The Weekly Dispatch No. 4:In Which I Am Coiffed British Style, Go Horse Riding While Beth Bikes The Countryside (And Does NOT Get Lost!); We Also Welcome Another Guest and Tour Maidstone

Once, a few years ago, the woman who was giving me a haircut told me, “You have perfect hair.” Naturally, I was flattered and even though I had not earned the compliment in the way that one might earn a “Nice shot!” or “You’re quite the dancer,” I, nevertheless, left the shop that day with a bit of a swagger. Before I had even gotten to my car, however, it dawned on me that what had, on the surface, seemed like something I could be proud of, it was, in fact, a burden, an obligation. I could not, as I mentioned, take credit for my perfect hair, which meant that I had been chosen to tend to it, be its caretaker, if you will, in the same way that the Knights Templar were charged with making sure nobody messed with the Holy Grail. And, like the Holy Grail, there probably weren’t that many other heads of perfect hair parading around.

I mention this bit of personal history because I knew that when we came to England I would, at some time or other, need to get a haircut. I knew, too, that I was going to take the advice of a former academic visitor from Illinois who said that the best place in Canterbury to get a haircut—pricewise—was at Canterbury College’s training salon. So, on Monday of this past week, I called and made an appointment for Thursday at noon. I felt good, at first, about my frugality, but, as the week wore on, I grew less confident in my decision. I began to imagine a scene in which I sat down in the chair, looked in the mirror and saw Lulu from To Sir, With Love (bubble hairdo, white lipstick) behind me, armed with scissors and comb. I also began to imagine things she would say as she snipped away:

“Ow, I shouldna done that.”

“I can fix that, I think.”

“So you don’t mind it patchy then? It’s quite nice, really, innit?”

By Thursday morning, I was ready to call and cancel. But I had made such a big deal of having my hair cut by a stylist-in-training that I couldn’t back out, so I made the five-minute walk to the school and climbed three flights of stairs trailing behind a dozen Lulu-esque would-be beauticians dragging wheeled suitcases, all of whom were eyeing my perfect hair in a way that made me very uncomfortable.

As it turned out, the young woman who cut my hair was not among that group. Her name was Joy, and she was in her third year of the program. She was, she told me, already a qualified hairdresser, but she had decided to do one more year so that she could get a job in a better salon. Her boyfriend is a student at a university just outside of London, and she’s hoping to work in London and, someday, opening her own shop.

Joy was very attentive and thorough and spent about forty-five minutes cutting my hair. She asked at one point if I wanted her to use clippers, and I flashed back to childhood when my father would take my brothers and I down to the basement, one at a time, to do away with whatever hair had dared to grow on our little skulls. (I tell people that I was in seventh grade before I knew what color my hair was because it never grew long enough for me to tell.)

“No clippers,” I said. “Just scissors.” I was going to stick with that decision but once Joy had finished with my haircut, her instructor came up to check her work and decided that I really needed to be clipped. Before I could protest, the all-too-familiar drone of electric clippers buzzed in my ears and short, silver hair flew everywhere.

“There,” the instructor said, clicking off the clippers, “now that’s a proper gent’s haircut. Just put a little wax in it, and you’re finished.”

Wax?

After Joy had applied the product, I stole a quick, fearful glance in the mirror and didn’t recognize myself. I looked like a cross between David Letterman, Samuel Beckett and the drummer from U2. In all fairness, it was a proper gent’s haircut, just not this proper gent. I haven’t had my hair this short since my basement days and have never relied on putting anything on my hair to make it do something—and I haven’t used anything since, either, resulting in some bristly cowlicks—but I am happy to report that I spent only about one-fourth what I’d have spent if I’d gone to a barber, and this haircut is going to last longer than one I’d have gotten there, I’m sure. A lot longer.

While the haircut was the most personally traumatic event of the week, it certainly wasn’t the only or most important. On Friday, a group of students and I went horse riding—as it’s called here—at a very nice stable a couple of miles outside Canterbury. Because not all of the students have bicycles, we hiked out to the place and had a great one-hour hack/trail ride through woods, up and down a few hills, and across a meadow or two. Everyone stayed on and seemed to enjoy the ride, but when it was over, only one student was up for a walk back into town; the rest called a cab, waving to us as they went past.

While we were riding, Beth, who had accompanied us on her bicycle, took a tour of the countryside and happened upon the village of Stodmarsh, which has a notable pub, The Red Lion, and a little church with a little churchyard/cemetery. We’re planning to bike back there again on a nice day for lunch.

Beth’s sister, Ginger, arrived on Saturday, and we spent most of that day keeping her awake so that she could get beyond the jet lag. We showed her around the city centre, walked the grounds of the cathedral and took a boat tour on the Stour River, which flows through Canterbury. By the time we let her go to bed at nine that night, she was asleep on her feet. But it worked. She was up early the next morning and has been on schedule ever since.

We tried to get to Leeds Castle that next day, Sunday, but because it’s now the off-season for tourist attractions, we missed the connections we needed to get there. Instead, we spent the day in Maidstone, which is a nice, quiet town with an archbishop’s palace (one of five the Archbishops of Canterbury owned between Canterbury and London; no vows of poverty for those guys, apparently), a captured Russian cannon, a medieval bridge—over which a modern bridge was built; you can still see the old one, though, from river level—and a flashy new shopping mall. We also watched some fishermen for a bit. They were angling for little silver fish no more than three inches in length and, using what I thought was a great deal of ingenuity, avoided catching trees or humans when they cast their lines—they were lined up along a walkway—by shooting the baited hook out into the water with slingshots!

It was not the day or place we had in mind when we set out in the morning, but it proved to be an interesting way to spend a few hours. At this point, everything we do is an adventure, and I expect that to continue throughout our visit.

Bits and Pieces
One of the perks of our stay in university housing is that, once a week, we have our house cleaned. Celia, head of the service, had been taking care of us, but this week, we had a mother-daughter team show up. The mother is much more of a go-getter than the daughter and did most of the work. As the daughter was vacuuming (hoovering) the stairs, the vacuum cleaner (hoover) came crashing down the steps and apparently—I was not an eyewitness and only heard all of this—smashed into her. She moaned loudly and, again I’m only guessing from the sound of it, hopped around for a few seconds. All her mother said was, “Well, you shouldn’t have dropped the bloody hoover on your foot, twit.” I’m looking forward to their next visit.

I don’t know why, but I came here thinking that British television would be more dignified than American fare, but it’s not true. While the news readers do gain more credibility by virtue of their perfect diction and “accents,” the morning programs, from the little I’ve seen, are no different from the Today Show or Good Morning, America. I haven’t made a habit of watching the shows, mind you (in fact, we’ve never watched more than an hour of TV at one sitting or in a day since we’ve been here—other than the NFL game last week), but I do turn on the television in the morning to get a weather report for the day. One morning, the forecast was followed by a story about an eighty-some-year-old woman who had been locked in a public restroom for twelve hours. They went to her home for a live remote hook-up, and the host asked her how it had happened. “Well,” she said, “there was a rap on the door, and a man said, ‘Is there anyone in here?’ and I said, ‘Yes, just a moment, please,’ but he locked the door, anyway, and then moved on to the gents’ room. He must not have heard me.” At that point, before the host, I’m sure, asked her how she spent those miserable twelve hours, I turned the television off.

From the ridiculous to the sublime: We have discovered a real treasure/pleasure in the Cathedral’s Evensong service, which is highlighted by the singing of the King’s Choir, a group of 20 or so boys—with a few men included to provide the lower register—whose voices can only be described as angelic. I grew up with the liturgy they are singing, but I have never been as moved by it as I have been listening to these astonishing boys, some as young as eight years of age. Last night, we met the grandparents of one of the boys and spoke with them after the service. They said that their grandson, who is from Oxfordshire, had to move to Canterbury and “be boarded” here in order to sing with the choir. It has been hard for him—he’s only 10—so his grandparents sold their house and are moving to Canterbury to make sure he has family nearby. We plan to attend the service fairly regularly, so we will, I’m sure, run into them again. Maybe we can get their grandson’s autograph.

Lastly, while we are still very much strangers in a strange land, our computer has become British. When I was typing up a handout for my class the other day, I typed in the word “honor,” only to see my spelling corrected by the machine to read “honour.” If it suddenly develops a craving for brown sauce or marmite, we’re in deep trouble.

Next week’s dispatch will include a recap of our trip to Leeds Castle, which we reached yesterday, and, I hope, a guest entry from Beth about the trip she and Ginger are on right now to London.

Cheers!