People often think Valentine’s Day is a modern invention, a diabolical conspiracy of florists and greeting card companies to suck money out of poor chumps who should be able to show their love without spending a dime. Actually, sending Valentines is older than modern commercialism.
The BBC reports that the first use of “Valentine” in the English language was in a letter dated 1477 from Margery Brews to her suitor John Paston.
Opening her letter to John with “Me ryght welebeloued Voluntyne”, the 17 year-old Margery shows some old-school teen angst by asking why he hasn’t written her recently. John, who was 33, had asked for her hand in marriage but didn’t get the dowry he wanted. The relationship between Margery’s father and John deteriorated and it looked like the marriage would never happen until the pair’s mothers intervened and saved the day. Love triumphed, something that didn’t happen as much as it should have in the 15th century.
To hear the whole letter read in Middle English, check out this link. It’s amazing just how much you can figure out.
The love note comes from a collection called the Paston letters. More than a thousand letters from this wealthy family dating from 1422 to 1509 survive and give an amazing insight into the life of the gentry in the decades before Henry VIII. They’re housed in the British Library in London. Watch the video below for a quick tour courtesy of Rick Steves.
[Painting of Saint Valentine by Jacopo Bassano, 1575, courtesy Wikimedia Commons]
With Valentine’s Day coming up shortly, it’s time to catalogue some romantic Big Smoke activities. Here are five budget-friendly London Valentine’s Day ideas.
1. Flower hunting at Columbia Road Shops & Flower Market. East London’s Sunday flower market is jam-packed with shoppers and aimless strollers alike. The streets are full of stands selling flowers, with salesmen barking prices in hardcore Cockney tones. Columbia Road shops are also delightful, with cafes, furniture stores, and curio shops sharing retail space. Columbia Road Market is open on Sundays between 8 am and 3 pm. Arrive early to avoid the crowds and to pick up the best possible selection of Valentine’s Day flowers for your loved ones.
2. Valentine’s Day at Tower Bridge. For £15 ($24) per person, participants can ascend to the bridge’s walkways, eat chocolates, drink a glass of bubbly (pink Champagne, no less!) and enjoy views over London. Organizers promise “scented flowers, seductive lighting and live mood music” in the background. Wow. In other words: one part cheesy spectacle, one part make-no-bones-about-it goosebump fest. This activity is scheduled on the evening of February 14 in four one-hour admission shifts, at 6:30 pm, 7:30 pm, 8:30 pm, and 9:30 pm. 18 and older only.
3. Romantic candies. Pick up some Valentine’s Day sweets at Hope & Greenwood. The very British confectionary shop has two branches, one at 20 North Cross Road in Dulwich and the other at 1 Russell Street in Covent Garden. They’re hawking a line of special Valentines candies right now; these include an organic spotted dick chocolate bar, love hearts, and champagne truffles.
4. Makeshift river cruise. Bypass the terribly pricey Thames dinner cruises and cobble together a romantic river journey of your own. On Valentine’s Day afternoon, take a River Cruise eastward from Westminster to Greenwich or westward from Greenwich to Westminster. A cruise leaving Greenwich at 4:50 pm arrives at Westminster at 6:10 pm, affording almost a full hour of post-sunset views of the city. A one-way journey for adults costs £9.50 ($15.30) and a roundtrip runs £12.50 ($20.10).
5. Primrose Hill views. Few neighborhoods in London are quite as picturesque as Primrose Hill. The hill itself perches on the northern flank of Regent’s Park, and affords beautiful, sloping views of central London. Primrose Hill is also home to ungodly numbers of British celebrities. Will they be out on Valentine’s Day evening, enjoying the view? Unlikely, but you never know.
Searching for the perfect romantic bolthole for Valentine’s Day? Of course you are. Check out our list of five romantic properties in Boston, California, Mexico, Quebec, and St. Lucia.
On my recent trip to London, I was asked frequently if it was my first time I didn’t quite know how to answer, as I’d spent a day wandering the city in 2008 before schlepping out to East Anglia. Instead of yes-with-a-but or no-with-an-except, I settled on kinda and used that as bait to give an explanation nobody really cared about.
Why is this important?
Subtlety matters in London, and for business travelers, time is of the essence. Fail to handle the former properly, and you will lose on the latter. Had I said I’d been to London while asking for directions, for example, the outcome would have been much different (I’d not have gotten sufficient detail). But, I remembered just enough to be dangerous.
London can be a tricky city for the white collar travel set, largely because it’s more different from what you see in the United States, given the shared language and history. Going to London on business? Here are five things that will tangle with your corporate yankee sensibilities:
%Gallery-66988% 1. They drive on the other side of the road: I know; I know – this is perfectly obvious, and you should know about it already. Here’s the problem, though: I’ve spent the last three decades looking or traffic on the right side of the road. Old habits die hard. Combine this with jaywalking (a New York necessity), and the results can be unpleasant. I’m not saying this is right or wrong, but after several close calls, it becomes annoying.
2. Cold toilet seats: no explanation needed.
3. Hopstop FAIL: I love Hoptstop in New York, but it just doesn’t measure up in London. Too many streets are missing. Usually, getting “close enough” is fine, except when close enough points you in the wrong direction … when you’re on your way to a business meeting. I quickly gave up on Hopstop and started carrying a paper map.
4. Late-night dining FAIL: It seems like London hates to eat after 10 PM. I worked late several nights on my last trip and found myself needing dinner after 11 PM. There just wasn’t much. If you’re in London on business, feed yourself and your team early if you have an all-nighter forming … and stock up for the early hours of the morning.
5. Nobody knows where anything is: I grew up in the Boston area, so I’ve been through this before: these tiny, crazy little streets are difficult to navigate, and the comfort of the Manhattan grid is nowhere to be found. Everything makes sense if you know where to look. But, it takes targeted knowledge to help a lost American businessman, and I mostly encountered only friendliness and willingness. Give yourself plenty of time to get to that next meeting …
A 20-year old British woman died in a Hampton Inn near the Philadelphia airport on Tuesday, after silicone injections in her posterior didn’t go as planned. AOL News reports that Claudia Adusei and three friends arrived from London on Saturday, and were staying at the hotel. Adusei and one of the friends had visited Philadelphia last November to have their buttocks’ enhanced with silicone (are you noticing the absence of a medical professional or facility in this story?). The duo returned so Adusei could have additional buttocks injections, while her friend had hip augmentation (are you also noticing the irony of women actually paying money to make their butt and hips larger?).
Although silicone is approved by the Food and Drug Administration for cosmetic use, the injection of liquid silicone for cosmetic purposes is prohibited. Silicone implants are medically approved for buttock augmentation, as is fat transfer.
Adusei received injections at noon on Monday, after two women showed up at the hotel to perform the procedures. Only one woman is believed to have performed the injections, and Adusei began complaining of chest pains approximately 12 hours after the procedure, according to police. The suspects vanished shortly thereafter.
Paramedics rushed Adusei to Mercy-Fitzgerald Hospital in Delaware County; court documents state she died around 1:30 a.m. A preliminary medical exam indicates that Adusei may have died from silicone entering her vascular system, which would have stopped her heart, says the Delaware County medical examiner. An autopsy must still be completed, and toxicology reports won’t be released for at least six weeks.
[Photo credit: Flickr user [lauren nelson]]”In order to make the buttocks big with liquid silicone, you have to inject a lot of it, and use a large-gauge needle because silicone is really thick–and this could easily get into the blood stream,” explains Dr. Steven Victor, a cosmetic dermatologist in New York City who was consulted by FoxNews. “When this happens, there could be several outcomes. You could have a stroke because it could go to the brain. It could also travel to other vital organs like the lungs, the heart, the kidneys, and liver. This could be extremely detrimental, including death…We need to regulate this kind of activity better and educate the public.”
Tip: Before contemplating any type of cosmetic procedure or plastic surgery, contact the American Society of Plastic Surgeons to check credentials. Then do your homework. If something sounds too good–or cheap–to be true, it probably is.
As for the women who performed the procedures? Police are searching for them, after being tipped off that the procedures were arranged over the Internet. Lt. John Walker of the Philadelphia Police southwest detectives division says that it’s unknown at this time whether the “person performing that procedure is licensed or unlicensed.” The FDA as well as British embassy officials are also investigating Adusei’s death.
When I was in high school, I got to know a sweet and charming exchange student from Germany named Linda. We hung out together and I did my best to show her around Seattle before she had to go home six weeks later. I regretted not having the opportunity to get to know her ten months earlier when she first came to the U.S.
Five years went by, and we would write an occasional letter. She’d tell me about her life in Germany, which revolved around a constant barrage of tests or how she’d been accepted into a school she’d always wanted to attend and I’d tell her about whatever flying rating I was chasing or what classes I was taking at the time. I always knew I’d see her again, or at least I had hoped I would.
While flying for Era, a regional airline based in Anchorage, I happened to write a letter that would forever change my life. I was in the town of Deadhorse, up on the north slope of Alaska, flying some scientists who were tracking the migration patterns of bowhead whales. For nearly a week, the weather wasn’t good enough to look for these whales from the air, so I wrote to Linda and happened to mention that I could travel cheaply-free in fact, if I were willing to ride on a FedEx cargo plane to Germany from Anchorage-and that I would love to see where she lived.
Before heading out to dinner one night in Anchorage, I checked the mail. A letter from Germany had arrived. I stuffed it in my coat pocket and drove to the restaurant with my sister and a good friend. I couldn’t wait to open it, so after placing my order for beer battered Halibut, I tore open the envelope. Linda hadn’t wasted much time writing back. The letter explained that she’d be in London for New Year’s eve with some friends from school and invited me to join them if that was possible. I was excited to leave right away, but I wondered if we’d have anything in common, since we last saw each other at the age of seventeen.
In London, we stayed at a place called “Ken’s Guest House” in a room that wasn’t much larger than a walk-in closet. The decor included three black and white TVs stacked on top of each other in the corner, no furniture to speak of and a shared bathroom down the hall. We didn’t really mind the spartan room since we wouldn’t be staying there long-we’d be moving to a youth hostel the next day anyway. After ringing in New Year’s of 1991, we talked until 7a.m. For a better idea of what happened to us, just watch the movie Before Sunrise. The next day, Linda introduced me to her parents who were also visiting London.
It wasn’t long before Linda was visiting me in Anchorage and I was spending all of my time traveling to see her in Germany and later in Wales. For two years I commuted from Alaska to Europe. We were married in Seattle just weeks before I landed a job at a major airline that promptly furloughed the bottom 600 pilots. We moved ten times during those next three years, but now we’re happily settled in New England.
Today, I fly to London regularly as a crew member and I can’t help but think of that first meeting with Linda, at the Victoria train station, and how we celebrated New Year’s eve together at Trafalger Square in 1991. Twenty years later, I managed to trade away my Barbados 25-hour overnight for a 44-hour layover to Heathrow. With so much time in London, why not bring my wife along to celebrate twenty years since the date that brought us together. We could swing through the Victoria station and just catch the midnight swarm of people at the square.
I immediately checked the loads, which is to say, just how full the flight was over and back. Three months earlier, I tried to get Linda on one of my trips while her mother was visiting from Germany and was willing to watch the kids. Unfortunately, I found myself waving goodbye to her from the cockpit as we were pushing back from the gate in Boston. Every seat was filled on the 767.
According to the computer, this time we’d have plenty of seats on the flight over. Coming home would be a different story. Should we risk it, I asked? Linda thought there were worse things in life than being stuck in London, a position I’m sure a few London travelers who had been stuck at the airport earlier that week would disagree with.
It couldn’t have worked out better. Linda got a seat in the back but stayed up in the cockpit while the passengers boarded and I explained just how to preflight the airplane, what we checked for and what everything on the overhead panel did. It had been eight years since Linda had been on a flight with me, and I was probably more excited than she was to have her come along.
Let’s face it, layovers by yourself can be boring, repetitive and even depressing. Flying to the same hotel, in the same city over and over, with little energy or motivation to get out-especially in the winter-can leave you wishing you could bring along a friend or loved one. Of course, it’s nice to fly with co-workers you consider friends, as I’ve written about in the past, but it’s a huge treat to bring along a spouse.
It was my ‘leg’ to fly over to London, so of course, anytime you know someone in the back, the pressure is always there to make an extra smooth landing. With a little help from the tower controllers at Heathrow, the touchdown was even better than my usual “landing only a mother could love.”
Typically at Heathrow there is an airplane flying just 3 miles behind you when you touchdown. This means flights are required to spend a minimum amount of time on the runway. That night however, the tower informed us that there was no one behind and we could plan on rolling to whatever turnoff we’d prefer. I touched down in the normal target a thousand feet down the runway and then instead of using a significant amount of brakes and reverse thrust, elected to roll to a slow stop using two thirds of the two mile long runway.
I escorted Linda through the terminal, meeting up with the rest of the crew as they pulled up in the bus that would take us to the hotel in western London.
By this time it was 8:30 p.m., so we decided to get some dinner after changing at the hotel. We made an appearance at the pub downstairs and had just enough time for a drink and visit with a few others from our flight before going upstairs to watch the rumored fireworks from the window of our room. I had heard that most of the fireworks would be near the London Eye, but we were shocked by the spectacular display which broke out directly from the giant wheel. Without a doubt, they were the best fireworks display we’d ever seen. From the BBC:
A 44-hour layover gives you the luxury of sleeping in a bit and staying closer to your home time zone. As much as London has to offer on January 1st, Linda was very much looking forward to not having to set an alarm clock.
We wandered down to a Starbucks quaint cafe for some tea.
“Did you put sugar in my tea?” Linda asked.
“Uh, yeah. Don’t you take milk and sugar?” I said, realizing immediately that she didn’t.
“I’ve never put sugar in my tea!”
This was bad. Linda was actually born in Belfast before she moved as a kid to Germany. The one cultural habit she kept from her years in Northern Ireland was an affinity for tea. And not just an occasional cup of tea, she started the day with tea and she took time in the afternoon for her “wee cup of tea.” After eighteen years of marriage, not knowing how she took her tea was not a good way to start off a romantic weekend getaway.
After retracing some of our steps twenty years ago, such as finding the best book stores in London and eating at a Chinese restaurant where I first got to know her parents, we popped into a cafe (this time not Starbucks) for a pre-theatre cup of tea. I managed to get the order right and we joked about it a bit.
I may have salvaged the tea faux pas with tickets to We will Rock You, which I knew would be the perfect musical to see if we were feeling a bit jet lagged. Linda loved the show and we were certainly wide awake afterwards, so we headed down to Trafalgar Square to see the area where the New Year’s celebration had been-the night before and ours twenty years ago.
A few blocks south was the Thames, so we headed down there to look at the London Eye across the river. We headed back toward another tube station, and just passed Big Ben as the clock struck midnight and the bells wailed.
The next morning we still had plenty of time to tour the city, so we set out to walk in front of Buckingham Palace and then to take a peak into the famous department store Harrods, during their one and only annual sale. Harrods turned out to be absolutely packed, and honestly there wasn’t anything there that either of us were interested in. But it was a spectacle to be seen, that’s for sure.
With just a couple of seats open for the flight home, we were a bit worried about Linda getting a seat. Fortunately the loads improved and the flight ended up with ten open coach seats. The flight attendants, some of whom I hadn’t worked with before, gave Linda a little extra special attention without making her feel like a burden on them.
So while being married to a pilot may have a few significant drawbacks-Linda often feels like she’s a single mother-there are occasionally some times when a really good deal like this comes along.
Thanks Linda for putting up with twenty years of this often turbulent career. It looks like a smoother ride is ahead, I think. But maybe we’ll just leave the seatbelt sign on.
Cockpit Chronicles takes you along on some of Kent’s trips as an international co-pilot on the Boeing 757 and 767 based in Boston. Have any questions for Kent? Check out Plane Answers or follow him on Twitter @veryjr.
