In the Beginning: England, England
I haven't written about my experience abroad yet because I wanted to give myself some time to allow the experience of travelling to sink in. It's been 6 days. According to some, or most in the country just south of me, an entire world had been created in 6 days. As a puny mortal, I need time to allow dust to settle, experience to penetrate.
I don't think there's any way I can capture the 18 days of experiences within a single post. A) I'd be here for about a week. B) It would be as long as a city block. I think it best that I write about it in chunks.
Historically, I've had few reasons supporting the absolute need to travel: work burnout; a dullness in perception, subsequently welcoming any new thing; a weariness regarding my environment - either being sick of the sight of the local yokels or, given enough dreary days, Toronto's communist carry-over architecture. With an airline ticket in hand, I've tended to perform a psychological warm-up a few days preceding take off. The usual manifestation includes, but is not limited to, being caustic at work and/or at home. Interesting to note (to self): It didn't happen this time. The days prior were like a mirage.
4 countries in 18 days.
Still hard to fathom.
In the past when I've been fortunate enough to have the means to travel, I'd considered the experience to be wholly for mine own pleasure. How many experiences can I cram into a week? For years, on a day to day basis, I'd denied myself experiences or treats only allowing these things for myself in the rare moments of travel. Reasoning? Petty enjoyment was allowed during an allocated respite, but not for regular times. Regular defined as: a lifetime of panicking while pursuing serious work. When travelling I shamelessly watch people; repeatedly splurge on espressos; go on excursions; eat like a queen; not worry. The question always on my tongue when I return to Canadian soil has always been: How can the experiences gleaned from travel be incorporated into my life at home?
I didn't ask myself this question when I returned home. Things have changed for me in the recent years, mostly because I've learned that serious work isn't something I'm cut out for. Panicking does nothing more than make my newly discovered irregular heartbeat extra-terrestrial. I still seek new experience, but not in the way I'd imagined.
I've eaten the best food in the best restaurants, sipped the finest wines, the most exemplary beers and the most kick ass coffee in the most astonishing environments. But not everyday. Not every year. I feel lucky to report if it's once over a lifetime. I realised that at home I don't give myself every little whim thing, but I no longer feel I deny myself anything. So, what can happen when a person is want for nothing material, but still craves experience? Still feels the old pull of bringing her experience home with her?
During a visit to W.H. Smith, an English bookseller, a book reached its pulpy fingers out to grab me. Kate Fox's Watching the English. The author is a self professed ethno-anthropologist. Travelling to different countries, she studies the behaviour, customs and unspoken etiquette of the nation's peoples. Being British herself and genuinely fascinated by her own culture, she's compiled a book about the bizarre, but to me imminently charming, behaviour of her own people.
Like queuing up.
The Brits have a natural instinct to stand in a line, conceivably for hours at a time. Even if there is no visible queue they will create a line of one. They also don't tip. They will buy the bartender a drink, but they won't make a big deal about it because any talk of money is vulgar to them.
The idea of watching people to gain a deeper understanding of where they've come from to be who they are at a random moment of witness, is who I am fundamentally. To find a through line that bridges gaps from one culture to the next, that makes us wholly individual, yet inescapably, commonly human, is what I feel I've been placed on this Earth for. The bridging of gaps. The understanding of past leading to present, informing future.
But I was still on vacation.
Before we left for the European Family/Friends Tour of 2005, I created a set of expectations. Loose as they were, they were expectations of the flesh. Eating and drinking like locals is always my mandate when abroad. I hope upon hopes that the only people inside the McDonalds found in every major city we visited were locals and not travellers. I don't respect myself much when I turn my nose up to cuisine I wouldn't normally suss out. But getting combo #3, or whatever the McChicken combo is, while out of district, is, to me, on par with xenophobia to the Bush degree.
In England I found myself performing an action I've never demonstrated before.
Clutching my heart in hopes to prevent further chest pains.
Potential Causes:
Traditional English Breakfast consisting of 2 fried eggs, 3 pieces of toast slathered with butter and jam, 3 kinds of pork, sautéed mushrooms, fried tomato, 2 jugs of orange juice, 2 pots of coffee.
Selection of cheeses, pâtés, ales
Cream Tea. This is a tradition in the Devon region. A cup of tea served with 2 enormous freshly baked scones, homemade strawberry jam and clotted cream (which one is supposed to pile high enough that, upon first bite, whipped matter, the leading cause of UK coronaries, enters both nostrils simultaneously).
Some bland/tasteless fish that was allegedly grilled, but looked closer to boiled, served with chips (fries) and peas. Total weight of plate= 3 lbs.
3 pints
All within a 6 hour period of consumption
The Comrade: So, this seizing feeling? The kind that's redolent of Freddy Kruger shoving his hand into my chest and repeatedly fanning, FANNING his fingers? Is this heartburn?
Fatty: Hm. I don't know. Mine feels more like burning.
The Comrade: I think I need a walk.
Uncle Eric: What you need is a scotch.
Uncle Eric.
85 years old
Former Shell Oil lifer
Conservative to the nth degree
The Comrade: [at dinner at the local pub] Would anyone like to try my fish? (Subtext: This bland/tasteless wonder)
Uncle Eric: I never mix meat with fish nor seafood.
The Comrade: I suppose you fancy yourself a bit of a purist then?
Uncle Eric: [slipping it on like a glove] Yes! Yes, I suppose I am a purist.
Aunty Annie: I find it rather sad that he never wants to share anything I'm having.
The Comrade: Eric! Share with your wife!
Uncle Eric: She orders what she likes and I order what I like.
The Comrade: So, the concept of surf and turf is lost on you?
Uncle Eric: Only fools mix. [He says as I pile bland/tasteless fish onto Fatty's plate of bland/tasteless meat]
The Comrade: You know, Eric. There is a fine line between purist and curmudgeonly old coot!
Silence for exactly 5 seconds
Then (gratefully) an eruption...
of the good sort.
I met him 15 minutes prior to this transaction.
Ah, yes. Making friends and influencing people again.
But what I learned later was that Uncle Eric's curmudgeonly self was never challenged. He was simply allowed to bully his wife, be nothing more than a spoiled little boy often. Fatty's Aunt Annie looked at me like a scientist looks at a lab rat.
After a rousing game that Fatty initiated: pin the accusing finger on the multinational, the aforementioned oil company not excluded, Eric accused Fatty of looking bright but being stupid. Fatty was looking at me for support. Sitting in their parlour, one room of many in their manor, a manor furnished and secured by the Shell company, I knew nothing I could say could sway this man's opinion. To the day he dies, he will maintain he was honoured to have worked at such a fine company. Poor Fatty didn't think I was supporting him though. I thought I'd make it up to him later.
Uncle Eric: [12:30am according to his (unfurnished by Shell) watch] Well, it's bedtime!
Fatty: Um, Uncle Eric? Do you mind if we duck outside to have a cigarette before we go upstairs?
Uncle Eric: No, I'm tired. [with a wink] Just smoke out the window, eh?
This seemed better than bundling up and shivering outside.
The Comrade: Is it so cold in here or is it just me?
Aunt Annie: We turn the heat off at exactly 10:30 every night.
The Comrade: Oh.
Uncle Eric: And from your bedroom, don't walk downstairs, whatever you do!
The Comrade: Why?
Uncle Eric: I'm turning on the alarm. Anyone on the stairs will trip it.
All of a sudden I felt like I would never be fed again. That the jailer would forget about us.
Fatty: Let's just go to bed.
Twin frozen ice floes masquerading as Mary and Dick Van Dyke's single bed scenarios were never to reach the Titanic to iceberg reality that evening. The doorway to the ensuite bathroom was the insurance policy.
The other policy, the one I've grown up with in understanding the English, has been one of No sex, please. We're British. It makes sense if only by virtue of the fact that, well, they're not having sex, so why should we? It's not our bunker. It's the only explanation for their rigidity when it comes to bedtime and restricted wandering about in the middle of the night.
Curmudgeonly as he was, Uncle Eric is okay with me, though.
And he was bang on about the scotch.
They're not all rigid. Some are very permissive. Some, like the fellow we made the 5 hour flight, followed directly by a 5.5 hour bus trek, for in the first place.
Fatty's grandfather, Granbobby, must be taking Viagra. He drives like Mario Andretti, takes stairs two at a time, smiles constantly and I think I saw him goose his wife a couple of times. He wears hearing aids in both ears, not from old age, but as a consequence of being a bomber during WWs I & II. He turns his hearing aids down or off when he doesn't want to bother listening to people who probably don't have much to say. I think it's the secret to his marital success.
Granbobby: Where are you going?
The Comrade: Well, I thought I'd peruse your garden as I smoked a cigarette.
Granbobby: You smoke? Well!
He said, as he delightfully pulled out his package of rum dipped Colts and escorted me to the conservatory, a much nicer word than sunroom. With pride, a large hand-cut crystal ashtray was gently placed in the center of the designated smoking table next to my glass of sherry.
God save the Queen!
He laughed at all my jokes, including the ones he didn't hear; escorted me crawling from one fine pub to the next, not daring to let me enter a seedy one.
90 years old.
He's the one Fatty looks like the most.
I miss him like mad.
With the generous aid of extended family, we had pints in real British pubs, ate a fine curry, gingerly walked through pastures where wild ponies graze, to skip through moors that led to old granite mining sites. We saw real English weather. I've never seen as many sheep in my culminated life. It was like a Greek man's wet dream.
Thinking about Kate Fox, the ethno-anthropologist, as much as I think I'd like to be her, or something like her, the best I can muster is a comment on the individuals I meet. Evidently there are culturally unique attributes that every region of the world has, but I can't comment on them. I see the stuff that bridges one human to the next. And that's okay with me.
I knew I'd love England. As Canada is part of the Commonwealth and had been a little part of the British Empire™ for most of its life, the English had left their brand on my homeland. We say sorry quite a bit and we're generally very polite people. Generally. Like right proper hooligans, a term derived by the British, we don't mind a scrap here and there, though. Depending on the situation, of course.
Hm. I think I'm discovering my roots, more and more.
I don't think there's any way I can capture the 18 days of experiences within a single post. A) I'd be here for about a week. B) It would be as long as a city block. I think it best that I write about it in chunks.
Historically, I've had few reasons supporting the absolute need to travel: work burnout; a dullness in perception, subsequently welcoming any new thing; a weariness regarding my environment - either being sick of the sight of the local yokels or, given enough dreary days, Toronto's communist carry-over architecture. With an airline ticket in hand, I've tended to perform a psychological warm-up a few days preceding take off. The usual manifestation includes, but is not limited to, being caustic at work and/or at home. Interesting to note (to self): It didn't happen this time. The days prior were like a mirage.
4 countries in 18 days.
Still hard to fathom.
In the past when I've been fortunate enough to have the means to travel, I'd considered the experience to be wholly for mine own pleasure. How many experiences can I cram into a week? For years, on a day to day basis, I'd denied myself experiences or treats only allowing these things for myself in the rare moments of travel. Reasoning? Petty enjoyment was allowed during an allocated respite, but not for regular times. Regular defined as: a lifetime of panicking while pursuing serious work. When travelling I shamelessly watch people; repeatedly splurge on espressos; go on excursions; eat like a queen; not worry. The question always on my tongue when I return to Canadian soil has always been: How can the experiences gleaned from travel be incorporated into my life at home?
I didn't ask myself this question when I returned home. Things have changed for me in the recent years, mostly because I've learned that serious work isn't something I'm cut out for. Panicking does nothing more than make my newly discovered irregular heartbeat extra-terrestrial. I still seek new experience, but not in the way I'd imagined.
I've eaten the best food in the best restaurants, sipped the finest wines, the most exemplary beers and the most kick ass coffee in the most astonishing environments. But not everyday. Not every year. I feel lucky to report if it's once over a lifetime. I realised that at home I don't give myself every little whim thing, but I no longer feel I deny myself anything. So, what can happen when a person is want for nothing material, but still craves experience? Still feels the old pull of bringing her experience home with her?
During a visit to W.H. Smith, an English bookseller, a book reached its pulpy fingers out to grab me. Kate Fox's Watching the English. The author is a self professed ethno-anthropologist. Travelling to different countries, she studies the behaviour, customs and unspoken etiquette of the nation's peoples. Being British herself and genuinely fascinated by her own culture, she's compiled a book about the bizarre, but to me imminently charming, behaviour of her own people.
Like queuing up.
The Brits have a natural instinct to stand in a line, conceivably for hours at a time. Even if there is no visible queue they will create a line of one. They also don't tip. They will buy the bartender a drink, but they won't make a big deal about it because any talk of money is vulgar to them.
The idea of watching people to gain a deeper understanding of where they've come from to be who they are at a random moment of witness, is who I am fundamentally. To find a through line that bridges gaps from one culture to the next, that makes us wholly individual, yet inescapably, commonly human, is what I feel I've been placed on this Earth for. The bridging of gaps. The understanding of past leading to present, informing future.
But I was still on vacation.
Before we left for the European Family/Friends Tour of 2005, I created a set of expectations. Loose as they were, they were expectations of the flesh. Eating and drinking like locals is always my mandate when abroad. I hope upon hopes that the only people inside the McDonalds found in every major city we visited were locals and not travellers. I don't respect myself much when I turn my nose up to cuisine I wouldn't normally suss out. But getting combo #3, or whatever the McChicken combo is, while out of district, is, to me, on par with xenophobia to the Bush degree.
In England I found myself performing an action I've never demonstrated before.
Clutching my heart in hopes to prevent further chest pains.
Potential Causes:
Traditional English Breakfast consisting of 2 fried eggs, 3 pieces of toast slathered with butter and jam, 3 kinds of pork, sautéed mushrooms, fried tomato, 2 jugs of orange juice, 2 pots of coffee.
Selection of cheeses, pâtés, ales
Cream Tea. This is a tradition in the Devon region. A cup of tea served with 2 enormous freshly baked scones, homemade strawberry jam and clotted cream (which one is supposed to pile high enough that, upon first bite, whipped matter, the leading cause of UK coronaries, enters both nostrils simultaneously).
Some bland/tasteless fish that was allegedly grilled, but looked closer to boiled, served with chips (fries) and peas. Total weight of plate= 3 lbs.
3 pints
All within a 6 hour period of consumption
The Comrade: So, this seizing feeling? The kind that's redolent of Freddy Kruger shoving his hand into my chest and repeatedly fanning, FANNING his fingers? Is this heartburn?
Fatty: Hm. I don't know. Mine feels more like burning.
The Comrade: I think I need a walk.
Uncle Eric: What you need is a scotch.
Uncle Eric.
85 years old
Former Shell Oil lifer
Conservative to the nth degree
The Comrade: [at dinner at the local pub] Would anyone like to try my fish? (Subtext: This bland/tasteless wonder)
Uncle Eric: I never mix meat with fish nor seafood.
The Comrade: I suppose you fancy yourself a bit of a purist then?
Uncle Eric: [slipping it on like a glove] Yes! Yes, I suppose I am a purist.
Aunty Annie: I find it rather sad that he never wants to share anything I'm having.
The Comrade: Eric! Share with your wife!
Uncle Eric: She orders what she likes and I order what I like.
The Comrade: So, the concept of surf and turf is lost on you?
Uncle Eric: Only fools mix. [He says as I pile bland/tasteless fish onto Fatty's plate of bland/tasteless meat]
The Comrade: You know, Eric. There is a fine line between purist and curmudgeonly old coot!
Silence for exactly 5 seconds
Then (gratefully) an eruption...
of the good sort.
I met him 15 minutes prior to this transaction.
Ah, yes. Making friends and influencing people again.
But what I learned later was that Uncle Eric's curmudgeonly self was never challenged. He was simply allowed to bully his wife, be nothing more than a spoiled little boy often. Fatty's Aunt Annie looked at me like a scientist looks at a lab rat.
After a rousing game that Fatty initiated: pin the accusing finger on the multinational, the aforementioned oil company not excluded, Eric accused Fatty of looking bright but being stupid. Fatty was looking at me for support. Sitting in their parlour, one room of many in their manor, a manor furnished and secured by the Shell company, I knew nothing I could say could sway this man's opinion. To the day he dies, he will maintain he was honoured to have worked at such a fine company. Poor Fatty didn't think I was supporting him though. I thought I'd make it up to him later.
Uncle Eric: [12:30am according to his (unfurnished by Shell) watch] Well, it's bedtime!
Fatty: Um, Uncle Eric? Do you mind if we duck outside to have a cigarette before we go upstairs?
Uncle Eric: No, I'm tired. [with a wink] Just smoke out the window, eh?
This seemed better than bundling up and shivering outside.
The Comrade: Is it so cold in here or is it just me?
Aunt Annie: We turn the heat off at exactly 10:30 every night.
The Comrade: Oh.
Uncle Eric: And from your bedroom, don't walk downstairs, whatever you do!
The Comrade: Why?
Uncle Eric: I'm turning on the alarm. Anyone on the stairs will trip it.
All of a sudden I felt like I would never be fed again. That the jailer would forget about us.
Fatty: Let's just go to bed.
Twin frozen ice floes masquerading as Mary and Dick Van Dyke's single bed scenarios were never to reach the Titanic to iceberg reality that evening. The doorway to the ensuite bathroom was the insurance policy.
The other policy, the one I've grown up with in understanding the English, has been one of No sex, please. We're British. It makes sense if only by virtue of the fact that, well, they're not having sex, so why should we? It's not our bunker. It's the only explanation for their rigidity when it comes to bedtime and restricted wandering about in the middle of the night.
Curmudgeonly as he was, Uncle Eric is okay with me, though.
And he was bang on about the scotch.
They're not all rigid. Some are very permissive. Some, like the fellow we made the 5 hour flight, followed directly by a 5.5 hour bus trek, for in the first place.
Fatty's grandfather, Granbobby, must be taking Viagra. He drives like Mario Andretti, takes stairs two at a time, smiles constantly and I think I saw him goose his wife a couple of times. He wears hearing aids in both ears, not from old age, but as a consequence of being a bomber during WWs I & II. He turns his hearing aids down or off when he doesn't want to bother listening to people who probably don't have much to say. I think it's the secret to his marital success.
Granbobby: Where are you going?
The Comrade: Well, I thought I'd peruse your garden as I smoked a cigarette.
Granbobby: You smoke? Well!
He said, as he delightfully pulled out his package of rum dipped Colts and escorted me to the conservatory, a much nicer word than sunroom. With pride, a large hand-cut crystal ashtray was gently placed in the center of the designated smoking table next to my glass of sherry.
God save the Queen!
He laughed at all my jokes, including the ones he didn't hear; escorted me crawling from one fine pub to the next, not daring to let me enter a seedy one.
90 years old.
He's the one Fatty looks like the most.
I miss him like mad.
With the generous aid of extended family, we had pints in real British pubs, ate a fine curry, gingerly walked through pastures where wild ponies graze, to skip through moors that led to old granite mining sites. We saw real English weather. I've never seen as many sheep in my culminated life. It was like a Greek man's wet dream.
Thinking about Kate Fox, the ethno-anthropologist, as much as I think I'd like to be her, or something like her, the best I can muster is a comment on the individuals I meet. Evidently there are culturally unique attributes that every region of the world has, but I can't comment on them. I see the stuff that bridges one human to the next. And that's okay with me.
I knew I'd love England. As Canada is part of the Commonwealth and had been a little part of the British Empire™ for most of its life, the English had left their brand on my homeland. We say sorry quite a bit and we're generally very polite people. Generally. Like right proper hooligans, a term derived by the British, we don't mind a scrap here and there, though. Depending on the situation, of course.
Hm. I think I'm discovering my roots, more and more.
posted by Comrade Chicken at
5:46 p.m.
1 Comments:
I am sorry to report that we didn't partake in the mushy peas, dear PAK. When Fatty announced that they sounded decidedly disgusting there was a wave of alarm in the form of rising, quite audible inhales. I think we really offended them.
God, I feel like a McDonalds eater.
By
Comrade Chicken, at 12:02 p.m.
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