The Queen's English

Daddy thinks I've picked up a bit of an accent. He says my os are sounding more like a combination of "oh" and "oo". I guess it's particularly noticable when I say Volvo.

I've picked up a few colloquialisms as well. It began when I started using the term garden like the British do, and stopped thinking of the phrase "paved garden" as an oxymoron. Then, I started refering to airplanes as aeroplanes. Finally, Mama caught me pronouncing schedule like the British, where the first syllable sounds like shed.

I suppose I've truly begun speaking like a proper Englishman.

Black Pudding

Yesterday, I did something else my ancestors might have done: I tried black pudding. Black pudding is part of a traditional English breakfast, along with baked beans, grilled tomatoes, fried mushrooms, bacon, scrambled eggs, hash browns, and toast.

I didn't eat all of those things, but I did try some black pudding. The first bite was alright, but by the second bite I couldn't do any more. When we got back to the hotel room and did a Google search for black pudding, I realized why.

Black pudding is also known as blood pudding, as in you make it by cooking blood with a thickener until it congeals.

My ancestors may have eaten blood pudding, but I think I've had enough to last a lifetime.

Roots

While you were celebrating the launch of an insurgency that went on to overthrow an occupying power, I discovered my roots yesterday.

We took a two-and-a-half hour train ride from London north to Preston. Daddy spent a few hours in the Lancashire Records Office poring over some old parish records while Mama, McKenzie, and I wandered around Preston and stumbled across some memorials to early church members.

Daddy found the birth record for my great great great great great great grandpa John Bromley (Brimley). He was born in 1739 in Leyland, near Preston. He also found the marriage record for his dad, John Bromley in 1732, and a few other records.

Next, we took a train five minutes south of Preston to Leyland, where these ancestors lived. We went to the church there, St. Andrews, where they were all christened and married. It's a really old church with a big cemetery. We wandered around the cemetery looking at gravestones. We saw some from the 1800s. There were some older ones, but they were so worn you couldn't tell what they used to say. I kept asking Daddy, "Does this one have grandpa's name?", but we couldn't find it.

Anyway, it was neat to walk around the same area where my ancestors walked as long as 300 years ago.

After Leyland, we took a train an hour south to Liverpool. Liverpool is where my great great great grandfather, William Jedediah Brimley, left England with his family to go to Utah. He was seven years old at the time.

By the time we got here to Liverpool (I'm in Liverpool now), it was late so we just grabbed some dinner and hit the sack. Today we went down to the waterside and went to the Merseyside Maritime Museum. They had an exhibit about emigrants that left from Liverpool to go to other countries. They had this little room set up like a ship's lodging quarters would have been in the old days. Maybe this is what my great great great grandpa's ship was like.

I wonder how they felt when they left. Maybe like I felt when I left to come to London: missing my family and friends and toys, but excited about the new adventure. I wonder if they imagined their descendants might come back. I wouldn't be surprised if they did, but they probably never though that we could get here in less than a day (with a half-day flight from the States, and a two hour train ride from London). Well, I've completed the circle.

Wimbledon Village Fair

Last Saturday we went to the Wimbledon Village Fair. You've probably heard of Wimbledon. They play tennis there.

We weren't at the tennis courts, though. We were at a park. They had big slides and a merry-go-round and a bunch of booths selling trinkets. They also had face painting. Mine is a lion. McKenzie's is a butterfly.

Ten Year Old Shadow

Last night after dinner, Daddy took us to the park. By the time we were done playing, the sun was kissing the horizon. I noticed my shadow and told Daddy, "My shadow is really tall, like it's ten years old."

He said that when the sun gets close to the horizon, it's gravitational pull distorts the time dimension and makes our shadows get older.

South Bank

Yesterday we walked along the South Bank of the Thames. We took the Northern Line (that's the tube for you out of towners) to Waterloo and then just walked along the river.

Just after we came out from the Underground, we saw a procession of different planes flying in formation overhead. There must have been an air show somewhere.

We also played at a playground near the London Eye, saw a bunch of street performers, and got some ice cream cones from an ice cream truck.

We walked down past Shakespeare's Globe theatre and on to the HMS Belfast, almost to the Tower Bridge.

The HMS Belfast is a navy ship that doesn't ship anymore. Now it's just a museum. Here's me in the captain's chair. "Let's get this tin can turned around!"

A Little More Challenging

Every night, before I go to sleep, Mama reads me a few bedtime stories. Usually she reads me one of my favorites, or a book we've checked out from the library. This week, she started reading me A Bear Called Paddington. Seeing as how we've been to Paddington Station, she figured I might want to know about the bear.

I wasn't getting it, though. Last night, as she was reading, I interrupted her.

"Excuse me, mama. Can we read something a little more challenging, with pictures in it? 'Cause I don't know what you're talking about."

She laughed and then read me Goodnight Moon instead. Then I think she wrote about it on her new blog, A Mother's Prerogative. Her blog is more about our day-to-day lives from a mother's perspective. Hopefully she won't tell all my embarassing stories, like the time I got up to pee in the middle of the night and slipped and fell into the toilet.