BRITTANIA DON’T RULE THE KITCHEN

We are off at last!  This trip has been ten years in the thinking, and delaying for one reason or another.  The week or so leading up to our departure I was imagining all means of disaster that would befall us, from missed connections, trouble with all my meds clearing TSA, lost baggage, respiratory failure at 39,000 feet and over the Pole.  None of that happened, of course, and indeed everything went almost eerily well.
We opted for a “limo” service to the airport as the Santa Monica cabs wouldn’t pick up in our community, and I was concerned that the L.A.-based ones would get caught in the horrendous traffic out our way (more negative worrying).  One of the S.M. companies has a sister limo service that was alleged to cost no more than a cab.  For us, the flat rate was $55, which was indeed just a small bit over the cost of a cab.  Having packed and repacked in practice, of course I threw out all my planning at the last moment 1 and used a larger suitcase than I had intended.  Just “had” to get in a second pair of shoes and move the guidebooks from my already bulging carryon.  We set the timers for the lights, turned the water heater to “vacation” mode, adjusted all the blinds (what looks “occupied” to a potential burgler?), made sure no water was running, and sat down to wait for the intended 1:15 limo arrival.  Knock me down with a feather.  At 1:13, the driver pulled up, we had the bags loaded, and we were off at exactly 1:15.  Amazing.  We hit heavy traffic on the I-10 before the 1-405 interchange, so he pulled an offramp-and-get-back-on-the-onramp maneuver (which I figured netted him a whole 20 seconds), plus a late cut-in that would have had me honking like holy hell (saving another 5 seconds), but got us there in one piece.  We were flying on the dreaded United, perennial contestant with American for worst airline in the world, but . . . . We had NO line at check-in, which went very smoothly with their fairly intuitive self-check-in (we did have to produce our passports, but even those were self-scan), and the only human we encountered was the guy who quickly took our bags and checked them through to Heathrow (via our connecting flight at SFO).  He directed us to the priority security line (say, what!?!), where we encountered . . . NO line, no shoes off, no nothing.  The only hitch was my security wallet triggering the scanner, but plopping that in the dish cured it, and we were through.  Five minutes of walking and we were at our gate, seated and waiting.  Time?  2:15!  We had gone from our front door to the gate in one hour flat.  That will never, I am sure, happen again.  Unbelievable.  We had over two hours to departure.
Now, United did redeem its reputation somewhat by overselling the flight, and we were subjected to repeated loudspeaker entreaties to take a later flight and get big buckos for doing so.  Eventually they got enough takers to board, but even then, after boarding, they were asking for two more volunteers to deplane and get even more goodies.  They buttoned up the door, started an engine, and then we sat.  Loni noticed they were still loading baggage.  And, look!  There’s MY bag just getting put on board.  Yikes!  So, we were baggage delayed for forty minutes before pushing back from the gate.  That’s the United I expected.  The “meal” just confirmed it.  The choices were chicken penne or an Indian vegetarian.  We had eaten a lot of chicken recently, so I opted for the Indian.  Oye.  A plastic tray with a 1/3 stripe of white rice down the center, flanked on the left by mushy potatoes and glup, and on the right by mushy chickpeas and glup.  A “salad” of old lettuce and one tomato slice, a roll of strange density, and a gummy brownie.  Eat up, campers!
Unlike any previous trip, I also splurged on a seat with 3 (count ‘em, three) inches of additional legroom over the cattle-car seats, as well as for “priority” boarding.  Both turned out to be good moves, although it still irks me to have to pay extra for decent treatment.  With the legroom, I could actually cross my legs with out a Yoga manual, and basically stretch them out under the seat in front.  Also, these seats were forward, just behind business class, thus we got served the stuff-and-glup before the great unwashed in the rear.  Lucky me.  I actually got to choose the glup instead of having it forced on me.  For the record, and ever the fair and balanced reporter, Loni enjoyed her penne.  Although the service crashed twice, requiring multiple attempts to fix, the in-seat entertainment selections were just fine.  Several dozen movies to choose from.  I watched a recent release, “Chef,” which was decent, and another one whose title escapes me at the moment.  My Sennheiser noise-canceling headphones, 7 or 8 years old, worked superbly.  Loni’s Sony’s, which I just bought, didn’t work at all, even with a change of batteries.  They’re going back to Best Buy as soon as we get home, 30-day return limit be damned.  As usual, no sleep for me, even with popping half an Ambien, and Loni didn’t get any either.  Nine hours of figiting.  Oof.  The flight was smooth, we made up 30 of our 40-minute delay, and landed to overcast skies on Sunday afternoon at Heathrow.  We again breezed through the place, our bags coming out about ten minutes in the claim area, with NO line at immigration, a less than one-minute processing, and that was that.  What’s going on here?  We called our travel companions, Chuck and Alice, friends from home who had preceded us by ten days to pick up a BMW 3-series saloon (wagon) from the factory and have an Alice-relatives reunion in Germany.  Amazingly our newly purchased cheap cell phone got through to their purchased-the-preceding day phone and they were about 15 minutes from the airport.  And bingo, we were on our way in just that time.  Exhausted, of course, from no sleep on the plane and, for me, only an hour or so the previous night.
First stop was Cambridge and the Ayah Villa B&B on the outskirts.  Chuck did a very nice job of keeping a left-hand-drive car on the straight-and-narrow in a left-drive country.  The Beemer was quiet and comfortable and will be great for our 5 week trip.  Ayah Villa is more like a small hotel than a “real” B&B, but is perfectly fine, with super-friendly hosts of some undetermined Asian extraction who bend over backward to make you comfortable.  Like all accommodations here (as Chuck would attest from their room the previous night), the rooms are small, but perfectly suitable.  Even a flat-screen TV and ample hot water!
We asked our hosts for dinner suggestions, and the consensus seemed to be the “Green Man” gastro-pub, just a short drive away.  Off we went and found a very pleasant looking place that was well-attended with locals.  This, as we discovered, was NOT a guarantee of fine dining.  They offered a standing Sunday fixed-price menu of roasts:  beef, pork, chicken, combos, etc., for 15 pounds (three courses) or 12.50 for two.  We all opted for two courses, with Chuck and I choosing (naturally) dessert for the second, and the gals for appetizers with theirs.  Alice and I ordered the beef, and piped up medium for her and rare for me.  Good luck with that.  This is England.  Meat ain’t done until there’s no more color other than whatever sauce you pour over it.  And, trust me.  You’ll need that sauce to get it down.  When these two plates of grey-black beef arrived, we asked about the doneness, and the cheery waitress (she really was friendly) tried to explain that they all came from the same joint of beef, so there was no difference in doneness.  My deadpan slackjawed look went unrecognized, so we proceeded through dinner as we remembered it from the last time we were in England:  1966.  Well-well done meat, mushy veggies, a crispy-critter Yorkshire pudding, and plenty of starchy potatoes.  Ah, well.  Some things never change, and that oxymoron, English cuisine, leads the way.  The gooseberry/apple crumble for dessert was only OK, with decent fruit but a strangely half-cooked crumble top.  Let’s see, nuke the meat, but half-bake the streusel.  Hmmmm.
  Breakfast this morning was not the “full” English breakfast that we will get in abundance throughout this trip, but a nice selection of cereals, yoghurts, muffins, toast, jams, fruit, etc. 
At breakfast we met a very nice couple, he from London, she from Australia, with baby in tow, who were in town for a wedding.  He was a wealth of info about places to see along our intended route, and we took notes.  They are extensive travelers, and were quite familiar with California, and indeed have another wedding to attend in L.A. next Spring.  We gave them tips on places to see in California.  You can’t see it in this photo, but we all agreed that he is the spitting image of a recent Dr. Who from the TV series.   Their baby was a charmer, and made us miss grandbaby Isla instantly.
Taking his suggestions on easy parking in downtown Cambridge, we took off in a welcoming English drizzle for the University’s colleges.  First up was Trinity, and we could spy its chapel across the fields from where we had parked.  We had to detour our walk to it, as the most direct path was restricted to pass-holders from the college.  But the route turned out to be quite scenic, with lush greenery everywhere, as befits a place that doesn’t know the meaning of drought.  At one point, we crossed over an arched stone bridge and viewed the river Cam, with punts tied up and ready to go.  Rather bucolic, I thought.  I loved the names they assigned to the punts, especially the “Harry Lime,” from “The Third Man” masterpiece by Orson Welles.  Chuck appreciated “Fluffy,” which he opined came from Hagrid’s three-headed guard dog in the Harry Potter series.
OK, it’s 10:30 pm.  I gotta crash.  I’ll post this half-done episode, and then will finish it off at our next stop, wifi willing.  So, next time you check in, re-read this entry for the rest.  ZZZzz