The ducklings have landed--now what?

Sunday 5 July—We had a coach tour in the afternoon followed by a “welcome dinner” at an “English” restaurant in Covent Garden—ultra Brit food (steak and Guinness pie with “spotted Dick” for afters). The coach tour started inauspiciously, as the volume level was deafening and I had to quiet them down; visions of high-school disciplinarian routines flashed through my mind, but I worked to chalk it up to first-day amplification of chatter. Abby and Brian, our guide and driver, did a beautiful job of coordinating an efficient trajectory featuring a good balance between stops and movement. We were abetted by it being Sunday AND the day of the epic Wimbledon final: streets that normally would have been clogged were flowing well, and both of them seemed to work together in predicting the closures and detours that are a daily part of London driving.

I’d been worried that this would be boring for students who’d done a tour already, but I was mistaken: their previous sightseeing outing had been on a doubledecker with headsets and recorded commentary / music that they could barely hear, and there was no stopping to explore on the ground; I was happy to see many of my students jotting notes on places they wanted to visit on their own!

It was interesting to undergo unexpected little trials-by-the-unknown: since I never had been in this position, I had no idea whether or how much to tip the driver and guide, who I know had been paid for their services. Luckily Andrew had overheard them talking amongst themselves, and slipping them each a 10-spot seemed the right thing to do. On the other hand, after the dinner I elected to take the direct approach and simply ask the servers of our meal whether a tip was expected, and they said the service charge was included, they didn’t expect anything extra, and so I left it at that: their service was nothing special, in a downstairs dining room with food flung quickly and with a certain brusque efficiency. Here and elsewhere I am disconcerted at not knowing what the appropriate custom is, neither wanting to be a boorish skinflint nor a stereotypically profligate Yank.

Walking back through the still-bustling streets and again through the park, I had a nice call from Amelie on my cell, and further on, an unexpected great little contact with a trash-picker-upper with whom I commiserated about the Slobbovian nature of too many park-goers (stretching near Round Pond later in the week, I marveled at the sheet number of cigarette filters and plastic caps and wrappers and twisties that I inventoried in the square meter around me): touching on the “music,” our conversation diverted to his old favorite, Captain Beefheart, and migrated to none other than Frank Zappa. An unexpected pleasure to break into “Cosmik Debris” and have him fill in the chorus! Yet more evidence of why one should occasionally walk alone, and make eye contact…