination of taped narrative via headphones and comments from our tour guide; the auto controls were almost byzantine in their complexity (must have been at least a dozen different languages you could choose from).

We had a quick lunch at at a local buffet-style cafe (the name escapes me, but it was very modern-looking), then we hiked north up to the Cartoon Museum. The museum was fun, although terribly disorganized. There was an initial section with exhibits on how cartoons are typically made (somewhat out of date, given that lots of people now use Adobe Photoshop or something similar), then a stairway into a large hall in which everything seemed to be mixed up at random. It was still fun, though, especially the parts dealing with Herge and Tintin.

After the museum we headed back home; all four of us had a nice swimming session at the pool attached to the complex where we were staying. Dinner: we went back into town to eat at Chez Leon, a "moules & frites" restaurant. Extremely touristy, but the food and the service were quite good.

Lots of graffiti in this town for some reason. Or maybe there's the same amount as in other cities, but for some reason we're just noticing it here more-- not sure. Here there is graffiti right in the center of town, actually written on the side of one of the art museums:



Here's some graffiti closer to the place we were staying (just down the block). The kids noticed this one right away and commented on it:



The next day we went in to see the antiques market, which I think was quite interesting for Amy, mildly interesting for me, and not especially interesting for the kids, so we didn't stay very long. We had lunch at another cafe and did a little shopping for chocolate. Brussels actually has a museum devoted to chocolate, but Amy read a whole series of unfavorable reviews on her web sites, so we decided that we would just use the money to buy actual chocolate instead. We started off at Neuhaus, which is quite good but ridiculously expensive (all their stuff is hand-made). Then we tried Leonidas (also very good, not quite as pricey), and finally we went (at my insistence) and loaded up at one of the local grocery stores (the slightly cheaper stuff).



In the afternoon we went to visit the Museum of Musical Instruments-- that was a real pleasure. Housed in a fairly elegant turn-of-the-century building, the museum itself is spread out over about four different floors; you start in the basement and work your way up. At the door they give you an audio device that looks like a large pair of headphones. As you are wandering around the place they have small circles painted on the floor; if you stand near enough to the circle, then your headphones pick up a radio transmission. The program for each circle consists of a series of short pieces played on the actual instruments you are looking at in the display cases. This means you get to listen to Albanian bagpipe tunes while you look at the Albanian bagpipes, etc. Wonderful!



They have a separate card that you can pick up at the entrance to each hall that gives more details on the music (title, composer, country of origin, etc). The music was great-- they had clearly gone to great lengths to find interesting and beautiful pieces to listen to. In terms of the collection, they had a fairly heavy emphasis on Renaissance and Baroque stuff, but with plenty of more "primitive" instruments thrown in (pipes, lutes, drums, etc). This one was one of Ethan's favorites: the "micro violin". Unfortunately they didn't have any recordings of this weird miniature beasty:



Favorite weird instrument names: Sackbut (a sort of trombone) and Crumhorn (strangely curving recorder of sorts). We stayed for quite a while; I think we might have lasted even longer if the kids hadn't started to get bored (Lydia had to drag us out the door). The top floor of the museum has a very nice-looking restaurant (with outdoor seating-- it would be a good spot for a summertime visit). After that: more swimming, followed by a pleasant meal at a local Italian restaurant.

The trip back the next day was fine. Oddly enough, we had more minor train troubles, first with the subway and then with the Eurostar. The subways in Brussels apparently don't run very often on the weekends; we had to wait a while, and then when the train finally showed up it was absolutely packed. I made a bunch of people very unhappy by cramming myself into the compartment with a suitcase, but it couldn't be helped. At the Eurostar station there was more muddle-- the times had been changed slightly and we had to check in again, then go through a fairly lengthy security line. When we did finally get to our seats we were almost immediately accosted by another group of ladies who had apparently been given exactly the same seats. Luckily we had managed to get there first (possession being nine tenths of the law, etc), so we were able to hold onto the seats without too much additional negotiation.

We played hearts and fantan on the way back, then Ethan and I amused ourselves by trying to come up with good titles for blog posts. He hit on the title "Chocolate and Graffiti, which I thought was the best of the lot. I did my best to convince him to let me use it for my blog, but he was having none of that (he wanted it for his blog). We went through several other alternatives, including "Machiavellian Ministers Munch Moules while Mysterious Machines Mix Millions of Mocha Merengues", but I eventually decided to go with the more boring title.