Picnic in the Park with George, er, Friends

No. 47: Become a picnic-er

“Do you realize this is probably the last time I’ll be sitting in a park in London?”

“Becky, don’t say such depressing things!” Lauren said from her spot on the grass. She carefully drew a portrait of Big Ben on her corner of Rebecca’s canvas, using a yellow crayon to add contour.

Sitting in the Leyton public park on the warmest day of the year so far (I think the temperature was somewhere around twenty-two degrees Celsius, which certainly didn’t sound like a sunny day, but I went with it) we spread a scanty collection of art supplies around us. Rebecca and I decided to put to use a pair of blank canvases Mr. Mappin gave us back at the castle, telling us to “Make something beautiful.”

We also brought an impromptu picnic with us, as I was skeptical about our ability to create a timeless masterpiece but confident in our ability to eat our way through the better part of an afternoon.

“Well it’s true,” Becky said. “And I’m not the only one.”

What a dour topic of conversation for that sunny day. But it was a fact; the four of us had each finally picked a departure date from the UK. Becky was going home at the end of the month and then Rebecca and Lauren would be leaving in May.

“I can’t believe you all are leaving me to live in a big empty flat in Leyton,” I said with a dramatic sigh. I plopped my thin paint brush into a plastic cup of water, making little splatters on the garden scene I was painting on my canvas.

“You could always leave when we do,” Rebecca said, though I knew I couldn't. Last September I announced to my friends and family, not to mention all of British Jewry and the five readers of my blog, that I would stay there one year. And stay there one year I would.

“No one would think anything of it if you left early Erica,” Rebecca continued as she drew a picture of the four of us huddled around a bath tub.

“I know you’re going to be sad to see us go, but I also think you’ll be fine,” Lauren said, picking at a bit of pita and hummus in a Ziploc bag. “You can do this on your own. And did you just say our flat was big?”

I suppressed a smile as I sipped from a plastic cup of Spumanti. She may have had a point, but I had a suspicion our home was going to seem massive come June. Massive, yet small, quiet and plain.

Secret Agent Man

No. 46: Become a Bond girl

If anyone ever asks you, the secret service agency James Bond works for is pronounced M-eye-six, not M-sixteen. Say the latter and local Britons are likely to point you in the direction of the nearest major highway.

Also, Bond considers tea to be partially responsible for the downfall of the empire, and I found myself warming to the idiosyncratic Brit during research for my column.

My only previous knowledge of the secret agent was snippets I’d caught of the movies being shown on TV, enough for me to know I really liked the glamorous costumes his leading ladies got to wear. I actually saw my first Bond film in theatres a few months into my trip, when Justin and Zeddy took me to a press screening of "Quantum of Solace" in North London. That film was successful in making me think becoming a double agent would be super fun, and I began plotting my career as a martini-chugging assassin.

And assassin is not an exaggeration, as I quickly learned the double-oh part of the code name literally indicates that Bond has a government-approved license to kill. I also discovered that Bond’s mentor M has a name rooted in real British history that dates back to 1909, when the first chief of SIS, Captain Sir Mansfield Smith Cumming, began signing his correspondences as ‘C.’ Every subsequent chief kept up the custom. I wonder if there’s ever been an E?

Unfortunately, further research informed me I would not be receiving the opportunity to actually become a sniper-come-lately, as to become an MI6 recruit both I and my parents must be British citizens. Blast! While I might be up for a quickie marriage in the name of accurate reporting, I’d have a fine time convincing my parents to take the same measures for the sake of my scoring a funny column. The dream died quicker than George Lazenby’s career.

I don’t actually know what that joke means, I stole it from Zeddy.

If you’re impressed with the amount of knowledge I gained about MI6, you should be. My information came with just a few clicks of my mouse during a perusal of the government body’s website, which is shockingly explanatory given its styling as a secret agency.

All this is to say that I found a museum in Hampshire that houses dozens of prop vehicles from the Bond movies. Actually, it’s less a museum and more a giant curio cabinet set up by a rich dude, Lord Montagu to be exact. I know, that’s his real name.

Lord Montagu, when he’s not busy battling those pesky Capulets, likes to collect vintage automobiles. He set up the National Motor Museum on the grounds of his ancestral home, Beaulieu Palace House. One section of the museum is devoted to motorbikes and submarines used by the various incarnations of James Bond and I decided to make it the subject for one of my last Erica from America columns.