Today I achieved my greatest culinary masterpiece to date: succulent pasta, smothered in succulent Ragu pasta sauce, oozing with succulent mild English cheddar and oscillating with succulent pieces of a pork patty I scavenged from our dwindling stack of leftover free sandwiches. The meal radiated succulency, and it was delicious.
In other news, I'll be trying my hand (and probably the rest of my body) at rugby this semester. During a trip to the gym today, I met and spoke with the captain of the Queen Mary Rugby Team, who said he would be happy to have me play. Most matches are on Wednesdays, practices are Sunday, and the season will be over before the month-long spring break in April, so it sounds perfect. Tomorrow I’ll go to a social event to meet the rest of the team.
I successfully attended two out of two courses today: Differential Equations and Thermodynamics. Very exciting stuff.
This evening, I went with a few other Americans on a free walking tour of London bearing the ominous title, “Ghost Tour.” A white-haired Scottish man led us through the city for a couple hours and shared with us the various tales of ghosts who haunt places in London. We heard about Anne Boleyn and Sweeney Todd, among other people, and visited remnants of many historic places in London, including a church which showed damage from World War I, and many pieces of buildings much older than that, like the remnants of the first church in London, founded by the Romans over two thousand years ago.
We took the tube back to our neck of the woods. We waited for the train with this very sketchy young man eating a bag of chips. His eyes were bloodshot and it looked like he needed some sleep. We got on the train, and after he finished his bag of chips, he took out a pencil and wrote on the train wall:
1690
UVF
NO SURRENDER
and got off the train at the next stop. I searched online and discovered that the UVF is an acronym for the Ulster Volunteer Force, described by Wikipedia as “a Loyalist group in Northern Ireland…and a designated terrorist organization in the United Kingdom.” This spooked me a little bit. I couldn’t figure out what the 1690 meant.
For some reason, it doesn't surprise me that he was a terrorist as much as I think it should. Emily said he was making faces at us while we were talking waiting for the tube?
ReplyDeleteAlso, who writes graffiti in pencil?
Someone who can't afford a pen?
ReplyDeleteAccording to Wikipedia, 1690 was the year of the Battle of the Boyne, between Protestant William of Orange and Catholic King James, who was attempting to reclaim the English throne William deposed him from. James lost. That meant that Britain was assured dominance over Ireland, something the UVF is not a big fan of.