|
April 2001 |
|
|
Back to
|
Thursday 5 April I'm looking forward to my trip to the USA later this month. I'll be going to Berkeley, for a conference at MSRI. The flights are booked with KLM (Leeds-Amsterdam-San Francisco), and I decided to rent a car for the week. The car rental is not much more expensive than the cost of a limousine from the airport to Berkeley and back, and it will give me the freedom to get around while I'm there. However, there won't be much opportunity to travel around, because I shall only be there for a week, and the conference programme is going to be fairly intensive. I shall be staying with Marc and Jan. I feel slightly ambivalent about that. It will be very nice to see them again, and it will certainly be cheaper to stay at their house than in a hotel. In fact, that's the only way I can break even on the trip, since my Department is only paying fairly limited expenses. But it will make it harder for me to slip away and explore San Francisco on my own. (Now why ever should I want to do that?) Mary decided not to come on this trip. She gets on very well with Jan, but she would have found the journey very tiring. She doesn't cope well with jet lag, and by the time she had recovered from that it would be almost time to come home again. To be honest, I didn't really encourage her to come with me. There are some conferences (like the one in Barcelona last year) that are geared up for spouses and other "accompanying persons" to attend. But the Berkeley meeting will be more of a workshop, very intensive with probably not much time for socialising. I have promised Mary that as soon as I retire we'll go back to California for a vacationing visit. I'll be leaving Mary at home on her own a couple more times this summer. She doesn't want to come to Moscow with me in June, or on the annual walking holiday in Scotland in July. So we're going to have to plan some other trips that she can come on. We haven't made any definite arrangements yet, but we're thinking of going to Vienna to see Nick's ex-wife Ingrid. We also want to spend some time visiting family on the south coast--my brother lives in Dorset and Mary's brother is in Sussex. And of course we'll have to go to Spain to see Steve, Jo and Tom. It's going to be a busy summer.
Monday 9 April Our wedding anniversary Today is our 35th wedding anniversary. It is the first time for three years that we have been together at home on the day. Last year I was in Edinburgh. The year before, we were both together, but in Spain, where we had an anniversary dinner with Steve and Jo (who was four months pregnant with Tom). Three years ago, we were both at home, and Liz was also here. The three of us went out for a very good Thai meal at the Sala Thai in Headingley. This year, there are just the two of us at home. So why, you may wonder, am I skulking in my study writing this journal entry instead of taking Mary out somewhere? The answer is simple. With her chronic fatigue, Mary has to ration her energy carefully. She had an appointment with her osteopath this morning, and she knew that that would wipe her out for the rest of the day. So we decided to spread the anniversary celebrations over the weekend. On Friday, we went for dinner at a strange Lebanese restaurant, with our young friends Stephanie and François (who house and cat sit for us when we go on holiday). They heard about this place a few weeks ago, but none of us had been there before. We turned up at 7.30, and the restaurant was empty. We were shown to a table in a room with an oppressively low ceiling and several tables jammed close together. We were asked if we wanted to order drinks, but nobody brought us a menu. Gradually the room filled with other people, including a party of six people at the table next to us, who all started to smoke. We asked if there wasn't a non-smoking room, and the waitress showed us to another room, much less crowded. Still no menus. It turned out that this was because there was a set menu (not that anyone told us this--they seemed to assume that we would know). Every table had the same food, at the same time. We could see into the kitchen from where we sat, and they seemed very laid back and unhurried there. After about an hour, a selection of very good cold starters was brought to the table--things like hummus, dolmades, spinach with a creamy, spicy sauce, and pita bread. After that was cleared away, they kept us waiting another hour or so for the main course while a belly dancer performed indifferently. "You're supposed to look at her, it's rude not to," Mary whispered to me as my gaze wandered to a cute young guy at the far end of the room. But I noticed that several other people were just as unimpressed with the dancer as I was. When the main course finally arrived, it was very good: spicy chicken, aromatic rice and a vegetarian dish consisting of various beans. Steph and Fran are vegetarian, so they had most of the beans while Mary and I had the chicken. That was the end of the set menu and most of the other diners left at this stage. But we were tempted by the baklava and Turkish coffee, so we stayed on for dessert. It was well after 11 p.m. by the time we finished. Then the restaurant sprang another surprise on us. They didn't take credit cards. Fortunately I had enough cash on me to pay for the meal. We had agreed earlier that Mary and I would pay for the food and Fran and Steph would buy the drinks. This was supposed to be a device for us to pay for their evening out, because the drinks bill should have been quite small. Mary doesn't touch alcohol these days, and Fran was driving. But the meal lasted so long that Steph and I managed to get through two bottles of a rather good Australian Merlot. For the second instalment of our anniversary celebrations, we went to the cinema yesterday. This is a rare treat for us. I can't remember the last time we saw a film. Possibly it was last July when we were visiting Nick in London. The film yesterday was Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. I had heard that this movie had been well reviewed, but I did not know anything about it except that it was described as a martial arts film. I didn't think that Mary would like that. But she loves anything Chinese, and apparently someone had recommended the film to her. We both enjoyed it a lot. At first, I was a bit disconcerted by the mix of historical realism and magical fantasy. But once I got used to the conventions of the film, I thought it worked beautifully. The choreography of the sword fighting episodes was spectacular, and so were the photography and the acting. The dialogue was apparently very clearly enunciated classical Mandarin, and Mary was able to understand quite a lot of it. She went to Chinese classes for three years, before our visit to Beijing in 1997, and she speaks the language impressively well. I don't understand a word of Chinese so I had to rely on the subtitles. Mary said afterwards that the Chinese names of the leading characters translate as Crouching Tiger and Hidden Dragon. So now you know the reason for the film's title.
Saturday 14 April Easter Saturday Easter is a major holiday in Britain, and especially in Leeds. Good Friday and Easter Monday are public holidays, and in Leeds the Tuesday is also a holiday. For some reason that I have never discovered, there is a local custom in Leeds that some bank holidays are doubled up to cover two days instead of one. Easter Monday is one of them. So the University has been closed from yesterday (Thursday lunchtime, in practice) until next Wednesday. With nearly a week off work, we ought to be doing something constructive with the time. But we have hardly any plans for the holiday, mainly because Mary is not feeling too good. Her chronic fatigue symptoms seem to be in remission at present, but she has developed some alarming allergic reactions to various medications that she takes. She has always had trouble sleeping, and needs to take drugs to get to sleep. But recently she has been having bad reactions to all of them. This means that she stays awake half the night and then feels terrible the next day. Right now, she is glad to stay home and do very little. I am also happy enough to stay home, because I am working on a little internet project (I'll tell you about it when it is finished). The only thing that has happened to liven up our holiday weekend so far is that our surrogate son Nick came to see us yesterday. His job (with a high powered firm of financial analysts in London) seems to be coming to an end. He is a bit evasive about the exact circumstances, and it isn't altogether clear whether he got tired of them or whether they decided to get rid of him. Also, he has split up with his latest girlfriend. His life is at a crossroads, and he is undecided whether to go off to New Zealand, where he has some contacts, or to follow up the possibility of a job in York. I hope the York job materialises. It would be nice to have him living so near. In the meantime, he is going off next month for a backpacking trip to Nepal, as young people do these days when they want to discover their true selves. We went out with Nick and a friend of his for a Cantonese dinner at the Lucky Dragon, followed by an Easter concert at Leeds Parish Church, an all-Haydn programme consisting of the Theresa Mass and the Stabat Mater. It was a good concert, but the heating in the church had failed, and it was co-o-old. Tomorrow, Lorraine is coming to join us for our Easter dinner. We have bought a duck to roast, and I'll make an orange sauce for it. With roast parsnips and potatoes, it should make a good meal. By the way, did you know that Easter is named after Eostre, the pagan goddess of dawn, and is a celebration of the vernal equinox that goes right back to Druid times? (I thought it worth mentioning, just in case you were under the impression that it had anything to do with christianity.) I hope that no non-pagan readers will take offence if I wish you all a very Happy Easter.
Time is running out fast. I had hoped to make a proper journal entry before setting off for California on Saturday. But we are going out tomorrow and Friday evenings, and this evening I feel more like slumping in front of the television to watch the football (Manchester Utd are playing Bayern Munich for a place in the semi-finals of the European Cup). I still have plenty to do before Saturday. I haven't started to think about packing, and so far I haven't got round to visiting the bank's international branch to pick up some US dollars. Then I also have to go grocery shopping with Mary, so that there is some food in the house for her while I'm away. This trip has somehow snuck up on me unawares, and I haven't really got used to the idea that I shall be in Berkeley three days from now. The flight on Saturday is outrageously early. I have to catch the 6:10 a.m. flight from Leeds to Amsterdam, which means that I shall have to get up at about 4:15. Add on the eight hours' time difference between British Summer Time and Pacific Daylight Time, and you can see that it's going to be a very long day indeed. I'll try to sleep as much as possible on the long flight from Amsterdam to San Francisco, otherwise I'll be totally shattered by the time I get there. It looks as though Man Utd have had it. They are 2-0 down at half time, or 3-0 on aggregate, since they previously lost the first leg 1-0. But Leeds Utd are already in the semi-finals of the European Cup, having beaten the Spanish club Deportivo La Coruña yesterday. Go Leeds! (Actually, they lost 2-0 last night, but they were ahead 3-0 from the first leg, so they won on aggregate.) Sorry about this scrappy entry. I'll try to make up for it when I get back from the USA at the end of the month, with an in-depth analysis of how Berkeley has changed in the 15 years since I was last there.
Monday 30 April
I enjoyed the week in Berkeley, staying with my friends Marc and Jan. Marc was the organiser of the workshop, and I really appreciated the fact that he invited me to be his house guest, rather than any of the other participants.
The workshop was fairly intense, and the
only free time that I had was on the Sunday, the day after I arrived. I
took the BART train into San Francisco, and did touristy things like riding
on the cable cars and visiting Fisherman's Wharf, where I had an excellent
crab sandwich for lunch. Oh yes, I did spend an hour or so in the afternoon
at the Nob Hill Theatre.
Apart from that, there isn't much to tell
about the week. I promised in the previous entry that I would give an in
depth analysis about the changes that have taken place in Berkeley since
I was last there, but in fact I can summarise them in three words: there
aren't any. The place looked just as it did when I last saw it. Just occasionally
you see something like an internet café that couldn't have been
there fifteen years ago, but other than that everything looked just as
it did on previous visits.
America is still a very different environment
from England, and you can't help noticing the difference in pace and scale.
I tried to capture this in a couple of photographs, but it hasn't turned
out as well as I intended. (I'm not a good photographer, especially when
holding a camera with one hand while driving.) Anyway, here are the photos. The first one shows the road from Marc and Jan's house to San Francisco airport:
The second shot shows the road from my house to Leeds airport:
Of course, I have cheated a bit. It is
not true that the whole journey from Marc's house to the airport consists
of roads on the scale of the Bayshore Freeway in Berkeley. And it isn't
quite true that the journey from my house to the airport consists of roads
as narrow and sleepy as Old Lane, Bramhope (though it's not far from the
truth).
I'm not saying that one environment is
better or worse than the other. I love both of them, and I enjoy the contrast in moving from one to the other.
Maybe I'll find a bit more to say about
the trip in another entry. For now, I'm still adjusting to the eight hour
time difference, and I don't think I am in a fit state to be writing anything
coherent.
|
