So You Want to Go to England: Surviving Heathrow Airport

You made it

Israel’s Ben-Gurion Airport, widely considered to be the safest in the world, uses a sophisticated passenger screening system headed by college graduates who coolly screen travelers for “micro-expressions” which may hint at nefarious intent – by contrast, the U.K. Border Agency (and the TSA in America, for that matter) employs a network of po-faced ungulates still seething over not being invited to prom.  So don’t take it personally when, upon your arrival in England, the U.K. Border Agency treats you like you’ve just arrived from Malawi with several sticks of T.N.T., a pound of cocaine and eight undocumented immigrants concealed somewhere on your person.  Or like you're Madonna.

"You guys still believe I'm English, right?"

So You Want to Go to England: Getting There - Freighter Cruises

Why fly when can you take 20 times longer for three times the price?
Photo by Mike Baird, licensed through Creative Commons

Part 1:  Getting Started

Part 2:  Before You Go 

Part 3:  Getting There - Air Canada

Part 4:  Getting There - Air Transat

Part 5:  Getting There - British Airways

Part 6:  Getting There - Freighter Cruises
Part 7:  Surviving Heathrow Airport

Once upon time, if a young man suffered from wanderlust or a failure to fully comprehend the rhythm method, fleeing his quaint coastal hometown was a simple matter.   All he had to do was run, preferably under cover of darkness, to the dockyard and beg for a job on the first freighter bound for Sheik Yarbouti.  Once onboard he was free to enjoy a lifetime on the open sea, never again to worry about personal responsibility or any kind of basic human comfort.

Over time, the slow encroachment of unions and maritime laws has made it tougher to escape your mistakes by sea.   Now the experience of traveling on a seagoing freighter is limited to those who thoughtfully joined the Seafarers International Union before “forgetting” their prophylactics and independent-minded tourists who have time and money to burn.  

And so, having covered some options for flying the friendly skies, in this installment of "So You Want to Go to England" we takes a look at this considerably less popular alternative to air travel.

So You Want to Go to England: Getting There - British Airways

Photo by Florian, licensed through Creative Commons

The first time I flew with to London via British Airways it was out of spite; on a previous trip Air Canada had switched my booking from a flight that had seat-back televisions to a flight that did not.  That may sound childish to you but since I enjoy flying about as much as I do being punched in the groin, taking away my only distraction from the fact I’m sitting in a chair in the sky was tantamount to a declaration of war.  

So You Want to Go to England: Getting There - Air Transat

Photo by Martin Hartland, licensed through Creative Commons

Are you so cheap that paperboys & waiters spit at the mention of your name?  So poor you spend your evenings huddled around a burning barrel beneath a bridge?  Have you recently been released from prison and found yourself wanting to relive the experience, with the added dimension of possibly plummeting thousands of feet to certain death?  If you answered “yes” to any of these questions then the next time you plan a vacation you’ll want to give Air Transat a call.

"The in-flight movie is what?"

Passenger reviews for the budget airline are mixed, with one passenger describing it as "You either swear by or at Air Transat.”  Most speak highly of the carrier’s customer service and denounce everything else with the kind of fury I haven’t seen since Kevin Bacon’s “angry dance” in Footloose.  There are no seatback televisions, the seats are narrow and legroom is nonexistent, but with economy class fares up to $500 less than those offered by Air Canada there is something to be said for flying the thrifty skies.

So You Want to Go to England: Getting There - Air Canada

- Photo by Patrick Cardinal, licensed through Creative Commons

You know your no-account brother?  The one who passes bad cheques and storms out of the intervention when your father says “You’re killing your mother – just killing her!”?  If he ran an airline it would be Air Canada.  Something of a running joke here in the Great White North, Air Canada has, in the span of a single decade, been bailed out by the Canadian government twice (once in 2001, again in 2009) and shows no sign of improvement.  

"On second thought, miss, I don't
need a blanket.  But thank you."

Check-in agents are grumpy, flight attendants could frighten Rampage Jackson and should a delayed flight cause you to miss a connection in the evening there is no guarantee AC will issue you a hotel voucher.

My distaste for Air Canada is such that I wouldn’t mention the airline at all if not for my fellow Canadian readers, who are not exactly spoiled for choice when it comes to choosing a Transatlantic carrier*.  Given their limited options, Air Canada represents the middle ground between the higher prices and superior service of British Airways and the bargain basement airborne buses operated by Air Transat.

* Update: As of May 24th, Virgin Atlantic will be operating four flights a week from Vancouver to London Heathrow, meaning you west coasters will have even less reason to fly with Air Canada.

So You Want to Go to England: Before You Go

Before booking your flight (or boat - more on both of these in the coming weeks) you'll want to know a little more about the people and what's important to them.  In this week's instalment of "So You Want to Go to England" we help you get to know the people of the British Isles and give you some talking points should you trap one of them in a conversation:

Go to Hell

Here in North America the popular vision of an Englishmen is a slender, foppish man with very bad teeth, dressed in tweed and seducing your wife with his ironed handkerchiefs.  While in some parts of England that may still be true – Knightsbridge, Colin Firth’s house – the Englishman you’re more likely to encounter on your grand adventure is the one approaching you at the bus stop of a night, wearing a hooded sweatshirt and demanding your wallet.  

Go West (of Bristol)

The lovely and talented Nicky Storr has opened her photo blog "West of Bristol" over at www.westofbristol.com.  Click over to check out her galleries, subscribe to future updates and leave a nice comment or two.  Nothing too nice, though - I hear her husband is the jealous type.


See you Wednesday for the low-down on Coronation Street, The Only Way is Essex and other touchstones of British culture in "So You Want to Go to England:  The People"

So You Want to Go to England: Getting Started

In my life I have met people who are natural travelers - the sort who can live for 6 months on whatever they pack into a rucksack the size of a grasshopper's scrotum - but I am not one of them.  While most people come back from a vacation talking about their amazing adventure, the kindness of the locals and how their journey expanded their horizons, making them better people on a spiritual level, I complain about intestinal parasites, sunburn and being mugged by whatever passes for highwaymen in the place I have just visited.  This travel guide is for people like me.

I also take pictures like this while giggling to myself

Lee's Famous Recipe Chicken | 5777 Trans Canada Highway, Duncan B.C.

This restaurant review is from 2011 and was originally published on "Hot, Fast, Dirty", a website I'd intended to be for 500-word-or-less reviews of independent and lesser-known fast food joints.  HFD has long since been closed and I've gradually been migrating the content to this site.  As with all my food writing, you'll be able to find this and other reviews on the Restaurant Review Index.

Update February 26, 2013:  This particular Lee's has closed it's doors.  A new location in Campbell River has sprung up although they no longer seem to make the spicy chicken wings I loved so much.

There is no hope for the chicken. The first nail in its tiny coffin is that it is a graceless, unlovely beast whose daily routine consists of wobbling around a farmyard looking like an owl gone to seed. Not having a majestic bone in it’s body, it is eaten even by those who refuse the flesh of wild game because once upon a misty morning they saw an elk silhouetted against the rising sun.

The second mark against poultry is that it is annoying. Admittedly, being nature’s alarm clock the deck is stacked against it but with a little effort the chickencould have overcome.  Instead it just dodders around making awful sounds and picking at the ground all day.  There are ugly animals, just like ugly people, whose natural charisma allows others to see past negative characteristics like a body made of spare parts (platypus) or a nose straight out of the magazines that stores keep behind the counter (Proboscis Monkey).  The chicken is not one of these animals.

The third and final strike? God made chickens delicious. This is the most damning trait possible for an animal with the defensive capabilities of a sofa.

Lee’s Famous Recipe Chicken is a chain with a number of locations in the American southeast and 2, somewhat incongruously, here on Vancouver Island.  Usually I opt for the 6 Piece Strip Meal ($10.99, includes a drink & 2 sides) and small buffalo chicken wings ($5.29 for 8 wings).

The strips are generous portions of all-white meat, offered in Famous or Crispy, of which Famous is my preferred choice, a slightly chewy and mildly spiced breading.  The fries are fast-food standard, thin and crisp but with nothing to set them apart.  The centerpiece of the 6 piece meal, or of any meal at Lee’s, is the gravy.  

The thick, peppery elixir is the river that drives Lee’s turbine and easily outmatches the gravy from competing outlets like Popeye’s, Church’s or the dreaded KFC.  The small container that comes with the meal is never enough and it’s so good that you can power right through the guilt that tries to stop you from buying a second round.

The other thing I adore about Lee’s is their commitment to serving up buffalo wings that you cannot eat in polite company.  When ordering wings at many places it’s common to get short-changed on the amount of sauce you get – not so with Lee’s Buffalo Wings.  On every visit they come covered in (literally) eye-watering amounts of hot sauce and are impossible to eat without looking like a two-year old tackling spaghetti for the first time.On occasion I’ve given into temptation and purchased the large order of wings  ($8.99) but this is ill-advised as your sinuses will go into full shutdown and you’ll have to power-wash the sauce from your fingers.

They're worth the trouble, though, and Lee's is a chicken joint worth coming back to.

Photo Gallery: Lonesome Creepy - The Midnight Special

For this edition of Lonesome Creepy I have a collection of night shots.  As with previous Lonesome Creepy posts the following photos were all taken with an iPhone 4 unless otherwise noted.

So You Think You Can Write: Shadows and Light

The focus of this assignment was dialogue - we had to write a conversation between two people where both were hiding something.  The assignment scared the hell out of me at first - fiction had been hard enough but creating speaking characters?  Eventually I had to force myself to sit down at the computer and wing it.

I couldn't stomach the idea of writing about some kind of domestic discord or tragic medical diagnosis so I reached into a different place.  Being raised Catholic I've always been fascinated by the struggle between good & evil so for this assignment I decided the two should have a conversation.

"Shadows and Light"

Except for a single light burning atop a worn desk the room was in darkness. Behind the desk sat an old man, his broad shoulders slightly stooped and his thick hands criss-crossed with the marks of age. His eyes were fixed on the desk, on an object at the fringes of the light. It was a globe — the world in miniature — the green land freshly charred, the blue seas newly boiled away.

God stared at the scale model of destruction and sighed. This had been his world, its inhabitants his children and his children had destroyed themselves. “Not for the first time,” spoke a voice inside him. The old man cradled his head in his hands as the unbidden emotions of a life long ago burst forth — the joy of creation, the wrath of wounded pride, and the ache of separation.

So You Think You Can Write: Juliette

For this, my third assignment in the Times Colonist "So You Think You Can Write" competition, I was tasked with creating a character in 500 words or less.  Descriptive writing was not something I often did and so this was an intimidating assignment, although it was easy compared to the one that followed.

"Juliette"

Gliding between Formica tabletops, her slender fingers around the handle of a coffeepot, Juliette remembers when John would take her dancing and, when the diner is quiet, she can almost pretend it’s still spring 1967 and the air smells of gardenias in bloom.

She closes her blue eyes and remembers the summer before John was drafted: drinking iced tea on the porch with her parents before sneaking away to make love by the banks of the Atchafalaya Basin. Juliette trembled in the moonlight, a tall, slim girl even then, and he handled her like something precious and rare.

More Oral Magic: The 2012 Victoria Spoken Word Festival

No?  How about some poetry then?

After a successful inaugural run last year the Victoria Spoken Word Festival is back for more in 2012 and so, apparently, am I.  For the second year running I will be on-hand to comment on the festivities, bringing the magic of the Spoken Word Festival to the frail, housebound and triple-booked.  


Just like last year, tickets are cheap ($5-$10) so try to make it out to one of the events at either Cafe Solstice or the Intrepid Theatre, from Thursday to Friday night.  Click the first link below for scheduling information.


Post 1:  The 2012 Victoria Spoken Word Festival Begins!  - The philosophical barber, Fish Jesus & Floyd Jones
Post 2:  Tongues of Fire Instant Slam - Meltdowns, turkey love and a bearded snake
Post 3:  The Awesome Shit Showcase - Nostalgia, glitter & heartbreak.  Also bodily fluids
Post 4:  On the Edge, Into the Sunset - Saying goodbye with class (and a golden penis statue)

So You Think You Can Write: The Knife

For the second assignment in the 2011 Times Colonist "So You Think You Can Write Contest" we had to tell the story of an item about which we have ambivalent feelings.  This is largely the truth (groan) about an angry time in my life and how I came to possess a handmade knife.

   The Knife

The drawer to the left of my kitchen sink contains a bizarre inventory of items: there are Ziploc bags filled with wet naps, ancient elastic bands, and various foreign coins left over from vacations past.

At the very back is the centrepiece of my little collection: a homemade knife. The pockmarked blade was machined from industrial steel; the handle from plastic cutting boards. It’s worn and without practical use yet I’ve taken it with me every time I’ve moved, from house to apartment to house, for six years.

I keep the knife because even though it represents a miserable part of my life, it’s also a reminder of the lessons I learned from the man who gave me it to me and how his sadness helped me to let go of the anger that had come to define me.

So You Think You Can Write: Nicolette, Tennessee

Last September, just before heading down to Las Vegas to blog the Mr. Olympia bodybuilding competition, I entered the Victoria Times-Colonist's "So You Think You Can Write" contest.  In a previous post I mentioned I was chosen as a finalist and urged (some would say threatened) my readers to vote for me.  My attempts at coercion failed and, alas, I did not win the contest.  I did, however, write some fiction, which I had not done before and it came out nicely, if I do say so myself. 

Over the course of the contest I wrote five pieces, including my qualifying story, and over the next little while I'll be posting the assignments here.  This first doesn't have a title but is about growing up in the (nonexistent) small town of Nicolette, Tennessee:

The men of the Delaney family are not known for being long-lived. Our grandfather, Lee David Delaney, died in the Number 52 mine collapse in 1964 and his son, our father, David Lee Delaney, died twenty years later from a lung infection caused, it is widely accepted, by working in Number 53.  And believe me, when I say ten years, I mean to the day.  We tried to console ourselves by saying that at least we could confine our grief to a single day.  It would have worked if it hadn’t been Christmas.  

Neither death made the newspaper, Grandpa Lee David’s because Christmas 1964 was about when all those rivers in Oregon got to flooding and daddy’s because one man dying isn’t news, especially if he was a good man.  We remembered them though, each in our own way - grandma for one developed a fear of going underground.  This wasn’t a problem until she came to visit me in New York City and screamed the entire way through the Holland Tunnel. 

The policeman who pulled us over was very gracious once he figured out that this 102lb senior citizen from Nicolette, Tennessee was no threat to any part of America except its eardrums.  Between her accent and my grandfather’s too-big dentures he barely understood anything she said - he made out the word “Yankee” once and took it to mean that she was a baseball fan.  I didn’t correct him.

My younger brother David & I were affected by the elder Delaney’s deaths in a different way - having died as a result of their jobs managed to impress upon us that toil was not conducive to good health and should be avoided.  David excelled at this –by the age of ten he could sit in one spot on the front porch for up to sixteen hours.  Jim Abramson, the tobacconist, would hire him to wear a headdress & pose as an Indian statue in his smoke shop, paying him in Prince Albert cigarettes – Jim always meant to have a proper carved Indian made but artists were in short supply in Nicolette in those days.  Now David teaches yoga in Cosmos, California and can’t believe people pay honest money to be taught to stand still.

Myself, I made up stories.  At first they were about people I knew, like my mother.  Shortly after David was born she ran off with Tor Engvall, a local farmhand who also performed a Johnny Cash tribute act in retirement homes.  At first she’d send postcards but they thinned out as the months passed & I sometimes imagined the two had been swallowed up by a whale, like Jonah.  

Eventually I made up other stories and with both television and literacy being a luxury in those parts, people would come by Grandma’s house at night to hear me tell them. 

Now I live in New York City and can’t believe that people will pay honest money to read about Nicolette, Tennessee.

The Un-Texan: A Quinn Martin Production

"The birth of a child, your first kiss from a new lover - neither compare to that sweet moment when your hangover finally goes away."

Those sage words are one of only two things I accomplished today in the fog that followed a friend's birthday party at Brown's Social House last night.  The other "accomplishment" adorns the top of this page and makes less sense even if it was more fun to make.  I will try to explain:

Artist's representaton

This morning I browsed Facebook while waiting for the hammering in my head to subside.  It was there I noticed that one of my friends, writer, editor & fugitive American Bob McIntosh (@BobMcVictoria on Twitter), was himself friends with a man named Hud Bannon.  

The name immediately appealed to to the child in me who spent hours parked in front of the television watching re-runs of Quincy, Barnaby Jones, & The Streets of San Francisco on WWOR.  I could just imagine "hot-shot detective" Hud Bannon sliding across the hood of his black '71 Charger (hemi, of course) as he chased down drug kingpin Mookie Davis.  So, in tribute, I created the above image and sent it along to Bob for laughs.

As it turns out Hud Bannon is a writer, author of the blog The Un-Texan, among other things, and though that’s not his real name it damn well should be.  I haven’t yet had the chance to delve into the man’s work but what I have seen so far concerns things near and dear to my heart:  America, truck stops, dusty roads and the strange carnival of people who inhabit all three:

“Looking at Delta Dawn's bare shoulders and back was like gazing across several acres of pale, drought-stricken ground in the harshest light of day; from the front she looked like all of those acres had gathered themselves into a shivering heap that might collapse at any moment. None of that seemed to bother her in the slightest.”

                                    -          Hud Bannon, "The Un-Texan"

Click on over to the man's site using either the link above or by clicking the image at the top of the page.  On a related note, does anyone know the name of the guy who narrated Barnaby Jones & The Streets of San Francisco?  This is the stuff they should teach in school.

Photo Gallery: The Lonesome Creepy - Waiting

Of all the things that smartphones can do - help us cheat at pub trivia nights or avoid having to talk to strangers, for example - their greatest feature has to be the camera. Having a reasonably capable camera in your pocket at all times is useful when your friends and associates decide to do something blackmail-worthy or when, like me, you’re walking around at three in the morning and say, “That looks spooky.” Portability, and the fact that it does all the heavy lifting for you as far as settings are concerned, has allowed me to use my iPhone to capture images I never would have bothered with if I'd had to lug around a camera the size of Optimus Prime's lower 48.