Day Four + Five + Six_Christmas

Ho Ho Hoooooly crap, it's hot out here... The weather is unseasonably hot for Florida at this time of year, with temperatures rarely leaving the 80's during the day. It's never particularly cold here, at least compared to British winters, but the heat is noticeable - as is the humidity. All of this seems particularly at odds with my expectations for what Christmas should be, somehow reducing what is one of my favourite times of year although not so much that the season is completely inconspicuous.

You have to give the Floridians their dues, despite record temperatures and blazing sunshine, houses are strung with lights, lawns are absolutely packed with Christmas themed paraphernalia and everybody wishes you a Merry Christmas when you speak to them. The lawns are worth pausing to mention in more detail - the custom here seems to involve cramming the space outside your house with as many inflatable snowmen, illuminated reindeers and hollow plastic nativities as you can without forcing yourself to remortgage your house to pay the electricity bills. There's a staggering amount of commitment required to make a convincing display and some of the houses can look pretty impressive by night - although it's always a little sad to see a deflated a rubber Santa lying forlornly across the grass. 

That being said, the day itself hasn't really felt like Christmas this year. Typically Christmas has a very special place in our family's calendar and it's something we take quite seriously - our Dartmoor home is decorated to extraordinary degrees, roaring log fires are banked up, stockings are stuffed and Christmas Dinner is the most important meal cooked in our house for the whole year - these are the hallmarks of the season for me and mine, clear and well defined particulars make Christmas, well, Christmas.

It was always going to be hard for Florida to match up to these time-worn expectations, so I'm not sure our family even tried. My parents informed me that they had already bought their gifts from me (I'm not sure I've even worked out what that means yet) and that we had no special plans for the day itself. That proved entirely true, as we awoke on Christmas morning to not a single present - a unique occurrence in my thirty odd years on the planet. In all honesty, my parents had already gifted me some lovely things the moment I arrived, but the point still stands. After a quick breakfast, we lounged in the sun and barbecued steaks and lobster on the pool deck, drinking champagne and then craft American beer. This was followed by a drive out to a nearby beach, which was packed with people grilling burgers and topping up their tans. A quiet night in followed and that was that. 

It might sound like we missed something this year, like our 2016 will be lacking the typically festive start that usually precedes the new year. But it doesn't feel like that, it's just that there hasn't been a Christmas for us this year. I think the key is that we didn't try to recreate the familiar in a different location - we have just all collectively decided not to engage with what usually makes the day so special. Whilst that may seem to be an approach more of humbug than of holidays, it's actually ended up making this year a different kind of special and all the more interesting for it. 

Hopefully all of you have had your own special festive break and I'll take this opportunity to wish everybody a very Merry Christmas - my next post will probably be once Nick's arrived and we get on the road.

Day Two + Three_Tampa

Florida is such a familiar place to the Ritsons. My family has strong ties with the Sunshine State; my parents travel here almost every year, my uncle owns a house just outside Tampa (the pool deck of which I’m currently writing this on) and I’ve visited many times on family holidays, mostly to run around the theme parks in Orlando like the ageing juvenile that I am.

Whilst Florida is undoubtedly a beautiful place, with much to recommend it, full of that sort of effortless enthusiasm and politeness that people in the UK seem to find both gratifying and irksome in equal measure, it’s actually the idea of ‘theming’ that I want to talk about here. So, I feel it only fair to warn my non-architectural friends and family that we’re going to stray into ‘my world’ for a bit - I won’t hold a grudge if you bail out on me here.

Sticking around? Well, let’s get going then.

Something that always strikes me when I visit this part of the U.S., more so than any other part I’ve seen - everything here, especially buildings, seems to be designed to communicate a particular geographic or cultural aspiration, often something that is incongruous with its surroundings or situational context. That’s a particularly ham-fisted way of saying that most of the major pieces of infrastructure here have a ‘theme’ - a defining aesthetic conceit that informs and flows through the overall development.

The most obvious exponent of this approach to design is clearly those involved in the design of Mr. Disney’s parks (and, to a lesser extent, those of Universal Studios), which if you haven't visited yet would be well worth a trip - especially for those readers in the architectural profession. As somebody with a staked interest in the design of physical space (I can hear some of my architectural colleagues laughing here), I have always been fascinated by the consistency and dedication with which these ‘themes’ are delivered, particularly at Disney World. 

As context, the beginnings of the design process for most modern architectural projects revolves around the abstraction of some idea or concept, perhaps drawn from the site or its history or something even more esoteric (ley lines perhaps?), which quickly becomes an architectural in-joke - something for people in perspex glasses and buttoned-up collars to nod knowingly at when they read about it in the Architectural Journal. Very rarely are buildings conceived to communicate a specific and extant architectural style - critics would use the word ‘pastiche’ for this and would not use it kindly.

Yet this ‘theming’ happens all over the States, from shopping malls to restaurants, institutions to theme parks, with the latter being the most obvious and greatest example of the craft. Native American, San Fran’s Boardwalks, Polynesian ‘fale’ - all have been researched, adapted and then recreated in fibreglass and concrete. What has always interested me the most is that Disney’s ‘Imagineers’ have to take what these indigenous architectures actually are and interpret them into what guests expect them to be. It must be an incredible design challenge - the reduction and simplification of an often ancient and refined idea into an expressive outward caricature of the original. Fake it may be, but I am willing to bet it’s as hard to make a successfully themed hotel as it is to start from scratch. I also like that it actually seems quite fitting that the buildings with which Disney surround themselves follow the same process of over-exaggeration that are at the heart of their cartoons from which the empire first sprung. 

For all of Disney’s success at this though, most of Florida has adopted the trappings of a theme of one sort or another, yet without any of the style and thought that the designers of House of Mouse must have poured into their creations. These last couple of days have brought me into close contact with many experiments in pastiche design; we’ve visited restaurants, shopping malls and even entire mock ‘town centres’ that all seek to create a sense of place where there was none before. Most of these fail, becoming banal and paper thin recreations of imagery and ideas that are little more than novelty and most are almost always entirely focussed inwards. Vast parking lots surround an island of blank beige boxes that try to convince unresisting shoppers that they actually walking down the classic (but air conditioned) New England main street, without providing any hint of the baking tarmac and crab grass margins surrounding them.

We did visit one new example worth mentioning though - the imaginatively named The Shops at Wiregrass. Rather brilliantly, there isn’t actually a Wiregrass. It’s not a town or settlement - it’s just a mall, still surrounded by acres of car-parking, but with the key conceit of turning the traditional shopping mall inside out. The developers really have created a high street as we’d understand it, an arcing semicircle of shops, coffee houses and restaurants (complete with miniature town square), but rather bizarrely, without anything at the ends of the arc. It’s worth looking up on Google Maps (especially in satellite view) as this really conveys the eccentric planning and gives a sense of just how ‘island’ these places are. Despite this though, I actually thought it was quite a successful analogy of a town street - people walk down either side of a central road, you’re outside for most of the time and there’s plenty of space to pause to enjoy the weather. But it’s still an odd experience all the same.

I suppose it all comes down to identity. Maybe we’re spoiled in Europe, where we’re enjoying cities and towns that have existed for hundreds (if not thousands) of years before America, as it is today, was anything other than a few dozen Spaniards getting in a boat, determined to see what was over the horizon. Perhaps these outlying parts of the USA have to borrow what identity they can, stealing those things that they can recognise as genuinely ‘American’, rather than specifically Floridian? To be fair, Florida is largely a swamp, with pretty beaches, so a little light pickpocketing of cultural starting points might be justified - it just seems like it’s been allowed to run rampant, so that now Florida retains very little of whatever it might truly have laid claimed to in forming it’s own identity.

The strange thing is that Florida, like all of the States, has a rich cultural history - there’s probably no chance now of the Native Americans getting a mention, but Florida was first a Spanish colony (it was actually the first place in mainland America to be encountered by Europeans) and was subsequently handed over to the British before returning to the Spanish following the War of Independence. There’s a lot there to define a place, but so far this heritage extends to the occasional roof finished with Spanish tiling - so I wonder why the Floridian people choose to deny the more obvious references that surround them in exchange for Texas Roadhouses and indoor streets with brick wallpaper? It’ll be interesting to see whether this approach is consistently adopted as we travel across the southern states - I sincerely hope it isn’t. 

Wow. That was quite a hefty post, and perhaps a little too earnest at that - but it interests me and there’s not a lot to do around here when the sun goes down. I’ve introduced my folks to House of Cards so they’re currently consuming the boxset with gusto - maybe my self imposed solitude on the deck has given me an introspective (and mock-intellectual) air. Apologies if any of you have fell unconscious whilst reading this, I’m sure it’ll be back to normal service tomorrow, so until then…

Day One_London to Tampa

So, the journey begins. Actually, it began at about 6AM this morning, when I arose to shower and get ready to head to the airport. Nick & I enjoyed a preemptory meal at 10 Greek Street in Soho last night, our last nutritionally rounded repast before we head to the world of deep fat fryers and ever-rising levels of cholesterol which we’ve committed to crossing over the next few weeks - Nick follows in a few days, after a brief festive sojourn to Manchester. 

The meal, though very good, was not particularly noteworthy in and of itself, having very little bearing on the events of today. What does have particular relevance however, is the two bottles of wine we polished off during the course of a couple of hours - especially the (excellent) bottle of Sauternes, which accompanied dessert. Although the walk home took the edge off of what might have been a particularly dangerous amendment to my preflight routine, it did result in some of the most haphazard packing I’ve ever done - any customs official checking my bag might consider themselves looking at a new and unregarded work by Tracy Emin and be forgiven for thinking so.

The journey across London - from Shoreditch to Victoria - was uneventful, as was the Gatwick Express, although the latter was enlivened by a couple having one of those gloriously passive-aggressive ‘on the way to the airport’ arguments. It’s amazing how much venom you can transmit just by asking who’s got the passports or whether you remembered to post the Christmas cards. Still, it passed the time.

Anyway, having arrived at the airport, I waited on a friend from work who is traveling to Athens for Christmas - this resulted in an unlikely, but very enjoyable, coffee before I headed onto the monorail bound for the North Terminal. A simple trip through security and here I sit now in the No. 1 Lounge, watching people hog the wifi (I am sitting next to one person with four items online at once - even I’m not sure how that’s sustainable) and pick at the remnants of the complimentary breakfast in the hope of finding a pain au chocolat that hasn’t gone rock hard.

Much like the first post from my last time I wrote something like this my thoughts have begun to wander to the trip ahead. I’ll spend a few days with my parents, which will inevitably be relaxing and Christmas-centric, but I’m thinking more about the days following Nick’s arrival and the same strange mix of excitement and anxiety is pushing its way into my forebrain.

I am, of course, thrilled about the trip we’re about to take together, Nick and I. As with our journey around Iceland, we have planned little, with only two dates set in stone - New Orleans for New Year’s Eve and the return flight from San Fransisco. This is how we seem to like to do it: Set a route and then let the time spool away as we make our way across the country, letting Serendipity surprise and delight us as she sees fit. It worked amazingly well previously, although it meant a last minute dash to Reykjavik as we got carried away indulging our Prometheus obsession at Dettifoss. 

This trip is longer, nineteen days compared to the ten spent in Iceland, and we’ll be seeing most of the southern states of America - there are some of the big names in there too; Texas, Colorado, Nevada, California. All worthy of several days at a time, a luxury we won’t have, making optimising our experience in each state much more of a priority than it was in Iceland. I think this will form an important learning curve as we continue on our agenda of yearly ‘Adventures’ - will our somewhat haphazard approach to planning pay dividends as it has previously or will we spend too much time walking snowy mountains in Vail and miss an opportunity to see Yosemite? I suppose time will tell, but I’m looking forward to those first few exploratory days when we’ve got a chance to sit in a dive bar and discuss what we want to achieve. 

This hopeless optimism brings me to the other strand of my traveling dichotomy. I am a little concerned about our personal safety. This springs not from any assumptions about Southern Hospitality (which I understand deserves the capitalisation) or the lazy stereotypes often associated with the Southern states, but more from a deep and thorough understanding of what my traveling partner and I are like once we’ve had a beer or two. We can both be somewhat *ahem* provocative in the right situations and have a fondness for seeing hilarity in simple sentences or phrases that leave even our mild mannered English compatriots rolling their eyes (at best) or furious (at worst).

Whilst I’m loathed to apply any preconceptions to the places we’ll be visiting, it is a matter of record that many of the southern states rank rather highly in any ’10 Most Dangerous States’ poll a hasty Google search can deliver. Pair this statistical base with a proud predilection for weapons of all sizes and the certain peculiarities of local politics, with a pair of childish Englishmen who delight in the gentle (and not so gentle) mocking of those around us and I can foresee situations arising that will necessitate us learning how to start our car in the most expedient manner possible and identifying likely escape routes from any place we enter of an evening.

A mutual friend of ours, in responding to the Facebook post announcing this website, commented thus: ‘I expect you to be shot within three days’. I wonder what odds that statement would get from anybody else that knows us? Something to ponder, for sure.

That’ll do for my first thoughts. I’m going to try and update this daily if possible, so I’m sure we’ll speak soon.

In the meantime, I think it’s worth paraphrasing Paul Revere’s famous warning - The British are coming... Brace yourself America.