This transcript was generated automatically from the episode audio, so expect the odd misheard word. Click any timestamp to play from that moment; times marked ≈ are estimated to within a minute or so.
Welcome back to the Anglotopia podcast. Apologies for the radio silence, literally.
Shocking, I know. There are many excuses. None of them really particularly matter other than pandemic.
Well, and we had like kids e-learning for a year at home. And we, you know, we both work from home. and it's a lot.
And we both work full-time jobs now outside of Anglotopia. So finding the time to sit and record the podcast is a challenge.
And a quiet house because we need good, clean audio. And so hopefully the noise will stay away while we discuss all things British.
So hopefully, we're hoping to do more regular podcasts. We will not promise the schedule, but we're hoping to do it every few weeks going forward. We may choose to start doing audio only for some things just to make it, easier to just record audio than it is to do video and get set up for a video. So we may have audio-only podcast soon or a mixture of the various kinds. This is...
Yes, look at it. It's so gorgeous. If you're not watching on video, I recommend, look it up on the website.
Yeah, it's on the store. So last year, about this time last year, I was having to think about things because I spent a lot of time thinking about the business and how we can grow it and expand it and move into new things.
And what our readers want based on what we sold before. And I was looking at the numbers and the most popular product that we've ever sold is the London Underground Tube Lightbox. which... Those are very cool. Which we do not make, and I should have put one in the frame, but we imported... It'll be in the show notes. Yeah, it'll be in the show notes, because we do still sell them. They were, they're made by a British company, and we imported them to the U.S.
and it was the easy way for people to buy it, because a lot of people would see them in the British or the London Transport Museum, but they didn't want to have to bring it home so they could order it from us. And we sold a lot of those. I won't say how many, but we sold a lot of them.
They were very successful. successful they actually they funded our trip when we did the drive from Land's End to John o' Groats in 2018 that like those lights paid for that so well
that no one really makes a Union Jack lamp and what inspired this was I was watching peep show we were doing our annual peep show rewatch if you haven't seen it yeah hilarious one of our favorite British comedies the characters are absolutely
Very funny. And really a really good encapsulation of kind of that time period. Not just
Not just early 2000s Britain, but just being in your, you know, your mid to late 20s and, you know, kind of getting life started and that sort of thing. So it's fun. Like definitely, you know, put that in the show notes for folks.
Yeah, the show definitely is. It's a lot of fun. on all the streaming services and you can usually find it for free too. So we were watching Peep Show and on the table and Mark in Jez's living room is a Union Jack lamp, okay? And I saw that lamp and I'm like Anglotopia followers, they would like to have that lamp. I would like to have that lamp. That's a nice lamp. I began researching. Well, the peep show was made 15 years ago, so nobody makes the lamp anymore.
You can't buy the lamp anymore. You can't buy the lamp I couldn't find the lamp anywhere. I looked everywhere, scoured the inner web. And I'm, I'm pretty good at finding things on the internet. Like, both of us together, we're pretty good at finding things that don't want to be found on the internet. Like, if she watches a movie and sees a nice briefcase or purse, she knows how to find what it is.
Yeah. Speaking of which, if anybody finds the briefcase from the second episode of the dropout, the Elizabeth Holmes documentary on, or it's not a documentary, drama on Hulu, like, please, pink, pink, us. I have searched high and low, written the costume designer. I have to find this briefcase, but I digress. Sorry. Anyway. Way off topic.
So I can't find this lamp anywhere, and I'm like, okay, I was looking at the London Underground light box, because I have one on my office, because of course I do. And I was looking at one of those plastic cinema signs that you see everywhere now, where you change the letters and stuff. And I'm like, it can't be that difficult to combine the two, to make a union jack rectangle LED light box. Like, they can't be that difficult to create.
Well, it is difficult to create because you have to find somebody to make it. And I tried to make a prototype myself and it didn't work. And so finally, I found a factory that specializes in making LED light things. I literally had to learn how to do all of this as I was doing it. And that's usually the funnest way to grow a business is you learn by doing.
So, you know, I had no way, I had no way, I like, I had no idea how you have something made to your specifications. So I found this factory. I said, look, I want to make basically this light box that you're selling off the shelf, but I want you to put a union jack on it. And there was a language barrier, but we, we were able to communicate and they understood what I wanted to do. They sent a prototype and the prototype was okay, but it didn't quite, didn't quite work.
So we, I had them go back to the drawing board and they had to make it bigger and make it out of wood and make it more substantial and increase the number of LEDs in it so it was much brighter. A few other tweaks to put the plug on the side so that you can hang on the wall and plug it in and the plug would hang rather than be behind it. It's battery operated. So this is the actual second prototype so it still looks a little rough it's not one of the new ones but we wanted to show the prototype like this dark shadow is not in the final product on the corner there it's not in the final product and so they when I flipped it on for the first time for you and we're like we have to like that's it that's that's the thing we have to sell that like we need to we need to make it well it's very expensive to make things we had to contract with the factory we had to order a certain amount which was a lot of money and it's a big investment in the business thankfully we were able to make it and then we so we launched it last fall to pre-orders because it was going to take it was going to take three or four months for them to actually get to us because they had a lot of late time yeah they had to make them physically make them and i have pictures of the of them making it it's a lot of fun to see them the process and then they had to go on a boat to get here but then they all arrived in February actually they arrived in late January they arrived early and so we sold a few in the pre-order we'd hold hope to sell more in the pre-order but it was a very expensive product so we've learned from that and we've now lowered the price it's now $49 with plus shipping we will we ship anywhere in the world
well wait there are a couple of exceptions where we don't ship yeah if if we don't ship to your
country the system won't let your order it but like sorry about that like we can't ship to russia right now we can't ship to syria or iran a few other countries like that are on the postal services list of places you can't send things to the u.s postals list list so yeah so now we have a basement full of these so please buy them because we need the space back in our basement because if you can imagine 500 of those it's a lot of space yes so and we've sold 50 so far i think we've done pretty well yeah i'm confident we'll sell them all and i've had to the whole process was fascinating to learn how to have something made and how to get it and how to market it and so there we're trying new things to market it than we would normally do for a new product launches like we sponsored a Lawrence brown over at lost in the pond for a video and he showed off definitely check out his yeah check out his channel and check out the video that we did we'll put it in the show notes that was that was fun he did did a great video he did a great unboxing of the two so you can see what it's like if it's unboxed he's a great guy too yeah he's well they live in chicago so they're friends and good good friends to have have so yeah that's that's the big thing you know within the last year since since we had the legal troubles last spring which we don't really need to rehash now and yeah so please buy a union jack lightbox it's you can't buy it from anybody else nope that's exclusive to us in our basement where they are stored so beyond that our main topic that we wanted to talk about in this episode was travel to Britain what does that look like for 2022 what does like when are we going to travel again when is you know with COVID-19 and everything it's it's it's been a year two years of travel uncertainty for everybody granted there have been more important things to be concerned about I know you know we like pretty much everybody we didn't travel for the longest time um we only started going really anywhere domestically when when we had our got fully vaccinated then we felt comfortable enough to just like travel to the next state or two and so now it's we're all considered to be in a new phase of the pandemic where most places are well i think we
should preface by not preface excuse me i misspoke i think we should say that at least in the u.s there's this feeling of we're kind of moving into a new phase of the pandemic because globally like like china right now i mean as we record this podcast very end of our march very beginning of april like they're having serious issues again and certain other parts of the world are as well so but u.s. wise there's very much a feeling and and from what we've read in you know most of europe western europe like there's this this feeling of we're coming to a new
phase so yeah and we should also say that neither of us are medical professionals no we are not providing you medical advice we are only giving you information based on our own experiences what we plan to do at our own level of risk tolerance in our opinions are our own in our opinions are our own but i'm also closely following what other industry travel industry professionals are saying i'm rick steves is my personal idol and i trust a lot of what he has to say and he has said that if you're vaccinated and you're willing to fully vaccinated and you're willing to be to be conscious of an ever-changing situation and whatnot then it's perfectly all right to travel as long as you're willing to to be flexible in your planning and you're whether you're going to wear a mask or not whether you bring your COVID certificates and
whatnot so and even domestically like when we've traveled interstate like like our sales state versus other states like you just have to be prepared very prepared to adhere to the guidelines of wherever you're going so you know bring masks bring your vaccination card or or whatever proof of vaccination that you have and you know be prepared to show those when asked
yeah and so that brings us to so britain itself they no longer have any COVID related travel restrictions is that coming from the u.s or globally coming from everywhere okay the they scrapped them all that earlier this month you do not need to be vaccinated which if you're going to travel I we really think you should be vaccinated well we're going to reserve our yeah that's our opinion you do not need to fill out passenger locator forms you don't need to wear a mask you don't need to do any of the things that we were all expected to do during the pandemic anymore to travel to Britain they've opened the doors and the corollary to that is visit Britain has launched a huge campaign to get visitors and tourists to come back to Britain because the while the pandemic devastated many industries the travel industry was completely gutted by the pandemic I mean there was an entire industry that was just basically flat out put out of work
then when you go there the landscape is going to be different there are going to to be attractions that have closed there are going to be favorite hotels that have closed or changed ownership your favorite restaurants may not be there anymore there's to be new restaurants there's going to be a lot of what they call creative destruction as the industry rights itself and so they are visit britain they are desperate for American tourists to come back they want us to come back this year that is the message that their national tourist body is saying and the message their government is sending desperate or eager both visitors please come back and so visitors are starting to come back we've we've read quite a few messages from readers who have said they have trips planned and then there were people who
traveled last year kind of in the lull of the pandemic and that's not to be you know I don't mean to be dismissive of anybody that went through a rough time but where you know global cases were a little lower in the northern hemisphere and you know we we watched kind of people go and and have great experiences and kind of sad we missed our window and
yeah and and and so now with all this there's nothing to stop you from traveling now you can go there are no restrictions in place but doesn't mean you should be careful you know and i know we're going to be very careful now briefly i want to talk about we have traveled internationally as the pandemic was coming to an end no
it wasn't coming to an end it was pre omnicron it was pre omicron yeah i could never say
that properly yeah it was pre omicron back in december i worked for an irish company hashtag black night shout out i worked for an irish company and i last went back to the head office two years ago right before the pandemic happened and so literally like in and out yeah like literally i was in and out pandemic started and then the whole company went completely remote and there was they decided to renovate the offices while no one was there so everyone was remote for for almost two years and so well back in december they're like well we want you to come over let's have you know you know we're fully vaccinated yeah we you know we were fully vaccinated that was the requirement and we have no problems filling that requirement you had to fill all these passenger locator forms then they we had to be tested before we arrived they changed it literally the day before we yeah the u.s.
changed the testing requirement no Ireland oh sorry i don't know there was so much change happening so quickly we really had to be super flexible and super just chill about it and in regards to like we couldn't get like we couldn't be uptight about our schedule and things changing because it's just like you just what are you going to do you got to you got to abide by the rules we want to travel safely we want us to be safe we want the destination we go you know you're going to you to we want to be respectful of their situation so we do what you got to do yeah so we follow all the red
tape there was a lot of it we she came along because she didn't want to pass up a chance to go to ireland and never been and very beautiful ran i went for work so like i was going to be at work the whole time i was there but in our off hours we had a chance to explore around and stuff but the like we had to mask the whole flight we had to mask the whole flight which i was really concerned about doing but it was fine the flight was half empty anyway there was a lot of once you filled all the red tape and did all the extra late work everything went smoothly and
there was a lot of documentation at that at that point like we had to bring you know results for tests
and that kind of thing but you don't have to do that yeah that's that's that's the point we wanted to get to is and the grand irel is completely separate from what the you how the uk manager pandemic but they did do similar things with locator forms and some vaccine certifications they did kind of work work along the same lines well now ireland as as with the uk there are no restrictions anymore you don't have to do any of this now so travel is back to the way it was before the pandemic well interesting though too is that the
night that we we landed in ireland or we landed that afternoon or morning and then by that evening it's the t-shock right yeah yeah they were the like starting to close things down because of the new variant that was going around and so yeah like we just really had to roll with things and like you know we ate in in empty restaurants because there were people weren't going out to eat well and really we kept our eating out we we rented a lovely yeah we were at a cottage and just ate at home we ate at home i cooked i cooked a lot because there were restaurants open but we also wanted to be just respectful of of of you know yeah a lot of
tourist attractions were closed we struggled to to do things but we're not going to talk about much ireland more because ireland is not what this podcast is about if you would like us to talk about our trip to ireland please leave a comment or send us an email and maybe we'll do a special podcast on our travel experiences in ireland because i've not been to ireland twice you've been once and we will be going more because now that people can travel again my employer will be bringing me over to the head office more hopefully i i beg often hi mcaley if you're watching so that all that being said we can now travel again where does that leave Anglotopia because where does that leave everybody really travel for engletopia was a big part of what we did it's how we did our research for our articles we put out it's how we got photography for our calendar it's how we got footage for our youtube channel like we had to travel to get the content that we published and you may have noticed in the last couple years the content has gotten very sparse because we literally are at the end of the line of content on our previous travels in the last decade or so we there's not much left that we can talk about that we haven't already talked about so we need to refresh that content and now to give you some history the last time we were in in britain was in september or 2018 we are now coming up on four years since we have set foot in britain we did not know it would be four years when we left in 2018 we just assumed we would be back the next year like we always had because we the cadence we had gone and was at least going once or twice a year as the business needed it but after that trip a lot changed as we mentioned before we both now work full-time jobs outside of ingletopia so engletopia is Topia is a site hustle now it cannot you know we can both either of us can leave for for for very long for vacation it's the business doesn't make as much money as it used to so it can't fund as much travel as it used to and so for the first two years after our final trip we couldn't go just because we just could not we couldn't afford to life and we couldn't afford to and then the pandemic happened and then we couldn't go because of that and so and that was the hardest part for me of the pandemic was like it kept getting so close to going back well and then we kept
having to cancel the trips and yeah you should you should mention though that we actually had booked yeah we had booked i think we booked and rebooked and canceled like four times yeah we've
booked and canceled the same trip four times and it's very been very frustrating and granted having having a trip to britain is not on on the scale of Maslow's hierarchy of needs it's not it's very low on that list of needs so it's been very but personally for me that i miss england i miss going to britain very much i miss going to our favorite places i missed the cottage that we've always go to and missed our friends and it there were some very dark days of the pandemic when it's just it was so hard knowing that you're trapped you can't go and you don't know when you don't know when you're you're going to be able to go and every time we book a trip we go okay it'll be fine by this point we're gonna you know and book it be positive and be flexible and be flexible and then a month or two before we were like there's just no way we can go and just just with the pandemic you know purely pandemic related our sort of red line was that we need to to be vaccinated and so we were kind of waiting around that was our initial red line yeah that was our initial red line we kind of waited for the vaccine roll out to happen which didn't seem like it was happening fast enough for our travel and patients but it was a very happy day when we got the vaccine yeah and then we booked a trip and then had to cancel it because there was another there was another surge and then we got the booster and we were very happy we could travel again and then we booked a trip and we were supposed to go this past january but and and that one we didn't cancel till like two weeks before yeah we're like unfortunately we're just like it was very much like can we can we then omacron
happened and then there was like no way and then this would be irresponsible for us yeah we're like
it's it's it's irresponsible and that's the point we kind of want to make is now it's not irresponsible to travel as long as you take in the precautions well and you are careful let's say
where we're at right now end of march early April nobody has yeah this see the future but as we sit right now and talk about it this could change again so mr Anglotopia has like this look of dread if you're not watching live like just oh so okay you'll get there don't worry you'll get there okay
so we have a trip booked when i say we i mean me royal we right over here yeah i have a trip booked and that's just the way with my blessing with yeah with her blessing it's the way it worked out with again we're americans it's very hard for us to take time off from our jobs we have two children who are middle school aged one's late elementary school age so like getting away both of us getting away is a lot more difficult than it was when they were much younger and much more portable yeah that's a good way to put it yeah and and when they weren't in school so not everything revolved our entire lives revolve around their school schedule now so as they should we're parents yeah and so traveling with them is just and we're not quite ready to take them to England but it's just the well I think the
primary though at least for us or at least for I'll speak for myself is just with you know it's hard
enough we it was hard enough going to Ireland just meeting you with the changing situation yes I
think that's an excellent way yeah and it's really my my primary concern with taking them overseas right now is just is is the continued yeah unknown of the pandemic
well and like for the to go back to the trip to Ireland because of the the requirement that you test negative before you come home that the US government even for US citizens even for US citizens has imposed you don't know if you're coming home for sure till the day before you're supposed to leave and that is really really nerve-wracking yeah when you're in a foreign country that was the worst part of going to Ireland was we just didn't know we were coming home well and not
weeks from Christmas yeah and we would have been trapped in Ireland so like granted Ireland is very lovely and our friends would have helped and everything but and
quarantine regulations and whatnot we would have been stuck and that that was that was
nerve-wrecking and we were yeah we were extra careful as careful as one can be you know we masked we kept our distance were possible and that kind of booking the test was was a
challenge because the government kept changing their requirements but it was a lot but it was all fine
because here we are and what was the takeaway we were flexible yeah you have to be flexible we were prepared either way like should we have gotten a surprise like oh you're you know you're non-symptomatic but you're actually positive for COVID like yikes so it's scary so the great return the great return of four years in the
making it's like a sequel to a movie that got stuck in development hell back in 2016 I did a course at Oxford for a week with the with the with the English-speaking union and it was like one of the best weeks of my life did it solo I did it by myself here's what I found sorry Siri is talking to me she thinks I want to know about Oxford right now so note to sell take watch off for future recording sessions so and it was it was great I love pretending to be a student oxford where I got to stay in Oxford rooms I got to like I got to eat in the dining hall and we took had special tours around the city it was like it was like I said it was one of the best weeks of my life ever and since then I wanted to repeat it and every year I would check the Oxford Continuing Education website the people that run these these summer programs where you can come stay for a week you do a course you get to stay on campus and you get to be fed and you get to have the whole like Oxford experience as a vacation rather than as a real student and so I would check you know every few months and all the the best courses would fill up really fast and when they announced the courses for this year earlier this year I saw a course I was like I really want to do that honey so I'm doing a course on Nelson and the Georgian Navy as a fan of master and commander yeah I'm I'm so excited about about doing it I'm gonna so I'm gonna go for this and they were very clear that this could be canceled at any minute so they're like you need to have trip insurance because it's a very expensive course but the course it includes your lodging on the Oxford College it includes the course it includes your meals includes some guided tours a field trip to Portsmouth so you can visit HMS Victory and a few other things so it's It's really, it's really great.
Anyway, so I'm going to Oxford this July for a week, and Mrs. Anglotopia is wonderful as she is. She has also said I can go for an extra week after the course.
Let's make very clear though, like you didn't necessarily need my permission. You just wanted my blessing.
Like I essentially I'm both parents and I work full time and I work full time and
you know so I'm going to be over there and while I'm over there I get to stay an extra week so because I have the best wife in the world and so the plan remind you of that from time to time so now the bulk of this trip costs nothing because like I said we've booked and canceled a trip so many times all the credits from the flight in the hotel I actually didn't even use all of our flight credit to book it like lay away in your Yeah, like it just, you know, all the money's credits through credits through all the travel companies.
So yeah, so I'm going to go in a late July for two and a half weeks and do the course in Oxford. And then the plan after that is I'm going to go to the Cotswolds and then I'm going to do a steam train journey to Cornwall and back in a day with my boss because he's into steam trains too. And I thought he's going to come over from Ireland and ride the steam train together and be steam train nerds.
I just can't be very excited about it. And so we're going to have a fun steam train journey. And then after that...
Okay, it leads from Bristol Temple Meads Station, which is a cathedral of railway stations. And it's going to go through Somerset, through Devon, into Cornwall, and terminate, I think in par is where it terminates. And then you get to go take a bus to Charlestown and see where they film Poldark. So it's an all-day thing. and they feed you on the train, they feed you breakfast, they feed you dinner.
Yeah. So we're doing that. And then the next day, I'm going to spend the rest of the trip exploring the north of England. I have booked a nice hotel outside of Yorkshire called the Middle. It's one of those National Trust hotel properties where the house got turned into a hotel and it's owned and maintained by National Trust. So it's like you get to stay in a National Trust property essentially. So and then there's going to be.
There was, it'll be more steam trains. Oh, never mind. Yeah, more steam trains, Jack. Maybe airplanes too. And then I'll finish the trip the last 48 hours in London because I booked to two. to Hidden London tours or the London Transport Museum, which were booked with credits because previous trips had been canceled. So it was like, use it or lose it.
See, my Fortnum and Mason list. Like, do you want that digitally or do you want just a whole notebook of...
So that is the plan. Now, today is Monday, March 28th, or March 28th. There is a 115 days to this trip.
115 days. I'm almost there. I'd like to just go to sleep and wake up on July 22nd when I'm leaving. But unfortunately, there's a lot to do between now and then.
Yeah, to sell these light boxes to help fund the trip, to sell the books that we're going to be launching in the next few weeks.
Because I want to finish the travel. discussion and then we'll move on. So, yeah, and it's going to be a great reintroduction to Britain because I'm going to get to visit Shasbury and Dorset, the place I love of all places in England. I get to see Goldhill again where my soul lives, which I miss so much during the pandemic. I'm going to get to spend a week in Oxford, being pretending to be a student, learning about Nelson and eating all the great food that's in Oxford.
And then I'm going to get to explore a steam train journey to Cornwall and then explore Northern England. I'm basically going to go from one end of the country to the other within this two weeks. So I'm going to see a lot. Like, I can already see all the great pictures that will be in the 2023 calendar, articles for the website, diaries, like I'm swimming with content ideas, and I'm looking forward to seeing some of our friends again.
I really wish she was able to come, but I'm making the most of it by doing things I know will her to tears. Yes. So I will be packing the trip at steam trains, airplanes, and yeah, and stately homes, because one can get stately home fatigue after visiting so many stately homes. And, you know, based on our trip to Ireland, based on other travel, stuff that we've read, we know that, I know to expect that travel will be different, that Britain's sort of landscape has been changed by the pandemic, that it's now more common for restaurants to have outside seating.
A lot of streets in London were actually closed off the traffic and turned into Alfresco dining scenes.
Yeah, a lot of, so a lot of that has stayed, you know, some tourist attractions have closed. Tourist traps have closed, no more than them, it's other than the people that worked for them, which is sad. But new tourist traps will open, you know, new tourist attractions have, however, I've opened. All the National Trust properties have reopened. Most of all. All of them have. The big thing, though, that I've read is that, and that's, this was the case when we were in Ireland, is you have to plan more closely what you're going to do from day to day and not leave it up to chance because you have to pre-book your tickets to get in everywhere.
You have, and it's usually a time ticket. Yeah, they do that to control numbers and whatnot. And I suspect a lot of attractors will actually keep the system because it helps them manage traffic flows and not let the places get too crowded. And as some people may still not be comfortable traveling this year, you know, people who travel this year will oftentimes have places to them or just with other British people. So avoid coming on the school holidays.
I'll put a list in our, in the show notes that there are times. times when we advise you not to go to Britain, that's when the kids are on school holidays. And they have three, no, they have, I think it's like six school holidays. There's half term. There's like a week in the middle of the term. Then there's the break between terms. And then there's a six-week break in the summer. So that's like, those are the times when the tourist attractions all around Britain are rammed with British people going to see their tourist attractions.
Yeah, we learn that less in the hard way when trying to go to the Natural History Museum. the line was around the block literally it's a free museum so it's not like the hold-up was paying to get in it's just too many people some people still aren't comfortable being around other people and that's okay so expect people to keep their distance from you you know or or the
opposite expect people not to keep their you just got to really roll in it i know i know the london
transport has said that their their numbers are getting back to what they were you know pre-pandemic so the tube trains are getting crowded again oh yeah i think i read something
this week just this week that they were saying but you know i you know here in chicago i i read something very similar that saying that you know within the past couple of weeks it feels like there are more people in the city and yeah people are starting to commute again yeah i know chicago for the last two years up
until a couple months ago well not even like a month ago yeah downtown chicago was a ghost town bizarre very eerie even on a saturday in the summer yeah it was just nobody there's just nobody down
there and granted the pan with the exception though of right of like la la la paloosa yeah then it
there's more to it than just the pandemic in chicago's case but but now it feels like chicago's back to life like we've been did the symphony in the last few months we went to the opera last week we've been to the art institute like people are like the cultural life of chicago's coming back and from what i've read and from what i've talked to with our first over there that's the case in london life is coming back cultural life is coming back just expect now there's no mask requirements but maybe if you're comfortable you should probably wear a mask we we mask we we mask still you know we i will probably mask while i'm traveling i don't because i don't want i don't want to get COVID while i'm there so yeah please don't bring that home and i don't want to bring it home and so and and like she said earlier the biggest thing is flexibility yeah you have to be flexible because you know i've planned all these things for my trip but i'm also well aware that i may have to cancel every single one of these things and do something else because the train got canceled or the hotel got closed or like it might just be this guy hold up in a in a cottage somewhere you're like hey yeah you know that sounds fine to me being stuck in english countryside for two weeks that's fine i'll just write log into work because i'm lame like that so that's the travel plan i don't know when we're going to go together you know she only gets two weeks vacation and and and it's not fair for me to take her whole vacation to take her to take her to england if that's not where she wants to go there are other
places we would like to wow did you really just worded like that well no okay i'm just going to say that there's probably like a tropical island somewhere down in the caribbean no offense we can go to a british island okay we go to a
british island there we go best of both worlds yeah there are other places that both of us would like to go then britain too so it's not fair for me to hog all of our vacation time to go to england we talked about going for the platinum jubilee in june but honestly when we talked about it
and talked about it it would like it was initially in its first iteration was like a big family trip and taking the kids and which could have been really really cool but for our family we have
some unique needs for our family situation yeah it's just it depends on a lot of factors and then we talked about it and we looked back to the diamond jubilee and realized where we took when we took the kids the last time there was only one kid at that point yeah there was only one now there's two they keep multiplying multiply and we we had a great time being there for diamond jubilee it was a great trip one of the best even with the stress of traveling with a six-month-old but we when we looked at the events that we attended and the things that we did we didn't really need to be there for a lot of the diamond jubilee stuff like and the way we're going to cover it this time around like we'll have the content anyway whether i'm there or not through a partnership we have with the PA now so well that and we've got friends that have always
kind of stepped in the gap and yeah we've people who write for a clotopia yeah yeah we've built a great
network yeah we've got writers and we've got like friends and writers and and and wire services like I don't actually need to physically be there for the platinum jubilee especially if it's a very much a repeat of what happened 10 years ago can I get that statement in writing no I really want to be there oh I know you really i'm still trying like i'm still trying to find a way to go oh my goodness uh this is asking by the way but as a as a family it didn't make sense for us all to go and like i said i i don't want to hug all her vacation time dragging her around for and honestly like we're not like we're not necessarily comfortable going to events with a lot of people no and that's that's that's what the platinum jubilee will be events with lots of people well i mean let's let's like if
we're going to really super be honest here like we went to the diamond jubilee with a child and a stroller and it was amazing the crowd was great we were in london but like we hit this point where we were coming down to the river to see the flotilla parade right yeah and like it started to become this crush it started to rain too as we expected it to be a crush and you know we're we're we're chicagoans like we're used to cities we're used to big crowds but there was something about this crowd that and maybe it was just as a new mom where i was just like you know what this is this feels scary to me this many people and i have an infant and just and so it was raining and i said to him i'm like i'm going back to the flat to watch this on tully which is the most ridiculous thing ever but you know what it's all going on outside but we were just watched on telly it was great we had a fire in the fireplace in our flat we you know we put out a beautiful british spread put Anglotopia junior down for a nap and we enjoyed it so you know just kind of like thinking through like what the next jubilee would look like what would that look like with our kids you know i i can at least speak for myself like although life is returning to normal like i'm not comfortable in a crowd of thousands or hundreds of thousands like i'm just i'm not comfortable with that yet and so to like to put my put the kids in that situation too like and i'm just trying to illustrate the point that even pre-pandemic it made me a little like oh there are a lot of people out here as there should be and and but i think that level of crowd just made me uncomfortable even then so i can't imagine like what that would be like now at some
pandemic on top yeah so we're not going for the platinum people d and that so at this at this point who knows what will change if i mean like i didn't plan to go to a hair mary megan's wedding but then the media appearances started calling like we want to talk to you are
you going to be there and it's like well we built those yeah yeah like that's important
to keep that going so you don't lose that so if i start getting calls like that then i might have to go but you know we don't want to we'll see we're not taking a big family trip yeah it wouldn't be a big family trip anyway yeah and as a consequence i don't know when we're going as a family there kids are old enough now that i think they would like a trip to england because that's all you know it's all i talk about they might be curious to know about the place that their dad is obsessed with and i think for
our family and our family's needs you know because our kids are are still kids you know from chicago to london that's that's that's a good that's a good time jump and so now you're going to contend with jet lag and one of our kids you know would do okay and the other kid just would not do great with jet lag and just so you know they get over it but what my point is is is that we really would like to go for like a week to like nine 10 days with them and so it's just really kind of finding that time not only in their schedule with school but in our schedules as well to you know to kind of book out and block out that amount of time to go do that yeah and eventually we will so we just need to
it just needs to and i i feel like i feel like even just just just one of us just needs to go and then that will start travel again like and then it will feel possible and it will feel like things are for us at least getting back to some kind of normality that i you know we we i us can go to england again so moving on to books and because that's the platinum jubli's a good segue for that we decided to put out a special magazine slash book thing on the queen thing it's a collector's item it's a commemorative thing it's a commemorative it's beautiful and we haven't seen it yet i don't have it it will be beautiful we've seen the mock-ups they're it's really beautiful so it's called crown and glory and it costs 2499 us dollars free ship it includes free shipping to the USA sorry elsewhere we have to charge because it's a lot to ship internationally right now but it's 2499 it's 128 full-color pages and it is a guide to every aspect of queen elizabeth's life reign british history british culture right now i'm working on a big long article chronically all the like kind of the major events that have happened in britain during her entire reign she's lived through a lot of
we've covered the core of it is a series of 12 articles that we've actually been published in the magazine that's sunsetting this year the angletobie magazine and so we put all 12 these articles that's the core of it and it's covers every aspect of her life her childhood her relationship with margaret the abdication crisis because she wasn't supposed to be queen how that all came about her her her life as a mother modernizing the monarchy her marriage to fill up the coronation like everything and on top of that there's going to be tons of licensed pictures historical images that we've gotten key events key people well and it's more than just that though
it's it's it's that we really wanted to tell a narrative yeah and that you know there are gosh probably millions of pictures of her but the goal was that you know we wanted to really kind of almost make our own tribute to the queen right so like we lovingly put this together as a tribute to really kind of you know Anglotopia's celebration of of her time on the throne and the remarkable job she's done well and a celebration
of britain during its reign because it is such a changed country from her beginning of her reign to now post-world war too yeah began her reign began in the austere post-war years where they were still rationing and now look at Britain you know and so we kind of the thing is going to cover all of that commemorative I'm we started selling it a couple weeks ago we're only making 250 copies so it's like a collectible that's what I said from the start and we've sold 150 so if you would like one we would urge you to follow the link in the show notes and preserve one because we're going to press probably next week I'm almost done laying everything out um i'm like 90 percent there just got to get over the line and that's going to be a great great thing for angletopi readers to have and you won't be able to get anywhere else we may be able to release a few copies on amazon but i won't know until we finished sales and how many copies are left and yeah and then they are going to ship next month so you'll have them in time for the jubilee celebration so you can have it as like your little guidebook to the jubilee there's a great article in there by laura porter our london correspondent who has summarized all the events that are going to be happening there's so much going yeah and so you you'll know how to plan your tv viewing around it it's a great little publication a commemorative publication so follow the link in the show notes and you can reserve one i'd urge you to do it sooner rather than later we'll issue the last call next week and that will sign of be the sort of the last the last guess with that and then on top of that i have i have a lineup of three books that i need to get out before i go to oxford and i need to get them out because they're going to help pay for my expenses while i'm there and so the first book that's coming out this friday that i just finished literally yesterday finished laying it out yesterday is a book called great events in british history the top 50 most important events that anglophiles must know about british history it's a similar format to the book we put out last year called great britons which was the top 50 greatest britts who ever lived this covers events not people and it's sort of like it's i the tagline i came up with yesterday was that it's the anglophiles guidebook to british history it will tell you the 50 most important events that you need to know about in british history and it gives you a summary of it its legacy how it's important to britain now and then if you might you might goal when you read this book is that if you watch british tv and they're talking about an event or a thing like you'll know because it's in the book where you can use the book as a reference and the book is massive it's going to be 450 pages 450 pages the if the name sounds familiar we about three quarters of the articles have been published on the website in the past the rest have not and so there will be a lot of new they've been updated and yeah they've been updated and a lot of there would be a lot of so like there's a lot of new content in the book and it's going to be sort of a great little reference it'll be releasing an ebook and a print version so that'll be released from friday and i'll update the show notes before the after this goes out with a link to that but it'll be on the ingotopia store don't worry we'll send an email blast when it's on the release day we'll be shouting about it for a while the next book that we want to put out is and i'm halfway done writing it is 101 oxford travel tips
ironic notice a theme here so our we have a publication now called 101 london travel tips it's the core of our business is this track is this guidebook like it's a very popular and so the plan is to start releasing guidebooks in a similar format for other major cities and geographic
areas around britain well and heavily heavily traveled areas that are places that we know really well
well that and that are really good and popular yeah popular rhetorice so this one is about oxford coincidentally i'm going to oxford so the hopefully the sales will help with that well i'm halfway done writing it it's turning out really great and it's also giving me a lot of ideas for the next ones because like we're going to do the conswolds i'm going to do dorset so but that's in the future i had to be careful that to get overwhelmed with all the things i want to do yeah deep breath
feel like our readers need a deep breath out too like everybody deep breath sorry i'm speaking very
speaking very fast so and then the next book after that is going to be great british icons following a similar format of the events in the great britain's book focus what's the
difference between an icon and a great britain the icons are things oh literally so the icons are
great british brands great british things like the phone box the mailbox the tartis like things like things like that that uh britain is known for and it gives you the background on those and the history and whatnot that should be coming out in june we saw on our drive from lands into jonah groats along with sort of being a travel log to the journey and then the then the appendices will be some travel tips for people who want to do the drive it's called a trip too far lands in the jonah grotes and i'm hoping to open up for pre-orders this summer but i have to finish writing at first but i'm almost done with it so give me encouragement internet i need encouragement to finish it because i need to get over the line it's been a very very very very difficult book to write for lots of reasons i won't go into here i'll talk about we'll talk about all this when the book is released it's very challenging to write especially during the pandemic and especially the further away we get from the trip the harder it is to write about it but i think what has ended up being created is going to be a nice worthy travel memoir that everybody he's going to love and i think i'm really excited to share it with everybody so now that i'm now that i'm losing my voice i think this is a good place to wrap it up what do you think agree so that's it for us from now we promise not to be so long until the next podcast and thanks for listening and if you have any questions comments concerns we'll leave a comment on youtube leave a comment on our facebook page or on the website or you can email us at editor at angletovia.net and you can email us at and get in touch with us.
So thanks for listening. Bye everybody.
