September 7, 1999 – Mom and Brian arrive!

This morning for the first time since I’ve been here, it is raining. It is a soft, steady rain and still warm and very humid. But by the time I walk to the University station and take the train to City Centre to meet Mom and Brian, it’s stopped. At New Street station, I wait for several minutes after their train is supposed to have arrived, but I don’t see them. I make my way towards their platform and there I see two tired and bedraggled travelers walking towards me. We have coffee and scones at the Internet café then take a taxi to my B&B for naps.

Around 2:00 PM we head off to Cadbury World. Brian is quite enamored of the Beanmobile ride. Today, I am thankful for the chocolate bars they hand out as we skipped lunch and I am hungry. We buy a ton of chocolate and then take the train back to Birmingham City Centre. We walk through the public squares to the canals. It’s too far for two jetlagged people and they are dragging.

We end up at the Malt House in Brindley Place, where Bill Clinton ate. Disappointingly, it is not traditional fish and chips pub food. Brian has chicken tikka. Mom and I have grilled chicken. Mom has coffee and says with a surprised look that it’s not too bad.

We are all leery of British coffee. When visiting in 1996, we found the coffee to be very bad; bitterly strong or, more often, instant coffee. In one of those stories that have become family lore; Mom always tells about Brian talking her into having coffee in every restaurant we went in, whenever the menu listed “filter coffee.” He’d say, “It’s filter coffee, Mom” thinking it must be made in a regular drip coffee maker, not instant. Mom is like Charlie Brown to Lucy with the football. Every time Brian encouragingly says, “It’s filter coffee,” she ordered it. But no, every time, it was bad. Finally, three days into our trip we switched to cappuccino and drank that for the rest of our time in the UK.

We take a taxi back to Glenelg and go to bed early.

• In today’s news: Row as Royal Opening Shuts Metro. Thousands of commuters have been told to catch a bus during the two-hour period the Midland Metro closes for its official Royal opening. Public transport promoter, Centro, confirmed it was suspending normal services on the Birmingham Snow Hill-Wolverhampton route for the Princess Royal’s visit next Tuesday. A Centro spokesman said the Metro was being closed for “operational reasons” and advised members of the public who wanted to use it to catch the bus instead.