TELGEN NEWSLETTER 4.0: April 17, 1999

Dear Family and Friends:

We've been so busy travelling around Europe that we haven't had time to keep you updated on our more mundane adventures at home in England. So I'm going to put off writing about our latest trip so I can let you know what else we've been up to.

Here comes Peter Cottontail—with a hernia: Because Halloween isn't very big over here and Christmas is full of puddings and pantomimes, I thought that maybe the British didn't celebrate what I like to call "candy holidays"—holidays where the stores are filled with brightly colored versions of your favorite confectioneries. As springtime approached, however, I realized that I was gravely mistaken—over here, Easter is a major candy holiday. But no wimpy little baskets filled with jellybeans make their way to British children—no, instead the stores sell giants packages filled with endless variations on the large hollow chocolate egg. There are Teletubby and Rugrat eggs, Spiderman and Action Man eggs, elegant high-class eggs for that sophisticated lady, soccer ball-shaped eggs corresponding to various football clubs for your football-mad bloke, any kind of chocolate egg package that you can imagine. And evidently they aren't placed within an Easter basket or hidden, just presented within their box to the lucky recipient on Easter. You could walk into a Woolworth's—a store maybe the size of an Arbor Drugs—and there would be four or five shelves full of Easter egg packages. I actually worried that they might collapse onto my head as I walked through the store. This must be why I avoided the packaged eggs; we had our traditional plastic egg hunt instead, with some plastic eggs that emigrated with us.

It's time for the disaster of the week: David is still enjoying school and has starting attending gymnastics class on the weekends. (Imagine two instructors trying to keep the attention of a dozen five year olds who would rather explore all the various apparatus, and you'll have a good recipe for chaos.) He still loves his trains and his computer games, but what he loves most of all are DISASTERS on the television. Tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, volcanoes, earthquakes, lightning, car and airplane crashes—if it makes a mess, then he's all for it. One of the coolest of all disasters, in his opinion, is the Titanic. (The Andrea Doria was pretty cool, too, but they haven't made a movie about it yet.) Every night we have to check the TV listings for stuff about disasters, and every weekend David wants to go to the video store and find a movie about a disaster. Luckily for him the 90s have seen a renaissance in the disaster movie genre not seen since the 70s (although I haven't seen anything to equal the "Sensurround" technique that made "Earthquake" such a fine cinematic experience). There is one problem with this fascination, however: although it gives us plenty of opportunities to teach him about earth science and technology, he has an unfortunate tendency to ask new questions at inconvenient times. Like asking, "Mommy, what would we do if the plane caught on fire?" just before we're getting ready for takeoff. Maybe I should recommend to British Airways that they provide children with coloring books filled with pictures of airplane crashes—it would be a great hit with David!

If music be the food of love, play on: You can only say good things about a country where six-year-old children call in to the classical music station to request a specific piece. Unlike the Detroit area, which sadly lost its last classical music station the year we moved, England has not one but two successful radio stations completely devoted to classical music. As a wonderful bonus, there are quality live performances not just in London but locally. Diane has organized a "Music Lovers" group within the local American Women's Club that goes to concerts every other month. So far I've seen the London Philharmonia, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, and the BBC Concert Orchestra. Plus I've attended a baroque chamber music concert, played on replica period instruments, and, finally, have found a local group with which to play my flute. Concert bands aren't very common here—brass bands and orchestras are more common—but I did find one close by which uses the facilities of a RAF band. (Which means I've had to fill out a security questionnaire just to play my flute.) The group is a bit different than what I'm used to—only two other flutes in the whole band, and the music doesn't go home—but I'm having fun when I'm not being puzzled by the language barrier. The conductor started going on about watching the "crotchets" and I finally had to whisper to the girl next to me, "What's a crotchet?" She said, "It's a beat, you know. What do you call them in America?" I gave her a funny look. "We just call them beats."

....Or don't, please: On the other hand, remember that England is the place that spawned the Spice Girls. I can only forgive Britain for this because they also gave us the Beatles, but recalling the popularity of various "girl" and "boy" bands explains a lot about the wretched state of popular radio here. (One cannot live by classical music alone, you know.) For every cool alternative-rock song you hear on the radio, you're treated to either a "classic 80s" tune (which could be anything from Bon Jovi to one of those tuneless always-flat depressing British technobands I can't keep straight and can't stand anyway) or some "club mix" type racket. The horrible influence of the "club scene" on music was brought home to me when Bill and I attended a Christmas party with several other people from his office. There was a DJ, and every once in while he would put on something eminently danceable, like "Great Balls of Fire" or "Love Shack." Unfortunately, no sooner had you heard the song, identified it, and got up to dance than the DJ's "mix" would swiftly turn to something else—like the "song" I heard which was nothing more than someone counting to eight to a disco beat, sounding just like you were in an aerobics class. And not only would this little musical gem go on for minutes at a time, but it would be played at regular intervals! Bill was just in Dallas this April, and wondered upon his return at how you could just put on the radio and actually listen to several songs in a row without having to turn the dial in disgust.

You can't have the news without the weather: Since winter never really came here (I don't count it as winter unless there's snow that sticks to the ground), we've had a very pleasant few months, even considering that during December we were living in the dark for what seemed like sixteen hours a day. Nevertheless, the temperature seldom fell below 40F and the rain never lasted too long. My bulbs started sprouting in February, and I had hundreds of daffodils by the beginning of April. Everything has been so green! Lest you get jealous, however, consider that back home in Michigan they've already hit 70F once or twice, while we've had one day where it got to 65F or so—the rest of the time it's been in the 50s. And we've had a cold spell at the end of April, one that saw us have two consecutive days with alternating sun and hail. So much for my daffodils. But if you come over to visit, we can promise you'll see some pretty countryside and lots of flowers.

That's all for this edition. But don't wait for the next update—keep in touch anytime!

Cheerio!

Diane, Bill & David Telgen

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