The End

Now that we are back in the states. I won’t be updating this blog anymore.

Thanks so much for reading!

To keep up with us.  check out these other places where we digress.

Bruce – www.cardiphonia.org

PJ – www.urbangardenpa.org

Back Home in Virginia

With strange mixed up feelings of familiarity and sadness we arrived safely at Dulles.  Mom and Dad B were there to pick us up and quickly ferried us off to a local mexican dive for some comfort food.  We reminisced about living in London and looked forward to the daunting challenges ahead.  When we left for the UK in September 2007 the economy was striving and Obama was still a junior senator.  It has been a tremendous 2 years for so many of us.   Thanks for all of your love, prayers, and encouraging emails during this journey.  Pj has Masters in hand, and considering all things it was a life changing experience for us.

Bon Voyage Soiree

Our great friends threw together a last minute party for us at our local, The Camden Arms.  It was a great way to send us off and we were thankful for the many friends that came ’round from all parts of London.  Particular thanks to Mary Brown for the great homemade cake and George for organizing.

Camden Town Church

 

CamdenTown Church

One of the saddest parts of having to leave London was our wonderful growing spiritual community.  We were part of a church plant in Camden Town sponsored by the International Presbyterian Church (child of Francis Schaeffer).  Here is a picture outside of the Pub where we met on sunday mornings.  Proudly showing of our new sign board.

Leda and the Swan – Southwark Playhouse

Urban Garden Performing Arts were featured as part of the “Secrets” series at the Southwark Playhouse last weekend.  They performed an original piece based on the greek myth Leda and the Swan.  They had around 50 people in the audience for the show.  I performed between sets.  It was a fantastic night for both the performers and the audience. (This picture is from a snapshot taken by a Flip video recorder)

National History Museum

One of the places on our list to visit before exit was the Natural History Museum.  Part of the original collections were specimens gathered during Darwin’s “Voyage of the Beagle.”  This place is a victorian mecca of taxidermied animals.  Make sure and check out the collection of about 300 hummingbirds in the bird section and ‘archie’ the giant squid.   This is the 200 year anniversary of Darwin’s birth and they have a wonderful exhibit on his life and ideas.

Lebanese Road

Friends Adrian and Christie gathered a bunch of us together to introduce us to the fine fair on Edgeware Road.  It is well known in London for its Lebanese food and hookah bar’s.  It was fantastic on both counts.  At the hookah bar we went with the traditional apple…the best part watching our attendant swinging the coals.

Abbey Road

Pj was on her way to a classmates house in St. John’s Wood so we decided to make a stop by Abbey Road Studios to pay our respects.  It’s always funny to come across these sort of iconic places.  They exist in the midst of normal life for Londoners.  The classic album cover is one of a million similar road crossings in London.  The front wall is covered with graffiti from people all over the world.  I thought that was one of the most interesting things about the place.

Every Good Boy Deserves Favour

Pj and I had a fantastic valentine’s day yesterday.  We spent the morning at Burrough Market enjoying some great bits and my weekly dose of expresso via flat white.  picked up a couple of quinoa vegan burgers, artisanal bread, and chocolate tart for dinner.  Walked down the southbank and dined at Giraffe with every other pram-owning citizen of London.  The afternoon we caught £5 standing tickets for Tom Stoppard’s (writer of Shakespeare in Love) excellent play for actors and orchestra “Every Good Boy Deserves Favour ” (think the notes on a treble cleff…although when i was young it was Every Good Boy Does Fine), which was a collaboration between said author and Andre Previn, a noted contemporary composer.  The play featured 6 main actors and an entire orchestra.  It was fantastic.  We also got two return tickets for the platform with Tom Stoppard after the play and pj got to ask him a question about his collaboration with the composer.  i was impressed….with pj that is.

Exit Strategy, or the 2009 Benedict Stimulus Package

It seems that mr. bush isn’t the only one pondering exit strategy’s in these early days of 2009.  When we arrived back in London after a luxurious couple of weeks in the states visiting friends and family we landed to find out that Pj’s full-time job had fallen through and that Oddbins has terminated most of their part-time contracts.  With our visa’s expiring in about 2 weeks time we needed to make some quick decisions about what in the world the benedict’s would do with their lives…besides planning trips to champagne and eastern europe.  we had just been mopped up in the growing recession of ’09.

So…we’re gonna do what any self-respecting suburban, middle-class, over-educated liberal arts person would do.  Move back in with our parents and splash it out as a time for some personal, creative retrospection.   

Bruce is going to record the next shorter catechism cd that the masses have begun hammering for.  That elusive “2nd” album.  I just hope that the public is forgiving.  It’s been almost three years since vol. 1 came out.

Pj is going to continue to develop both her butoh movements and phenomenological embodiment vocabulary.  

Across partisan lines, we are continuing to work on our 2009 stimulus package, which include’s large injections of cash from Visa and the state of virginia.   If the country is going a few more trillion in debt, than a couple thousand more in the student loan coffers can’t hurt too much. 

So…if anyone is traveling through Virginia in the next couple of months.  give us a ring.  we’ll be around.   Murking about vineyards in Mount Crawford and Cafe Caturra’s in Midlothian.