Dispatch No. 18: In Which a Masked Man Prowls the Streets of Canterbury, A Drunk Assails My Door, Visitors Arrive, and We All Go for a Long Walk in the Woods

According to The Complete University Guide, Canterbury is the second safest university town in Great Britain, behind Bath, which makes the events of this past week surprising and perhaps a little frightening, but mainly aggravating.  I’ll give you a recap of what happened, but if you want to read more, go to kentonline.co.uk for the complete story.

Although Great Britain has not yet caught up to the U.S. when it comes to Halloween excess, it’s getting close.  Now, along High Street, there are seasonal shops with plenty of scary masks and costumes (“fancy dress,” as it’s called here) and lots of sound effects, strobe lights, etc.  In one shop window, there is a Guy Fawkes mask, featured in the graphic novel and movie, V for Vendetta, and favored by anti-government, anti-establishment groups like the computer hacker group, Anonymous, and the Occupy movement.  It is an unsettling visage, white with a wide smile, a moustache with upturned ends and a thin pointed beard, a stylized version, supposedly, of the real Guy Fawkes, who was one of a group of conspirators who tried to blow up the House of Lords in 1605.  He has his own night here, November 5, and is a kind of folk hero/villain.

A little more than a week ago, at least one person wearing one of these masks and a hoodie has been spotted in Canterbury, following people and, in general, acting creepy.  In at least one case, he attempted to grab a young woman, a Christchurch student, but she got away easily, and there were no other reports of similar assaults.  Mainly, the figure has been roaming parts of the city where there are lots of people—and lots of closed circuit cameras—intent, in my opinion--more on scaring than hurting people.  One female student from Cazenovia College in New York, who is part of our larger group, said she and a large group of friends were followed by the guy after they’d left a High Street restaurant, but he left off after a block or two.

Last Monday, they took two people into custody.  One, a 15-year-old, and the one spotted in the city centre, was brought to the station by his father.  The other, a 22-year-old, was brought in for questioning and then released on bond.  As a result of these sightings, there’s a much more visible presence of uniformed officers and, according to the newspaper, more plainclothes officers as well keeping an eye on things, but following the detaining and “quizzing” of those two, nothing else has happened. 

To the credit of the university, study abroad administrators came to the group’s Wednesday informational meeting and explained the whole situation to the students and alleviated a lot of their unease, but, as is so often the case in something like this, rumors are keeping the “masked man” alive and kicking; on Friday, students on the bus back from our field trip to London were saying that there are still three or four more faux Fawkes out there somewhere.  Given all of the increased awareness, the extra police on the street, and the omnipresent closed circuit cameras, it’s unlikely anything more will occur and, as one of the administrators told our students, in Chicago, this wouldn’t even have made the paper, let alone the front page, but because Canterbury is such an untroubled place—remarkably so, given the number of tourists and students and the potential opportunity for them to fall prey to pickpockets or con men or worse—it got everyone’s attention.

My own attention was gotten last Monday night when a reveler—unmasked and unsteady—came to my door at 1:30 a.m. and woke me from a deep sleep with all of his banging and shouting.  I sort of stumbled downstairs and listened for a bit before asking him what he wanted.

“Jimmy G!” he said.  “Jimmy G, lemme in, mate”

“There’s no Jimmy G here,” I said, hoping he could hear me over the racket he was making. 

“Jimmy G!” he said, punctuating each syllable with a kick or a fist to the door.  “Open the f***in’ door!”

“You’ve got the wrong house!"

“Wha?”  He paused for a second.  “No, I ain’t!  Jimmy G!” More kicking and slamming.

“You’ve got the wrong house,” I said again, louder and more slowly.  “There’s no Jimmy G here.”

Again, he stopped.  “James?”

“No, there’s no James here, either.  This is the wrong house.”

A couple of half-hearted slaps followed, then he was gone.  I went back upstairs and opened the front windows above the door and looked out but didn’t see anyone.  I could hear voices down the street a little, drunken voices, ordering chicken curry from a take-away shop.  I couldn’t tell if my friend was there, but I was irritated enough that I called the police and told them what had happened.  Whether or not they came, I don’t know because I got back into bed and assumed the fetal attack position, suitable for both sleeping and leaping up like a jungle cat.  I faced the door, knowing that the motion sensor that turned the hall light on any time someone goes up or down the stairs would alert me to an intruder.

The next morning, I got a text from Rich, whose flat is next to mine, asking if I had met our friend.  I called him and he told me that he had been awakened by noise at his front door, followed by the door opening and the sound of someone inside.  He jumped out of bed and started downstairs—any element of surprise eliminated by the hallway light blazing on—and found a short, somewhat muscular young man standing—weaving, really—just inside the door.  When he saw Rich, he held up his hands and said, “Sorry, mate, sorry.  Wrong house.  Wrong house.”  Rich ushered him out and pointed him in the direction of the house where they would shortly be ordering a late night snack, and then went back to his bedroom, only to hear the guy attacking my door.  Rich opened  his front window and yelled at him, but to no avail.  He kept at it until, as chronicled above, he was convinced that he was, indeed, not where he wanted to be.  Now, whenever I pass Rich’s door, I slap it a few times and yell for Jimmy G.

Later that morning, I headed up to the Canterbury West train station to meet friends Pam and John Moore, who were just starting a two-week vacation to England and Ireland.  Beth had helped them plan their trip (when she retires, I’m guessing she’ll make trip planning her new vocation, and she’s good at it), and John, though retired, has maintained his engineer’s meticulous attention to detail, so they were there at the precise time they were supposed to arrive, and we started our way back down High Street to my place.

Like everyone who has visited, Pam and John were battling jet lag, hauling suitcases along uneven cobblestones and trying to look at the buildings without falling or running into someone.  They made it without serious incident and then, after dropping their stuff off, we went on a walk, both to let them see more of Canterbury and to keep them awake.  While I went to class, they went to evensong—the boys were singing—and then we met up for a traditional English dinner (steak and ale pie; chicken, mushroom and leek pie; lamb and rosemary pie).  I dragged them around a little longer before letting them go to bed. 

When the Moores met with Beth to talk about their trip, they made a list of things that they wanted to do and, with maybe one or two exceptions, I think they did it all.  They went to Dover where they saw the castle and the war tunnels, to Rye where they walked the steep hills, to Fordwich where they had a beer at George and the Dragon.  They toured the cathedral and St. Martin’s Church, and they wandered around the ruins of St. Augustine’s Abbey. We also walked along the city walls, climbed to the top of the Roman Burial Mound, visited a number of pubs, ate well, and, in general, had a great time.  John even got to ride a bike one morning.  And they did all of this before Saturday!  Saturday was my day to pick an activity, and I chose a ramble.  Pam and John were agreeable, as were Rich and one of his students, Lisa, so we set out at 9:30 a.m., in a slight drizzle, to meet up with the Canterbury Ramblers at the West Gate Gardens to take a guided tour of the countryside.

The ramble was one of the best things Beth and I did six years, and I was looking forward to the walk and to the company; the locals are great walkers and talkers, and we met a lot of great people.  When we got to the meeting point, though, we were told that we were welcome to come along but that there was a 7 pound fee.  I didn’t remember having to do that in 2007, but later, when I told her about it, Beth said that we’d paid that time, too, because it was part of the Canterbury Festival and helped cover expenses for the two weeks of activities.  At any rate, we quickly decided that we didn’t want to pay to go on a hike, so I volunteered to lead the group out into the countryside for free and with 90% certainty that we wouldn’t get lost.  So, off we went.

I can now admit that 90% struck me as a little high when I made that pronouncement, but I charged ahead in the general direction of the paths that Beth and I had walked two or three times—once with the Ramblers—hoping that I’d see a landmark that would jog my memory.  I managed to get us across a large open area where people walked dogs and played when the weather was nice and kind of meandered through a neighborhood until we came to the road up St. Stephen’s Hill, and I knew (or thought I knew) that we were going the right way.  What I was looking for was Tyler Hill, but I was pretty sure we had to go up St. Stephen’s first. 

I’m actually quite surprised that my merry band did not revolt at this point because St. Stephen’s Hill is a bit of a climb.  If you are from the St. Charles area and have ever ridden a bike on the path north toward South Elgin, then you know that there is a hill that conquers most who try to get to the top.  Make that hill longer and steeper, and you have an idea what we were trudging up.  Add to that the rain, which came and went, came and went, but was a steady enough presence that we were growing soggier by the minute.  There was an inspirational moment, however, that made the walk all worth it and buoyed spirits enough to let us continue.  Just before you get to the top of St. Stephen’s, there is a break in the trees on the opposite side of the road, and you can look down on Canterbury and, more importantly, the cathedral.  We all took pictures and talked a bit about the pilgrims who might have had this very same perspective (save the traffic, of course) hundreds of years ago after walking a lot farther than we had come and whose spirits must have been lifted more than ours. To my great delight and relief, it wasn’t more than a few hundred yards past that spot that I saw the narrow road marked Alcroft Grange, and I knew I’d led us to the right place.

Alcroft Grange was the home of Sidney Cooper, a Canterbury artist who was one of Queen Victoria’s favorites.  His landscapes often featured cows, large cows.  As we walked toward the house, we saw lots of sheep, but no cattle.  Before we got to the place, though, a post bearing a yellow medallion with an arrow aimed us to the north, and we ducked into a tree-covered tunnel (see Facebook photo) and walked along a path that is part of an elaborate web of public pathways dating back to the time when people walked everywhere they went and wanted the shortest route between two points (usually church and home), regardless of what might be in their way.  I explained these paths in 2007, so if you want to find out more about them, you can check my old dispatches for more information.  It’s enough here to say that the walk we were taking is a perfect example of how these paths work.  After coming through the trees, we had to duck under a low branch to get to a bridge that took us across a stream and dropped us at the edge of a newly planted field.  Rather than go around this field, we went straight across, following a narrow but evident trail to the far side.  Again, a yellow medallion mounted on a wooden pole—these helpful guides were not around in 2007—sent us around a stand of trees and along the edge of the field and then back into the trees again. It was during this second woodland walk that we finally found the mushrooms I had told the group we would find and which, I’m sure, they thought I was imagining. 

If you’ve seen Walt Disney’s Fantasia, then maybe you remember the red mushrooms with the white polka dots in the “China Dance” sequence.  Beth and I saw them when we did our ramble, but I wasn’t sure we’d see them again.  But we did, and plenty of them.  Again, photos were taken, and my credibility was restored.  Since the walk, I have read up on the mushroom and found that it is called amanita muscaria and is both poisonous and psychotropic.  I guess if you really want to hallucinate, you’ll risk getting sick or dying.  It was also used as an insecticide and, according to one theorist, was responsible for the “berserker” rages experienced by marauding Vikings.  Luckily, none of us did anything with them except take pictures, though a couple of nights earlier, we had sampled—after doctoring it with red wine and garlic and olive oil--a slice of puffball that Pam bought at a farmer’s market.  None of us suffered any ill effects, but none of us went back for seconds, either.

We ended the walk following a radfall, which is a kind of bermed roadway which landowners would use to move stock from their property to market.  Again, I wrote about this in 2007, and I invite you to read about it there, but I was happy to find the place again and recognize it.  Not long after we found the radfall, we arrived at Tyler Hill, emerging from the woods on the edge of a field where three or four soccer/football games were in progress.  We tried to find the pub, The Ivy that I remembered from earlier visits, but it was being remodeled and wouldn’t be open for a while.  A bit disappointed, we went back down the hill and into Canterbury, finally stopping for a short beer at The Parrot before going home and spending the afternoon napping.

Around noon on Sunday, I left Pam and John at the train station.  They were going to spend a few days in London before going to Ireland where Beth and I will meet up with them again next Saturday, so the leave-taking was not a sad one.  I got a text from John a few hours later, letting me know that they had arrived and were getting settled in their hotel on the south bank of the Thames.  It was great having them visit and getting caught up on each other’s lives.  Since they moved to Waukegan, we don’t see them very frequently, so there was a lot of catching up to do.  In addition, it was fun for me to see this place through someone else’s eyes, so I asked John if it would be OK for me to post some of his photos on Facebook.  He said it was, so take a look.

The week ended with Rich and Doug coming over last night to watch the Bears-Redskins game.  One of Doug’s friends has the NFL Game Pass license and because he’s a Giants fan (imagine that!)and this is their bye week, he allowed us to use his password to watch.  It was great to see the game, but the outcome was no less painful 4000 miles away.   We may get to see another game in November, and I’m hopeful—nay, confident—that the Bears will win, no matter who they play.

I won’t be on a regular schedule the next couple of weeks because I’ll be traveling.  I leave Thursday for Ireland to spend a few days with Beth before coming back via ferry to Wales and taking the train to St. Ives, Cornwall, where I’ll have a short stay on the seaside.  I’ll let you know when I have time to post the next dispatch and will be putting pictures up on Facebook as often as I can.

Thanks for reading!