The Paralympic Torch

I'm going to be honest and admit that until this year, I didn't actually know that there was an event called the Paralympics that took place after the Olympic games.  It's pretty much exactly what it sounds like - disabled people from around the globe come to test themselves against one another to determine who the best in the world is, in the same proving grounds as regular Olympics.  Since I've come after all the Olympic jazz, I figured I'd missed all the cool stuff that was going to be happening because of it, but after last night I can definitely say I was wrong.

Steve was kind enough to agree to drive to Aylesbury with me to see the creation of the Paralympic flame.  We weren't able to actually get tickets to the stadium in Stoke Mandeville, but we were set up in the Market Square where they were broadcasting the event live and where the flame would later come to begin its 24 hour trek into London for the lighting ceremony tonight.

I hadn't realized the significance of the location, but the Paralympics actually first began in the Stoke Mandeville hospital in Aylesbury only fifty years ago, when it was thought that most people who had come back from World War II with serious disabilities wouldn't last longer than two years and should just be made comfortable to die.  A doctor named Ludwig Guttmann was responsible for changing this idea with one of his own - that using sports therapy could greatly improve the fitness and quality of life of his patients.  He hosted the first International Wheelchair Games in 1948 to coincide with the London Olympics, and the concept grew from there, expanding to include other types of physical disabilities as well as to be held, planned and executed by the same committee that hosts the Olympics.

This year's Paralympic games is apparently the biggest ever.  Nearly 4,000 athletes are competing and for the first time ever, the games are sold out, even the heats.  Steve's told me that they'll be broadcasting a lot of it on TV, and I had to wonder if they'd be broadcasting it in the US as well.  I don't know if I'm at fault for not knowing about the games, or if they aren't very well advertised back at home.

The actual event was pretty cool.  Steve and I armed ourselves with sandwiches and drinks and staked out a spot by the stage, where we watched the merging of four flames, which had been lit using traditional flint by scouts with and without disabilities who had climbed to the highest mountain in each of the four countries that make up the UK: Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales and England.  Together, they created the one flame (to rule them all!) that then made it way to the Stoke Mandeville hospital before heading toward the Market Square where we were.

I guess I should mention that there were other things before that, such as dance groups and singing by famous British people I'd never heard of, as well as a couple speeches.  While we were waiting, they did have some interesting street theatre that did neat musical sound effects (such as banging metal strainers together to make sword clashing noises) and harped on the British obsession with tea, which I thought was funny.  I was also quite keen on the performance that took place just before the flame arrived, which was an ecliptic mix of film, dance performance and artistry.  It was a old-fashioned hospital like setting, except the blank walls were canvases, which the artist started scribbling on, depicting movement.  They really did just mostly look like scribbles for most of the time, until the end where they actually did end up forming clearer images.  It was really cool to see the metamorphosis.  I wondered if she sold them after each show -- it's pretty awesome to see something like that created right in front of you, and to have a memory invoked as part of a piece as well.

It was fun to be part of the British crowd as well.  Everyone was kind of chatting with one another, groaning and complaining when they announced the flame was delayed, commenting on the announcers and so forth.  I had four bouncy kids that I let stand in front of me for a while who were adorable and bouncing, climbing up the fence until one of the grandmotherly types in front of us complained that they were jostling her too much. At that point we all looked around at each other and realized that we had no idea who the kids belonged to.  They were claimed not too long after, but I was amused mostly because this was the same woman who kept backing into me and whose British flag cape kept flapping up and hitting me until her husband noticed and tucked it around the side.  They were a funny pair, but I liked them very much, especially after she starting giving some of the guys in the press box a teasing hard time for being able just to pop in there and have a perfect view when she'd been standing there for six hours.  They took the ribbing well and asked her to get them some coffee.  The people around us also championed the cause of a mother with two kids, one in a wheelchair, to get them pushed up to the front, where the organizers finally noticed them and allowed them into the disabled section that they'd been rejected from before.  We cheered when they finally let them through.

Then the torch itself arrived!  We could see it held high above the heads of the crowd until they ran it up to the stage and performed a kiss, where the flame was passed to another torchbearer who would start it on its way out of Aylesbury to London.

I have to say that the send off was probably the best 3D video/pyrotechnics show I've ever seen.  Of course, I only remember some of the one I saw at Stone Mountain in Georgia when I was young (oddly enough, we were there during the Olympics then too), which is what my parents usually cite as the best one they've seen.  But this one was incredible.  They managed to perfectly outline the old style town hall-esq building just behind the stage and used the visual effects to make it shrink, spin, flip upside down, and to make people and giant arms come out of the windows.  And they had fireworks perfectly in tune with it, which were also amazing.  They had to have shot off thousands of them, and they were all fairly low and right above our heads, launched from the roof of the same building the video projection was on.  And with the crazy fireworks finale, they launched a bunch of red white and blue ticker-tape into the air, along with streamers.

It was an amazing show, and an amazing night.  And almost the best part happened at the end, as we were headed back out to the parking lot.  We passed by one of the torchbearers who still had her torch (apparently they all get to keep them as a souvenir -- how cool is that?) and she let me hold it and wave it in the air.  Awesome!

On Coming Right After the Olympics

British flags are everywhere.

I didn't realize it at first.  It was kind of like I just assumed that everyone wanted to remind me that I was in the UK now, not back home in the US.  I thought it was nice.  But then I started to notice that a lot of them had become tattered and started to count backward of when they might have been put out.  Oh, and I saw these flags below, which provided a major hint as well.


I am kind of sad that I missed actually going to see the Olympics here in London.  This is the second time I've made trips to the area close to the end of the Olympics, and ended up not going both times (the first time was in Atlanta).  I swear one of these days I'm going to actually go.  But maybe when I do go, it'll be in a more exotic location, or somewhere I haven't been (Rio?) and I'll get to go all out.  Or maybe I'll go see the Winter Olympics some day.  Yes, I'm one of those girls who loves the figure skating.


Everything having to do with British pride in the Olympics is on offer (on sale) at the shops.  They've got Pride the Lion, is the British mascot that I kind of actually like.  And then they've got these gumby things which I really don't know about.  https://mascot-games.london2012.com/

And if your mind hasn't been scarred by the illusion of the 2012 London symbol in the colors of Bart and Lisa Simpson, then I beg you, don't do it.  I can't buy anything with that logo on it.  It's not something you can unsee.

So, a lot of patriotic things here.  It's just been kind of hard to tell if it's British national pride or if it's the Olympics' leftovers.  And the Paralympics is just about to start!  I may see if I can talk Steve into heading somewhere to see the torch relay for that if it's nearby.

PS - Does the US have this?

The Battle of Evesham

Steve's from a lovely little town called Evesham in Worcestershire (points if you know how to say that correctly), which is near the middle of the country in the aptly named Midlands.  Like most places, it's got its history, which is a little bit cooler than Sonoma's history of the Bear Flag Revolt where someone's foot was shot in an otherwise bloodless raid of the house of the Spanish governor and then the entire rebellion was made moot when the US took over California not too long after.  But we did keep the flag!

In Evesham, they actually had a battle, aptly called "The Battle of Evesham" on August 4 of 1265.  (Did you get that?  TWELVE 65.  Not a mistype.)  A year earlier the rebels, led by the Earl of Leicester Simon de Montford, had captured King Henry III and Prince Edward and ruled in their stead for a year.  But Prince Edward escaped and gathered a huge army to attack the rebels on that fateful night.

Quite frankly, the rebels were massacred.  Simon de Montford was pulled off his horse and hacked to pieces.  Thousands were chased into the streets of Evesham and slaughtered, leaving blood on the stones of the road.  I had to look down at my feet then and shiver, wondering how many of the old stones there were originally from that time period.  But doesn't that story sound just like the makings of a movie?  It's no wonder there are so many old knight stories out there.

A few kings later, the Abbey that had sheltered the rebels and where the bits of Simon de Montford were buried was ordered to be torn down by Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries.  Basically, it was the King naming himself head of all the churches so he could get a divorce.  Reality TV has nothing on this.  Nevertheless, the abbey was torn down and the stone it was made of sold off.  But the church and bell tower remain standing from those times.


Regardless of all that blood, it's a lovely place to explore.  The river Avon flows through the town and there are swans everywhere along with bridges and parks.  There's also a statue depicting the name of the town, which translates in Old English to "Home of Eof" who was a shepherd that saw and spoke with the Virgin Mary.

Scenery

Steve says I've brought the California weather with me these past few days, as it's been as hot as its ever been this summer, breaking records.  It makes driving in the car very drowsying for me, even with the windows down, which might be good because I'm not inwardly freaking out every time he turns down a street and goes into what I would consider the wrong lane.  I've begun playing a game where I pretend that I'm driving and try to turn into the correct British lane.  Let's just say it's a good thing I'm not actually driving.  Of course, by the time I actually get accustomed to driving on this side of the road, it'll be time for me to head to France, where they drive on the same side as the US.  And there, I may actually be driving a car, and having confused myself to no end about which side to be driving on, it'll be a miracle if we all survive.


I've also taken to having my camera nearby when we make long drives and have been shooting out the window occasionally because the scenery and lighting can be so nice.  The clouds and sun make nice with the green of the fields we're passing through.  I feel quite embarrassed about asking Steve if they have good lettuce in the stores after seeing the wealth of pastures and fields that are around the area.  Bad American.  Or maybe just bad California, since I assume everything would be better where I'm from rather than on an island where it snows and rains more than half the year (okay, Steve tells me it barely snows here any more).  But the area around Northampton and Evesham actually has a lot of produce, and I've been educated now.  That's what I get for staying in London for most of the first time I was here!

The Oldness of Britain

For those of you who haven't been to the UK or pretty much any of Europe before, you might vaguely realize that the British Empire (and indeed the Roman and others) have been around for quite a while, and have been building things for just as long.  Sure, you can go to a castle and think "Wow, how cool, this thing was built in King Arthur's time" (not that they actually know that King Arthur was real or when in time he might have actually existed) but what you might not comprehend is that buildings that old are fairly common and most of the English don't think of this as unusual.

In the US, we protect 'old' buildings that are famous landmarks, such as Betsy Ross's house (though they think it might actually have been the house next door now), despite their being less than two hundred years old.  In the UK, they remodel the bottom story (storey here, but I haven't gone completely British yet) into a typical store but keep the upper level old-fashioned.  It's quite the odd effect.  But most downtown buildings in any established city or town in England are as old or older than those in the US, and if they want new businesses in, they need to make those changes.

Everything is just very different here, which I had realized on my previous visits, but I think now that I've actually kind of settled down into a non-touristy position in a town not London, it's really sinking in.  These are the buildings these people see every day, and they think nothing of it, where I would marvel at it.

Steve's being very patient with my pausing taking pictures of what he considers to be normal streets, anyway.  :)  Here are a few more photos taken around town.

Into the Grey

Whew!  Made it!

After working the fair for nearly 14 straight days, I didn't really realize how unprepared I was to actually leave.  One day to pack and get used the fact that I wouldn't be home for five months wasn't quite enough.

The flight wasn't too bad.  Tried British Airways for the first time, and it wasn't horrible.  They actually have awesome headrests that wing out so you can rest your head against them on the side.  I haven't decided if most other aircrafts I've been on just didn't have these wings, or if I've just been very unobservant.  But it's definitely worth it in regard to my last long flight.  They've got personalized screens where you can choose the movies and pause them, which is also definitely an improvement.

They gave us free headphones at least, the kind that have big pads that go over your ears and then link over your head, which was nice because the earbud ones can start to ache after five hours in my ears.  But even at the smallest setting, they were way too big.  I can't image what the kids do with them, because I could fit my whole wrist between my head and the band, so they had to be way to big for them as well.  So they were actually kind of worthless, but it was a nice thought.  At least they took them back at the end of the flight so I didn't have to toss them.

They almost bypassed me for free wine with the meal, but I couldn't have that.  And I remembered that cranberry juice looks prettier in clear cups than it tastes.  Bleh.

I seriously think I got through customs faster than any Europeans.  I was sure I wasn't the only American on the flight, but there was no line so I just walked up to one of the agents.  I think she asked me three questions total, the last of which was, "What does this stamp mean?" and I had to explain it was from when I'd done my semester abroad in the UK.  Wouldn't that make it their own stamp?  But I didn't want to get kicked out of the country that quickly, so I didn't ask.  And they didn't actually ask me how I was planning on leaving or anything, either, so they obviously don't care if I ever leave.  ;)

Steve was waiting to whisk me away to Northampton with a small bottle of rose wine, which I'm convinced helped to drive away the traditional English grey rain clouds that greeted me upon exiting the airport.  And it worked!  Had a lovely sunset as I tried (to various degrees of success) not to pick up Steve's accent immediately and to stick to my fluctuating American.  We'll see how long I succeed!