Now Then, About My Welsh Walkabout

I spent a glorious part of my UK time hiking the Pembrokeshire Coast Trail in southern Wales. It is the island's only national park on the coast, which I found surprising. Still, what else could beat this 190-mile trail, overlooking the St. George's and Bristol Channels, to the Celtic Sea, to the Atlantic Ocean?

Sometimes the trail wandered through coastal woods so set in an unknown time, illuminated by another world's light, that Welsh mythology seemed entirely possible.

Most times though, the trail hovered at the edge of the cliffs looking out onto the water.

Whenever there was a set of footholds or stairs leading down a cliff to a beach, the trail signs obligingly pointed it out for an arduous but worthwhile detour. What was so truly amazing about views and visits down to various beaches was the difference between high and low tides. At most beaches I know, the difference was simply several yards more or less of sand.

Not here.

This set of stairs, unusually formal for its setting, simply disappeared at a certain point during the tide. I so longed to sit there like Tiger Lily and let the sea rise to my throat.

This spectacular formation, accessible only at low tide, looked like where the world began, with a dark drill-bit heart and waves of golden rock undulating in a perfect display of centrifugal force, the most fluid, transitional movement caught in the hardest, most ancient substance.

More to come (and with apologies for the layout) . . .

Please Let Me Shout: My Photo on The New Yorker's Book Bench Blog!

The New Yorker's The Book Bench has had a great feature this summer, with contributed photographs from around the world focusing on the summertime pleasure of books and reading. My Welsh bookshop photograph, which all of you trendsetting people saw first on my blog, is the August 13th entry there.

And while we're on the subject of the manifold talents of the Rummage clan, Intrepid Theorist, one of the Chocolates, is the focus of an article in Science Magazine.

I will let you quietly guess in your head which is the greater honor. (Hey . . .)

My Summer Vacation Book Report

Vacation time travel is best if you end up behind where you started.

My time in England and Wales began smack in the 21st century with a presentation on semantics and content architecture at University College London. It ended smack in the 18th century with an antiquarian edition of The History of Sir Charles Grandison from Charing Cross Road. Most definitely the right direction!

Vision of the Future (Hint: It's broken.)

Blackwell's bookshop in London has the famous Espresso "books on demand" machine. The first image shows the "Books on Demand" center with its samples on display. The second is a close-up of the machine itself. You might not be able to see the sign saying that it's broken.

Vision of the Past

This little bookshop in Wales had sedimentary layers of books, just like the rock formations there did. It was the hidden treasure in a town with several antiseptic bookstores. This shop had odd hours, delightfully treacherous aisles snaking between stacks and layers of books, and a knowledgeable and charming owner who smelled gently of liquor early in the morning. The one other customer in the store turned around and sent huge piles of books tumbling from several directions. I bought my book of Welsh fables here.

What I Read on My Summer Vacation

I read my first No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency novel on my Kindle while on my Welsh walkabout. I was predisposed to like it because a friend recommended the series and because the possessive is always used correctly. This was probably an overwrought vacation reaction, but it reminded me a little of Trollope in its style, at once masterly and deceptively simple.

I also looked for a book that I would never see in the United States. My find this time was Madresfield, a historical biography of the house that inspired Evelyn Waugh to write Brideshead Revisited and that was subject to the lawsuit that inspired Jarndyce and Jarndyce in Bleak House (a very very favorite novel). I never imagined those two authors in the same sentence, let alone the same house!

Alas, now I am reading my bills for my trip.

Sign, Sign, Everywhere a Sign

I need to start writing about my wonderful time in London and Wales before my vacation glow becomes, um, a vacation glower, which is not the comparative form.

So I'll begin with a few UK signs. Ever since a long ago trip to Japan, where a friendly little carp icon meant "EARTHQUAKE!"--something, quite honestly, I never would have translated correctly because there's no hope for anyone if fish aren't safe from land tremors--I have paid attention to signs when traveling.

Misfortune Awaits

I loved this unambiguous little guy, telling me that if I continued on (or actually off) my Welsh hiking trail, misfortune awaited. I really like the fact that he so clearly has five fingers on each hand.

The Polite Ashtray

For some reason, this seemed so British, compared to our dirty lumps of sand.

Restaurant Dumpster

Alas, you can't really tell from the photo, but this sign reminding patrons to choose this pasta eatery was pasted on the side of a dumpster. And I think we all know why the pasta is brown . . .

The Powerful Construction Lobby

Don't you love the idea of a "Considerate Constructors Scheme"? It sounds like something from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

Sign of the Times

What could be sadder? (If I didn't bring you something from London, now you know why.)

Two Days Ago, There Was a Little Incident Involving Flip-flops and 3 Miles

I am going to write about my own stellar trip to England and Wales soon, but first, I want to share a few details coming in from the Chocolates, currently in France after a sojourn in Italy.

The title of this blog comes from a postcard that Cupcake of the Chocolate family sent me. I must wait for details of the "incident," but the postcard otherwise tells me that pastries and art are the order of the day.

I also have a postcard of Louis XIV that Rat of the Chocolate family sent me. He has been given big red lips, fishnet stockings, and eyelashes because Rat admired this painting until she discovered it was actually supposed to be a painting of a man.

Sacher Mom of the Chocolate family tells me details of the eclair tasting that the family conducted in the heart of Paris. Or the heat of Paris.

It's good to be related to the Chocolate family.

Art and "Art"

Social engineering is a funny thing. I usually think of it in terms of government policies where people with families get more benefits from their employers, people with mortgages get tax deductions, and things like that. Rewards for certain behavior.  

In Brazil, according to the Washington Post and Inter-American Development Bank, telenovelas--the super soaps--are responsible for social engineering: lower fertility rates, higher divorce rates, and other social and family life phenomena. What's the corollary in the United States? Will people become really diligent about vacuuming up their hair and fibers after watching all those CSI episodes? That might not be too far from the truth, now that I think about it, because some studies have shown a change in jury behavior because evidence is always so fully determinative on shows like CSI. 

This isn't quite social engineering, but a neat experiment about art and news. The Haaretz newspaper in Israel, which is like the Economist, with a small but very elite readership compared to other newspapers, used National Book Week to create a day where almost all of its news was reported and written by novelists and poets. You've got to love a TV column that begins, "I didn't watch TV today," a weather report written as a sonnet about summer being an unsharpened pencil, and a business report written by a children's book and cookbook author. One of the only beats not surrendered to artists was sports. I will brush up on my Hebrew and report further. 

יום אחד

And in other Kindle-related news, there are some funny tweets from Mark Glaser who is being tormented by the crappy teenage material being "whispernetted" to his stolen Kindle.

My Week Was So Bad that THIS Is What Cheered Me Up

Newspapers accounts of 

• a "Parents Council" listserv war where one woman called the leaders "purveyors of evil" and "inebriated beavers"
• a Humane Society report on a "tormented guinea pig," where the reporting officer had to rescue said pig from a child trying to groom and dress it like a doll
  
• a nearby restaurant closed by the Health Inspector because of a "gross unsanitary occurrence"
  

I guess this is the fun side of newspapers no longer having a lot of real reporters to provide stories. I guess that doesn't cheer me up so much after all.