Sunday, January 12, 2014

Mind the jammy dodgers

It's been six and a half years since I've been in Great Britain - I took a week long trip there with my daughter. We spent three days in London and then took the train to Edinburgh for the Fringe Festival.

I've been thinking about it lately because via the BBC America Facebook presence I came upon a web site called Mind the Gap which is for British people living in the United States.

London is gigantic so it's easy to get lost. Everywhere you go is historical for one reason or another, especially where we stayed, in the City of Westminster area not far from Regent's Park, the Sherlock Holmes museum (Baker Street is in Westminster) and as I distinctly remember seeing, this stone relief plaque of Charles Dickens. We were only there three days so we didn't get much of a chance to see anything. We did go to the reproduction of the Globe theater - couldn't miss that. And we had afternoon tea at a posh hotel, although I could not say exactly where it was, at this point. We got around walking and by taking the subway, or officially, the Underground. They also call it the Tube, which I accidentally called the loo, to my daughter's chagrin.

The loo is what they call their bathrooms, which they don't call bathrooms, they call the toilet. Which I never got used to calling the bathroom, it seems so crass. Although as I said, it was only three days.


I did enjoy the English breakfast, although not so much the watery baked beans.

I had no Jammy Dodgers while I was there and apparently the British are nuts for Jammy Dodgers. I think they might be available at Tea and Sympathy shop in Greenwich Village here. I still have the Midsummer Night's Dream teapot I got from there fourteen years ago. I'll have to go back again soon.

Another thing that annoyed my daughter in London was my observation that the loo Tube was crawling with little blond boys who liked to address their mothers as "Mummy" as in "Mummy, I want to have some Jammy Dodgers now, Mummy" in their high-pitched voices with their funny accentuated Ts. When we got off the train I just could not stop myself from imitating them. "Mummy! Mummy!" I'd say "I have to go to the loo now" as my daughter grimaced and accused me of being an embarrassment to her personally as well as the United States of America.

It happened pretty often, too,  because it seemed like every time we took the Tube there was at least one little blond boy, talking to his Mummy. It was freaking uncanny.