Weekly Dispatch #9In Which We Soar Above London, Meet Up With Olde Friends, See The Queen, Travel Back to Neolithic Britain & Begin To Grow Suspicious…

Our trip into London last Tuesday, I figured, was going to be a pretty low-key affair. The plan was to take the train to the city, switch to the Underground briefly and pop up near the Westminster/Whitehall area for some sightseeing. On the train going in, however, I have to admit I was a bit apprehensive because our tour was going to begin with a ride on the London Eye, which, for those who haven’t heard of it, is a 440-foot “observation wheel” next to the Thames. I have mentioned in earlier dispatches my anxiety about high places—thus the apprehension—but I have never, for some reason, had trouble with ferris wheels. Maybe it’s because I grew up near an amusement park and rode the wheel there many times every summer. Still, neither that one nor the Navy Pier wheel in Chicago rose as high into the sky as London’s, and I was hoping I would either not be bothered or would be able to cover up any anxiety (screaming, swooning) I might be feeling.

This trip also marked the first time that our guests, Terri and Gary Sible, would be seeing London, even though they had been in the city on three other days during their stay with us. On each of those days, though, they had been zipping around on the tube and had not gotten above ground. As we climbed up the stairs into the very bright and warm day, Gary asked, “Now, where are we?” Before either Beth or I could say anything, he looked up and over his shoulder. “Oh my god!” he said and grabbed his camera to take a photo of Big Ben, which towered glittering and golden above us on the corner across from where we stood. (Actually, Big Ben is not the tower but the 14-ton bell inside which has kept time in London almost continuously since 1859.) While he and Terri—with Beth’s help—located and snapped pictures of the Houses of Parliament and Westminster Abbey, my eyes were fixed on the big white wheel across the river.

After a few minutes of photo-taking, we made our way to the other side of the river, bought tickets and climbed aboard the Eye. Immediately, a soothing voice welcomed us to our “flight,” and our car began its very, very slow ascent. Each car can hold up to 25 people, but we had only 10 on ours, so there was plenty of room to move around and see the city sprawling below us. London is a low-rise city, so we were able to see all of the landmarks—Wembley Stadium, St. Paul’s Cathedral, Buckingham Palace, to name just a few—and get a sense of the size of the city as well; it has the same population as New York City, but is twice as large in area. As we made our circuit, we met a couple who had lived in London but now owned a home and a holiday cottage in Wales. They were very willing to point out the architectural highlights, along with reminiscences of their life in the city and how much it had changed. They also gave us information about renting their cottage, so, before we leave this island, we may spend a night at their place. We also met a man who runs an antiquarian book shop in London, but I doubt that we could afford his wares, so, if we stop, it will be to browse not buy. The 30 minutes we spent revolving were, happily, anxiety-free. The only moment when I felt any vertigo was when we reached the top of the wheel’s circle, and I could look directly into the car just ahead of us. It was, in retrospect, a great experience, one I hope to repeat when our kids come to visit next week.

Because I had been so transfixed on the Eye when we crossed the river, I hadn’t noticed that both ends of Westminster Bridge were blocked by huge concrete barricades and guarded by police. We got to the other side, where we had planned to walk along Parliament and on to Westminster Abbey, but we were told by a bobby that we would have to go in a more roundabout fashion, skirting all of the barricades along the streets, because the Queen was opening Parliament.

“In fact,” he said, checking his watch, “she’s addressing the MPs right now.” He said that she would probably give a 45-minute speech and then would process back to Buckingham Palace about 1:30.” It was just a few minutes before noon, and, after a bit of discussion, we decided standing on the sidewalk for an hour-and-a-half wasn’t worth it. So, we made our way along Bridge Street to Parliament Street to the Underground stop where we’d emerged an hour earlier and were waiting at that corner for the light to change when we heard behind us, “I don’t believe it!” We all four turned, and there, having themselves just come up from the tube, were Clyde and Chris, our pals from the Newmarket railroad stop. What are the odds, we wondered, of meeting up in a city of six million people? Apparently better than one might think. At any rate, we talked for a few minutes—this time remembering to exchange email addresses, etc.—when I heard the distinct clopping of a horse’s hooves on the street. A single bobby on a white horse trotted past, so I held my camera up over the heads of the crowd in front of us and took a picture. I had no more brought the camera down than there was a more thunderous clatter of horses’ hooves and a whole cavalry troop—red jackets, white trousers, black boots, silver helmets with white plumes, silver swords held at the ready—trotted past on matched black horses. As soon as they passed, another identical cadre came into view, and we realized that something was happening. A loud cheer started to our left and swept toward us and, suddenly, right in front of us, in the Irish Parliament Coach she takes from the palace to Parliament, was the Queen herself!

Despite the fact that my photographic evidence merely shows a blur behind the coach’s glass, it was unmistakably the Queen of England in one of her trademark pastel hats. She was out of sight in a few seconds, but I am certain that she looked right at me and mouthed the words, “Call me.” Of course, none of the others believed me, but I was beginning to wonder about the coincidence of her showing up when I was at Windsor last week and then again here in London. Especially curious was the fact that the speech she gave was not 45 minutes—which would have meant that we would not have been on the parade route—but a mere three minutes. Still doubt me? Wait: there’s more to come!

Following the Queen’s coach were another four or five carrying various royals and dignitaries to the Mall and up to Buckingham Palace, and I took poor pictures of all of them, too (in my defense, I had my arms stretched as high as I could stretch them and was snapping pretty much blindly), many of them featuring the balding head of a man in front of me and several other upraised cameras. More cavalry passed, along with a coach that carried only the Crown of England and another that carried two golden maces, both of which were so large that they stuck out of the windows.

When the procession had passed, the six of us—already amazed at our improbable reunion—were even more stunned that we met at that spot and, delayed by our conversation, were there to see the Queen. Terri was perhaps more excited than the rest because her sister is a huge royalist and was going to be jealous beyond measure; something Terri said she would have fun exploiting at Christmas when the family gets together.

Chris and Clyde were heading in a different direction than we were going to take, so we said goodbye again—after inviting them to visit us in Canterbury—and walked to Westminster Abbey. We had to stop once more because the Royal Band and a number of other military groups were lining up for their march to the palace. While we were there, Beth asked one of the bobbies if he guarded the Queen regularly.

“No,” he said, “I’m just up from Greenwich for the day.” He was a burly man with a cauliflower ear and a build that we guessed later marked him as a rugby player, but when Beth then asked if this was as big a deal for him as it was for us, he got wide-eyed and gushed, “Oh my God, yes!” The rarity of our getting to see the British monarch became more apparent as, over the next few days, we asked people—including a number of Brits—whether they had seen her and were told by most that they had not.

We finally, after the last of the marchers went past, crossed over to Westminster Abbey where, on the lawn in front of the main entrance, a dozen or more people were preparing a Remembrance Day display. The whole lawn—perhaps 100 yards or so long—was divided into squares identified by military regiments. In each of those squares, the volunteers were driving into the ground six-inch crosses adorned with a poppy and the name of a soldier who had died. There were thousands and thousands of the crosses already placed and, according to a man we spoke with, there would be thousands more by Thursday, when the exhibit would be officially opened, and people could walk among the crosses.

Because of its proximity to Buckingham Palace and Parliament, Westminster Abbey, which is a working church with daily services, is known as the Coronation church. In fact, since 1066, when William the Conqueror was crowned, this is where the country’s monarchs have received the vestments of their office. In addition, this magnificent church is also the resting place for many famous historical figures from the last thousand years of British history, including Queen Elizabeth I; Mary, Queen of Scots; Isaac Newton, and Charles Darwin. In the south nave of the church is Poets’ Corner, where the dead buried there reads like the table of contents of my British Literature textbook: Chaucer, T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Byron, Keats, Shelley, Jane Austen, Wordsworth, the Bronte sisters, and on and on. Unlike Canterbury Cathedral, where you can take photographs, the interior of Westminster is off limits to any kind of cameras, so I can’t show you what the place looks like, but I can say that the abbot who was in charge way back when was very good at convincing the government and the royal family to give him money because this is a much more ornate—lots of gold and polished stone—church than Canterbury’s. Still, I think I prefer the one we can see from our windows every day.

Our plans for our London day trip had also included Terri and Gary’s going to the War Cabinet Rooms while Beth and I took in the National Portrait Gallery, but after we had toured Westminster—and because of the Queen—it was later than we’d expected, so we stopped in St. James’ Park, ate a brown bag lunch, and then walked to Buckingham Palace. It was while we were walking that I became conscious of Gary and his prowess with his wheeled suitcase. I was carrying a backpack that day, but because he and Terri were staying the night—they had an appointment with the company that bought the firm where she works in Geneva—Gary was dragging a little brown suitcase. He pulled the same bag during our weekend to Newmarket and had apparently honed his skills at maneuvering through crowds and, more importantly, at manipulating the telescoping handle. If we came to a stairway, he collapsed the handle with one quick motion, and when we reached the top or bottom, he snapped the handle back into place and was rolling again. It got so that Beth and Terri and I would start laughing when we heard the metallic slide and pop, and we compared it to the sound Luke Skywalker’s light saber in Star Wars. Gary said he figured he had pulled it far enough that it was time to rotate the tires.

The Queen, of course, was still at Buckingham Palace (we guessed in the room with a lamp in the window), but we were too late for a tour, so we took some pictures from beyond the locked gates and then started off in the direction of Terri and Gary’s hotel—past the Royal Mews, the Queen’s stable and coach house, which was also closed for the day—in Grosvenor Place, a large area where most of the foreign embassies are located. After we left them there, we took a slow commuter train back home and talked about the day’s strange coincidences and the trip we had planned for the upcoming weekend.

Originally, we had talked with the Sibles about going to Paris over the weekend, but the logistics of the trip—not to mention the cost (the dollar is faring very poorly these days)—we decided, instead, to rent a car and head into the West Country. Because I was the only one with any experience driving on the “correct” side of the road—as opposed to the “right” side—I was given the job of piloting us safely to and from our destination. This time, when I reserved the car, I made it clear that I not only wanted a car with an automatic transmission but a small car as well. Beth talked me out of a Nissan Micra, which was wonderfully tiny but, as a result, lacked any back seat legroom, so we settled on a slightly larger small car. But, like last time when I thought I’d be driving a Ford Focus and ended up with a Mercedes, the car we rented was not the one I thought I’d be driving. Rather than a smallish vehicle, we were given a Toyota Prius, and I had visions of tire-rubbing and cursing and gasping from the seat next to me. But after a quick tutorial on how to make the car go, I got behind the wheel and headed out on the highway, looking for adventure.

Now that I have successfully completed the 450 miles we spent on the road and have returned the car intact and won’t curse my luck, I can say with confidence that I drove marvelously well. Only once did I scrape a curb—and that was early on—and only a few times did Beth feel compelled to let me know that I was a bit too close on her side to a car or a hedgerow or a pedestrian or livestock. I handled everything from an M road (major motorway) to the narrow B roads. And, I fell in love with the car. Not only was the mileage incredible (52 mpg), but the car also had great pickup and was as smooth a ride as in any car I’ve ridden in, including the Mercedes we rented last time out.

In order to beat traffic, which we were told would be heavy around London, even though it was a weekend, we left early and reached out first stop—Avebury—around 11 a.m..

Avebury is, like Stonehenge, a prehistoric site marked by rings of stones standing on end. At Avebury, though, it is possible to walk up and around the stones, which may account for the fact that a good number of them have, over the years, been removed or knocked over. Still, anyone wandering the 28 acres, through deep defensive ditches and around grazing sheep, comes away with a sense of wonder at how and why all of this was done. The stones themselves—100 in all and weighing up to 50 tons each—are a kind of sandstone native to the county and are more than 20 feet in length, but only about half of that is above ground. That means that the Neolithic engineers who put them in place had to dig deep holes and wrangle each stone into place, all the while keeping in mind the shape of the arrangement as a whole. Like Stonehenge, the purpose of the site is unknown, but its age and popular folklore suggests to some that it has something to do with pagan rituals, which explains why, in a local pub, there is a sign inviting anyone interested in paganism to attend a meeting at the “Avebury pagan moot” on the third Sunday of each month. Sadly, we were there on the second Saturday.

Once we were back in the car, we needed to make a choice. Either we could go into Bath for an abbreviated visit of that historic Roman city, or we could go to Lacock, which was just a few miles away, for a more leisurely stop. We opted for the second and were off. On the way there, we saw, scraped into a chalky hillside, a large white horse believed to have been created about the time that the Avebury site was being constructed.

Lacock is, simply put, a lovely little English village. The whole village, in fact, is a National Trust site and has remained largely unchanged since the 18th century. Lacock is so pristine that a number of films—Pride and Prejudice, Moll Flanders, Emma, and the next Harry Potter—have been filmed at least in part there. Wandering the cobblestone streets and admiring the architecture was a good way to spend the afternoon. As the sun started to get lower, we drove the last couple of hours to our hotel on the edge of the New Forest. We went through Salisbury on the way and could see the cathedral—its spire is the tallest in England—where one of the four remaining copies of the Magna Carta is kept. We had talked about going there the next morning, but after seeing signs indicating that anyone wanting to get to the cathedral would have to leave his car at a remote parking site and take a bus into the city centre, we decided to take a pass. We got to our hotel shortly after sunset and ended the day with a great meal at an Indian restaurant next door.

Sunday started clear and chilly, and as we drove into the New Forest for an early morning hike, it looked like the weather was not going to be a concern. But after we had walked for an hour or so among the wild ponies that live there and looked from hillsides over the 92,000 acres of woodland that William the Conqueror had set aside as a private hunting ground, the sky had begun to darken. It continued to get more blustery and threatening as we made our way to the last planned stop of the weekend: Stonehenge.

Ever since we had talked about spending this time in England, Stonehenge was a place I had hoped we would visit. It is a place of mystery and magic, an inexplicable prehistoric formation that continues to draw visitors and to puzzle historians, and I wanted to see it. My anticipation on the final few miles to the site was matched by that of everyone else in the car, and as we topped a hill and could see it below us on a broad grassy plain, there was a collective gasp.

Some people have said that visitors to Stonehenge are disappointed, that it is smaller than they thought or not as grand in some other way, but none of us felt anything but excitement as we walked up to the rope fence that marked the walkway around the circle of stones. We were given audio guides to accompany the tour, but it was so windy by that time that I could only hear about half of the commentary, and I finally gave up and just looked and took photo after photo. (None of those photos accompany this dispatch, however. If you’d like to see what it looks like, go to Start on your computer, click on Control Panel and then click on Appearances and Themes; click on Change Desktop Appearance and then scroll down the menu beneath this little display to Stonehenge; click on it and then on the button marked OK, minimize this screen and, voila, you can see what we saw.) What I learned from the audio guide before I stopped listening was that the engineering it took to make this ring of tall stones was even more impressive than that of Avebury because not only did the creators plant the rocks, they also carved them so that they fit together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle and had dragged some of the blue stone from as the mystical Pressli Mountains in Wales, 240 miles away. By the time we had gone all the way around, the crowd was getting larger, and a stinging mist was blowing in our faces. We stopped briefly in the gift shop and then had to run through a downpour to the car.

As we headed back toward London in the rain, Terri and Gary began to doze off. Fortunately, Beth stayed awake and continued to read the map and navigate. At some point in the journey, it dawned on me that we were going to be within a few miles of Windsor Castle. Earlier that day, Gary had said that the only thing they would not be seeing on the trip was Windsor, so I suggested to Beth that we take a detour and let them get the full English experience before heading back to the States on Monday. Terri and Gary were up for the idea, too, so we left the M3, passed by Ascot racetrack—which is enormous—and on into Windsor. When we drove into town, I drew attention to the flag flying over the Round Tower (see last week’s Dispatch); it was the Union Jack, which meant the Queen was not there.

Beth is going to take our kids to Windsor next week, and I’ve already been there, so after a Sunday roast at the Carpenter’s Arms (Sunday roasts are a tradition and very filling), Terri and Gary headed into the castle, while Beth and I wandered around the High Street. When we met up again, I happened to look at the flag flying above the tower. It was the Royal Standard! The Queen! She hadn’t been there when we arrived in town, but now—just like the last time I was in Windsor—she was!

This was the third time in a little more than a week that the Queen just “happened” to be in the same place I was. Once may be coincidence; twice, perhaps. But three times? As much as I hate to believe it’s true, the evidence seems to point to only one thing: I am being followed by a royal stalker!

Stay tuned…

Weekly Dispatch #8In Which I Visit The Queen’s Home Whilst Beth Travels Underground To Collect Friends & Then We All Travel To Newmarket To Watch The Horses Run & Meet Great People
Prior to our field trip last Friday, the Modern Britain course instructor gave the American students a writing assignment: What does Windsor Castle say about the monarchy? Although I was not required to write on the topic, it was certainly in my thoughts as we boarded the coach that morning and prepared to visit Queen Elizabeth’s “weekend home.” We had already sampled some of the excesses of royalty at the Royal Pavilion in Brighton and at Leeds Castle, so I had some idea of the grandeur I could expect, but the question seemed to suggest we should be trying to come away with something more than a guided tour through high-ceilinged rooms furnished in gilt and purple.

Beth did not make this trip; she was off on an adventure of own—to be related shortly—so when I climbed on the bus, I did not have a seatmate. The students had all settled in and were either with a buddy or had their backpacks next to them, and I have to admit I felt a little like I did in junior high when my family moved to a new town and I got on the morning bus the first day not knowing anyone and had to find a place to sit. Luckily, on this trip, the driver apparently sensed my confusion—or maybe I looked a little lost—because he offered me the seat upfront—the co-pilot’s seat, if you will—which provided great views and allowed me to see the correct way to maneuver through traffic (something I will need to do this coming weekend when, it has been decided, I will again be behind the wheel).

During the two-plus hour journey, I learned quite a bit about the British highway system from the driver, along with his own history as a coach driver in Europe and his dream of being Great Britain’s Minister of Traffic one day. I don’t know what qualifications one needs for that position, but he certainly had given a lot of thought to what could be changed to make travel easier and safer, and he told it to me in such great detail that I’m convinced he’s the man for the job. Interestingly, he was also an assistant dockyard manager in the port city of Ramsgate where, instead of bad drivers, he had to contend with poor sailors, and expressed an equal frustration with both.

As we approached Windsor Castle, the first thing that surprised me—and the students, too—is that the castle is not situated in the midst of a large estate but, instead, sits just off the High Street in the town of Windsor. We learned that the castle had first been a wooden fortress built by William the Conqueror on a high point above the Thames River to guard the western route into London, which not only explained its geographic position but also why the city had grown up around it; it afforded protection for the townspeople who could, in case of an attack, quickly get inside the castle gates and out of harm’s way. Now, the city benefits in other ways from the castle’s presence, evidenced by the dozens of souvenir shops, taverns and restaurants visitors pass through on their way to and from the gates.

Our tour took us through those gates and on into the castle. Compared to Leeds, which is surrounded by expansive grounds, Windsor is very modest. In fact, the only green to be found on the public side of the castle is in the old moat. Now that it no longer is needed for protection, the moat has been drained and turned into a very attractive garden that visitors can look at from above but not walk through. Rising above the moat is the oldest part of the castle, The Round Tower, built to replace the wooden tower in the 11th century and, from which, when we arrived, the Union Jack was flying. The path into the State Apartments, the public portion of the castle, follows the castle wall and provides a panoramic view of the countryside—especially attractive at this time of the year because the trees are now turning. Before entering the Apartments, visitors pass through a room that houses Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House, an amazingly accurate and precise model of a palace, complete with working electric lights, functional plumbing, miniature paintings and books, a wine cellar containing genuine vintage wine, and a tiny reproduction of the Crown Jewels. As I looked at it, I was reminded of the dollhouse in the Science and Industry Museum in Chicago, but this one is more delicate and refined.

From that room, I passed through one chamber after another and was, admittedly, more overwhelmed by the amount of stuff. There were, of course, the perfectly crafted pieces of furniture—including a solid silver table and matching mirror—and remarkable paintings in every room. But there were also glass cases filled with crowns and scepters and robes and jewels—spoils gathered when the British Empire stretched around the globe—and magnificent displays of weapons. In one room, for example, wheels of flintlock pistols and herringbone arrangements of muskets climbed one wall of the room while a hundred crossed sabers hung on the opposite wall; massive suits of armor guarded doorways or sat astride full-sized, equally well-armored, wooden horses. In the hallways were floor-to-ceiling cabinets filled with the finest china in the world—only a few of the more than 100 sets belonging to the Queen—and hanging overhead in every room was a crystal chandelier. In another portion of the apartments is the Royal Collection, an assemblage of art that rivals the best galleries anywhere, including hundreds of drawings by Leonardo da Vinci.

After an hour or so of admiring all of these things, I needed to get outside, so I went back to the moat and watched rock pigeons flapping around. As my eyes lifted with one of the birds, I saw that the flag flying over the Round Tower had changed. Instead of the Union Jack, flying from the pole now was the Royal Standard which meant that at some time between my entering and exiting the Apartments, Queen Elizabeth II had arrived at Windsor Castle!

My first instinct was to tell everyone who walked past that “The Queen is here!” and point up at the flag. My enthusiasm, while understandable, was not well-received, so I stopped the pointing and announcing. Instead, I found a couple of students and suggested we try to go find her. I figured it wouldn’t be that hard to slip past the armed guards marching around the place and toss a few pebbles at a window in her part of the castle. Again, my enthusiasm went unappreciated, and I settled for taking a photo of the flag, instead.

I’m not sure what the students will have to say about Windsor Castle and the monarchy, but what I came away with, I think, is a little clearer understanding of how the royal family and England work together. It is very easy to condemn the notion of a monarchy and the kind of tax-supported lifestyle put on display at Windsor and elsewhere, especially in a country where pensioners have a hard time making ends meet and young people are looking to emigrate because there are limited opportunities for careers. It’s equally easy to find fault in the almost obsessive observance of tradition and of glorifying Britain’s golden days when theirs was the greatest empire in the world. And, indeed, there are discussions here about the need to be seen as a nation focusing on the future instead of the past, along with discussions about abolishing the monarchy itself.

On the other hand, England has the most recognizable monarch in the world in Queen Elizabeth II, and it has built an industry around her and her family. If the monarchy were no more, the number of tourists visiting would be certain to drop dramatically, and there would be less allure about coming to this island rather than going to Paris or Prague or anywhere else in Europe. The sense of tradition, too, while it can be seen as stodgy and outdated, has kept the nation’s courage intact, most recently during two world wars, and anchored the country in countless other conflicts. England’s is the longest continuous monarchy in the world, which says something about the relationship between the ruler and the ruled, and for all of its flaws, the system will probably continue for many years to come.

This same day, as I was waxing rhapsodic about the Queen, Beth was on her way to pick up two of our friends, Terri and Gary Sible, from Heathrow Airport. To get there on time, she had to leave Canterbury at 6:45 a.m., take the train into London, then take the Underground to a distant station where she would pick up another line that would take her out to airport. Of course, her journey did not go as smoothly as she had hoped, despite her having meticulously planned it all. There was again that moment of realization that things had gone awry—this time, Beth believed the sign which said that the line to Heathrow left from a particular station when she knew (and was right) that it departed from a different one. She ended up somewhere just shy of the Welsh border—at least she said it felt that she had gone that far—and had to take a taxi back to the airport.

As Beth was zipping along in the tube, Gary and Terri were getting a little concerned because she had not arrived at the appointed time. But they finally talked on the phone during Beth’s cab ride, and after meeting up at last, the three of them headed back to Canterbury. The trip back was happily uneventful, but an overheard conversation gave them (and me, when they told the story) a good laugh.

Seated nearby on the train was a young woman of 19 or 20 who was traveling with her grandmother. At one point, they were talking about Christmas presents, and the girl was asked if she had gotten anything for her father yet.

“Oh, yes, Gran,” she said. “I got him a razor and a box of shoes.”

As we have done with our previous visitors, we kept Terri and Gary awake until 9 p.m., which seems to be the magic hour for defeating jet lag. And like our other guests, they were wobbly-headed and cranky when we finally told them they could go to bed, but, when they woke the next morning at 6 a.m. so we could catch an early train, they were refreshed and did not have a jet lag hangover.

The early train we caught on Saturday was going to take us—via London and Cambridge—to Newmarket, home of English horse racing. We had decided to go there because we go to the track a few times in the summer at home with Terri and Gary, and we were all curious about racing here. As it turned out, Saturday was the final day of the racing season, which made us wonder if, perhaps, this was a lucky omen and that we would all come home big winners.

Newmarket’s train station is not really a station at all. It’s just a couple of rail lines and a shelter—like those you find at bus stops—and a map of the city. We checked the map and saw that we had quite a hike ahead of us to the track, but, deciding we had no option, we walked down the platform and around a hedge toward the street. Again, lady luck was on our side; waiting for us behind the hedge was a motor coach offering free rides to the track.

Newmarket is the home of English horse racing and, in fact, the first recorded horse race took place there in 1622. Charles II, the only British king to have ridden a winner, was so enthusiastic about racing that he brought his whole court to Newmarket every summer. The whole city, in fact, is dedicated to the horse. Along the High Street are shops that sell feed and tack and equestrian clothing and offices for international equine businesses. Horse transport vans are parked on side streets and, every morning of the week except Sunday, the heaths (large open grassy expanses) surrounding the city—and known as “the gallops”—may be filled with the sound of the pounding hooves of as many as 2,500 horses in training. Here, the horses have their own traffic lights and their own sidewalks, and people are, we were told, second-class citizens.

Unlike Arlington Park, which is surrounded by a suburban landscape, the Newmarket courses—there are actually two tracks—are situated on hundreds of acres of green, away from any buildings. The July Course, which is only open during the summer months, is the larger and more elegant of the courses. The Rowley Mile, where we were, was still an impressive place, with a large grandstand and paddock area. Though it looked a little different from the track we are used to, there was still something familiar about it. Once we got inside the grandstand enclosure, however, that all changed.

The first thing we noticed was “bookies row,” a cluster of thirty or so stands with electric tote boards giving odds for the upcoming race. The track itself has betting windows, so we asked a security guard why anyone would go to a bookie rather than to a window. He told us that the odds were usually better at the bookie stands—that is, you stood to win more if you picked the right horse—but that you were more likely to lose there, too. We decided we wanted to wager a little bit, so we went inside the clubhouse to the more familiar windows and, after a quick lesson in British betting, picked our horses.

Back outside, the second most distinguishing feature of British racing became apparent. While American racing takes place most often on clay or dirt oval tracks, most British races are held on a turf (grass) straightaway, one that is not planed flat like those at home, but one that may rise and fall with the land. The Rowley Mile track, for example, had a couple of swells along its length. Every race track in Great Britain, we were told, is different, and the tracks that do feature turns may have the horses run either clockwise or—as they say here—anti-clockwise. All races in the States are anti-clockwise. So we found a place as close to the rail as we could and looked off down the track where, a mile away, the horses were being loaded into the gates. There is no trumpet fanfare at the beginning of a British race and no ringing of a bell. At least not that can be heard from the grandstand. Rather, you keep an eye on the giant television screen and wait for the announcer to say, “And they’re off.”

We watched the horses on the screen for most of the race because it’s difficult to make out what’s happening in the pack from that far away, but as they got closer, we turned our attention to the track just in time to catch the horses and jockeys flying past in an indistinguishable blur, and the race was over. We weren’t sure who had won, so we had to wait for the results to appear on an electronic board before we found that none of us—despite the feeling that it was our lucky day—were a winner. We were just about to turn away from the track when I heard a horse galloping and looked toward the track. The others looked, too, and we all watched as the horse Beth had picked to win—Touch of Pep—ran toward the finish line nearly a full minute after the race had ended. That was the last bet she placed all afternoon.

Luck might not have been with us at the track that day, but a couple of other things that happened made us all feel very fortunate to have come to Newmarket. Our original plan was to come for the races only and then to take the train back that evening. But after figuring out that doing so would mean about eight hours on the train, we opted to stay overnight. Beth is very good at bargain-hunting, and she was able to get us us a half-price stay at the Bedford Lodge, a four-star place on beautiful grounds, set back off the road far enough that there was no traffic noise. After a taxi dropped us off in front of the place, and as we walked up to the desk with our backpacks and Terri and Gary’s tiny rolling suitcase, we thought they might not deem us worthy to stay there, but we apparently passed the test and were given keys to two very, very nice rooms. The Sibles had two white terry cloth robes hanging on the door of their bathroom, but we only had one; somehow the hotel had forgotten to provide one for Beth. After leaving our “luggage,” such as it was, we walked back into the city centre—at first along the horse sidewalk but then, after dodging the numerous and large droppings there, on the people sidewalk.

Since breakfast that morning, we had only eaten only a half a croissant apiece, so we looked around for a pub where we might get some lunch. We stopped at a place called the Bushel on a winding side street and were told that their kitchen, like all pub kitchens, closed at 3 p.m.—it was a little after 4 p.m.—but would open again at 6 p.m. Because the young woman had been so apologetic and cordial, we decided to go back for dinner and wandered the streets for awhile longer, trying to talk ourselves out of being hungry. We finally gave up, went back around 5:30, ordered an ale and waited.

Again, luck was with us, this time in the form of Martin Jarred, owner of The Bushel and one of the nicest people we have met here or anywhere else. When he was told by the young woman we had spoken to earlier that we were there and were hungry, he came down from the apartment he and his wife share above the pub, introduced himself to us and said, “I understand you’d like a meal.” As meals go, the one we had that not was not spectacular, but for the two hours we were Martin’s guests, he entertained us with stories about himself—he and his wife had run nightclubs in London until their children were grown, then they moved to Newmarket and bought the pub—and about the pub itself. He told us that there was a tunnel that ran from the pub to the Rutland Arms hotel on High Street for romantic liaisons between courtiers in Charles II’s court and that toward the front of the pub, in a spot occupied now by a large round table, there had been a pit used for cockfighting. He gave us a photocopied article about the pub, autographed a postcard of the place, gave us a pitcher of Pims and had his picture taken with Gary and me. We were having such good time that it was hard to leave, and when we finally did, Martin was in the kitchen, but he came running outside as we walked away to say thanks and goodbye.

Sunday morning, after a belt-busting full English breakfast (eggs, sausage, black pudding, bacon, stewed tomatoes, mushrooms, toast), we checked out of our hotel. I discovered as we were leaving that I wasn’t supposed to take the robe from the room and would have to give it back. Fortunately, I was fully dressed under the robe, so I was saved that embarrassment. Back in the city centre, we visited the National Horseracing Museum, where one of the docents took us under his wing and gave us an almost-guided tour of the exhibits. The hour-plus that we were in the museum was time well-spent and we might have stayed longer, but we weren’t sure when the train to London came through, so we headed back to the station. Along the way, we passed Tattersalls, an auction house where, over the weekend just ending, more than 1600 horses had been up for sale.

At the train station, we discovered the next train to London wouldn’t be arriving for an hour, so we hung around the platform and talked to a couple of other Americans who, like us, had come to Newmarket the day before for the races. Chris is an English professor at NYU spending a year with American students in London, and Clyde is a jockey/trainer from Philadelphia. They own a horse farm outside of Philadelphia and are waiting for their first foals to be born in the spring. When the train finally arrived, we hurried to get on and didn’t really get a chance to say goodbye to them, which we regretted because we had had such a nice time passing the time with them.

I’m not going to go into a great deal of detail about the difficulties we had getting back to Canterbury because travel woes are becoming a bit redundant, I think. Let me simply say that seven of the Underground lines in London were closed for “scheduled engineering work,” and that getting from King’s Cross to the station where we finally caught the train home was akin to a scavenger hunt, in which each stop revealed a tiny piece of information, but only that. As a result, we spent an hour or more underneath the great city, going this way and that, first on this line and then that line until, at last, just when we were sure the wheels were going to fall off the suitcase Gary was dragging around and that we were going to have to go up to the street to find a taxi, we got the last snippet of information we needed, found the right station and the right train and headed home.

Despite the nightmare beneath London, the weekend had been great. We all were in agreement that the races and the sights around Newmarket had been enjoyable, but it was meeting Martin on Saturday night and Chris and Clyde on Sunday morning that had been the highlights of the trip. We may not have won anything, but we had been very lucky, indeed.

Cheers!

Weekly Dispatch #7:In Which We Travel The 500 Miles From Canterbury to Edinburgh & Back Again With Great Success & Few Travails & Take A Trip to Dickens World

Edinburgh

In every one of our escapades this fall, there has been a moment when Beth and I will suddenly realize that the path not taken, the roundabout sign misread, or the taxi pulling away signals yet another mistake on the part of one of us—usually the other—and that we are again are not going where we wanted to go. What we have come to realize (or, at least, what we have come to tell ourselves) is that each wrong turn leads to some different, better adventure. And so it was, too, when we went to Edinburgh, Scotland, for our first overnight excursion since arriving in Canterbury.

As I noted in the last dispatch, we have not felt a great need to travel far afield while we’ve been here. Part of the reason, again as I mentioned last week, is that we wanted to feel like we were putting down roots—albeit shallow ones—and becoming a part of the place. Another equally important part of our decision not to roam is our obligation to the students we are accompanying. Though we are not technically chaperones, we do have a responsibility—both by agreement with the consortium that sent us here and our own natures—to make sure that the students are doing well, are not feeling lost or overwhelmed and, if they need it, have a home away from home and parent-aged people to talk to. Because our group is made up of 13 very independent and resourceful young adults and because we all have cell phones and because we agreed with our Missouri counterpart Bret to look after his charges for a weekend if he’d look after ours, we decided we could take off for a few days and not be so guilt-ridden that we couldn’t enjoy the trip. And after the students raved about their time in Edinburgh, we chose that city as our destination.

Our journey began on Saturday morning. Toting only a couple of small bags and backpacks, we struck out on foot to Canterbury East railroad station for a 10:20 a.m. departure. Our friend, Tina, who was leaving for her home in the Netherlands later that day, stood in the doorway and gave us a Dutch goodbye, which means standing and waving until the people you are seeing off are out of sight. After repeatedly running through the list of things we needed to have—BritRail passes, cards for the London underground, passports (just in case), money, guidebooks, timetables—we arrived at Canterbury East and were told that the train we wanted was not running that morning. Work on the tracks, which is a common weekend impediment to travel, meant we would have to take a later train and cover part of the route to London via bus. Our other option was to leave from Canterbury West. Seeing that we had about 15 minutes to make the train from there, we hopped in a taxi and sped across town. The driver told us that he made the run from one station to the other—depending upon the lines under construction—with great regularity on Saturdays and Sundays, and he told us, too, that there was a phone number we could have called to find out ahead of time about any delays. We’ll know better next time.

We made the train, rode it into London’s Charing Cross Station and zipped under the city on the Tube to King’s Cross Station, where we caught the Flying Scotsman and headed north. By accident, the car where we settled was the quiet car which meant, according to the signs posted at either end of the car, that we were not to use our mobile phones, play iPods too loudly or talk in anything other than low voices. The car also, it turned out, had a self-appointed enforcer of the rules: a large and muscular bald-headed man who first scolded a young man whose phone rang before we even left the station—“Hey, mate, read the big signs!”—and a female passenger whose phone rang en route—“It’s a quiet car, you ignorant woman!” Needless to say, we whispered as the train zipped along.

The only problem with this idyllic, nearly perfect, situation is that we were, according to the timetable Beth had copied from the railroad website, not the right train. The train she had chosen—but which did not appear on the big, lighted schedule of departures at King’s Cross—was, again according to her timetable, the fastest train to Edinburgh. Expediency is a quality Beth possesses and admires, so it was not surprising to me when, as we pulled into York, that she looked from her watch to her transcribed timetable listings and announced, “We can catch the 2:34 to Edinburgh from here,” and leapt up, gathering her books and packing her backpack.

It is at this point that I need to interrupt this account to again repeat that we detrained in York because of an erroneous timetable, not human error. I say this now because it was in York, right after we asked a railway clerk about the next train to Edinburgh, that we experienced the moment of realization alluded to at the outset of this dispatch. And it was at that moment when Beth, who has been known to claim an almost papal-like infallibility in certain situations, cut off any attempt on my part to lay blame at her feet—which I would never do—by stating, “I wrote it down correctly. The timetable was wrong.” There was just enough gritting of teeth and enough of a glare accompanying that pronouncement that I thought better of saying anything and, instead, looked longingly after the Flying Scotsman, already missing the bald man who liked the cozy comfort of the quiet car as much as I did.

The information we received from the railway clerk that prompted our moment of realization was that the train we were going to board was not, in fact, the fastest train. The one we were going to board would take us as far as Newcastle, where we would have to wait for an hour before catching the train that would take us into Edinburgh. And, instead of arriving at 6:30, which is what we would have done had we stayed on the Flying Scotsman, we would be pulling into Waverly Station at 8:41 p.m., instead.

Have I mentioned how comfortable the Flying Scotsman’s quiet car was? The train we climbed on in Newcastle had no quiet car. Indeed, it had no quiet at all. In addition to MP3 players and overly loud conversations, we also had, across the aisle from us, little Nathan, whose bottle of Virgin Cola (we were on a Virgin train, which, apparently, sold only products with its brand name) was at first an oft-launching rocket (“3-2-1 BLAST OFF!! 3-2-1 BLAST OFF!! 3-2-1 BLAST OFF!!”) and then fuel for his window-rattling belches.

On our taxi ride from the station to our hotel, it was difficult to see much of the city because of the dark and a little drizzle. It was not hard to see, however, the large, illuminated castle that loomed over us as we drove past. After dropping off our bags at the hotel—the Herald House, a two-star accommodation, which means clean and tidy but a little worn—we walked to the McKirdy Restaurant and had our first Scottish meal. Beth had salmon, which is traditional, and I had McChiggis, which is not. McChiggis is a chicken breast stuffed with haggis. And haggis, you may or may not know, is a lot of chopped-up meat-stuff cooked inside a sheep’s stomach. As unappealing as that may seem, I liked the dish a lot. Haggis—sans stomach, anyway—is really a mild, somewhat dry sausage and very tasty.

We had read about Edinburgh on our way up on the train, but nothing really prepared us for the city that we encountered the next morning. When we first left the hotel and started toward the city centre, all looked typically urban: modern, undistinguished buildings. But when we turned the corner and caught sight of the castle that we had only glimpsed the night before, it was clear that we were in for a real treat.

Edinburgh Castle sits on a fist of black volcanic rock and appears to have emerged from the stone rather than having been built atop it. When we reached the base of the nearly sheer rock face and looked up, we were easily 100 feet or so below the bottom of the castle walls. It’s obvious why its builders chose this location; it looks virtually impenetrable. We made our way up to the courtyard in front of the main entrance and looked south toward another extinct volcano called Arthur’s Seat, north toward Calton Hill, where replicas of Greek buildings explain, in part, how the city became known as “The Athens of the North.” To the east, down the hill toward Holyrood Palace, is the Royal Mile. That’s the direction we headed.

This part of Edinburgh is known as “Old Town” and is characterized by tall, narrow buildings known as “lands.” Behind each building, accessible through a passageway called a “close,” is a courtyard surrounded by equally tall and narrow buildings. In the “front land,” business was conducted; in the “back land,” the merchants, their families and other tenants lived. Much of stone and brick used to build these tenements—as well as most every other edifice in the city—is soot-blackened, which gives the city an oddly gloomy appearance, but as we walked down the hill past these dark buildings, there was still the sense that the city was vibrant and thriving. That feeling can be traced, to some degree, to the fact that most of the businesses along the Royal Mile cater to tourists, hundreds of whom shared the street with us that morning. There were, of course, the usual souvenir shops and the stores offering 50% off on all Scottish wool sweaters and scarves and lap blankets, along with pubs and restaurants. Happily, though, tucked in among these places were a number of little museums and churches. The thing we enjoyed most was slipping through the passageways—each of which had a name: Mary King’s Close, Wireworks Close, Lady Stair’s Close—and investigating the back lands.

At the bottom of the hill, across a busy road from the Holyrood Palace is the ultra-modern Scottish Parliament building. It was designed by a Spanish architect, Enric Miralles, and made to look as if it came out of the landscape. Not as gaudy as Gaudi’s sculpted cathedral in Barcelona, there is something similarly whimsical about the building and grounds. It was open to the public, so we went in to take a look around. As we approached the metal detector and guards, I realized that I was carrying my pocket knife with me. I showed it to one of the guards and asked if I could leave it with her while we were inside. When she opened it and saw that it was a lock blade knife, she informed me that if she took it, she would have to call the police because it was, despite the fact that the blade is only an inch-and-a-half long, considered a weapon and is illegal in Great Britain. Rather than risk arrest, we thanked her and—fighting the urge to run for our lives—left the building.

The Parliament Building sits near Holyrood Park, which is home to the volcanic peak known as Arthur’s Seat. Arcing around one side of the Seat is a curving cliff known as the Salisbury Crags. A steep path, Radical Road, climbs past the crags and on up to the top. Another path takes a more leisurely route. We knew we were not going to get all the way up that afternoon, so we opted to head up the slightly less vertical path and climbed to the ruins of St. Anthony’s Chapel, where we perched on a clump of black basalt, snapped pictures of the city and witnessed a wiccan ceremony of some sort, complete with robes and gnarled sticks and other witchy accoutrements. All of the participants were young women, except for one young man who apparently thought this was a good way to meet girls. As we made our way back down the hill, we could hear wailing and howling from the group and were sorry we hadn’t stuck around.

After a pub lunch, we walked north and climbed up Calton Hill which, like Arthur’s Seat, afforded us wonderful views of the city and, farther north, the Firth of Forth, Edinburgh’s route to the North Sea. This is home to an odd assortment of buildings, including a section of columns that resemble the ruins of some grand building, a copy of the Acropolis, an observatory, a monument honoring Admiral Nelson, and a cemetery where philosopher David Hume is buried—right next to a statue of Abraham Lincoln. By this time, the sun was starting to set, so we walked back to the neighborhood where our hotel is located and decided to take in a movie, our first since coming to Britain. We saw a great film, Atonement, which, with its scenes of Dover and the evacuation of Dunkirk, was especially appropriate, and we learned that while the Scottish may be masters of making haggis and whiskey, they have not a clue as to how to make popcorn.

The next morning we spent visiting the little museums that had all been closed on Sunday. We started at the bottom of the Royal Mile at the Queen’s Gallery, where we saw an impressive collection of Flemish paintings by masters including Brueghel, Van Dyke and Reubens. We followed that stop with a quick, unarmed look at the inside of the Parliament Building. From there, we went up the hill and stopped in at the Edinburgh City Museum, which had great models of the city that helped us see how the “Old Town” had been built straddling the long hill that made up the Royal Mile and an exhibit detailing the role of the Scottish and English in the slave trade. They were among the first countries to abolish and condemn slavery but not until after decades of involvement—both implicit and explicit—in human trafficking. After that, we went to the Museum of Childhood, five floors of toys and dolls and games from the 19th and 20th centuries, and then to the Writers’ Museum, where exhibits honored Sir Walter Scott, Robert Burns, and Robert Louis Stevenson.

For lunch that day, we went to a Mexican restaurant. Though it was not a total disappointment, I have to say that this cuisine—like movie popcorn—is not the country’s forte.

To the north of “Old Town” and to the west of Calton Hill is “New Town,” a 1790s development built because the city was growing rapidly and could not get any taller. When we walked past the last tenement and crossed the bridge to New Town, we got the feeling that we had entered a completely different city. As open and orderly as Old Town is crowded and jumbled, New Town features some of the best examples of Georgian architecture found anywhere in Europe. On Charlotte Square, The Georgian House at Number 7 is open to the public and provides a fascinating look at life in the late 18th-early 19th centuries. While none of the furniture is original to the house, it is all authentic to the period, and the docents who greet visitors in each of the rooms are friendly and knowledgeable and clearly enjoy their work.

By the time we finished touring the house, it was dark, so we went back to the hotel, dropped off our backpacks and went to a nearby restaurant/bar for dinner. We were the only customers in the place for the first twenty minutes or so, but then a crowd of people came pouring in. It became clear very quickly that this was an office party of some sort, and we spent the better part of another hour seated in their midst, unacknowledged and, apparently, unnoticed, trying to figure out relationships—personal and professional—and deciding whose fortunes were on the rise and who was not going to be around the office much longer. With help from our waitress, who was just as amused and interested by these folk as we were, we learned that a young trainee had paid for all of the snacks and that the silver-haired man with whom each celebrant sought an audience was the boss and did not have to buy a drink all night long. We asked our co-conspirator if she thought we might be able to slip our dinner bill in on their tab, but she said that, unfortunately, they were all paying at the bar. So we gave up our feeble attempt at criminal behavior and went back to get some rest because we had to catch an early train home.

On our shorter, more uneventful trip back to Canterbury, Beth and I agreed that the weekend had been better than we had hoped. We also agreed that any attempts to describe the city—even this noble effort—would fall short. There is a magical quality to the city, from its dark tall spires to its narrow, winding streets and endless stairways, that really does need to be experienced to be understood.

Dickens World
In last week’s report, I mentioned that I was excited about visiting Dickens World: “a thrilling, chilling, fun packed journey around Dickensian England.” I have always had an affinity for the tacky and the kitschy, and the brochure touting it as “thrilling and chilling” promised that kind of experience. Sadly, it was not to be. While the place had a Disney-esque town square and an impressive array of electronic gizmos—from animatronic figures to holographic images—there was no clear sense of purpose or vision. Because its creators did not seem able to decide whether this should be a place for entertainment or education, they went for both and fell short. For example, the Britannia Theatre, which one of our students said looked like it came from Branson, Missouri, presented a quick look at Charles Dickens’ life and work by combining an animatronic version of the author and a couple characters from his novels with holographic images of Dickens’ real father and two more fictional characters. Throughout the show, we all exchanged looks of bewilderment trying to figure out what it was that we were watching and why. Similarly, a haunted house peopled by holographic ghosts gave us a two-minute condensed version of The Christmas Carol—all of it taking place in Scrooge’s bedroom—along with a snippet from Nicholas Nickleby, a series of character sketches drawn from several novels, and a talking chair. Again, bewilderment reigned. There was also a schoolroom where you could play a games of Chutes and Ladders by answering trivia questions about Dickens and his works, a 3-D theatre that only a few of us even found and, most inexplicably, the Great Expectations Boat Ride. On this journey, the boat started out on the Thames and meandered through Victorian London, but then it somehow rode a waterwheel up to the roofs of the city where a robot crow nodded as the boat passed and a clothesline hung with laundry lifted to let us pass. Then, the boat crashed into a wall, spun ninety degrees and plunged backwards down a short flume and splashed back into the river. How this had anything to do with Charles Dickens is beyond comprehension. But as disappointed as I was by the whole excursion—and curious as to why this was a college-sponsored outing—I came away with a dream of my own: Theodore DreiserLand.

Till next week…


 

The Weekly Dispatch Number 6
In Which We Learn The Secrets of Walking In English Cities And On Public Footpaths,
But, Alas, Do Not Learn Morris Dancing

In England, as most everyone knows, cars are equipped with steering wheels on the right and are driven on the left side of the road. Following the same kind of logic, I guess, it is the left hand brake on a bicycle, rather than the right as it is in the States, which operates the rear brake (something it’s good to know before you’re careening down a hill). And the left hand door in a double door is the IN door—again, the opposite of what you find in the U.S.. Given these examples, it seems only reasonable to presume that when you are walking down the street people will observe the same set of navigation rules and pass on the left.

Presume again, mate.

From the day we arrived in Canterbury and headed into the city centre, we have tried to figure out how to get around people on the sidewalks. We tried the “American way” and stayed right, and it didn’t work, so we stayed left, and that didn’t work, either. We always ended up doing a little dance—kind of a bob-and-weave, feint here and step there—that got us past the other pedestrians but did little to assure us that we could use the same move the next time and achieve the same result. So we watched and learned and discovered the secret to successfully maneuvering one’s way on foot through a British cityscape: no apparent eye contact.

At first, we thought that people would not look at us when we met them on a sidewalk because of the famous “British Reserve.” We were sure that a big old American smile and cheery “Good Morning!” were a cultural affront. In fact, on one occasion when a woman did happen to glance at Beth and was greeted warmly, her expression turned to one of mouth-agape abject terror, and she flew past us so quickly that by the time I turned to watch her go, she was already gone.

But what we learned from our experiences and our observations is that people don’t make eye contact—or appear not to make eye contact—because if they don’t acknowledge you, then they can ignore the fact that you’re on the sidewalk heading in their direction and can effectively force you to move out of their way. This works especially well when they are in pairs and taking up an entire and often very narrow sidewalk. In the double-walker scenario, not only will neither person look in your direction—or appear not to look—they also will appear to be so deeply engaged in conversation that the rest of the world seems to have fallen away. This works for both serious “You have a good point there, but I disagree…” kind of dialogue and moon-eyed “I don’t care. What do you want to do?” kind of lovers’ babble.

The key to this technique, as I’ve suggested, is the appearance of no eye contact. The British have clearly developed a more evolved variety of peripheral vision than the rest of us possesses, one that involves no sneaky twitching of the eyes or sidelong glances. They can walk for miles and seem to be staring at the ground—or at their walking partner—and never, ever need to check out the path ahead.

Despite our knowing that we are inferior to our Anglo counterparts, Beth and I still attempted to replicate the technique but, as you might expect, with very little success. Whether genetic or societal, cordiality is a hard habit to break, and there were times when we were sure that we were deeply engrossed enough in a meaningless conversation to hold our ground, but then one of us would momentarily lose concentration, chirp “Hi! Nice day!” to someone who was not looking at us, as we had mistakenly thought, but was staring purposefully over our shoulder and, just like that, we had stepped off the curb and let the person pass.

Another variation of this skill is practiced on High Street, where the person bearing down on you suddenly sees something of interest in a store window, looks at it with such interest that, again, you have ceased to exist and must jump clear. I tried this myself last Friday, which is market day and extremely crowded, and did manage to cause a fairly large man to get out of my way. I was feeling pretty full of myself, but then, to my great dismay—and ultimately to my horror and humiliation—two tiny and frail elderly women, who had been hidden in the man’s shadow, suddenly appeared right in front of me, and I plowed into both of them. Luckily, one caromed off into a vendor’s table and kept her feet. The other one I grabbed by the coat collar and managed to hold upright until she regained her balance. Once I saw that they were all right, I said, “Pardon c'est la vie,” in what I hoped sounded like a French accent and ducked into the crowd.

Walking, in addition to being utilitarian, has also become a recreational activity for us. We have, as I reported earlier, struck out on our own for afternoon tramps through the countryside which, invariably, ended up with us being somewhere other than where we thought we would be. We did the same thing on bicycles, but we’ve learned that walking is a much safer way to get lost. There’s something rather terrifying in pedaling along a narrow country lane and have someone come barreling around the corner not expecting to see someone on a bicycle because there hadn’t been someone on a bicycle there yesterday. We haven’t had any real near-misses yet, but we are being more and more careful about the roads we travel on two wheels.

But it was more curiosity than safety that prompted us to take yet another hike on Saturday. This time, though, we would be looked after by members of the Canterbury Ramblers, a local walking club. They were sponsoring the walk, entitled “Public Footpaths and Rights of Way” as part of the Canterbury Festival, a two-week-long celebration that includes everything from musical and theatrical performances to art exhibits and lectures to workshops and walks like the one we signed up for. According to the brochure, this would be a five-mile walk, which was something we have done a few times already, but the start of the hike was at the University of Kent, so, by the time the other hikers had arrived by car and started to tuck trousers into heavy socks, pull on their boots and grab their telescoping walking sticks, we had already covered two miles, most of it uphill, and were peeling off a layer of clothing.

The two co-leaders of the walk, Jenny and Kath, introduced themselves to us and then moved off to talk with the rest of the group. Both Beth and I, at this point, began to wonder if we had made a mistake. Some of the people knew each other, and everyone else had come with a friend or two, but there was not much mingling. A lot of “no apparent eye contact” again, which made us think this was going to be a very long and quiet three hours. Luckily, before we returned to the campus, all 28 of us had gotten through the initial discomfort and had a great time talking about subjects ranging from recommendations for local restaurants to species of birds. One of the walkers, it turned out, lives just two doors from us and another works at Christ Church University. As we walked back down the hill after the walk was ended, we agreed that it had been one of the most enjoyable experiences of our stay so far.

The walk itself took us close to one we had taken ourselves a couple of weeks ago—near the radfall (see Dispatch # 3) and into Broad Oak Valley. This time, though, we did not get lost. Our guides, we learned later, had hiked the route a couple of days earlier to make sure we stayed on course and on time. We also learned a great deal about public footpaths and public rights of way, as the title of the walk stated. One of the first facts we learned was that there are 4000 miles of public rights of way—which includes footpaths, bridleways and byways open to all traffic (other than “ordinary” roads)—in Kent County alone. Most of these rights of way, especially the footpaths, are ancient, having served as routes for parish members on their way to church or farmers on their way to market and quite often cross private property. To make access possible, many of the landowners erect stiles for crossing fences and mow the grass—or, in some instances, their crops—to give people a clearly defined path. Not everyone, as you can imagine, is as agreeable to the notion of having people walking through their fields or across their yards, but it’s been done for a thousand years and is part of English heritage. Those who don’t like the practice—like one of the farmers whose field we walked on Saturday—simply refuses to cut a path, while others, like Madonna (who owns an estate somewhere in Great Britain) try to fight the right of way in court. Most of those who take the legal route, lose, however, and the footpaths are saved.

We also learned along the way that Tyler Hill, which is a village we passed through early on the trip, got its name, naturally enough, from the tile industry that thrived there for hundreds of years. Many of the tiles in Canterbury Cathedral were made there as were many of the roofs in the city. We were shown a couple of deep pits in the forest which had been dug to get at the clay needed for manufacturing the tiles. A little farther on, we stopped to take a look at Allcroft Grange, a Tudor style home built on a hill overlooking Broad Oak Valley. It had been the home of Thomas Sidney Cooper, a local painter—one of Queen Victoria’s favorites—whose work often contains cattle or sheep in the foreground. We saw some of his paintings in the public library and thought, at the time, that it was odd to be looking at a landscape dominated by a giant cow while, way off in the distance, Cooper included the Cathedral almost as an after-thought. Now that we know of his affinity for the bovine and the ovine, we’ll go back and look at them again with a new appreciation.

In all, the walk took about three hours, 30 minutes of which we spent fortifying ourselves at The Old Stone House pub in Broad Oak with a half-pint of Whitsun Better Bitters and a bag of Cheese Moments. On the way back to the university, I stayed at the back of the pack and talked with the other stragglers. There is, I’ve come to realize, a sense of camaraderie among those of us who dawdle. We tend to get distracted a lot more and don’t seem to mind—though we are appropriately chagrined—having to apologize to the rest of the group, who have to stop periodically to make sure we haven’t wandered off and will never be found. Luckily, this was a walk and not a forced march, and no one scolded us for being pokey.

As I said earlier, Beth and I both felt that this was one of the best experiences we’ve had, and that, in large measure, was due to the people we met. There are Ramblers Clubs throughout Great Britain, clubs like the one that hosted Saturday’s walk, and they are passionate about preserving the country’s footpaths. And they don’t simply pay lip service—or a few pounds—to see that this important part of their heritage remains; they are out, at least once a week, walking the paths and leading groups and educating people like us about the history of these pathways. They have a website—www.ramblers.org.uk—that provides more information about walking in Britain—and we are hoping that we might be able to hike in a different part of the country—maybe Scotland or Wales—when and if we get to one of those places.

Getting to one of those places has not been a major priority of ours so far. While our students and our counterparts from the other American colleges have been going off to Amsterdam or Paris or Stockholm or Rome, we have been content to investigate Kent County. It was, in fact, one of the reasons we thought this kind of an extended stay would be so enjoyable; we could settle in and feel like we, in some small way, belonged. So far, it has worked out that way, but as winter starts to loom—this past weekend was cold, and the central heating in our house did not come on—we decided we should try to take a couple of overnight trips. Our first will be to Edinburgh, Scotland, by train this weekend. In another week or so, when friends from St. Charles visit, we will go to Newmarket, which is the home of horse racing, for a couple of days, and maybe Paris, and then, in December, we hope to take the train either to the Cotswalds or to Wales.

Hosting family and friends who have been able to take time off from work to visit has also be a treat. This week, our friend, Tina, from the Netherlands is here. She and Beth were faculty exchange partners in 2002, and we have been friends since that time. Other than the fact that her train arrived an hour early and she had to stand in the cold and wait for us because she wasn’t able to call us and didn’t know our street address (both flaws in the system we will fix for future guests), it has been a great visit. We all attended a Sunday morning service at the Cathedral and then took Tina on our version of a guided tour, explaining most of the highlights accurately and making up the rest (“And then, when the knights had finished hacking him to death with their swords, Thomas Becket’s body rose up from the stone floor on a beam of white light…”).

The Cathedral trip precluded an adventure I had hoped to undertake Sunday morning: a workshop on Morris Dancing. After the 10-mile walk on Saturday—which had been preceded on Friday by a riding lesson (my first in six weeks) and an extended bicycle ride—I didn’t think my legs would be up to the kind of rhythmic hopping I’d be required to do. Then, after reading about the dance, I decided it was just as well. Besides dressing oddly in matching vests and hats, one red sock and one green sock, and draped in bells, dancers also swing things above their heads—handkerchiefs, sticks, sausages—and leapfrog over each other.

Perhaps this is one of those things best left to the natives.

Bits and Pieces

I had thought that this week’s Dispatch would be made up entirely of “bits and pieces,” but then walking seemed like a good subject, and I was off on that tangent. Maybe some other week when it’s too cold and/or rainy to get out to do much, I’ll patch together a bunch of the little observations I’ve been storing up.

Next week’s Dispatch might be a day or two late. If we do get to go to Edinburgh, we won’t return until Monday evening, which means I won’t get to write this until the next day and then, I hope, post it on Wednesday. We will also be visiting Dickens World this coming Friday, which is a kind of literary Disneyworld. I'm excited.

Thanks for reading.

Weekly Dispatch #5In Which We Visit Leeds Castle; The Sisters Visit London In The Rain; We Welcome More Guests And All Visit London, Then Rent A Car And Defy Death
After our poorly planned attempt to visit Leeds Castle—billed as “The Loveliest Castle in the World” by Lord Conway who, apparently, knew lovely castles and the proper use of italics—we tried again the next day and were successful. The castle, which dates from 857 A.D., sits on two islands and seems to float on the lake that surrounds it. Adding to the fairy tale quality of the place are the exotic birds—including black swans—which populate the ponds and inhabit the aviary, a very well-constructed and confusing garden maze and 500 acres of woods and well-tended gardens and lawns. In addition, the grounds are also home to the world’s largest dog collar museum (I’m not sure where the second-largest dog collar museum can be found) and a nine-hole golf course. You can also, for $40, enjoy 15 minutes in a tethered helium balloon 400 feet in the air. We opted to stay on the ground and spent three hours or so wandering.

The castle itself is two buildings which were restored by Lady Baillie, the last private owner of the place. The first building houses historical artifacts and displays—many concerning Henry VIII, who owned the castle during his reign and visited it frequently—while the inner building, the castle keep, was the residence of Lady Baillie and is decorated in mid-20th century style. The castle is now kept by a trust and, in addition to be a very popular tourist site, is also a conference center. Meetings to finalize plans for the Camp David Accord in the 1970s were held there, as were meetings of Sinn Fein, the IRA’s political branch.

The castle is certainly worth a look, but, for us, the grounds were the real appeal, and we spent most of our time walking, which meant we were pretty pooped when we got on the train for the ride back to Canterbury and ready to snooze. Unfortunately, a school in one of the towns on the route had just let out for the day, and we were swarmed by rambunctious junior high students riding home, reminding me of the days when I used to ride the school bus. We did not, needless to say, get much napping done.

On Tuesday, Beth and her sister, Ginger, went into London in a driving rainstorm. Here’s Beth’s account of that soggy day:

The trip to London went of without a hitch. We’ve learned to read the scrolling signs on the trains that tell you when to get off, and we’d studied the map closely enough to have confidence that we knew what to do once we got off the train. Waterloo Station was our station of choice. It was a swirl of activity and commotion, but we managed to find our way to the subway—the Underground or the Tube—where we purchased “Oyster Cards,” the Underground’s equivalent of an I-Pass, a means of getting from point A to point B without having any human interaction. Simply “tap your card.” And all for half the price. (Having heard from my brother Doug later that he spent $8 on a ticket to travel five minute’s distance on the Underground, I guess we made the right choice.)

Because it was raining, Ginger and I decided to spend as much of the day inside as possible. Our first destination, St. Paul’s Cathedral, fit the bill perfectly. Because we had missed the first guided tour of the day and didn’t want to wait for the second, we opted for the audio-tour. A brilliant choice! There was enough information, guidance, interpretation, and stories to make the experience much better than a simple walk-through. I especially liked one of the opening comments on the tape that Sir Christopher Wren had accomplished something remarkable in this cathedral: he had actually made this enclosed space feel bigger than the space you had left outside the door. A very apt remark, and one I kept in mind during my walk through the whole cathedral.

We also saw the tombs of a remarkable list of historical and literary figures, including Wren himself, William Blake, Admiral Nelson, and Florence Nightingale.

From St. Paul’s, we headed via the Underground to the Tower of London. Because the rain had progressed to the point of downpour, we put up our hoods, ducked our heads, kept our eyes on the ground, and followed the crowd that seemed to know where it was going. We did, indeed, end up at the Tower of London where we saw the various towers in which the famous were imprisoned before their beheadings or murders—Sir Thomas More, Anne Boleyn, and the prince sons of Edward IV. (When given the chance to vote for who was responsible for their murders, I pushed the button for Richard III.) We wandered through the medieval palace and saw enough arms and instruments of torture and execution to serve me for a lifetime. Oh, we also saw a few baubles they like to call the “Crown Jewels.” This last display had a Disneyland-style exhibit which gives you videos to look at during the waits that can go on for hours during peak season. Ginger and I, however, walked right in. When the rain let up and we finally wandered out onto the walls surrounding the entire grounds, we saw the sights we had missed walking in with our heads ducked. There was the lovely Thames with the impressive Tower Bridge crossing it.

At the end of the day, we met Pat for dinner at the Raj Venue, an Indian restaurant in Canterbury. I decided to order a dish that our British expatriate friend Neil Edmondson had recommended to us: chicken vindaloo. This dish, for those who haven’t tried it, was described on the menu as hot/very hot. “I can handle it,” I thought. “If it were really hot it would have said just ‘very hot.’” Halfway through the dish, though, I realized I couldn’t handle it and gave up. I ate the plain nan (bread) that Ginger had ordered, instead. At the end of the meal, I asked the waiter if there was anything hotter on the menu. He seemed startled at my naïve question: of course not. To get something hotter, you have to special order it. I’m now looking suspiciously at the list of food that Neil has recommended. I’m wondering if he is personally exacting revenge for that event a couple centuries back called the American Revolution.
(The list of foods that Beth mentioned above includes a number of dishes I believe Neil made up, hoping that we would go into a restaurant and try to order “Coal Scrubber’s Pie” or “Beets and Leeks with Gravel.” More about food next week.)

Beth’s brother, Doug, and his daughter, Emily, arrived from Dubai on Thursday morning and spent the rest of that day with Beth and Ginger getting acquainted with Canterbury. While they did that, I met with my class again and am seeing increasing evidence that the students here are no different from my students at home. I received excuses for why a paper was not ready to be handed in, had emails explaining absences due to migraine headaches and eye infections—which may be legitimate, but the fact that these students were struck down the day something was due does make me wonder about the coincidence—and, during a rather lengthy and not-as-helpful-as-I’d-have-liked demonstration of the Blackboard e-learning site, I had to keep moving around the room to keep people on task.

That said, I feel more comfortable knowing that these students are not that much different from their American counterparts because I have a pretty good idea what to expect from them. And I do think we’re getting along pretty well. The week before last, a piece of notebook circulated around the room, started by the gregarious (and bright) Dougie, with the heading “The Pat Parks ‘What Is Your Age Game’ 2007.” This past class period, I gave the two closest guessers each a roll of Polos (British Lifesavers) and the student who made me the youngest a good-sized chocolate bar. No one guessed me older than my age, which is either a testament to my youthful appearance (this was the same day that I had had my hair cut and waxed) or to their student savvy. Either way, the sheet of paper with their guesses is a souvenir I will bring home with me.

Our third school-sponsored field trip took us to London on Friday where we spent part of the day on a walking tour of central London—from Whitehall to Picadilly Circus to Trafalgar Square—and part of the day in the Wartime Cabinet Rooms/Churchill Museum. Our guide for the walk was Alan Read, a professional Blue Badge guide, whose observations and anecdotes made the tour entertaining and informative. We saw Big Ben and Parliament and Westminster Abbey from a distance—we hope to go back to see more of those at a later date—and took the appropriate photos, but it was the less-well-known stops that Alan showed us that were more memorable. He showed us, for example, a number of gentlemen’s clubs, which are not like our gentlemen’s clubs (no noontime lingerie shows) and are now open to women, including the Reformers’ Club where Phineas Fogg made his famous claim that he could circumnavigate the world in eighty days. Another of the clubs was famous for its gambling, and Alan told us about the members who would sit at the front window in a rainstorm and bet which raindrop would reach the bottom of the window first, and about the time someone noticed a woman had collapsed in the entryway, and, rather than help her, members took bets as to whether or not she was dead or merely sleeping.

We also saw Lobb’s shoe shop, where, in the basement, are the lasts (personalized wooden models of feet) for more than 300 of their customers, many of them dead for years. At Lock’s, the hatter’s shop, we were told that the first bowler was made and was worn by servants who served as “beaters” on hunting trips because they often had their scalps cut or scratched by brambles as they chased pheasants. In addition, we stopped at the “factory gates” erected by Margaret Thatcher at the end of Downing Street to snap long-range, blurry photographs of No. 10 (later, at the back of the PM’s residence, we caught a glimpse of a man in shirtsleeves passing a window and convinced ourselves it was Gordon Brown), and we saw a changing of the horse guards outside of Whitehall.

The second part of the trip took us underground to the location where Winston Churchill and his cabinet met in relative safety during the London Blitz and beyond to plan Britain’s defense against the German army. The curators of the cabinet rooms have done a remarkable job preserving and restoring the rooms as they appeared during World War II, and the audio tour that takes you through the tunnels and rooms brings the place to life. Coupled with our earlier trip to the wartime tunnels in Dover—and punctuated by the shrapnel-pocked buildings we saw on our walk—I have come to a better understanding of just how frightening and tenuous life was on this island in the 1940s. The Churchill museum, which occupies a part of the subterranean complex, is an ultra-modern, interactive homage to Britain’s best-known Prime Minister opened in 2005. I did not budget enough time to see everything in the museum, but what I saw was impressive and what I did not see—judging from what Beth and others said they saw and did—was apparently more impressive still.

Then came the weekend…

In an email Doug sent us prior to his arrival, he mentioned that when he had lived in England—he taught in London during the late 1980s—he enjoyed renting a car and traveling around the countryside. Because that sounded like a good way to spend the day, and because I had already driven once—albeit it in a Dutch car with the steering wheel in its proper place—I was named designated driver.

When we called to reserve a car, my only request was that it be an automatic. Navigating on the “wrong” side of the road was going to prove challenging enough without having to learn how to shift left-handed. The young man at the rental place told us he would have a Ford Focus ready for us at 9 a.m. on Saturday, so Doug, Emily, and I, that morning, walked to the office and asked for our car. After checking the lot, the same young man who had taken our reservation over the phone informed us that the Ford had been rented the day before, unfortunately, and that the only car they had available with an automatic transmission was a Mercedes, which we could have for the same price. And not only a Mercedes, it turned out, but a brand new Mercedes, with only 69 miles on it. Doug and—especially—Emily were excited about touring the English countryside in luxury, but I was horrified.

In 2001, we traveled to Ireland and rented a car. As patriarch of the family (a title I seem to deserve only when no one else in the family wants to do something), I drove the entire time. Like England, Ireland is a “drive-on-the-left-side-of-the-road” country and, like England but more so, it has very narrow roads. As we tooled around on that trip, Beth was forever warning me that I was—in her words—“too close” to things on her side of the car. On at least one occasion, she was right, and I knocked the left-hand mirror off the car. I felt terrible about having done that—and did again when the insurance bill came due—but my shame was mitigated a bit when I saw that almost every other car on the road had a mirror dangling or missing.

It was this memory—the echoes of “You’re too close!” and the solid thwack of one mirror smacking another at 30 mph—that raced through my mind when I was told I would be driving a brand new, shiny black Mercedes on narrow, twisting, hedge-row-lined country lanes for the next four or five hours. Immediately, I had a shooting pain that went from my neck to my shoulders and my fingers curled into a white-knuckle grip I knew would be permanent. But, as patriarch—pater familias—it was my duty, and I accepted it.

Other than those times when we met other cars or—worse—trucks on our excursion and had to run the brand new shiny black Mercedes up into a hedgerow to save the mirror on my side, I did not mind driving. The car handled beautifully and was very comfortable for all of us, even during those moments when we were raked at a 45 degree angle, and I was practicing phrases uttered centuries ago by my Anglo-Saxon ancestors. The only damage I did—and it went unnoticed when we returned the car—was some scuffing of the front left tire caused by numerous collisions with the thankfully low curbs that edged every road not canopied and crowded by trees and hedges. (More on the roads next week.)

During our Saturday outing, we did not travel more than 10 miles from Canterbury, but we went through more diverse countryside than I’d have imagined. We went from hilly and wooded areas to open farmland to sea marsh. One of the most interesting stops along the way—which was closed for the season but still viewable from outside the fence—were the ruins of a Roman fort at Richborough, between Dover and Sandwich. The fort was built in 46 A.D. and was also the site where St. Augustine arrived in England in 597 A.D.

For lunch on Saturday, we stopped at the Half Moon and Seven Stars pub in Preston. Like most pubs, this one has a story, and the Half Moon’s story deals with smugglers who would offload contraband cargo at the nearby coast and stay the night before heading into Canterbury or on to London to sell their ill-gotten goods. (More about pubs next week.) We took another short break at a farm stand in the same village and stocked up on apples and pears—both of which are locally grown and delicious.

The most interesting and sort of dreamlike moment of the day came when we emerged from a tree-covered lane into a narrow valley. Spaced along the grassy floor of the valley were perhaps a dozen men with shotguns and hunting dogs, all facing us, watching. Whatever they had been doing had been suspended as a family walking in our direction passed through to safety, and they had to desist a bit longer as we drove past. With all of those guns potentially aimed in our direction, I did not want to spend much time gawking, but I did notice that the men were all dressed in similar fawn-colored coats, tweedy vests, and Wellingtons, and it reminded me of old black-and-white photographs of proper English gentlemen posing with a few hundred dead pigeons or ducks or quail. Whether this was a hunt—we saw dozens of pheasants that day—or a dog trial or shooting contest, I have no idea, but it was, as I said, such an odd scene to come upon that I thought—just for a moment, until I scraped the brand new shiny black Mercedes against a bush—that I was dreaming it all.

Having a Mercedes for a weekend means that it must be driven both days, so on Sunday, we first delivered Doug and Emily at the train station so that they could visit friends in London before flying back to Dubai, and then we headed to Whitstable on the North Sea. I was a little more relaxed driving this time but, again, meeting cars—even on the British equivalent of highways—caused a sharp intake of breath—a gasp, if you will—and the oft-heard rubbery squeak of tire meeting curb.

Whitstable is a beautiful town known for its seafood. In fact, Caesar was said to have preferred Whitstable’s oysters to all others in his empire and had them shipped to Rome. At a restaurant right on the shore, I tried the oysters—broiled because it’s been a while since I slurped them raw—while Beth and Ginger had fish and chips. This is such a charming place that Londoners are gobbling up the property, causing prices to skyrocket and turning the place into a British version of the Hamptons. It is still very much a tourist attraction as well, and we found ourselves sharing the day with a horde of holiday-makers who would, later, share the road with us in their deadly vehicles, grinning maniacally as they aimed at my mirror.

I am very relieved to report that the Mercedes survived the weekend intact. We returned it as early as we possibly could on Monday morning and happily walked home.

This week looks to be a quiet one—no guests until Saturday, no field trips—so I’m planning—as I noted above—to offer some more general observations on life in England in my next dispatch.

Cheerio!

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!