On second thoughts...
“When travelling alone,” my husband warned me once, “you need to watch your thoughts.” I never quite understood this until this morning.
Well, I wasn’t travelling as opposed to waiting in line at the bank. For no reason I can explain, I began to think of a bloke I once worked with.
Geoff would probe his ears with straightened out paper clips - and I’m not talking mere caresses here, he’d really jam that clip all the way home, then twirl it between two fingers, as if tuning into a radio station. I felt certain it must have been excruciating but Geoff seemed to draw great pleasure from it. Sometimes his eyes would roll back and he’d make rapturous gurgling noises. Maybe he thought nobody noticed, but we all sat there, transfixed. Once, during a particular rigorous session, the paper clip all but disappeared and seemed as it if it might be stuck. A colleague from across the room cried out to Geoff, enquiring if it would help if one of us pulled from the other side.
I thought of this as I peered into the pimply ear of the teenager ahead of me in the queue and I laughed out load – a sudden lunatic chortle that startled me as much as everyone else in the bank. I covered my mouth with my hand but more laughter managed to leak out. The bank’s customers and staff glared at me.
It was only by staring at my muddy sneakers and concentrating very hard that I was able to compose myself, at which point I observed what could only be described as a cornflake peaking out of the bank teller’s nose.
British Elevators
Today I reacquainted myself with what could only be Britain’s most ancient elevator.
It started with me fiddling uselessly with the elevator buttons which were obviously not connected to anything but my fraying nerves. After a few irritating minutes of me stabbing at numerous buttons then calling out to an unseen elevator person, the doors clanged shut.
With a sudden burst of vigour, the elevator shot upwards to the eleventh floor at such a speed I thought my face would peel away from my skull. On reaching the eleventh floor it paused tantalizing for a half-second, then dropped ten-feet, poised for another few seconds, then proceeded to freefall to the ground floor.
I emerged with what felt like blood trickling from my ears and wobbled back to my car with as much dignity as I could muster.
Driving styles
My husband was left somewhat ashen this morning. There I was, test driving a new Chrysler 300D through the fetching English countryside - in an abundance of varying shades of green and dotted with small farms, where geese and chickens loitered along roadsides that seldom saw a passing car. I was so taken aback at some of the vistas I would crane my neck and turn around in the driver’s seat to better view it.
“I can’t quite understand how you’ve managed to stay alive all these years,” he piped up from the back seat. “You lunge around bends, mostly on the wrong side of the road then seem genuinely astonished to find a 40-ton truck bearing down on you.”
“There’s just so much to see,” I responded. “Anyway, this is why I have Penny-Lane (my teenage daughter) in the front seat.” Penny smiled brightly then continued to stare intently ahead. “You see Penny is my alarm device.”
“… your what?” my husband demanded.
As if on queue, Penny shrieked and I swerved out of the way of the oncoming vehicle at the last possible instant, I then hung out of the window shouting abuse at the passing driver before being shrieked back to the next crisis by both Penny and my husband.
“Like that,” I announced triumphantly.
A drive through England
Driving from my home on the coast of SE England to Liverpool in the NW I felt certain there is no landscape anywhere that is more collectively valued, more visited, ambled across and gazed upon, more cleverly worked, more exquisite to behold, more restful… than the countryside of England.
Just beyond my front door is a handsome church that was built in the 13th century - older than most of the buildings in Great Britain. It has been standing there, adding a little touch of nobility and grandeur to the landscape, for 800 years. If this church were in North America people would travel from all over to see it. And here it is just an anonymous country church, treasured by a few aging parishioners and one rather eccentric writer, and otherwise almost entirely unnoticed because it is just one of several hundred ancient parish churches in Kent.
Altogether there are twenty thousand ancient parish churches in Britain. There are more listed churches than there are petrol stations. Isn’t that an amazing fact? If you decided to visit one every day, it would take you 54 years to see them all.
Wherever you turn in the UK you are faced with marvelous and fascinating things – 19,000 listed ancient monuments, 600,000 archaeological sites, 100,000 miles of public footpaths, 250,000 miles of hedgerows, 73,000 war memorials, 6,500 noted bridges, 14 National Parks, more than a hundred Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty, over 4,000 sites of Special Scientific Interest. You’ll brush up against some striking reminder of England’s long and productive past.
The McDonalds Finishing School
I went to McDonalds yesterday to pick up a burger and fries for my son. Having recently moved across to the UK from mainland Europe I am accustomed to dealing with bilingual people. I now stood before a McDonalds employee - a young man who had evidently invested a recent pay cheque in a very large tub of hair gel, whom I doubt was even lingual. He just stood there with his mouth hanging open.
Not wanting to be insensitive, what with the UK being so ridiculously OTT politically correct, I thought he may have been hard of hearing so repeated my order, speaking a little louder and a little slower. But he continued to stare at me, his mouth agape.
I stepped back to look at the name of the food outlet just in case I’d walked in some kind of a health food joint, but no, there was the McDonalds sign. I returned to the counter by which point the McDonalds chap was digging in his nose. I asked him if he understood my order and proceed to outline what a hamburger looks like on the back of my hand. “To go,” I said, drawing little feet on it too.
He critically examined a recent rock dug out from the depths of his brain then proceeded to wipe it on the edge of the counter.
“Wazzat?” he said. “Duzwanthawhiffraaz…”
“I beg your pardon, could you repeat that?” I asked. “I speak English.”
With a sullen gaze and a long sigh he repeated slowly, “Duz-wan-tha-whif-fraaz!”
How I longed for a small firearm or perhaps a set of industrial tongs with which to clamp his reedy neck and draw his head close to mine.
“It makes no difference,” I said. I still only speak English.”
I stalked through the front door and went to Waitrose instead where I secured the healthier option of a lettuce and cucumber sandwich.
London City
London is an exciting, fast paced city, cultured and storied, and speaks volumes in the fog threaded low-lit streets of Chelsea or Knightsbridge, where you’re certain to find a street you’ll want to live on, a pub you’d like to get to know, and a view you’d like to call your own. Old diners where you can just have a nice cup of tea and a simple bun; medieval apartment buildings where pools of warm light give tantalizing glimpses of walls lined with books, sills of sprawling pot plants, and decorative antiques; the market squares, slumbering parks and little temples of great shopping.
There’s something to be said about the spirit of a nation who prefers their pleasures small; like the old couple I spotted in St James’ Park, huddled in artic clothing in deck chairs, wrapped in lap blankets and being pounded by winds. The man was trying to read The Daily Mail, but the wind kept wrapping it around his face. Yet they both looked content, as if they were sitting in Kirstenbosch Gardens, sitting under a warm African sun, rather than half-perishing in a severe gale. They seemed content because they could pour a cup of tea and watch the swans - and if they were feeling particularly rakish, have a chocolate digestive biscuit. Afterwards they would spend a happy half-hour packing their things into a basket then hobble off to catch a bus. They wouldn’t dare think to grumble; it’s all so romantic and inevitably a part of being British.
Hit the ground running
Two established homes, all polished and squeaky clean, everything unpacked, ironing done, husband despatched to Brussels and I’m back on the job tomorrow.
I’m researching an article for an international carrier’s in-flight magazine about visiting London (England) at Christmas. I’ll be staying at a gorgeous boutique hotel in Knightsbridge and will be visiting Buckingham Palace, Hyde Park, Harrods and several other unique stores in the most amazing city in the world.
When I get back I have a few days in which to write the article. Then I need to begin writing the article about the German castles trip, do a road test of a Chrysler 300 and arrange a trip to Iceland for Spring next year – in between starting my teenage daughter off at her new Grammar School, seeing my son off the University and having my long-standing friend from South Africa visit me for a few days.
