Murals, Ireland, and the Post I Can't Write

After having it on my life list for many years, I finally got to visit Northern Ireland. I waited for a lull between bombings. Nothing's exploded for a while, hey? Time to go!

It was as amazing as I'd hoped it would be...and far more tense than I ever expected. I mean really, really tense. If I happened to say "Derry" instead of "Londonderry," the British Loyalists would say, "So...they've gotten to you, have they? They've taught you to call it that?" If said "Londonderry," the Irish Nationalists would take me aside and tell me to rip the "London" right out of it. And that was the least of the hostilities. I dare not write what else I heard. Wherever I went, it always felt like half of the population was looking away from the other half. A powder keg about to blow.

Indeed, a bomb did go off just a week or two after I left, but since I was still travelling I didn't hear about it until much later.

I originally planned to write a post about all the various murals I saw throughout the country, ones honoring fallen heroes on both sides, ones that inspired, ones that terrified. But then I realized I couldn't write a single letter without bias, because what information I learned on my short fling through the country is hardly worthwhile repeating. I left with nothing but impressions. Impressions of men who frightened me, no matter their politics, with stories about their roles in violence and murder. Impressions of the dead castles, the green hillsides, the waves crashing steadily against the mathematical rocks of the Giant's Causeway, that pay no heed to whose feet stand or whose blood flows. I came and went as a tourist in the purest sense of the word, unable to contribute anything useful to the argument. Unable to articulate anything, really, except a great sense of loss and frustration, even though I have nothing personally at stake.

I can't write this post, you see, because I can't possibly tell an accurate version of what is happening, what has happened, in Northern Ireland. It's too complex, and I'm bound to get something terribly wrong, or oversimplify, or just plain insult. It's over my head.

What I can give you, however, before I slip down any further into my own deep morass of rumination, is

THE RED HAND OF ULSTER

Zing! Here it is. You can, I don't know, stare at it for a while.


This was a mural in the Shankill area of Belfast. In comparison to some of the others in the area, you might consider this particular mural "lighthearted." A sign on the side reads, "There are many legends telling the origins of the Red Hand of Ulster. This mural depicts only one of these."

I think this mural depicts the "race" version of the legend. According to Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, 1898:

"In an ancient expedition to Ireland, it was given out that whoever first touched the shore should possess the territory which he touched; O’Neill, seeing another boat likely to outstrip his own, cut off his left hand and threw it on the coast. From this O’Neill the princes of Ulster were descended, and the motto of the O’Neills is to this day 'Lamh dearg Eirin' (red hand of Erin)."

I love how in the mural O'Neill is saying, "Yay I won!" while waving around his one remaining hand.


Also he doesn't seem to be wearing any pants. Couldn't he have, I don't know, just cut off a finger? You've got to hand it to him - he was determined. I guess he handled it the best he could. It's a good thing there wasn't a seagull nearby, or he might have been caught by it red-handed. Hand to mouth, you might say. It's okay that the other guy lost, though. He wouldn't have wanted the land anyway. It was a hand-me-down.

Okay, I'm done.

The Red Hand has been used as a symbol by both Loyalists and Nationalists. So there. I'm safely apolitical. This post has been entirely evenhanded.

Er...

University Rooms

When I travel, I stay in hostels. I love hostels. Mostly. Sometimes when I'm just trying to cook up a meal in a kitchen filled with staggering, drunken teens, or read the morning paper over the thumping sound of bass, or sleep in a crowded bunk room where one person is snoring, one has a constant cough, and one has a boy sleeping next to her, I think, "I might be getting too old for this."

That thought hung over me like a gloom as I searched for hostel options in Oxford. I already had some familiar mainstays for London, but I knew nothing about Oxford, and the hostel reviews were grim. A bed and breakfast might give me some of the same group atmosphere that hostels are good for - less drunkenness too - but I wasn't quite ready to bump up to that level.

That's when I discovered a great site called University Rooms. The site works with various universities around the world to rent out their vacant rooms, especially during school holidays. Rooms cost more than a hostel but less than a bed and breakfast.

In most cases you might ask, "Why on earth would I want to pay to sleep in some kid's empty dorm room?" But for Oxford it was perfect. For Oxford, it meant that I got to march boldly into colleges that are normally closed to the public. It meant I could loiter in the quad in the morning and watch the light shine through the stained glass at night, and there was no tour guide looming over me to rush me along.

I stayed in Oxford for several nights, and each night in a different college. Like a bed and breakfast, my stay always included breakfast in the main dining hall. If you want to imagine what that's like, picture the dining hall at Hogwart's, but smaller and with no floating candles. Picture servers who won't let you raise a finger, dishes engraved with the school's crest, and rows upon rows of austere scholarly dead guys gazing down upon you. (Non-moving portraits, sadly.) And then picture contentedly strolling back through the gardens, up the narrow stone staircase to your room, recently cleaned by the scouts, where you make a cup of tea while looking out the window at the rooftop spires while the bells of half a dozen towers ring out the hour in discordant unison.

To think, right now I could be tiptoeing over the mystery stain on the carpet in a hostel while Tuberculosis Girl hacks over the communal sink.

Of course, not all Oxford rooms are created equal. At one college I was in a room several hundred years old, while at another stayed in an addition build in the 1960's. The newer rooms lack charm, but the older ones lack...heat. Plumbing. I think there has been a general philosophy over the centuries that the more uncomfortable you are, the better you learn.

Here are the rooms I stayed in. Can you guess which colleges they're from?


A modern (and teensie!) room that overlooked a street. A little too much traffic noise for my taste, but I imagine you get used to it if you're into your reading deeply enough. (If you're not into your reading that intensely, what are you doing studying here?)


And old room that's been modernized. The little fireplace was sadly non-functional. (It had carpeting underneath it.) But pretty classy, otherwise.


I drew the curtains because it was nighttime. I'm pretty sure these curtains (also the furniture) were original to the circa 1960's room.


Wow, a room that doesn't have gray carpets! I really liked the permanent Dutch angle feel to this room, which, as you can see, was shoved right up against the sloping roof. Kind of a hobbit room. Did Tolkien ever stay here? Hmm...


This room might not blow you away, but man oh man, you should have seen the view out that window. Plus those shutters opened up completely and the ledge was two feet wide, so I could sit halfway out writing in my journal while eavesdropping on conversations below. I might be biased for this particular room just because it was the first one I stayed in.

Did you guess the colleges? Did you see the wicked trick I just played on you?? One of those rooms is a Cambridge room, of course! Bwa-ha! How delightfully droll of me.

In that last picture, notice the one brilliant, rebellious, eye-popping decoration on wall. Weee! This is one of the big differences between Oxford/Cambridge college rooms and American ones. When I was a university student, I moved in to my room big time for the entire year. And by that I mean I grew tropical plants there, strung up Christmas lights, got an awesome ghetto $20 recliner, flipped the beds, had a gecko, stuck posters and postcard to every surface...That room was mine, baby.

(Well...and also my roommate's, to be fair.)

At Oxbridge they do a pretty good job of communicating the fact that you are just passing through - nay, that you are a wispy seed of a person who hardly deserves to settle more than a moment upon the venerated stones of those schools. If you should go out into the world and do well for yourself, that's another matter. Then you can donate a lot of money and have a renovated section of rooms named after you. But you want to hang a picture on the wall? Forget it. To make sure of this, they uproot you from your room every eight weeks and rent it out to ogling tourists like me.

So, if you ever find yourself in Oxford (or Cambridge!) without a place to stay, I highly recommend you take a look at University Rooms.

That way when you get sick with a cold and have to sleep and sip tea for half the day - like what happened to me - you can stare at the walls and at least feel like you're still having a unique travelling adventure.

UK, What?

Today, a sampling of British bobcat eggs that I found while travelling.

If you are an American abroad, Great Britain's not the place to go for culture shock. It's pretty easy to shrug off the most blatant differences, like having to look right instead of left as you step off the pavement, or signs that say "Way Out" instead of "Exit," or inexplicable urges to visit Florida, or Morris dancing. The subtler ones, like the vestigial influences of the class system or the (in comparison to Americans) general social reserve come across more as "annoyance" than "shock."

The most I have ever been shocked in Britain was when I went to buy a sandwich. "Prawns and mustard? Eggs and cress? Pickles and cheese? What is wrong with these people??!?" I said. Also, Marmite.

Britain's not more prone to strangeness than anywhere else. Quirky knows no bounds. Quirkiness is everywhere. (Alaska, I'm looking at you and your gold-painted moose poop.) With that disclaimer, I just have to ask, really...what is going on here, UK?


Found these babies in a...oh, I nearly said Marks & Spencer's. (Wait, does M&S even sell food? Ah yeah. That's where I found $20 per lbs cherries once upon a time.) Waitrose. Waitrose. I can read it in the picture. I'm not sure what tickles me more about these - the fact that they are what they are, or the fact that they are so CLEARLY and HONESTLY labelled. I wish all grocery items were labelled this way.

"A Creamy White FAUX EGG Sandwich Spread"

"Crunchy Puffed CORN Delightfully Coated in BRIGHT ORANGE CHEESE POWDER"

"Carbonate BEVERAGE Lightly Drizzled With SWEET BROWN COCAINE"

It would really take the mystery out of shopping.

One slow day in London I was trying to take a close look at every statue, plaque, and monument I passed, figuring that if someone had taken the time to make the darn things, I should make the time to appreciate them. Because of this I got to learn that so-and-so defeated someone at the battle of something, that what's-his-name and his company built this section of the embankment, that Lord Sir Edwards Ballingham Tippory Roo Fairchild His Excellence donated this plot of grass to the common people, and so forth.

I was especially touched by the words on this statue:

In honour of over 2100 men and women volunteers who left these shores to fight side by side with the Spanish people in their heroic struggle against fascism 1936-1939.

"They went because their open eyes could see no other way."


But...what? What...what is...? Is that a horse? ...With a melon?

I looked at this thing from every possible angle, but it never turned into brave men and women volunteers. I'm sure it's fraught with deep and meaningful symbolism, but five hundred years from now when the words have rubbed off, bemused foreigners like myself might mistake if for a celebration to ménage à trois.


No. What? No, Britain, no. There is nothing remotely Californian about this coffee I just had. This coffee was distinctly non-Golden State. I could understand if you wanted to market a bag of CHIPS this way, but...I mean, look at the size of the cup that lady's holding. Is it a European espresso? Haven't you heard of the bottomless pot? We Americans drink such large cups of coffee that I can't even get a short here anymore. They give me a tall, and I buzz around on the sides of the walls for the rest of the day. People who try to drink teensie cups of sophisticated coffee here are beaten up by roving gangs of biker-patriots who snap off your pinkie finger if they catch you holding it out.

Also, when I hear "California" and "coffee" in the same sentence, I tend to think of free rest area coffee. No. That was not the sensation I was going for when I came in here for a drink.


Yes it is! Because ten is a sin and thirty is dirty. (But forty is sporty, and fifty is nifty, and sixty is sexy...Seventy just makes you hit pedestrians and veer off the road in a spectacular fireball.)


Oh, sorry. This one's all mine. It seemed like a waste to throw out all those perfectly good toilet paper tubes. So instead I created an installation piece that forces the viewer to confront one of life's more difficult questions.


My American friend and I had a strange craving for Jello. We wanted to make it. We needed to have it NOW. But in the UK "jelly" doesn't come in powder form. It comes in these alarming jiggly blocks that, and I can't stress this enough, do not taste good eaten as-is no matter how much they look like the finished product. Before we started making the jelly, we entertained ourselves with the blocks by poking them, wiggling them, stacking them, and seeing if they would bounce. I'm actually kind of sad these aren't a US thing.


I had to include a picture of the Tardis, of course. It was well camouflaged.