Confirmation Sunday

Today was Confirmation Sunday at the Mint. Four new Methodists were confirmed, and several new Mint members were welcomed to the family. Among those welcomed were Joe and Kirsty, who were mysteriously absent; however, they were welcomed in abstentia. The confirmation portion of the service can be found on pages 97-101 of the Methodist Worship Book, and was really quite boring. It was followed by communion. We sang two hymns with tunes I knew today; one was "Great is Thy Faithfulness," and the other I knew what was at the time we sang it, but I can't remember anymore. It was one of the "printed in the service sheet" type hymns that consists of new words written recently set to an existing tune, in this case number 272 in Hymns & Psalms. Hymn 272 isn't one that I'm familiar with, but I know the tune by two different names (one from the Baptist Hymnal, taken from the first line, and one from every other hymnal in the world, taken from the refrain).

Andrew's sermon was necessarily brief; however it contained a few golden items. He began by discussing some sort of Millionaire's Club that is run out of Hong Kong, which has an annual membership fee for its highest level of $15.2 million per year. He then turned to cheaper clubs, noting that you can get a family membership to the British National Party for 40 pounds for the year. He then went on to say something in the vein of BNP, thirty pieces of silver, and selling your soul. He then launched into an attack on the BNP as being the antithesis of Christian values, and encouraged everyone at the Mint to vote for anyone except a far-right party at the upcoming elections on 4 June.

He briefly touched on the discussion topic for tonight, MP's Expenses. I hadn't planned to go tonight, but as I was thinking over breakfast "I hope Andrew talks about the MP Expenses crisis today," I think I am going to have to change my plans to go!

Lunch after the service today was rather sparsely attended. There were three students, me and two Japanese girls. Olive popped by, but another couple were doing the lunch today. Andrew and Liz came by just after the two Japanese girls had left; they discussed the topic for tonight with the three of us (me and the two doing the lunch) that were still there. Olive, while she was there, called me "Jim" at least three times. Some things, apparently, never change . . .

Victoria Inn Pub Quiz

Tonight, Gavin and I (with several friends Gavin managed to enlist) entered the Victoria Inn Pub Quiz. We thought it would be a fun evening. It was.

One of Gavin's housemates is from Germany (he's a PhD student in Geography), and he came up with our team name: Chuchächtgli, a Bavarian-Swiss German dialect's word for "small kitchen cupboard." I'm not sure I spelled that right, but it's pronounced "choo-chehy-chuh-tuh-lee," I think. The guys doing the pub quiz never could get it right, so we didn't worry about it too much.

For the first five questions, we were given a set of five pictures of people. They were Lily Allen (a British pop singer), Barack Obama, Willie Nelson, Phillip Scofield (best known as a TV presenter; known to me as Jason Donovan's successor as Joseph), and some soccer player whose name I can't remember. The questions were this:

1. Name her latest album (after much brain wracking, we came up with it, It's Not Me, It's You)
   
2. Name his two daughters (I thought it was easy; apparently, I was wrong)
   
3. Name him
   
4. Name his co-presenter in Going Live (we named the puppet, Gordon, the real answer was someone else)
   
5. Name him (needless to say, I didn't get this one)
   

The next fifteen questions covered topics such as General Knowledge (we got 3.5), Linguistics (we got 4), and Medicine (we got 4). Thus, our total score for the first 20 questions was 17.5, good enough for a 2.5 point lead over second place.

The next twenty questions were Current Events, Religion (and anything that might relate to it), "Man About the House," and Locations in Music. We got four out of five of the Locations in Music, including one before we heard the song in question. The guy doing the second half of the quiz, before playing the music, said "I want you to tell me where the Devil went down to." And one of the other guys and I looked at each other and said "Georgia." Which was, of course, correct. And the guy doing the quiz said that was the hardest one. In reality, the one for which the answer was Reno was the hardest one, as most of the groups didn't get it. Incidentally, the person whose paper we were scoring said that the Devil Went Down to Paris.

We didn't do too well in the Religion section, mostly because we put aside the thought that perhaps the correct answer to "Give the name of the only book of the Bible which gives a full account of the Ascension" (today is Ascension Day; that was question one in the section) might be Acts, which was the correct answer, opting instead to go with Luke. We also missed the location of Ascension Island, saying it was in the Pacific (remember what I said about a Geography PhD student? He was embarrassed.) rather than the Atlantic. We did, however, correctly answer Enoch as the great-grandfather of Noah. I don't remember the fifth question from this section.

We did fairly well on Man About the House, four of the questions in which were "Around the House" type questions. We also got the name of the American version of the British sitcom Man About the House, with me correctly knowing that it was Three's Company. The guy doing the quiz said that knowing that wasn't something to be proud of, but something to be ashamed of; when my teammates protested that I was American, he conceded that that was a good reason, as the "football" questions did put me at a bit of a disadvantage.

The Current Events section went fairly well, too. We only got three right; however, that was good enough for a total of 14 points on the second half of the quiz, bringing our grand total to 31.5. There were eleven teams, and the last place team had 21.5 points. The second place team had 27.5 points, with teams 3-10 scattered in between. We utterly destroyed the field to win by four, which is a rarity in pub quizzes. It's much more normal to win by 1.5 or less, with winning by two being a pretty good job. All told, we split the entry fees to end up with £12 each. We're going back next week to defend our title and try to make some more money!

New to Kew

Yesterday and today, I was in London at the National Archives, which are located in Kew (which is part of London). I took a bus from Exeter up to London on Wednesday morning, and I arrived in London on Wednesday afternoon.

From the Victoria Coach Station, I went out to the Victoria Railway Station to get some lunch, and then into the Victoria Tube Station to catch a train out to Kew Gardens. While waiting for my train, I discovered that the Victoria Line was "Closed Due to Industrial Action." Apparently, the drivers were unhappy about something or other and went on strike.

Once I got out to Kew, I set about finding the National Archives, which have signs that kinda, sorta point to them from the Kew Gardens Tube Station. I did eventually find them, and then set about getting myself a Readers Ticket, which lets me look at the documents in the archives. Mine is valid for six months, so it expires the day before my birthday.

After a few hours, I left the Archives shortly before they closed and went to the Globetrotter Inn to check in. If that sounds familiar, it's because it's where we stayed when Amanda's family were in London. Once I got checked in, I ditched most of my stuff, and took a couple of books with me to the Subway in Hammersmith. I spent about an hour and a half at Subway, working on some reading, before I went back to the hostel to get ready for bed. I decided to go to bed a little early, since I was pretty tired and knew that I had a long day the next day.

On Thursday morning, I awoke with a start and panicked that I had missed my check-out time. I felt better once I found my phone and realized that it wasn't even 7:30 yet. I had planned to get up at 8, but I decided to go ahead and shower, which I did. After my shower, I went downstairs to breakfast, and then went back up, finished packing, and got checked out. I got to the Stamford Brook Tube Station around 9:00, and then realized that you can't get an Off-Peak Day Travelcard until 9:30. Rather than springing the extra £3 for an additional 30 minutes of riding time, I picked up a copy of Metro, the free London paper, and read it while I waited for 9:30 to arrive. It was mostly concerned with the new Budget, which was formally proposed yesterday.

After I got my Travelcard, I went into the Tube station to find that there were "Severe Delays" on the Richmond Branch of the District Line, which just happened to be where I needed to go. Thus, I had to wait for a while longer for a train to arrive before I was able to get out to Kew. The good news was, once I got out to Kew, I didn't have any further problems.

I worked at the National Archives until around 1, at which time I had to leave Kew to go back into central London to meet one of my lecturers at the University of London at 3 pm. I met up with him, and stayed at the Institute for Historical Research to do some work on an upcoming paper. I headed back over to Victoria Station when they closed, to try to find a McDonalds to use the internet there.

However, the McDonalds at Victoria is a McDonalds Express, which just has a counter that opens out onto the station concourse. Thus, I wasn't able to get on the internet, so I had to go on over to the Coach Station and sit and do the Sudoku in The London Paper. I managed to do the Simple and Medium ones, but made next to no progress on the Difficult one in the 20 minutes or so that I worked on it before it was time to board the bus and head for home.

Topsham

Today, I went down to Topsham, a favorite destination of University of Exeter club and society social outings. However, the purpose for my visit was a little different. I went to the Topsham Library to do some research.

That I might need to go to Topsham didn't occur to me until a Rotarian at the Tiverton club made an esseitnally throwaway comment about their being some letters from prisioners of war in the Napoleonic era in the library. I thought that there might be something in there that I could use, so I made a note to go down and check it out. While much of the material doesn't fit with my topic in the least, there are a couple of things in the letters that could prove useful. I'll want to discuss them with Dr. Duffy and see what he thinks about them. It appears that the last time they were really looked at was for a PhD thesis about forty years ago, but I may be wrong about that. In any case, Topsham has a nice little library, and I may have to go down there again sometime to take a better look around town!

As an aside, there is debate over whether the name is pronounced "TOP-shum" or "TOPS-ham." I've never heard anything but the former; however, someone claiming to be from there told Amanda at church one day that it was the latter. This may be one of those cases like the name "Barham," which is either pronounced "BAR-hahm" or "BAR-ram." In that case, it was an issue because one of the Royal Navy's dreadnoughts (commissioned 1915; sunk by a u-boat in 1942) had that name, and different captains reportedly imposed punishments on their ship's company for mispronouncing it-however it was the captain thought it should be pronounced! The consensus on that one seems to be "BAR-ram," but that could be wrong!

Terminology

One of the major purposes of this blog has been to help Will and me remember our time in England and all of the things we learned and saw. In that vain, here are a few interesting British terms and phrases I encountered frequently over the past several months, along with their southern American equivalents:

tick- a check mark
cheers- thanks
spoilt for choice- overloaded with options
trainers- tennis shoes/ sneakers
football boots- soccer cleats
trainer liners- thin, ankle-length socks
gumshield- mouthguard
The South West of England- southwest England
in hospital- in the hospital
should do- should
the till- the cash register
hob- stove/ range
chips- french fries
crisps- chips
brilliant- wonderful
sorted- sorted out
This bit of the train will be coming off- This train car will be separating from the rest
not suitable for- not recommended for
of course you can- sure (this is used frequently in stores when a customer makes a request)
Are you serving?- Are you checking customers out?

wash up- wash the dishes

washing up liquid- dishwashing detergent

soft toy- stuffed animal

queuing- waiting in line

never mind- it doesn't matter

flat- apartment

not meant to- not supposed to

pants- underwear

trousers- pants

to let- for rent

letting agency- real estate agency

Otter Valley Rotary Club

Tonight was the visit to the Otter Valley Rotary Club, located in Ottery St. Mary. Yulia and Anne are both away, so it was just Sangmi and me this trip. The Otter Valley club is all-male, and is one of the ones that would be regarded by some people in some clubs to be full of "tired, old grey-headed men in grey suits." I found them to be decidedly lacking in grey suits, and they didn't strike me as being particularly tired. They were mostly grey-headed (the rest were bald), and thus tended to be older on the whole than some other clubs. They do love their parliamentary procedure, as evidenced by a mini-debate on a point of order regarding whether the club could appropriate money by a general vote rather than a vote on the recommendation of the executive committee. The debate there was resolved by the President quashing the discussion on the grounds that, as two members of the executive committee were not present, the executive committee should deal with the issue first out of courtesy to those two.

Both my and Sangmi's presentations went fine; we had both added in a couple of new items. She was in a picture in the Express & Echo, which she had added into her presentation (it was of the crowd at the Exeter Football Club on Easter Monday). She also noted, for the first time that I've heard in one of her presentations, that she was embarrassed to say that she had been an English teacher in Korea, as her English, by her term, isn't very good. She was later assured by the sergeant-at-arms that her English was good, and was fined 50p for speaking better English than some of the members of the club!

I was fined 50p for having talked on the phone just before the meeting started. Amanda had called me from Newark, which I thought was probably worth the 50p. I found the club to be pretty lively, and they were especially interested in the parts of my presentation that dealt with turkey hunting (I happen to have a picture of dad with a turkey). They had lots of questions about how hunting works in the US (apparently, here most animals that are hunted are raised for that purpose) and were surprised to find that it is legal to go out and shoot wild animals (which required a discussion of hunting seasons). Unfortunately, I couldn't lay my hands on the picture of Robert when he was about 10 with a gun in hand and something that he had killed; it would have made a nice addition.

We didn't depart for Ottery St. Mary until 6:40, which is a good bit later than usual. There were two reasons for this. First, it is only about a 25-minute drive out to Ottery St. Mary, and second, the Otter Valley club's meeting began at 7:30 rather than the 7:00 for most of the other dinner clubs that we have visited. As a result, we didn't leave the meeting site until after 10:00, and got home around 11:00, which is par for the course for these meetings.

Bye-Bye Manda

Yesterday and today, I took Amanda to Bristol. Her flight left the Bristol Airport this morning around 10:30, so I left the Bristol Airport once she had boarded her plan at about 10:00. Because of the way the trains run, to get to the airport as early as we wanted (6:30), we had to leave Exeter last night. We had planned to spend the night in Bristol at the Backpacker's Hostel there, but the receptionist was extremely rude, so we decided to return to the train station to wait for the 2 am bus out to the airport. We were able to stay in the train station until around 1, but they locked the doors at 1, so we had to wait outside at the bus stop. Once the bus came, we had thought we were going to be able to take our backpacks on the bus (because the website said we could), but the bus driver wasn't havning any of that. Once we got on the bus, we weren't too happy to find that other people had their bags.

In spite of this, we made it out to the airport, and got everything set to put Amanda on her plane. We re-arranged her things in her bags, and let her get her clothes changed. Once the check-in counter opened, we got her checked in, and she headed off to security. I stayed in the lobby of the airport reading a book while I waited for her to tell me that she had made it on the plane. Once she was on the plane, I went outside and caught the bus back to Temple Meads station.

At Temple Meads, I missed the train back to Exeter by about two minutes, and so I had to wait for the next one. I caught the next one, and was back in Exeter and back home before 1:30 pm. I have a Rotary event tonight, and I wish I could sleep, but I'm just not having much luck (hence this blog entry). I'm goin to get back to trying to sleep before I have to get ready to head down to the Odeon to meet our ride out to Ottery St. Mary at 6:40 tonight.