Evensong

Yesterday we went to hear Evensong at King's College Chapel. Dad and Joanie are visiting this week; through his various Cambridge connections, he was able to get us reserved seats in the main portion of the church. It was a memorable experience-- the building alone is very old and lovely, and the music was astonishingly beautiful. This page has some pictures of the exterior of the church; here is a page on the choir itself (the top picture is actually more or less exactly the view that we were seeing, although from a slightly different angle). The interior of the church dates back to the original construction (completed in 1547)-- it was amazing to sit in a seat made from an oak tree that grew in the first part of the 16th century.

Rugby

Ethan has taken to rugby in a big way this fall, and the St Faiths rugby team has definitely taken to him as well. In spite of his relative inexperience (e.g. never played a game before this September), he seems to have figured out how to operate on the rugby field and make his way in the game. Here is a shot of Ethan's team (most of them at least) with their coach, Mr Mageean.


As a parent watching the games, I have to say that it is an emotional roller coaster. On the one hand I am very proud of Ethan and I love to watch him out on the field playing. On the other hand, rugby is a rough game, no two ways about it. I cringe every time I see him get tackled or wind up on the bottom of the scrum. It also doesn't help much that if it were me out there, I would not last 10 minutes without having to be led off the field with some sort of broken bone or strained muscle.

There are of course rules designed to limit the amount of contact for this age group. For example, the runners are supposed to avoid "fending off" with one hand when they run: you are supposed to hold onto the ball with two hands (in theory) which in turn leads you to be a little more conservative about making contact (e.g. when you see yourself about to be tackled, you can turn your back).

There is a huge team element in rugby, at least as much as there is in soccer if not more (which I like). When you get tackled, you try to hand off to another of your teammates, and much of the strategy and field positioning play is design to enable this sort of transfer.

Here is a picture of Ethan setting up for the scrum. For a while it seemed that his coaches were moving him from position to position every day (at one point he was tight head prop, at one point he was playing left wing, etc) but at this point he seems to be consistently in the back part of the scrum, typically "lock" (second row).



This next sequence of photos gives you a sense for the flow of the game. In the first shot, Ethan's teammate is being tackled, so he passes it laterally to Ethan. Ethan grabs the ball, charges forward, then gets tackled by the other team. And so it goes...





The strategic part of rugby is interesting, particularly kicking. In American football, virtually all of the kicking plays (punt, field goal) are set pieces, elaborately planned and rehearsed ahead of time and often with a specialized/dedicated kicking crew. In rugby, if you have the ball and you suddenly decide that you don't like you or your team's field position, you can haul off and kick it up field more or less at any point. Picture to illustrate:



There are occasional breakaways, but it doesn't seem to happen that often. In one of the most recent St Faiths games, the other team had one guy who was especially speedy and was able to break away. This next shot shows Ethan trying (unsuccessfully) to chase down this player after he broke away on the sideline. [Note of parental pride: Ethan was the only kid on the team who got close enough to even get a shot at tackling this speed demon].

Libraries

Cambridge, in spite of being a world-renowned center for learning with an extraordinary history of academic achievement, doesn't have an especially good public library system right at the moment. The main library downtown is closed for repairs, and the various branch libraries are miniscule, with tiny collections and cramped quarters. [Footnote: yes, it seems incredibly petty to grumble about something like this, but libraries are such an integral part of our family life, it's a shock when things aren't working out.] I decided that I wouldn't be put off by the small stacks, so I just went on line and requested a bunch of books from other libraries in the Cambridgeshire area. When I went in to pick up my loans yesterday, however, I wound up having to pay a one pound "transport" fee for each book. Ouch! I really miss my local library in Lexington, which I have obviously been taking for granted until now. You know don't know how good you've got it until "it" isn't around any more!

Oi! Me bank's been nationalized!

Woke up this morning to hear on the radio that Gordon Brown and company decided to take a controlling interest in the Royal Bank of Scotland (owner of NatWest, the British bank that our family uses here). The banking crisis hits home...

I can't say that the banking experience here is all that wonderful, at least compared with how things are in the US. Generally speaking in America you can open a free checking account with nearly any bank as long as you have a pulse and you provide some sort of minimum deposit. Here in the UK we had to jump through all sorts of hoops in order to get the same sort of deal-- most of the banks wanted to charge us steep fees just in order to provide us with a checking account (and apparently this is not just how foreigners are treated-- it's the same deal for the locals). Amy was able to find a better deal with NatWest, but it was puzzling that the "base" level of service here is so much more expensive.

Artwork

Here is Lydia's latest, a portrait of her mom. The photo doesn't quite do it justice-- it looks better in person. She drew the main features of the face in pencil and then did the rest with her watercolors.

Cycling

Here are a couple of pix of my trusty bicycle, which I have been using religiously since we arrived here in Cambridge-- cycling has become a huge part of our everyday life. If you look closely at the odometer, it reads 221 miles, which over 6 weeks averages out to about 5 miles a day, which seems like a lot. Still, if you figure that I bike to and from school (St Faiths) twice a day during the week, that gets me pretty close to 5 miles already, then once you add in a bunch of longer rides on the weekend, it makes sense.



I am especially proud of my kids for all the biking they have done since we arrived here! There has been remarkably little complaining (all things considered), and they are developing into very competent cyclists as a result of all the mileage. The morning rides are definitely challenging-- sometimes it is quite cold, the pavement can be slick, there are cow pies to be dodged in poor light (on the Llamas Land portion of the ride), and all of the other bikers on the paths are usually in a hurry and biking aggressively.



I do worry every now and then about bike safety. If you bike a lot, sooner or later you are going to get into a bike accident of some sort: it's really just a matter of time. Both Amy and I have had several close calls while biking, and both Ethan and Lydia have had (minor) spills while biking to and from school.

Interestingly enough, you see very few "real" mountain bikes on the roads around here, compared to the USA. There are plenty of hybrids and bikes with "sort of" mountain geometry, but really most of the cycles you see out there were purpose built for commuting, which is kind of neat. Folding bicycles are also very popular; it's reallyquite common for people who work in the city to park on the outskirts, haul the bike out of their trunk, unfold it, and go by cycle from there.

I hope all of our bikes manage to make it through the year, given the heavy use. My bike has developed a bunch of slightly ominous clicking/crunching noises-- I am hoping that if I ignore them, they will go away...

A grand day out

This weekend we had our first day trip into London, which was an excellent outing. Saturday morning we woke to cool weather, a bit windy, fairly high cloud ceiling, but the weather forecast was grim (predicted "pouring" rain in the evening). Accordingly, we left the bikes in the shed and called a cab to get to the train station. The train was fine-- we had a little muddle at the station trying to find a newspaper, but then settled in and had an uneventful ride. Took about 50-55 minutes with no stops. Kings Cross station was mobbed-- way more people than I had expected to see on a chilly Saturday morning in October (wonder what it's like in July!), and we had another mob scene in the Underground due to the fact that the Victoria line entrance was closed for the day to be worked on, so all of those guys pushed onto our train (the Picadilly line). Anyhow, we got to the Waterloo tube station without any problems.

The London Eye is pretty cool-- I think everyone really enjoyed it. The wheel travels at a ridiculously sedate pace, but in fact this is a good thing, since it gives you lots of time to soak in the sights. Picture taking is a little tricky due to the fact that the curved glass on the "pods" tends to warp the view slightly, so you have to pick your spot. Lovely views of Westminster / Parliment, the river, and you can even see St Pauls off on the distance to the northeast.

After we finished up at the Eye, we took a walk around on the riverside and then tried going across the footbridge for the view. On out way back across the river we got to hear Big Ben chime the noon hour, which was neat. At that point we high-tailed it to the restaurant for lunch: "Ping Pong" a sort of reinvented dim sum place (very sleek and modern, with contemporary furniture, etc). The food was quite good, although for some reason they wouldn't give me a bowl of rice to go along with the dumplings, so I was still rather hungry afterwards (wound up eating both the carrots that I had brought as part of kid snack food).

The weather was nice (still quite cool and breezy but only a hint of rain every now and then) so we decided to walk to the theater district. We went past Trafalgar Square, where they were having some sort of very large Unicef demonstration on child poverty, then up along Charing Cross road, which was also quite crowded. That area has a lot of the same qualities that you find in the Broadway theater area in New York, except that it's all crammed into a much smaller area
with narrower streets.

Amy had arranged ahead for theater tickets in the afternoon, the 3pm performance of "Stomp". When we arrived at the theater, we still had plenty of time, so we decided to go for a walk the area. There are several used book stores along Charing Cross that we got to explore, and then we cut over into Chinatown for a bit to see what it looked like. Chinatown was just a bit too crowded (also we were getting tired of walking), so we ducked into a bakery to buy a couple of coconut buns, then headed back to the theater to wait for the show.

"Stomp" was terrific-- amazing dancing and music (percussion, that is). Many of the individual percussion performance pieces during the show were just jaw-dropping ("how the heck did he/she do that!!!"), the group pieces were terrific as well. Very entertaining; my expectations were greatly exceeded.

Afterwards we thought about eating dinner in the area (there was actually a nice restaurant that we walked by), but it was still fairly early and we didn't feel like yet another tromp around the city before dinner. Instead we decided to make our retreat to Cambridge, so we hopped on the tube to King's Cross and caught the 5:15 train back to Cambridge (just made it in time). It had indeed started to rain at that point, so we felt good about not having biked (also felt good to take a warm cab ride back to Newnham!).

For dinner we had pizza + pasta at the Red Bull, one of the local pubs in Newnham (right down on Barton Road). Very cheerful place; friendly staff, nice atmosphere. The pizza we ordered for the kids was good, although the pasta dishes were a little on the bland side. The waiter who brought us our food turned out to be from Colorado (he actually had a very British look to him, and we were certain he was a local until he opened his mouth and started speaking). After that we walked the rest of the way home-- raining lightly but not too cold. All in all, a nice day.

Today, Sunday, we woke up to more find that the rain had started in earnest, so we had an "at home day" catching up on laundry, cooking, grocery shopping, cleaning, and (of course) blogging. The kids and I are having a lot of fun playing the board game ("The aMAZEing Labyrinth") that Rustin gave Ethan for his birthday. The rain finally let up long enough for me to go for a run-- it was a hard slog (my legs are still store from the walking yesterday, apparently).