Burlaki on the Thames

I celebrated the great American holiday with only 9 hours at the office. As opposed to now habitual 11.

At least, there was a sumptuous feast waiting for me at home.

Turkey is a rare type of meat that I have only lukewarm feelings about, so we don’t always cook one at home for Thanksgiving. When we visit relatives or friends for the holiday dinner, I will certainly partake in the consumption of the main course, but when we in the past spent Thanksgiving at home - and not entertained - we would not even bother. Natasha would prepare whatever took her fancy on that particular day, and I am never a stickler for traditions when it comes to food.

This year, my Mother is spending the week with us. And she took it upon herself to go the whole nine yards in preparing the meal. Natasha participated - she finds it hard to ignore the process of food preparation in her own kitchen - but most of the credit goes to Mom. The turkey was excellent, the stuffing - as it should be - was hard to stay away from, and it took me considerable effort to climb the stairs to get in front of the computer afterwards.

Oh the wonderful post-dinner feeling, when your eyes hurt from all the pressure that your stomach puts on them!

Dad did not have enough vacation days left this year to come as well, so Mom came by herself. She has not done much of sightseeing (after all, this is her third visit to London in less than two years), but instead accompanied Natasha on shopping trips, went with her to musical performances (have I mentioned anywhere yet that Greenwich has free classical music concerts at a couple of churches every Tuesday and Thursday?), and spent quality time with her granddaughters. Happiness all around - and to top it all, for the weekend, Natasha and I are off to La Ville Lumière. Can’t hardly wait!

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! I promise to get back at all of you on Boxing Day, when I’m going to loaf all day long while you toil away in your offices and your factory shops.

I had a horrible sudden realization the other day: We have entered a terra incognita as far as the duration of our stay-at-home intervals since we arrived in England. We are nearing our 20th trip (counting only those that included at least one night away from home), but it’s been two and a half months since we returned from our previous traveling adventure, and the longest we’ve stayed put so far was the very first 70 days after our arrival.

Oh boy! No wonder I have been getting restless lately. I even had to chart our stationary intervals. This does not include a few trips taken by Becky with her school, nor the trip to Russia or the States that my girls made without me. Had I included those, I’d be even more depressed.

The sad thing is, after our planned trip to Paris in two weeks (that’s ninety days after the completion of our last journey), we don’t have anything planned at all. The sorry new record may not stand for long. Arrrrgh!

Natasha’s brother and sister-in-law sent us a package with a friend of theirs who was coming to London. We used to jump at the opportunity to send something with an occasional messenger across Russian borders in the early 90’s, when the Russian postal service was reliable in only one aspect - pilfering the contents of any package with a foreign address. But the situation improved markedly towards the end of that decade, and we started trusting postal services more.

Old habits die hard, though, and someone from our old quarters in Russia traveling to a general vicinity of our current residence is often viewed as a potential messenger. Just as would anyone making a trip in the opposite direction.

The logistics of catching up with such messenger on the receiving end vary in complexity, but almost always include an extra hassle for the addressee. When you know the messenger personally, it could even be fun. But most of the time that person is more or less a stranger.

This time around, our sister-in-law’s friend is coming to London for a trade show. There is no phone for her and not a hotel name. All that we were given were her name, the dates of the show (held at the ExCeL) and the name of the company she represents. The idea is that we’d find a way to go to the show and find her there.

Easier said than done. ExCeL is actually within reasonable driving distance from where we live, but Natasha would still have to spend half a day on this exercise. But that’s not all. This is a travel industry event, supposedly not open to the general public. A part of its schedule is by invitation only, while most of the time only registered industry professionals may attend.

“Registered” not as in “certified”. “Registered” as in “having gone through the process of registering for this event”. Online registration happens to be free. So, Natasha figures, who is to say that I am not a travel professional! I make plenty of travel arrangements all year around!

She clicks on the registration link, improvises a business name and, presto, receives an email containing her personalized show pass. She then proceeds to attend the show, checks out a considerable number of booths, and even returns home with a bag full of goodies, in addition to the package from her brother. She says she had to discuss the size of her business and the range of her clientele, and was offered special commission deals several times.

It could have been worse. A proctologist convention or something…

The fireworks at Blackheath is an annual event for us. As I mentioned in this post two years ago, the November fireworks period of festivities in England is related to the early-17th-century plot by Guy Fawkes and his companions to blow up the Parliament. While it does not cease to amaze me that this particular occasion is the root of celebrations, I realize that Great Britain’s history lacks an event of an Independence Day stature and, therefore, the country has to find a cause to have fun where it can.

Anyway, the firework displays are plentiful around town in the weeks leading to the actual anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot on November 5th, and the fireworks at Blackheath on Saturday are one of the climactic highlights. We went to see them this year, just as we had in the previous years.

Becky, actually, watched them independently from us, having had left the house in the early afternoon for a girls’ day out. We, in turn, had friends over at our house for most of the day, and went to the fireworks together.

The display was magnificent, as always, but the weather did not cooperate, with a steady drizzle picking up midway through the festivities and not letting up until after we returned home. As we met up with Becky once the fireworks had ended, we foolishly agreed to escort one of her friends to where her father was waiting for her in his car. The fifteen-minute walk through the rain was mildly unpleasant, and then we lucked into getting on a bus full of less-than-agreeable teenagers, loud, obnoxious and intent on having fun at the expense of others. Girls, mostly, of the kind that you can only hope to ignore. Kimmy got upset with their behavior, I got upset in turn, and the evening was largely a wash. Only Becky had too good of a time during the day to let that affect her sunny disposition.

She has more plans for today, with our friends from Reading area coming over, and their elder boy with a friend going to the movies with Becky and a couple of her schoolmates. The parents and the younger kids will spend the time wining and dining chez nous, as the weather outside continues to leave a lot to be desired. Natasha has been rather pleased with the prospect of making two dinner parties in a row - the process in which I am always only too happy to participate from the point of view of consumption.

Halloween was an annual disappointment for my girls. There is not much of trick-or-treating happening in our area. We had lighted jack’o'lanterns on the porch, and still only one single visit from neighborhood kids. Kimmy, all dressed up as a Dorothy from Wizard of Oz, decided that she did not want to go out for treats, once she learned that her school friend had fallen sick, and spent the evening moping.

The situation was not improved when I picked up Becky from a gathering with her friends before she had a chance to go trick-or-treating with them. We were ready to sit down for a family dinner at around 7:30, and Becky was out with her friends since 4, so I assumed that she already had her fun, and she got upset without telling me why until it was too late. Her mood improved a bit during the dinner, but Halloween being her most favorite holiday, she oscillated between sunny and dejected for most of the evening.

The dinner was otherwise a success, thanks to Natasha’s culinary talents. We toasted our anniversary several times and amused the children with stories from the early days of our happy union.

Since Becky returned from her school-trip to Iceland only that morning, she in turn entertained us with the recount of mayhem that only adolescent girls unencumbered with strict supervision can wreak. Her impressions of Iceland involved geysers, hot springs baths, black sand, and many waterfalls that all start looking the same after a while. And cold!… She made a couple of dozen of nice pictures on her camera - we’ll post them eventually.

I leave you today with my daughters in their Halloween outfits - all dressed up with nowhere to go, as it were.

  

[Update Nov 2nd]
There are some kid-related Halloween-themed activities organized here or there. They don’t normally happen on the 31st of October, though. So, today, Natasha took Kimmy to nearby Eltham Palace for such a celebration. Kimmy had a very good time and came back wearing this self-made hat:

It snowed here last night. For no more than an hour, and melted instantaneously, but it was a huge surprise nonetheless.

While Becky boldly went where her parents have never gone before, - she is on a school trip to Iceland, - Kimmy required extra attention than normal during her half-term break. So Natasha enrolled her in a three-day theater workshop, brought her to see a Russian circus troupe and commandeered half of the living room for continuous work on the summer vacation scrapbook. They also sang together, with Kimmy learning songs that she did not know the words to before. That obviously necessitated a session of videotaping. Here is one performance.

For my non-Russian-speaking audience, the song is called “A True Friend” and is basically about friendship.

All of Europe has moved the clocks back one hour as the “daylight savings” interval came to its annual end. Looking out the office window, by the time I’d get out in half an hour or so, it will be entirely dark outside. Why is moving the clocks back a good thing again?

Such a nice an Indian Summer this year in London! Who says that London weather is all fog and rain!?

We did not do anything extraordinary, but tried to make the good weather count. (Of course, I could not refrain from watching a couple of World Cup qualifiers at intervals).

On Saturday, Natasha and her dad went on a jaunt around London that, in theory, should have included all of the various modes of public transportation, with a fair amount of walking in between. Commuter train, Underground, bus, riverboat, DLR… Except that on weekends, “due to planned engineering works” many Underground and DLR lines are customarily suspended. They had to do with an extra helping of a double-decker bus instead of the DLR. On the other hand, they had a smashing time on the riverboat cruise from Westminster to Greenwich.

Meanwhile, Kimmy and I went to a playground in Falconwood that we recently discovered and had a couple of hours of fun by ourselves.

Becky was involved in an open day at her school, which was relatively the least fun activity among the family members. To make it up to her, we later went for sushi to a great place in Greenwich (Becky is the true sushi enthusiast in the family, and with no good take-out places in our neck of the woods, her opportunities for indulgence are quite limited).

On Sunday, Becky went to markets and shops with her friends, Natasha’s dad went to central London on his own, while the rest of us met up with our friends Anya, Ari and little Ben in the pleasant area of Marylebone, north of Oxford Street, for a few hours of park- and playground-related activities. Continuing with the Oriental food theme, we had lunch at a reasonable dim sum eatery. Kimmy, as is her custom, found very little to her liking there, so we had to promise her an ice-cream follow-up to cajole her into eating a bowl of soup and trying a couple of dumplings.

Mostly, we sat on a bench, watched Kimmy and Ben run on a playground, and enjoyed what could be the last good days of the year.

The hot water is back. It seems that the “immersion” heater was wired improperly and lacked a rather essential fuse. The effing thing never ever worked before!!! And nobody - not the landlord, not his agent, certainly not the repair guys - knew about it.

Anyway, the slightly harassed repairmen made their third visit to our house in as many days - this time with a clear directive not to leave until they are sure that there is hot water in the house. They spend a good hour re-wiring the immersion heater, but they accomplished the objective splendidly.

Now we are waiting for the official date and time of the main heater repairs.

No hot water in the house and - although we are not yet in dire need of it - no heating. The heating unit has lost its ability to pump hot water, instead filling the house with loud banging in the pipes. It had to be turned off. There is a backup electric water heater, but it is not operational either, for unknown reasons.

And this is what makes the situation worse: The repairmen already came to the house twice in the last couple of days. On a weekend, no less. Yet all they can do is sympathetically explain what they think the problem is, but they cannot even attempt to fix it until the landlord provides his dispensation to spend a large sum of money on the repairs. The landlord lives in Japan, the house management agency that needs to deal with him is enjoying the weekend, so we may not get anything fixed until several days from now.

I knew there was a reason why I prefer owning a house to renting!

At least the study can be used as a warm refuge, what with two computers running in a fairly small room…

About a year ago, I started going to the gym. And a few months later, I stopped (an event not expressly commemorated on this blog).

Part of that was certainly that I lack mental make-up to enjoy the tedious process of exercising. To put it more bluntly, I hate it. With a proper video entertainment on hand I might be able to stay patient for a reasonable workout, but in a public gym, you get limited choice of that.

And the music they blasted over the speakers in that gym was simply atrocious!

My other excuse was the schedule. Early mornings are out because I’m not a morning person. The “greater lunch” starts around 11am, and the not too spacious gym gets overcrowded for a couple of hours. The best time to go there is right around 2pm, when the lunch crowd already left and the “after-work” crowd not yet arrived.

But when I moved on to my current US-centric role, 2pm became the time when I needed to be at my best multi-communicating on email, IM and phone, as the various people whom I needed to reach arrived in their New York office. And having only 4-5 hours a day to fit in all of the transatlantic meetings that you need to hold, tends to make you awfully unwilling to spend an hour in the middle of that on such trifles as exercising.

On the other hand, I can work from home considerably more often now than in times past when my physical presence in office was often necessary to make my regional business partners feel loved. And if I want to go to a local gym at lunchtime, I can find it fairly empty in the middle of any given weekday…

Not that I’d really go to a gym - the boredom hurdle is still there. But Natasha has lately been scouting local “health & leisure” centers for good swimming pool deals - have I mentioned anywhere that over our summer holidays she got into a habit of doing a couple of dozen laps every day? - and she insisted that I should join her once in a while.

Which is what I did today, for a nice half-hour swim at one of the new community centers in our area. Only £3 a pop - and we actually did not pay anything today, on pretenses of checking the place out before making our decision to join. Good facilities, few people at that time of the day. Natasha bought herself a multi-visit discount card, with an intent to go a couple of times a week. I might be keeping her company occasionally. Although I’ll be in trouble trying to keep up - I barely managed 10 laps by the time she finished her twentieth.

Taking advantage of what might be the last - and first - nice-weather weekend in September, on Saturday we took the kids for a long-promised visit to Legoland.

Of course, half of London had the same idea as us…

The amusement park, located near Windsor, failed to make a great impression on us. It wasn’t just hordes of people and interminable waits for rides. It was mostly the fact that the rides were underwhelming and fairly short.

We collectively tried around a dozen, of which only Vikings’ River Splash (a river rapids ride), Spinning Spider (like the Teacup Party in Disneyland) and Wave Surfer (a fast watercraft circular ride) received top marks from those who went on them. The roller-coasters, The Dragon and Jungle Coaster, were short on thrills, although the former started with a fun “tour” of a castle full of various Lego statues. The water log ride, Pirate Falls, also went for a tour, that of a pirate island, but it had only one single lift-and-drop, which made it ultimately disappointing. The big rotating gondola swing, Longboat Invader was ok.

Kimmy went on a bunch of smaller rides, of which she especially liked Boating School, and that only because she got to drive the boat herself around the water course. The speed is much too slow to make this appealing to anyone older than 8 years of age. Chairoplane (circular swing ride) and a little Ferris Wheel were mildly amusing for her, and Rat Trap (a tree-house playground) provided an opportunity for some climbing and sliding exercises.

Miniland, a collection of models of buildings from around the Britain, the rest of Europe and the US, was a nice non-ride attraction.

In short, smaller kids might find things of interest to do at Legoland, but teenagers will likely get bored, and the adults will have to contend themselves with being happy for the kids (as opposed to maybe finding attractions of their own liking).

We availed ourselves to the Q-bot technology, thereby reducing our potential levels of wait-queue aggravation. Q-bot is a small wireless gadget that allows you to “reserve” your place in the queue for the next ride that you want to get on. It is not a “fast pass”; rather, it gives you an appointment for the approximate time that you’d be able to get on the ride if you were to join the queue at the moment of making your reservation. The upside, of course, is that you do not have to physically spend time in line; you can explore other attractions in the meantime, or even get on another ride; the gadget only allows one reservation at a time, though. The largely acceptable downside is that renting the Q-bot costs £10 per person (which is an introductory rate; in 2009, the price will double). And your “reservation” will always be for exactly the number of people that you rented the Q-bot for (so, if there are four of you and you only rent a Q-bot for three, you will always have to leave someone off; conversely, if you rent a Q-bot for all four of you, but never get on any ride all together, you simply waste money). Plus, some rides cannot be reserved via a Q-bot, which is quite annoying.

No matter, not standing in queues beats the alternative any busy weekend day.

At any rate, we liked being out of the house and we had as much fun as we could squeeze out of Legoland, aided in large part by the fact that we met with our friends Mila and Andrey and their kids at the park. Towards the end of the day, we all retired to their place and spent the evening catching-up around the dinner table. We should do that more often!

We went to a child’s birthday party on Sunday. Lyuba and Pasha are among our closest friends, so even though little Tim, at 4, is a bit younger than my children, our family presence at his celebration was a given.

The rest of the guests had kids right around Tim’s age. My two girls were the oldest by a margin, although we discovered at some point a presence of a 14-year-old boy, who looked barely 10, glued to his mobile phone and indifferent to the proceedings. Becky rejected the idea of making acquaintances, preferring instead to insinuate herself into adult conversations. Kimmy, as she often does, found things to occupy herself with, first on her own and later entertaining two-year-old Ben, Anya’s and Ari’s son, with whom she has a mutual adoration thing going.

A dozen little kids, running around, fighting over toys, screaming and throwing stuff, and basically behaving in the only way little kids know, gave me a headache to rival those I get from loud restaurant parties. Several glasses of wine helped very little, so a number of musically-inclined adults sequestered ourselves inside the house for a bit of guitar-aided singing and idle banter, while the little kids continued running amok in the garden. Somewhat unsurprisingly, Becky and Kimmy chose the adult company, and Ben, of course, followed Kimmy wherever she went.

A thought struck me: I am now so used to having comparatively grown children, mostly self-sufficient and no longer requiring to be constantly looked after, that I’m growing positively allergic to being exposed to little kids in large quantities.

Although, truth be told, when Kimmy has a bunch of her friends over at our house, as happened the other day, - and certainly when Becky has her friends for a sleep-over - I tend to lock myself in my study and even ask for my meals to be delivered there. So, this allergy has got to be not so much age-related, as it is quantity-based…

Anyway, my health soon improved, and we spent the rest of the day catching up with friends on a leisurely walk around St John’s Wood and at dinner. A great day, on balance!

In my city-vs-suburbia post, I made a mention of the fact that there is nary a good playground in the vicinity of our rented place in Mottingham. My family recently discovered that one of Becky’s friends lives by a very good one in Falconwood, some 15 minutes away from us by car. The day was nice, and I agreed to interrupt my feverish typing of the summer trip diary to take Kimmy for an outing.

Well, all I can say is there are playgrounds and there are playgrounds. This one is a Cadillac of them all, spacious and well-maintained, with tons of fun implements beyond the common swings and slides, and distinct age-appropriate “zones”. The ground under all of the climbing, swinging, sliding, crawling, hanging, etc, equipment is padded for soft landings. A full-size basketball court, doubling as a small-size football field, is part of the complex.

Not surprisingly, we saw children of all ages, or at least 1 to 50, enjoying themselves on that playground. And it did not feel crowded because of the overall space. There were even groups of teenagers, not exactly playing, but hanging around, - and behaving rather properly, not like delinquents that I often observe in our vicinity.

Kimmy had a blast, even though she was largely on her own or with her two parents (Becky went to the movies with a friend instead). She tried every single apparatus several times, made me push her on a dozen different swings and go-arounds. Us - we were happy to get out of the house in the sun for a change. And to have learned that there are tranquil and nice neighborhoods not far from where we live.

When we go on holidays, we always keep a diary about our doings. It becomes the starting point for a scrap book about each trip, and I plan one day to convert all of them into hardbound coffee-table books. I also use the detailed accounts of our trips and meals in these diaries to keep up our modest family travel guide.

In the past, Natasha and I kept the diary together; at the end of every day, we would spend half an hour recording the important things that perspired in the last 24 hours; I’d dictate and Natasha would write. For the big summer trip, since I knew I would be absent from it for intervals, I delegated the entire diary-keeping task to my lovely wife.

The result - 128 pages of her beautiful handwriting, detailing practically every breath and every waking moment of the six weeks on the continent.

The problem is, I need to type it up in a text document - or, as I like to say, digitize it, - before I can reasonably start using the important bits for the Travelog. So, for a few days now, I have been spending my free time as a typist. And since I never learned to type with ten fingers, I’m only about two-thirds done…

Visitors to European capitals with metro systems (for instance, Paris) are undoubtedly familiar with the concept of manual door opening on subway cars. The doors are equipped with buttons or handles both on the inside and the outside that need to be operated in order to enter or exit the car. The exact reason for that always escaped me, with the best guess that it is an anachronism that morphed into an energy-saving approach (during slow times, most doors will not open on every stop, reducing the consumption of energy needed to re-close them).

Curiously, on London Underground, the car doors are equipped with the buttons but are always opened and closed automatically.

But on the commuter trains and the DLR, both of which play a role in my commute, passengers still need to operate the doors manually.

On my way home today, as the train stopped at the station immediately preceding mine, the nearest door to where I was standing would not open. The lights indicating the mechanism’s readiness to be operated were on, but no amount of button-pushing produced the desired result for several people desiring to get off.

The configuration of this older car that we were on was not favorable for trying to make the next door when the train is full of commuters. And the Brits would not think of using the emergency stop signal in these circumstances (whereas your truly once did just that when faced with similar events on New Jersey Transit). So the poor souls resigned themselves to having to ride to the next station, muttered assorted curses to themselves, and queued up towards other doors along car’s passages.

Which, of course, made it impossible for me to advance to those other doors myself, I realized too late.

Figuring that at Mottingham, where I get off, half of the train gets off as well - meaning that the train lingers a bit longer here and I should have enough time to exit with the tail of the long queue - I first tried to operate the offending nearest doors myself when the train had stopped. And, with a ring and a hiss, they opened at my first touch! And because I always ride in a car that deposits me nearest to the platform exit, I strolled out of the station ahead of the entire train-load, which is a huge bonus at that time of day.

Somehow that made my otherwise boring and dismal day feel a tad bit better.

P.S. This post took place of the one reflecting on the successful “birth” of the Large Hadron Collider. Unfortunately, so many places that I frequent on the web has recently talked about it, that I found it hard to come up with something original to say on the event. Instead, I felt that I needed to go back to my roots and relate a largely inconsequential story from the life of a befuddled American in London.

It struck me suddenly: My life is actually a bit less exciting without the morning trip to drive Becky to school. She firmly refused any further chauffeur services from either of us, preferring to take public bus routes both to and from school. I can now get up a whole hour later in the morning, and do not have to get behind the wheel at all during the week. And I feel some strange discomfort because of that.

Natasha expressed her own discomfort for a different reason. For pretty much the first time in over two years, she has nothing to plan as far as travel is concerned. There are house chores, children’s activities, photo editing, etc, that she can occupy herself with, but no tickets, hotels, tours or sights to be researched, reviewed or acquired. She feels out of her element.

————

Two unrelated notes:

I received a cool postcard from Nathan in today’s mail, with a picturesque view from his recent long-weekend trip. Looks very peaceful, Nathan. Thanks!

The data from the external hard-drive has been safely recovered and transferred to the new and shiny replacement. The repair shop charged me an inspection fee, a recovery fee and a separate data-transfer fee, coming to £90 in total, but it was certainly a small price to pay. Although, upon further inspection, I had almost nothing of one-copy, irreplaceable value on that drive. But now I know that for a fact!

The weather is dreary. What else is new?

The weekend will be reasonably slow, with only a dinner visit by a couple of friends planned. I know it’s a bit too soon to start whining that we are sliding back to the unexciting routine existence - and, to be honest, we have at least one social event planned for every weekend for a few weeks ahead, - but I can’t help but feel apprehension at the need to follow up our summer holidays with something comparably grand.

The kids started school. Becky is positively excited - as I said time and again, she attends a really good school. But getting back with her friends is the clincher. She already went to a birthday party and a sleep-over this week, and is hanging out at a friend’s place tonight… Kimmy is somewhat less enthusiastic, but appears happy enough to see her friends as well.

I seemingly lost an external storage drive to some sort of terminal failure. Most of the media stored there was also replicated elsewhere, but I have no doubt that there are some archived items that existed in a single copy on that drive. A local repair shop is looking into recovery, and in the meantime I bought myself a replacement. They are dirt-cheap these days. Part of the weekend will be spent on re-organizing my digital archives.

The stock market that’s been in the tank since last summer and keeps getting worth has now been joined by the foreign exchange market in beating the crap out of my financial worth. The British pound lost about 10% of its value against the US dollar in the last month or so. For anyone in the States who plans to travel to the UK, it’s pleasant news. For someone paid in sterling, who plans to move funds back to the States in fairly short order, it’s downright depressing.

It’s been only three months since I converted my main blog to WordPress, and the Akismet plugin already caught 1000 spam comments. Lately, they seem to be arriving at the rate of 30-50 a day. I stopped looking through them and switched to summarily deleting them once in a while. I’m sure I’ll soon be craving for a fix of “Nice blog, webmaster. Respect!” messages.

Becky received her scores for the Russian-language GCSE exams that she took during last school year. It’s basically an A+. As she correctly suspected, being a native Russian speaker - don’t forget, she did not start speaking English until she was about five, - was more than enough to top requirements in all areas of examination.

And these are Burlak family news of the moment.

When we came home from our trip on Sunday, there was seemingly a wedding party in one of the neighboring back gardens. We knew that because of the music, of course, which was loud enough to be heard as if the speakers were positioned directly under our windows, even though I could not visually determine the precise location of the party from the upper floor of the house.

The funny thing is that the entertainment consisted of a lounge music act with a Tom Jones sound. The singer very ably belted out such favorites as Only You, That’s Amore, My Way, It’s Impossible, New York, New York, It Had To Be You, For Once In My Life, She’s A Lady, and many others.

It could have been a recording, for all I know, but it was strangely soothing after a 950-mile two-day drive.