God Blind Me = Gordon Bennett??

In my continuing adventures trying to learn the British language, I've discovered something so obscure for us non-British speakers I just had to share.

As you may or may not know, I'm supervising a 4th year Engineering Student in what we would call back home his Senior Design Project. Many thanks to the folks in the BSE department and the TMDL group for sharing data with me so I didn't have to go redownload everything myself to give this student so he could do his project on Beaver Creek.

Part of my supervision is teaching this student how to use various hydrological software packages. He is continually amazed by throwbacks to DOS that can still be found in several programs (e.g., ArcGIS) (recall this student is probably about 21...so born around 1988...since Windows 1.0 was released in 1985, he probably never had a computer with the old DOS interface that provided us with such wonderful things like The Oregon Trail as children...). Most recently, he discovered an oddity in the WDMUtil program wherein the path name (e.g., C:/Documents and Settings/My Documents/etc) has to be really short or you get an error saying it's not a valid file. I told him this (saying he would just love the latest example of ancient programs) and this was his response:

"Haha, Gordon bennett...you are right, I do love this."

I briefly considered that Gordon bennett was his new nickname for me, and was rather dismayed at the implications of that. However, Aaron did a quick search and found this link. So apparently this exclamation of surprise originally started as 'God blind me'...which makes enough sense in normal English. This became Gor blimey, which I could easily see given some of the thicker British accents here. How this finally jumped to an actual person's name, Gordon Bennett, is just one of those mysteries of the British language we may never understand...and which is completely alien to foreigners like myself!!

Adventures with hair and burrs

Aaron and I went to Hungerford about a week and a half ago to collect water samples for my research. We stayed with the same lovely couple that I blogged about before.

Cows grazing next to the canal in Freeman's Marsh in Hungerford

It was a bit of a slow day, as boats are ... well ... slow (4 mph max in the canal). Also, schools were back in, so the number of boaters traveling along the canal in the middle of the day wasn't what it might have been in the middle of the summer. So whenever a boat did come along, we scrambled to get measurements taken, notes made, etc., but in the 0.5-1 hour inbetween boat sightings we sat around, Aaron mostly bored of course. After losing interest in a game of can-I-get-my-hat-stuck-in-a-tree-without-it-falling-in-the-canal, Aaron decided it would be far more fun to play darts.

So, if you're wondering how we came across a dart board in the middle of a canal in the middle of nowhere, southern England... Doubtless you've run across one of these before:You know, the velcro dart boards. The concept is the same. All you need are velcro-covered balls and a fuzzy board, right? Aaron, being ever the inventive and clever person that he is, found just that:

Velcro-Covered Ball

Fuzzy Board

After tossing 3-4 of these things in my hair, and having it whipped around by the wind, I must say my hair was a bit of a rat's nest (the picture above is actually after Aaron had started trying to remove them). So he slowly but surely removed the offensive items from my hair:

The gritted teeth really say it all. The most hilarious thing about all this is that in the first round, Aaron tried to blame the whole thing on me because I didn't take them out right away and thus the wind whipped my hair around and made it really bad. To prove his point, he went out and got ANOTHER burr, and again threw it in my hair. Then he came over right away and tried to remove it...and had just as much difficulty as he did the first time. At this point all I could do was laugh. It was actually more frustrating for him than me, since he was the one having to deal with pulling the things out of my hair. Serves him right ;-). All in all a rather hilarious experience I thought was worth sharing :-).

Coke vs. Coke

As I sit here with my can of Coca-Cola (in a valiant (yet fruitless?) attempt to stimulate my jet-lagged brain), I am led to ponder about the taste of Coke in the UK vs. Coke in the US. In the UK, as many of you know, Coke is made from sugar rather than corn syrup. To be perfectly honest, I didn't really notice a difference until someone mentioned it to me. Although it's my favorite soda, I must not drink it routinely enough to notice such differences.

However, this time upon my travel to and return from the US I can definitely tell a difference. Now I'm trying to decide which I like better. Most people seem to prefer the sugar Coke taste rather than the corn syrup taste. I *think* I do as well, but at the same time there is a nostalgic part of me that found it refreshing to drink the Coke I grew up with while I was home. When I first had Coke during my recent trip back home, my brain thought "now that's what Coke's supposed to taste like." But now that I'm sitting here at my desk in the UK drinking the sugar Coke, I'm thinking that it tastes a bit better than what I was just drinking back home.

So I guess I'm just confused!

Springtime in Britain (or why the masses come out)

As weather perks up here in England, I am finally beginning to understand the British (and probably European) obsession with being outside on nice days.

When we first moved here, we noticed that a nice day (defined as a day with more sun than clouds, no rain, and a temperature that doesn't require a winter coat - medium/heavy-weight coat maybe, but not a down coat) caused the populace to come out en masse and flock to every open area available, fill every last seat at outdoor cafes, etc. At the time this seemed rather odd to us. Now, having lived here two years (I arrived two years ago yesterday!) and endured two British winters, I am beginning to understand.

I am now a firm believer in seasonal affective disorder. The short days throughout winter in England are just plain depressing. I think this is why the British have this obsession with being outside on nice days. Today is one of those nice days, and as I was walking back from lunch I felt this inexplicable pull to just stay outside. Now, I've always enjoyed nice weather as much as the next person, but rarely have I felt the need to stay outside if I have other things to do. But today there was this very real feeling that there was a very distinct possibility that this beautiful weather may never (really, never) come again, and so I should stay out and enjoy it while I could! Of course this is nonsensical, I'm sure we'll have this weather again within a week, if not tomorrow. But my brain was convinced otherwise.

I will freely admit that the stresses of study may be affecting my judgment, that the lure of a beautiful day outside was far more enticing than an afternoon behind a computer. However, I think perhaps there is this irrational yet very real feeling when you live in a northern area that the sun may never come again and you need to enjoy it while you can. That's my working hypothesis anyway!

Tipp-Ex vs. Wite-Out

As I use correction fluid YET AGAIN during my research writing...I have cause to reflect on the merits of British correction fluid vs. American correction fluid.

While the common name of correction fluid in America - 'Wite-Out' - makes far more sense to me than the common name in Britain - 'Tipp-Ex' (I was very confused the first time I was asked for Tipp-Ex...the poor Brit had to think hard about what to call it so I'd know what he was talking about!!), I must say that Tipp-Ex wins over any correction fluid I used in America, hands down. I imagine the basic chemical composition of the two substances is basically equivalent, but the applicator for Tipp-Ex is far more effective. Rather than a brush, Tipp-Ex uses a tiny wedge-shaped sponge that is the perfect size to cover mistakes in a typical computer-printed type size. Double the width covers your typical College-ruled paper. The sponge applicator gives the correction fluid a very smooth application, none of that roughness that a brush leaves behind. It has all the adhesion of the fluid with the surface of correction tape (I find correction tape frustrating because it tends to tear when you write over it). Perfect!

As a disclaimer, I was so frustrated with the Wite-Out brush applicator that for the last couple years in the States I used correction tape rather than fluid. So if there has been an advance in correction fluid applicators in the US since I last used them, my apologies to Wite-Out!

Snow in Cambridge!

Well, I can't believe it, but we actually had snow in Cambridge TWICE in the last week! Of course, those of you living anywhere vaguely north will scoff at the 'snow' we received here, but I still found it very exciting to wake up to see white stuff on the ground :-). Last year the only snow we saw was at Easter! So this is an improvement. However, I still don't know where they get all those gorgeous photographs of Cambridge in the snow! These two not-so-gorgeous photos are taken from right outside our front door and from our back window.

There were a couple nice views on the way to work this morning. The one on the left is of Parker's Piece. On the right is a view from the huge window wall in my new computer lab.

Of course, the flip side of having snow that I can actually photograph is that it is very cold and cold enough to keep the snow on the ground. So cycling has been ... well, cold! This is a picture of a bike parked at the Engineering department (not mine fortunately...our bikes are stored in a nice dry shed overnight!). Below that is the frozen water on the fountain in the cycle park at the Engineering department.

So that's the latest excitement here - SNOW!

British Hospitality at its Best

Last week I went to Hungerford, in southern England, to collect water samples for my research. While there I stayed at two Bed and Breakfasts, as they were SO much cheaper than the local hotels (£35/night at a B&B vs. MINIMUM £95/night at a local hotel), and I like Bed and Breakfasts better anyway.

I had to stay in two different Bed and Breakfasts because I made my reservations at the last minute, and this being a popular tourist destination for cyclers on the Kennet and Avon Canal, and it being the end of summer, most locations were all booked up. So I stayed at one B&B the first night and another the next two nights.

The second Bed and Breakfast I stayed at was truly remarkable. It was Berries B&B, where the hosts are Mick and Lynda Berry. As I mentioned, I had to stay at a different B&B the first night, but couldn't check in until 5 even though I arrived in Hungerford at 2 (this was outside my control). I stopped by Berries B&B when I first came into town as they had agreed to lend me their bike to cycle up and down the canal (where I was taking water samples). Here the remarkable nature of the Berrys started to become evident. That they allowed me to use their bike was remarkable in and of itself - bikes aren't all that cheap, after all, if I happened to take an unintentional dive into the canal. But then they offered to let me store my luggage at their B&B while I went back out for the afternoon to start my sample collection. They were tremendously friendly, and I talked to them about an hour before heading out. That evening, once I was checked into the other B&B, Mick DROVE MY LUGGAGE over to the B&B so I wouldn't have to carry it myself. Amazing! The next day, the Berrys invited me to have lunch with an angling friend of Mick's who was coming into town to fish for the day. It just so happened this gentleman knew a bit about the canal and the river that I was studying. It was so kind of them to allow me to intrude upon their lunch for the benefit of my research! Later that evening, when I checked into Berries B&B, Mick drove me over to the old B&B to retrieve my luggage, and then drove me to a takeout restaurant to pick up some dinner. Unlike many bed and breakfasts, where they seem to shoo you off to your room and don't want to see any more of you until breakfast the next morning, Mick invited me to eat in the kitchen and we chatted a bit while I ate. The next day, Mick drove over to the train station to pick up Aaron, who came in for a day to help me. That evening, he drove us out to a local pill box - the canal was considered a possible point of defense in WWII and was lined with them. I had told him Aaron was interested in WWII history, and so Mick drove us out to see one just outside town. Then he dropped us off at a local restaurant, and we called him once we were done and he came into down to drive us back to the B&B. The next day he drove us to the train station at the appropriate time, and waited to make sure we set off ok. We exchanged hugs all around when we left!

It turns out that Mick and Lynda spent a year in a motor home in the US, and have so many stories to share. They run a bed and breakfast because they want to meet people and hear new stories. Lynda is a great cook, and served some of the best scrambled eggs I've ever had. They have three wonderful dogs - which are kept outside the main living areas, but are close by if you want to seek them out. The bedrooms are beautifully decorated.

These pictures were taken the morning we left - the rooms look much more stylish when you arrive. It was just absolutely wonderful, Aaron and I both agree this is the best Bed and Breakfast we've ever stayed at. We really felt like guests of our hosts, not like customers. If you ever have a need to be in this part of England (and they are centrally located for things like Stonehenge, the Avebury Standing Stones, Windsor Castle, Stratford-on-Avon, etc if you have a car), you should definitely check them out!!