Passion Première: Travel Diary

The informal rule I've adopted over blogging my travel diaries has been to keep work-related ones over on the NT Gateway blog so I am blogging my brief journey to London and back for the première of The Passion over there. So far I have got as far as Charlotte airport and hope to be in London by the morning.

For those not familiar with my academic blog, here's the address: NTGateway blog.
 

Laurel and Hardy Impersonators in Harlem

One of the highlights of our trip to Harlem, GA was the presence of Laurel and Hardy impersonators Jamie McKenna and Bill Leavy. Viola took some video footage of their ad hoc performance in the Laurel and Hardy Museum and I have uploaded it to Youtube (my first experiment in doing that). Here is the clip. It is just under three minutes long and is their performance of the classic "Trail of the Lonesome Pine". You can hear us giggling quite loudly. Watch out especially for the moment where Hardy looks at Viola's camera and says "Thank you very much":



In the unlikely event that you do not know the original, here are the real Laurel and Hardy performing the "Trail of the Lonesome Pine" from the film Way Out West (1937). (This is a coloured version; the original was in black and white):



Here is a second short video (3 minutes) of the Laurel and Hardy impersonators performing on Saturday, this time a song called "Kitty from Kansas City":

Travel Diary: Harlem, GA: Oliver Hardy Festival

As I mentioned in my previous post, our reason for driving out to Augusta, Georgia was to attend the nineteenth annual Oliver Hardy Festival in Harlem, Georgia. As the article in the Augusta Chronicle mentioned, we were missing an annual event in Birmingham, a Laurel and Hardy day at the MAC which took place every October. And finding ourselves in America, we decided to make pilgrimage to this annual event in Harlem, a small town in Georgia, about twenty miles from Augusta and a mere 300 or so miles from where we live in Raleigh. Oliver Hardy was born there in 1892 and this annual festival is the small town's opportunity to advertise itself to the world, with parades, stalls and entertainment.

We drove from Augusta and parked on the side of the road, about a mile out of town, when it became clear that others were doing the same thing, and the traffic going into Harlem was at a stand still. As we got closer, we met the parade coming through the town, with Laurel and Hardy impersonators at the front of it, the first set in a Model T Ford, the second set on the back of a van. There were lots of vintage cars in the parade, some local politicians and dignatories, and lots of schools, bands, cheerleaders, clowns and historical recreation types. In other words, it was a general celebration of Harlem; and the festival as a whole was the same, the streets full of people, stalls and huge amounts of food.

Since we are now pretty fond of Carolina barbecue, it was good to try Georgia barbecue, which is slightly different but still very good. It is a kind of "pulled pork" with a very tangy sauce, perhaps a touch hotter than the Carolina variety. There were multiple lemonade stands too, one in the shape of a lemon. Lemonade in America is what we would call lemon squash in England, and they drink lots of it, and it's quite nice.

We spent most of the day hanging around the Laurel and Hardy Museum. It was pretty full of people all day, but it was not so full that one could not look at the artefacts including some original Stan Laurel letters from the 1960s, shortly before his death. There were films showing all day and we watched The Chimp, The Music Box, Sons of the Desert and Busybodies. Lauren laughed so much during all of these that people occasionally turned round to stare (I think fondly).

Most memorable, though, were Laurel and Hardy impersonators Jamie McKenna and Bill Leavy. They remained in character throughout the day, walking around the town and meeting people, and they performed songs and interacted with people in the museum. The picture at the top is of the two of them with Lauren, taken by Viola. Viola also took some video footage, which have uploaded to Youtube and will link in a separate post. Here are several more photographs taken by Viola:

Goodacres mentioned in Augusta Chronicle

You may ask what we were doing in Augusta, Georgia. Well, before I was able to give you part two of my travel diary, it seems the Augusta Chronicle was there ahead of us:

Thousands celebrate comedian
By J. Scott Trubey| Columbia County Bureau

The city of Harlem opened its arms to the world Saturday as thousands of people from across the nation and across the Atlantic gathered for the 19th annual Oliver Hardy Festival.

City officials said the crowd of about 37,000 featured guests from more than 30 states and Great Britain.

Mayor Scott Dean said the festival is a chance to showcase Harlem "globally."

The festival pays tribute to Hardy, Harlem's most famous native son, and his comic sidekick, Stan Laurel . . .

. . . . Feeling a little homesick, British transplants Mark and Viola Goodacre and their two daughters, now living in North Carolina, said they felt right at home with thousands of other Laurel and Hardy admirers. Mr. Goodacre said his family used to attend a Laurel and Hardy film festival in Birmingham.

"We were missing that, but we wanted something locally," Mr. Goodacre said. In England, the comic legends retain their popularity, and Mr. Goodacre said he fondly remembers watching their films as a child.

"It's like people keep rediscovering them as time goes on," he said.

You can read the whole article, and see several pictures, by going to the link above, though you'll have to sign up for a (free) subscription. And I'll complete my travel diary, I hope with pictures, as soon as possible.

Update (27 October): Savannah Morning News has the same story.

Travel Diary: Augusta, GA

It's fall break at Duke and we are on the road again. We are clearly becoming more Americanized, and used to the enormous distances people travel here, because driving over 300 miles to Augusta, Georgia on a Friday evening did not seem like a big deal. It took us a little over six hours, with a stop at Cracker Barrel on the way. If you get a good Cracker Barrel, it's a great experience -- good American cooking, friendly waiters and waitresses (three lots of liking our accents today) and pretty good value -- $28 to feed four of us until we were stuffed. They advertise themselves as a kind of "old country store" and the décor, which looks pretty much the same in every one you visit, is American style olde worlde, with old portraits on the wall, old baseball bats and balls, and of course some mounted fire arms. The food is all breakfast, burgers and barbecue, and I love it. Eating "biscuits", a kind of tasty savoury scone, which sounded so strange to us two years ago, is now a natural and regular event. Cracker Barrel biscuits may be the best, though Bojangles ("chicken'n'biscuit") runs them a close second.

Driving on American roads is unbelievably straightforward. On a big journey like this, you never hit a single track road (=single carriageway), so it's like being on a big motorway for hours. And even on a Friday night, our route was very easy with no traffic jams anywhere. So you just point the car in the right direction, bang it into cruise control and there's not a lot more to do except choose your BBC podcasts. We managed to clear a bit of a backlog on that front, going through several Daily Mayos, Start the Week, Thinking Allowed, Genius, Safety Catch, and a programme celebrating 25 years of Radio 1. The most poignant moment in the latter was the short feature on John Peel, still missed. Earlier today, on my way back from work, I finished listening to a wonderful, lengthy documentary celebrating 40 years of Radio 4. Nice to think that others are turning 40 this year.

We are only just in Georgia. Having driven through North Carolina and South Carolina, Augusta is right on the eastern border of the Georgia / South Carolina state line. We have a twenty minute drive tomorrow morning to get to the small town of Harlem. More on that later this weekend.

Travel diary: Myrtle Beach

This weekend we have been at Myrtle Beach in South Carolina. We are staying in a huge hotel on the sea front, made up of lots of privately owned but centrally rented condos. Ours is very nice and very well equipped. It's high up and has a balcony overlooking the next door hotel, which is also huge. We can just see the sea from our balcony. The hotel has several swimming pools and a "lazy river". The latter is a lot of fun; you sit on a "tube", like a blow-up beach ring, and get carried around a little circuit on a slow water flow. We all went on it last night for a while, then swam and then went into the hot jacuzzi. Today we spent the early afternoon on the beach, where the sea was pleasant, with decent waves, and the sand was hot. The weather was well into the 30s Celsius and we all got pretty hot after a while. It must get very hot down here in July and August. Coming in low season like this is ideal. And it's not too crowded at this time of year.

We've had a few minor incidents along the way. We picked up a flat tyre on the way down; we saw it as we walked out of the Mad Boar restaurant, where we'd had a nice lunch, about 30 miles from Wilmington. There was a big nail in the tyre. Triple A put the temporary tyre on for us while we went back in to the Mad Boar to have some coffee, and we got a new one fixed about 20 minutes away from Myrtle Beach.

I'm writing this in the small hours after the toilet overflowed and poured water all over the bathroom and kitchen. I managed to stop the flow before it reached the carpeted area. A lady came to mop it up for us, but the fire alarm went off in the hotel while she was doing it, about 90 minutes ago, and she never came back. Eventually, I just finished the job myself and will probably give up waiting and go to bed soon. In the mean time, I've got lots of extra work done, with the Today programme on Radio 4 in the background. We'll ask for some money off our bill for the trouble.

Viola has taken several photos, and I hope to add some when we get back later today.

Two Years in America

It was two years ago today that we left Birmingham to begin our new life in the USA. We stayed in a travelodge at Gatwick airport that night, and arrived in North Carolina; my travel diary continued with Waking up in America, finding my office and Supersize Me! I found it enjoyable reviewing those travel diaries and a lot of those first impressions have stayed with me. I still find it amazing to have the warmth of a British summer in late September. In fact, the climate here in the autumn is lovely, and I often sit outside to work. Although I can now find my way to work without trouble, I still get lost if I am on an unfamiliar journey. Groceries are, on the whole, a little cheaper than in the UK, though you have to invest a bit of time to get all the best prices. Eating out is much more common for us here than it was in the UK; it is often as much as once a week. And I still love my job.

The second year here has been much easier than the first. There were moments in the first few months when we really struggled, and we were on the verge of leaving. But the only really draining thing in the last year has been the application for the Green Card, which went off in January. That was a massive amount of work, and all a bit soul destroying, but fantastic once we had it over and done with. Viola received her work permit not long after that and now enjoys working for a computer company, from home.

I don't know how Americanized we are becoming. I can say American words now without feeling self-conscious, though asking for "water" in restaurants is still a challenge and sometimes we have to use a cod American accent. Lauren does a really convincing North Carolinian accent when she is with American kids. Our lives are a mix of Americana and British stuff. The kids watch a lot of American TV and Viola and I watch some of the big American series, but we all still watch quite a lot of British TV, and I listen mainly to British radio.

One thing we'd like to do is to explore more of America as a family. So far we have explored the mountains in North Carolina (twice) and the coast. We have driven the 620 miles to and from Orlando, Florida, and we have flown to Seattle. We have more trips planned over the coming months, and I hope to blog my travel diaries here.