The Weekly Dispatch No. 15: In Which Trains Play A Central Part; An Anniversary Is Celebrated; and A Long Overdue Debt Is Paid
 

 As much as I love Britain’s train system, there are times when things go awry, and, suddenly, you are caught in a web of tracks and tunnels and time tables, and there’s nothing you can do about it.  It happened to us in 2007—especially on weekends, when engineering work is done on both the Underground and National Rail lines—and taught us to check ahead of time before we set out on an adventure.  No amount of planning, however, could have prevented what happened last week.

Monday before last, my Missouri counterpart, Rich, and I went into London so that when his wife comes to visit later this month, he’ll know how to navigate the city.  Because I know my way around passably well, and with the only alternative my tagging along with them—which could really take the romance out of a candlelight dinner—it made sense to head up for some reconnoitering.

Since I was last here, they’ve added a fast train service, which means making it to St. Pancras Station in 56 minutes rather than the hour-and-a-half or more it normally takes.  When we arrived, we went to the Underground where Rich bought an Oyster card, a reloadable pass for city subway and bus travel, and took the Tube to Leicester Square, where cheap tickets to theatrical productions are sold, then wandered through Picadilly Circus, down to the National Mall, (a wide, wide street that leads up to Buckingham Palace), up the Mall to the palace (QEII was not home.  See the 2007 Dispatches for my history with the monarch) where we watched a royal band and horse guards apparently rehearsing for something.  The crowd there was heavy, so we snapped a few over-the-head phone photos and walked through St. James Park to White Hall and across to Westminster, where you can see Big Ben, The Houses of Parliament, Westminster Cathedral, the River Thames and the London Eye, all just by turning your head.  From the walkway along the river, I was able to point in the direction of the things most people want to see that aren’t in Westminster: St. Paul’s Cathedral, The Globe Theatre, The Tate Modern Art Museum, The Tower of London, all of which are along the Thames, but out of sight around a big bend.

Thus endeth the lesson.  Rich felt comfortable and confident, so we went underground again and rode the Picadilly Line to South Kensington, where we had a pub lunch, meandered past luxurious homes and a half-dozen or more embassies in this posh part of the city, then got back on the Tube and made our way easily to St. Pancras to pick up the train to Canterbury.

Here’s where things went awry.  As we made our way to the platform, we noticed that the 14:25 to Canterbury was cancelled.  When we asked an attendant about it, she said that we should get on the train leaving shortly for Ashford and transfer there to a train that would take us the rest of the way.  We did what she advised, but when we got to Ashford, we, and hundreds of other passengers, were told that there were no trains running in the direction of Canterbury or beyond because a bomb had been discovered near the station in Ramsgate, and all train travel was temporarily suspended.  Worried a bit by the meaning of “temporarily,” we nevertheless settled in to wait.

As it turns out, the bomb was not a terrorist device, but a World War II relic that had been buried and lay unexploded, for 70 years.  It was removed and taken to Joss Bay—a place we had visited last week on our trip to Broadstairs—and detonated there.  The whole ordeal caused the station to be closed for five hours, an inconvenience for us, but a more traumatic ordeal for school children who normally would catch a train home.  Buses were dispatched to the various affected locations—including Ashford—to alleviate the back-up.  We made a mad dash along with the rest of the stranded to the bus stop outside the station but, alas, we did not get seats.  By the time we had been herded back to the platform, though, a train was waiting to take us to Canterbury, three hours later than we’d planned.

In addition to the bomb, we were told by a couple of rail employees that there had also been a   derailment elsewhere that had had an impact on our travel; in addition, at Sevenoaks, a person had been hit by a train, and in some other location, “staff sickness” had caused a suspension of service.  After hearing all of that, I mentioned that the only thing missing was an attack by Godzilla.

This was also the week that Beth came over to celebrate our anniversary and this, too, has a railroad connection.  When we made arrangements to meet Friday after she flew in, we decided to rendezvous in Rochester, where I would be visiting the castle and cathedral and nearby fort with students.  We figured she could come to the castle and we’d head back to Canterbury from there.  It seemed like a good idea at the time because we had been in Rochester before and remembered it to be a much smaller city than it actually is.  Once this dawned on me, it was too late to change our plan; Beth was already on a train without a British phone, heading my way, and our chances of finding each other seemed rather remote.  I imagined us as a blindfolded trapeze act: one flying through the air, the other reaching out to grab hold; neither of us aware of where the other one was.   I figured my best bet was to get to the train station and hope I’d catch her there.  I didn’t know where the station was, but I went down High Street and saw trains moving a couple of blocks away.  I asked for directions and found myself at the place.   I had just gotten to the platform, when a train from London pulled in.  To my great delight, Beth stepped off, and all my worries disappeared.  It proved to be a good start to a great visit.

Much of our weekend was spent reliving things we had done together six years ago.  First on the list was going to evensong at the cathedral, which, on Friday nights, features the boys’ choir and the most angelic voices you can imagine soaring up to the ceiling a hundred feet overhead.  We also went charity shop shopping, and I now have, thanks to Beth, a décor in my flat.  Before it was white; now it has accent colors and little pillows and a vase with flowers.  It does, I admit, look a lot better and feels homier.  Eating and having a pint at a couple of favorite pubs, retracing walks where we’d gotten lost (and did again), and just taking in the place occupied most of the weekend. 

One exception to our nostalgia tour was Saturday’s trip to the Canterbury Food and Drink Festival held in Dane John Park, a sprawling green space just inside the city wall.  This was not as large as Chicago’s famous Taste of Chicago, of course, but it drew a pretty large crowd, and everyone seemed to be having fun.  We tried a few local delicacies, including wild boar and apple sausage, sweet potato croquettes and the British equivalent of funnel cake—in terms of novelty, anyway—a French-fried, spiral potato on a skewer.  (A note to organizers: ask people to leave their dogs at home.  I saw more than one hunger-crazed pooch lunge for a carelessly dangled sandwich.)  This was clearly an event for the local citizenry rather than the horde of tourists who take over High Street every weekend, and according to our new friends at The Forge restaurant, piqued a lot of interest in places many Canterbury residents had not yet discovered.

We also saw our favorite busker, a gravel-voiced singer named Vince Herron, outside the cathedral gate on Butter Market Square.  I had come upon him last week and was elated.  In 2007, the day before we left for home, we finally worked up the courage to talk with him and told him how much we had enjoyed listening to him over the previous three months.  He thanked us and sang REM’s “Losing My Religion” for us.  Sadly, we had spent most of our British money—and we were prevented from speaking to him after the song by a well-meaning neighbor who steered us away in both conversation and location—so we weren’t able to thank or tip him appropriately.  When I saw him in his customary place, I told him the story and gave him a tip I told him was six years late.  He had only just returned to singing he told me because a homeless man he’d felt sorry for and had given a place to stay had attacked him with a sword, giving him a nasty head wound and injuring one of his hands.  Then he launched into a song of his own, “At the Gates of Heaven.”  It occurred to me later that Vince essentially spends his days at “the gates of heaven,” sitting as he does just outside the cathedral, and that the attack he had suffered was eerily like that of Thomas Beckett, Archbishop of Canterbury, who was killed by four sword-wielding knights in the cathedral—his death due in large part to a vicious head wound—in 1170.  Thomas was granted sainthood, but I don’t think Vince will be honored the same way, but, given his compassion for his attacker, maybe he should be.

If you want to hear Vince’s song, go to YouTube and type in his name.  It’s worth a listen.

As much as I love this place, it’s even better when Beth is here to share the experience.  The three days went very quickly and, as I write this, Beth is almost back in Chicago where she will, I’m sure, be battling jet lag for a few days.  This weekend abroad idea is way more cosmopolitan they we are, but we agreed that this was our best anniversary to date and will be hard-pressed to top it any time soon. We’ll be enjoying an equally cosmopolitan weekend in Ireland late in October, and then she’ll be back to celebrate Thanksgiving.

Interestingly and thematically enough, as we made our way from the Tube into Heathrow yesterday, there was a hand-lettered sign alerting passengers to a delay because of “a person under a train.”  Mind the gap, people, mind the gap.

 

This week is the first real week of classes for the British students, so I will be put to work, finally.  In addition to leading seminars in conjunction with the American-student-only course on the relationship between Britain and the U.S., “Divided by a Common Language,” I will also be a seminar co-leader, along with Rich, and a one-time lecturer in “The Invention of America,” an American literature class, which will be great fun.  We will also be taking a field trip into London on Friday, so there may be enough to fill my next dispatch with activities, but I also have learned some things about the cathedral that I want to share when there’s room. 

Cheers!

p.s.  Because I'm pretty lousy at doing much on this site except uploading text, I'm posting pictures periodically on Facebook.  If you're not a Facebook friend, you can be!  Just send a request, and I'll add you. 

 

 

The Weekly Dispatch No. 14:  In Which I Return To This Wonderful City, Settle In, and Begin A New Adventure.

Though Beth and I have been in England a few times since our 2007 Canterbury stay, landing at Heathrow last Sunday was different because I knew that it would be months before I got back on the plane to come home and that I would be not a tourist but a resident, albeit an alien one.  When we landed for our first extended stay, that realization was a bit daunting; this time I felt ready and confident.  The only major drawback to that confidence is that I’m alone—Beth’s school suspended sabbaticals this year—so any mistakes or wrong turns or missed connections will fall entirely on me.  More importantly, I will miss sharing the experience with Beth, but she will be coming over three times during my stay, so we’ll have plenty of opportunities to board the wrong train together.

 At Heathrow, I met up with the ICISP students who will be my “charges” during this study abroad semester.  All six are female and all six strike me as capable young adults, eager and excited about this new chapter in their lives.  After we found each other in the terminal, we were brought to Canterbury and driven to the places where we will live for the next three months.  I was the first one dropped off—so that the students know where to find me—and then the rest were taken to the homes where their host families welcomed them.  One of the students had to wait until evening to be delivered because her family was in London, so she was stuck hanging around with me until the taxi picked her up.

 My residence until mid-December is a new three-bedroom flat in a brand new building the university built as student housing.  No students have or will live in the apartment I’m in unless they are older and/or have families because the neighbors on the street did not take to the idea of having 18- or 19-year-old students carousing next door.  Like most English homes, this one is small but has everything I need.  On the ground floor, there is a combination living/kitchen space, a half-bath and a bedroom.  I have both a large refrigerator and a combination washer-dryer.  Upstairs, there are two more bedrooms and a full bath.  I also have a large TV set on the ground floor hooked up to cable, so this time I won’t be limited in my viewing to British game shows, though it was good to watch Eggheads again.

 While I was unpacking, Jayne Anne Kilvington from the university's international program came to the door and told me that my Missouri counterpart, Rich Pernaud, had arrived, so I went next door to say hello.  Last time around, the faculty person from Missouri was, to say the least, a challenge and not someone we cared to spend much time with.  This time, I am lucky to have a great neighbor and colleague.  Rich teaches English at St. Louis Community College, and he and I will be guest lecturing in an American literature class taught by a young, enthusiastic lecturer, Zalfa Feghali, who is just starting her first full-time teaching position.  When both Rich and I had unpacked enough to feel a break was needed, we walked into the city centre, where I tried to be both tour guide and silent companion, knowing that I could diminish the wonder of discovering this beautiful city by talking too much.  It was interesting to note that Rich’s impression of Canterbury was exactly the same one that Beth and I had when we first walked on High Street: “This doesn’t seem real. It’s like a movie set.”

I did impose my will a little bit, though, and suggested that we have dinner that night at The Weavers, which is a traditional English restaurant housed in a building built in the late 1500s—“oldy-woldy,” as they say here—that serves a variety of pastry-topped pies both filling and delicious.  After walking some more and staying awake late enough to beat jet lag, I came home and got ready for what I hoped would be a restful sleep that would leave me charged and ready for Monday’s obligations at the university.  Teeth brushed, lights turned out, I pulled back the duvet on my bed and lay down.  As I did, I remembered that Steve Alvin, the faculty person here last spring, had commented on the firmness of the mattress.  I think he said “hard” rather than “firm,” but I passed that off as hyperbole.  Surely, Steve just wasn’t used to an English mattress.  As I stretched out and pulled up the covers, I realized Steve was not exaggerating. The mattress was hard in the same way that a paved road is hard, ungiving and unforgiving.  Despite my being fatigued and desperate for sleep, I spent the whole night trying to find a position that approximated comfort, but, alas, I could not find one.  Every time I woke from a brief bit of fitful sleep, all I could think about was doing this every night until December. I tried to convince myself that if medieval monks could sleep on bare boards in tiny, dank rooms, then I had no room to complain.  By morning—by which I mean 4 a.m.—I decided that medieval monks must have been idiots or had grown up in an environment where a wooden slab was preferable to whatever they had known prior to their joining an orders (what could that be?) and was determined not to emulate those brown-cowled knuckleheads another night, so I dragged the mattress off the bed in the adjoining room and put it on top of mine: it worked! I managed to get an hour of real sleep before I had to hop up and head off to campus.

 Even though I was groggy and a bit unfocused the next day, I was very impressed by the changes that had taken place in the study abroad program at Canterbury Christ Church University since we were here in 2007.  This time, the students were given everything they needed to get off to a good start.  Representatives from every important office or department spoke with them, welcomed them, reassured them that they were there for them.  All in all, there was a greater cohesion and completeness to the orientation process missing six years ago, and I think the students had any lingering fears allayed before the day was out.

There is also a more concerted effort to get the students out and about, so on Wednesday night, we were treated to a Canterbury Ghost Walk.  Granted, it wasn’t dark, and we didn’t see anything even remotely resembling a spectre, but the woman who conducted the tour was very theatrical (she had some BBC acting credits) and kept us amused for an hour.  At one point, she even hid behind a guy who was leaning in a doorway drinking a beer, a move that he seemingly took in stride, but one that made all of us spectators a bit uncomfortable. 

 On Saturday, we went on our first field trip, this one to the Roman fort at Richborough, followed by an afternoon of roaming around the seaside town of Broadstairs.  The tour was conducted by Doug MacMillan, who had been a student in the American Literature class I taught six years ago, and it was a real delight to see how much he has matured and how well he does his job.  (For those who read the blog in 2007, Doug—or Dougie, as he was known then—was the instigator of the “how old is Pat Parks contest,” a claim to fame that had him a bit chagrined when I reminded him of it, though I reassured him that it made me feel accepted.)  Doug, who has a Hugh Grant-ish charm about him, had been one of the first students to get involved with the American students, so it seems only fitting that he is now helping this group get acclimated.

 The Roman fort was a place that we had discovered in 2007 but could not explore because it was closed for the season. This time we were able to do more than take pictures of a lone stony wall and could actually get in and look around.  Past that wall, which is all one can see from the parking lot, is a two-acre complex of crumbled stone ruins and deep trenches. The footprint of St. Augustine’s first chapel on British soil is there, too.  Built in roughly 45 AD, the site marked the first place the Romans came ashore in Britain.  They picked that spot because it was low—unlike the cliffs at Dover and other spots on the southeast coast—which made it easy for them to off-load supplies and troops.  Though this was a beachhead then, the sea has silted in considerably, and it’s now a mile-and-a-half to the coast rather than the five or six hundred yards that it had been.   

 After an hour or so of wandering, we piled back into the coaches and headed off to Broadstairs, a smallish city that had been a popular seaside resort in the Victorian period for Londoners who wanted to get out of the smoggy metropolis and enjoy clean air and sandy beaches.  White chalk cliffs rise up from the beach—not as high as those at Dover—so the hotels and restaurants command a wonderful view of the English Channel and, when the sky is clear enough, the coast of France, 22 miles away.  Doug took the group down High Street (there’s a High Street in almost every community; it’s their equivalent of our Main Street) to the beach and let the students go exploring for a bit until reuniting for a trek up the coast to the North Foreland Lighthouse, the last manned (though no longer) lighthouse in England. The walk took about an hour and gave the students not only a chance to see the historic building but also to go down to Joss Bay and wade barefoot in the very chilly Channel.  Behind the lighthouse, a hill drops away to a riding stable.  In a field near where we were standing, horses and sheep mingled and grazed.  I was talking with two students who were interested in finding a place to go horseback riding and perhaps take lessons when I noticed a tiny girl in Wellington boots, blond braids and a purple riding helmet making her way up the long hill toward us.  When she got to the fence—which was a good 20 yards or so away from where we were—she said, “Excuse me.  Please don’t try to touch the horses or feed them.  It will make them fight.”  I said that we wouldn’t, that I had a horse at home and that we were just looking.  Satisfied that she had done her job and had likely prevented an equine free-for-all, she turned and marched back down the hill.

 One of the great things that Doug did on this trip was to make the students responsible for getting themselves back to Canterbury.  His thinking, which strikes me as very sound, was that if they could safely manage to return on their own, then they would be more comfortable with a longer trip away.  He had purchased train tickets for everyone and made sure that they were in groups of three or four so that no one was left alone.  These were distributed prior to our arriving in Broadstairs with the understanding that once the lighthouse walk was over, students could either stay for a while longer or make their way back to Canterbury.  Some students had plans for the evening—one group was heading up to Edinburgh and had to catch a train north—leaving about a dozen students behind.  Some of them accompanied Rich and Doug and me to a sailors’ pub where my formidable skills as a pool player on an American table proved to be woefully inadequate on the much smaller, narrow-pocketed British table.  Rich and I lost three in a row and decided a second pint would make lessen the embarrassment.

 Part of the reason we had decided to linger in Broadstairs was a pageant scheduled for 7 o’clock, to be followed by fireworks at 8.  Now, I am a great fan of local pageants—in fact, I even wrote one when we lived in Muscatine, Iowa—and the more awkwardly sincere it is, the better.  Keep in mind, I don’t attend these to mock their clumsiness but, rather, to appreciate the honesty and guilelessness of that clumsiness.  Granted, I am amused and find myself laughing when perhaps I shouldn’t, but it’s never mean-spirited.  I love that people throw themselves with such abandon into their roles, and I love that people who attend do the same. There’s a shared joy that’s undeniable and enviable, a respite from cynicism.

 From where we stood on the beach, next to the place where the acts gathered for their turn on stage, it was a bit difficult to follow the action, but the deep-voiced and impassioned narrator told us that the over-arching theme of the evening was tolerance.  He noted that the performers possessed many abilities and disabilities and that they had all practiced diligently for this night.  That said, he introduced the first performers, a dozen males of various ages dressed as Roman soldiers and Brits, who re-enacted for a very long time the invasion of Britain by Rome.  While those costumed characters swung wooden swords against wooden shields, four men also in Roman garb galloped back and forth behind the action on white horses.  One of the four, the leader of the group, rode with both arms extended, clearly pleased that he could ride with no hands.  After the big battle, the action took a decidedly genteel turn, and group after group of dancers made their way from where we stood to a wooden dance floor.  Rich, who was closest to the performers, said to one young woman who was nervously waiting her turn, “I’ll be you guys are going to be the best ones out there.” To which she replied with typical British modesty or resignation, “I don’t think so.  We’re not very good at all.”  We were too far away to see if she was right in her assessment, but the whole event, with lights swirling off the white cliffs and New Age-ish instrumental music (think pan flute and a hammered dulcimer) reverberating over the sea was a memorable way to end our first week in England.

 This coming week will include a trip to London on Monday—a kind of primer for Rich so that he can navigate the city on his own next time around, a field trip to Rochester on Friday and Beth’s arrival that same day.  We also have a tour of the cathedral on Tuesday, so there should be plenty for me to pass along in the next installment—which may be a day late because Beth and I will be in London on Sunday, my writing day.  I’ll try my best to meet my own deadline, though.

Thanks for reading.

 p.s. A word of advice for travelers to England: don’t buy an umbrella for a pound ($1.72) unless you want to tell people not to buy an umbrella for a pound.

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Weekly Dispatch #13:In Which We Catalog The Things We Love The Best & Will Miss The Most
We are winding down our time here in Canterbury, and though we are both looking forward to seeing our family and friends (and horse), we are equally sad at the notion of leaving. Because I knew that this last week is going to be a busy one—in addition to packing, we are also hosting our neighbors for dinner, our students at a Christmas party, and I have papers to grade—we started talking a couple of weeks ago about the things we have enjoyed and will miss the most. Here then, in ascending order, are the 11 Top Ten things:

11. Charity Shops: Whenever a customer buys something in a retail shop in the UK, he or she is assessed a 17.5% VAT (Value Added Tax) which can, if the total from the store tops the minimum, be recovered through the customs office at the airport. But if you don’t top the minimum, you don’t get the 17.5% back. I mention this because it is one of the reasons we have found going to the many charity shops in Canterbury (and other communities) such an enjoyable experience: no VAT. Unlike the Goodwill stores at home, which are large and impersonal, the charity shops here tend to occupy small spaces, and each has its own character. The YMCA shop, for example, has quite a bit of furniture, while the Hospice shop is so packed with clothes that you can hardly turn around. And there is a higher quality to the “castoffs” in these places, too. Beth is quite proud of the cashmere coat, the tweed jacket, the wool winter coat and the “little black dress” she has picked up while we’ve been here. I’ve not been so lucky; the tweed jacket I saw in the front window was gone before I had a chance to get to the store the next day and I lost out in the same way on a tuxedo that looked like it might fit. We also picked up some kitchen things our house lacked when we got here and came across some great “white elephants” for the Christmas party we’re having this week with the students. What makes it especially enjoyable is that the stock is never the same from one day to the next, which means I may still have a chance to pick up a tweed jacket before we leave.

10. Historical Sites: A visitor to this country could spend weeks—probably even months—visiting places where, literally, history was made. It is possible to go from the Neolithic sites of Stonehenge and Avebury to the Roman city of Bath in a day, traveling only a few miles but through hundreds of years. There are notable Roman ruins, including Hadrian’s Wall near the Scottish border and a Roman fort near Richborough, and there are many more hidden treasures buried underneath London—and even Canterbury—which can be visited. At the British Library in London and in Salisbury Cathedral, you can see copies of the Magna Carta, one of the most important documents of law ever written, and, at the Library, you can also see Shakespearean folios, the working notebooks of Lewis Carroll and Jane Austen, pages from the sketchbook of Leonardo da Vinci and original, handwritten lyrics of Beatles songs. If you go to Hastings, you will be on the site of the 1066 invasion of England by the Normans. If you have a cup of coffee at Chambers in Canterbury, you will be sitting in the place where the Pilgrim fathers planned the voyage of the Mayflower to America. In Dover, you can walk through an ancient castle that stands above the subterranean headquarters of Britain’s navy during World War II. Everywhere you go, there is something of historical interest, and even if you’re not a history buff, you will still, I guarantee, pause for a moment when you look down from the parapet of a castle and think about what happened there on that very spot hundreds of years ago.

9. Train Travel: Probably the best purchase we made in preparation for this trip was a pair of BritRail passes. We thought at first that we would never recoup the cost (about $600 apiece), but we have far exceeded the amount we would have paid in regular fares during our visit. And more importantly, traveling by train was a delight—once we figured out how to read a timetable. Whether it be short trips to Faversham or Chilham or longer excursions to Edinburgh and Newmarket, the trains were clean and safe and on time. Most cars were equipped with tables, so it was possible to spread out a bit during the longer journeys and on some trains, a man with a catering trolley rattles—and occasionally crashes—his way down the aisle. As I mentioned in an earlier dispatch, the best thing about the trains equipped for longer runs was the quiet car. The trains that are primarily for commuters tend to be a little noisy because you will have business people on their mobile phones, kids on their way to school listening to music and goofing around, and you expect to have a bit of pandemonium on a trip of that nature, but when you know you’ll be in transit for six or seven hours, silence is the key, and the quiet cars provide that. Overall, unless it’s biking or walking, there seems to be no better way to get around England. Coaches are fine for local runs—and you do get great views from the upper deck—or, if you are going to a remote site and have the nerve, a car is handy, but pound for pound (pardon the pun), nothing beats the train.

8. Ale & Cheese: The Germans can claim to have the best beer in the world, and the French are fond of flouting their cheese, but, for my money, there is nothing better than a pint of hand-pulled English ale and a wedge of English cheese. On a recent tour of
Shepherd Neame Brewery—Britain’s oldest brewery—in Faversham, we learned that what we have been enjoying in pubs since we got here is real ale, ale that is put into a barrel and gets its fizz from yeast rather than carbon dioxide. It is served at room temperature and is remarkably smooth and tasty. The ales also range widely in color—I prefer the darker ales; Beth likes the paler varieties—and in alcohol content. (A comment from Beth: Pat prefers the higher, I prefer the lower.) Most pubs have the strength of the ale posted—from about 3.5 to 8.5 percent—so you have a pretty good idea of how many pints you can consume before you start proclaiming your love for all things British and actually worsen relations between our two countries. (Three is a safe estimate.) As for the cheese, we have grown to be great fans of great cheese with great names like Red Leicester and Stilton, Shropshire, Wensleydale, and Double Gloucester. Combine a pint of good real ale and a cream cracker topped with a chunk of blue-veined Stilton, and you’ll think you’re somewhere in the vicinity of heaven. Or Liverpool.

7. London: We did not go to London until October—not by design, but because we were finding plenty to occupy our time here—but once we did make our way there, we couldn’t get back often enough. With Oyster cards in hand, we learned how to navigate the Underground and how to Mind The Gap as we sped around beneath the city, popping up at all of the right places—OK, not always at all the right places—so that we could take in all that the city has to offer. London is a vast city—twice the area of New York City—but it’s a low-rise city, so there’s never the claustrophobic feel in a place like New York. It is—surprisingly to me, having Chicago as my most recent point of reference—a somewhat hilly city, so it’s possible to find places where a portion of the place is spread out below. We, of course, did not see everything—the trick, we’ve been told, is to always leave something undone so you have a reason to return—but we did get to take in most of the tourist attractions—Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, the London Eye, the British Museum, St. Paul’s Cathedral, St. James Park—and we did get to one show in the West End—a farcical and hilarious version of The 39 Steps, adapted from the 1935 Hitchcock thriller, well-worth seeing again. When we come back to England, as we surely will, more than a couple of days will be spend in the city, exploring as much as we can but, again, leaving a few spots unvisited for the next trip.

6. Pubs & Restaurants: Because the tourist trade is the city’s biggest industry (or so it seems), Canterbury is a city filled with places to eat and drink. While we’ve been here, we have dined on Lebanese, Italian, Portuguese, Mediterranean, Thai, Indian, and, naturally, English cuisines, with Indian being far and away our favorite. And we’ve also visited some of the city pubs, most notably The Thomas Becket and Simple Simon’s. These were all wonderful establishments, but what we found we enjoyed even more are the village and country pubs, where you get both a pint of good “real” ale (see Ale & Cheese) and great food. This is not typical bar food I’m talking about here. These little places in remote spots have actual chefs preparing meals that rival anything you might find in a swankier place in a city. For example, we recently had a lunch that consisted of “coriander carrot, curried parsnip with basil and croutons” soup and “Portobello mushrooms with minced Thai chicken in hoi sin sauce.” And that was at the Red Lion pub—our favorite pub—in the miniscule village of Stodmarsh—one of our favorite miniscule villages—five miles—twenty minutes by bike—outside of Canterbury. There are others, too—The Wool Pack Inn in Chilham, The Half-Moon and Seven Stars in Preston, The Duck Inn in Pett Bottom—where we stopped—typically during a bicycle journey—and dined royally and reasonably. We also found the country and village pubs to be warm and welcoming, with owners and staff who seem to truly love their places and their work. I wish there were something comparable at home, but our “native” bars just don’t have the same atmosphere, I’m afraid.

5. Canterbury: The novelist Virginia Woolf said, “There is no lovelier place in the world than Canterbury,” and we have to agree wholeheartedly. From the very first time we walked into the city centre on our first day here back in September, I have felt that we are living on a movie set—and I don’t mean that pejoratively. Outside of Disneyworld, where it is all a brilliant fabrication, I’ve never been to a place with more charm or character than Canterbury. From the towering presence of the cathedral to the narrow, winding cobblestone streets, the bustling crowds on High Street, the crooked houses with their chimney pots, the riverside parks, the city walls and tall stone gates, this is an amazing place to live. And to add to its allure, it is a compact city; everything a person needs or wants is within a few minutes’ walking distance. Maybe it was that we knew our time here was short, but we have taken in this place like no other place we have ever lived and will miss it in a way we have missed no other place.

4. The Cathedral: It’s hard to explain the feelings I have for this magnificent structure. Every morning, when I look out of our bedroom window, it is there: tall and solid and ancient. Every evening, I can see it lit up against the black night sky when I get ready for bed. I’ve never lived before in a place where a single building so dominates not only the skyline but the life of the city as well, but the Canterbury Cathedral does just that. Each day, there are hundreds of pilgrims clustered outside the gates, snapping photos and waiting their chance to tour the building, to follow the last, frantic moments of the life of Thomas Beckett and to see the place where he was murdered, to walk through the dark quiet of the crypt, to see the tombs of kings and princes and archbishops and to wander around the ruins outside. We have spent many hours in the cathedral, showing friends around or attending evensong (last week, we had the good fortune to get tickets to a stunning evening of Christmas music performed by the students of Christ Church University), and I suspect it will be one of the last—if not the very last—place we visit before leaving at the end of this week.

3. Pace of Life: Slower. That’s the best way to describe life in Canterbury, but that doesn’t mean it is not active or vibrant. Rather than drive to the grocery store, we walk or take our bicycles. When we want to go to the city centre, we walk. When we go to school, we walk. At mealtime, we don’t throw something in the microwave; we take the time to prepare and cook good meals. We’ve both been reading voraciously, and we rarely turn on the television. There’s no sense of rushing, no need to rush. Granted, we don’t have bundles of student papers to grade or lessons to plan, so the stress level is considerably lower and we have more time, but we are hopeful that we can hang on to at least some of this way of life when we get home, even though we both know how easy it can be to slip back into old habits. With that in mind, we’ve made a pact that our first and preferred mode of transportation will be walking and that we will continue to make our “at home” time as comfortable and relaxing and fulfilling as it has been here.

2. Countryside and Villages: A few weeks ago, Beth said, “I know this country doesn’t belong to me—obviously, I’m a foreigner—but I do feel that the countryside is mine. I don’t feel that way at home.” That may sound odd, but I know just what she means. Here, we have ridden country lanes on our bicycles and have walked public paths for hours, meandering across farm fields and through woods with complete freedom, never fearing that we were trespassing—or would be accused of trespassing—and getting to know the land in a way that is not as easy—or even possible—where we live. Granted, there are well-tended bicycle paths, and I’m sure we’ll use them more than we have in the past, but they are often crowded and, in some way, even more treacherous than the narrow roads we’ve ridden here. I know I’m romanticizing some because we’re about to leave all of this, but there is, quite honestly, something more satisfying about tramping out of town on a well-walked pathway than there is to driving to a forest preserve to take a hike. And it’s very possible that we just not ever tried it before we came here. Maybe it is possible to find a trail that leads us past the shopping malls and the housing developments, across busy highways and out into the countryside. But I really doubt it, and for all of the good things to which we will soon return, I don’t think anything will be able to replace or replicate this part of our experience in England. It is what we will both miss the most and will most look forward to when we return sometime in the future as shorter-term visitors.

1. People: Without question, it has been the people we’ve spent time with here that are the highlight of this trip. We’ve had the good fortune to be traveling with 13 wonderful students from home who have enriched this trip for us on a daily basis. And we’ve developed a fondness for the students in both the Missouri and New York groups as well. I’ve also been lucky enough to have worked with equally wonderful English students, a group which reassuring me that, no matter which side of the ocean, students are students. In addition, we’ve been extremely lucky to have had guests visiting regularly during our stay. We would have enjoyed traveling around on our own, certainly, but being able to share that with family and friends made it even more memorable and transformed us from strangers in this country to residents and tour guides, responsible for knowing what to do and where to go. And, lastly, we have met some truly lovely people while we’ve been here. Our neighbors, Reg and Sylvia Steel, took us under their wings and will, we hope, be coming for a visit, their first, to the States sometime soon. We hope we can be as gracious as they have been. Then there was Martin, from The Bushel Pub in Newmarket, who was such a jovial and enthusiastic host that we had a hard time leaving his place. The Ramblers with whom we hiked the public pathways, the owner of Red Lion in Stodmarsh, every person we met who helped us when we were lost, the driver who brought us to Canterbury, the driver who took us back to Gatwick when the kids flew home, every person we worked with at Canterbury Christ Church University, even the bearded busker whose gravelly voice made me drop coins in his hat every time we heard him in the city centre…without all—without any—of these people, our time here would have been diminished.

And so, we get ready to leave. As we re-stuff our suitcases and decide which things will make the trip and which will have to be left behind, we’ve been talking about this remarkable adventure and are incredibly thankful that all the stars that needed to align for us to be here did so. In less than 48 hours, we will drag our bags out of the front door of 25 Monastery and say goodbye to the house and to the city and to the country, and we, no doubt, will be a little misty-eyed when we pull the door shut for the last time. But, as with all good things, there is an end.

It’s time to come home.

Weekly Dispatch #12In Which We Welcome Our Final Guests, Cross the English Channel, Meet the Archbishop of Canterbury & Walk Along The White Cliffs
Winter in England is a different season from winter in the Midwest. Rather than freezing temperatures and inches of snow, the weather here today is a comfortable 50+, but a steady, heavy rain is being driven sideways by a gusty wind and sounds as if someone is throwing handfuls of pebbles at our windows. Add to that the fact that it starts getting dark between 3:30 and 4 p.m., and you’ve got a good picture of Canterbury in December. We aren’t likely to go out anywhere today, but having just received a stack of student essays—and with both of us in the middle of good books—staying inside where it’s warm and dry seems like a pretty good idea.

This past week, we hosted our last group of visitors. Jan Grainger, Lisa March and Shawn Skiver arrived by bus—in the rain, of course—a few hours after we put our kids on the plane home and settled in for a few days of sightseeing. Usually, people who fly to Europe leave the U.S. around 5 or 6 p.m. and land about 8 a.m. in the new time zone, but these savvy travelers left around 9 p.m. Chicago time—which meant, theoretically, that sleeping would be more natural and easier (if you can get comfortable)—and only lost a couple of hours on this end. Next time we take a trip abroad, I think we’ll do the same thing.

Our big outing with these guys was a ferry ride across the English Channel to Calais, France, for the day. We all studied the time tables for the trains to Dover and for the ferry and left Canterbury, we were sure, with enough time to make the required 45-minutes-before-departure deadline. And, we are all convinced, we would have done that had the train/bus/ferry companies made any attempt to coordinate their services. Instead, there is a large sign absolving them of any such responsibility. So, when we de-trained at Dover Priory Station, we discovered that the bus to the ferry port had left a couple of minutes earlier. Instead of waiting, we hired a couple of taxis—Shawn and I in the second one, and I got to say to the driver, “Follow that cab”—and hurried to the ticket counter, only to be told that we had missed the deadline for the 9:25 a.m. crossing by two minutes and would have to wait for the 10:10. We were not the only people who were inconvenienced, and more than one Brit said that the company had never been that bound by the 45-minute rule before. Needless to say, there were a group of grumpy people shooting dirty looks at the ticket clerk and watching the clock. Finally, they called us to board the bus that would take us to the boat, and we were off.

Sort of.

From the terminal, the bus took us along a winding route through chain link fences and warehouses and then into a barn-like building where we stopped and were told to get off for passport control. We followed the rest of the passengers into a large, bare room where two Frenchmen behind tall desks greeted everyone with a cheery “Bon jour,” looked at and stamped passports and then handed them back with a friendly “Merci.” We filed out of that room and got back on the bus which arced out of one gate, through another and into a barn-like building just like the one we had left. According to an announcement piped into the bus, our vehicle had been specially selected for additional screening, but we were all beginning to feel like refugees rounded up and about to be sent to a prison camp somewhere far, far away. Again, we shuffled off the bus and into another big, cold room where we had to pass through a typical security check (bags on the conveyor belt, walk-through metal detector, full body cavity search), collect our things and then re-board the bus again.

Until this trip, the only ferry ride I’d taken was out to Mackinac Island in Michigan, so I was surprised by the size and accoutrements of this massive craft. In addition to a duty-free shop that sold cosmetics and liquor and the biggest boxes of cigarettes I’ve ever seen in my life, there were a couple of bar/lounge areas, restaurants, a video arcade, and a casino. We took advantage of none of the options and, instead, went up on deck for awhile to see the White Cliffs of Dover as we pulled away and then settled into a quiet corner and watched people. A man who had mistakenly identified us as Canadians (can you imagine!) sat and talked with us for a bit as we were about to dock in Calais. He had been a disposable “nappie” specialist for Kimberly-Clark and had spent time in Racine helping folks in that plant get their production lines up to speed. He was traveling to Calais with his neighbor to do what everyone does when they come to Calais for the day: have a nice lunch, then go buy French wine, cheese and bread.

Once we were on French soil, we needed to get from the port to the city center, but, again, we had missed the bus. So Beth, who has studied French for the past five years and did a summer of language immersion in Dijon, went up to a taxi and flashing five fingers, asked “Quatre?” which, to those who don’t know French (like me), means, essentially, do you have room for four. There was actually room for all five, and Beth made the driver laugh by declaring “Je suis un idiot!” (I am an idiot.) The driver also recommended restaurants for lunch, and, taking his advice, we settled in at a table in La Mer, one of a dozen or more seafood restaurants in this part of the city.

Because there are so many Brits who come across the channel, the menu had English translations of all the dishes, but the specials of the day, which were printed on a chalkboard, were only in French. Lisa was interested in finding out what one of them was, but none of us could figure out what “sabaste” was. Our best guess was “sea bass.” When the waiter came to the table, Lisa asked him, “Is this sea bass?” To which he replied, “Oui, sabaste.”

“But is it sea bass?” she asked again.

“Oui, is sabaste.”

“I know, but what is sabaste?”

“Is sabaste.”

This went on for a few more volleys until Lisa managed to find out that it was a kind of whitefish, which both she and Shawn ordered. Jan and I had mussels, and Beth, inexplicably given that it was a seafood restaurant, asked for beef stew. Guess which one of us wasn’t happy with her meal? My mussels, for the record, were incredible. They arrived—probably close to 100 of the little black-shelled beauties—in a silver pot, having been steamed in a white wine/thyme/rosemary/bay leaf/onion concoction. I ate and ate and ate until Jan, a former biology teacher, wondered about the effects of all of these mollusks on American Midwestern gastrointestinal systems. Fortunately, there were no ill effects, and I wish now that I’d have finished the bucket; I’m not likely to get a delicacy like that again for quite some time.

Dragging ourselves away from the table—there was discussion of ordering a second bottle of wine and staying put until it was time to go back to Dover—we set out on the second part of our mission: bread and wine and cheese. Since arriving in Canterbury, neighbors and colleagues had been telling us we needed to get to France to pick up that trio because the French varieties are better than the British (I won’t concede that the French have the corner on cheese, however) and because the currency exchange rate favors the British pound, meaning your money goes farther. We figured that there must be shops nearby that specialized in one or all of the items we were looking for, but we wandered for a bit and found nothing but more restaurants and lots of souvenir shops. While we were looking, we caught glimpses of an impressive clock tower between buildings and, almost by accident, found ourselves in front of the place.

The clock tower—which we learned is a World Heritage site, like Canterbury Cathedral—is part of Calais’ Hotel de Ville (city hall). The clerk at the information desk in the vast, marble-floored lobby told us we could explore the first two floors, so we did, discovering along the way the “marriage chamber” where Charles de Gaulle got hitched, and letting ourselves into a plush meeting room where, I’m sure, we weren’t supposed to be. The architecture, which is Flemish Renaissance, features ornate and intricate ornamentation and more color than is found in some other, more sedate styles. In front of the building is a Rodin sculpture, “The Burghers of Calais,” which honors six local citizens who, in 1347, after an eight-month siege by the British, surrendered themselves and the keys to the city, hoping that their sacrifice would save the rest of the population. Edward III, the English king, was so moved by their bravery that he spared them and the city.

Our quest to find wine/bread/cheese led us, at last, to a rather uninteresting mid-town mall, where American Christmas carols sung by Perry Como and Bing Crosby and others played over the heads of the shoppers, and into a large supermarket. We made the purchases we wanted, but the quantity and prices that we had been told to expect weren’t there. Only later, after we were at home and re-consulted the guide, did we learn that a huge shopping mall located near the channel tunnel entrance in Coquelles, about 3 miles outside of Calais, was the place we should have gone to get bargains. So, lugging heavy bags, we trooped back to the spot where we had been dropped off five hours earlier and waited for the bus that would take us back to our ferry. As we waited, I struck up a conversation with a couple of Brits who were also heading back. The older of the two men told me that he had worked the ferries for years before retirement and came over once a month or so, but usually by car and not as a foot passenger. In fact, he said he was unlikely to come again without his car because it was more expensive and more difficult getting to places he wanted to visit.

On the bus to the port, someone wondered if we would have to do anything like the double security check we’d passed through on our way to France. Jan said she didn’t think so. “All the weirdness was on the other side,” she mused, not knowing there was, indeed, a little weirdness awaiting us in Dover.

It was probably my fault. When I presented my passport to the British agent in Calais, he asked what I was doing in Canterbury, and I told him that I was working at the university. He quickly flipped through my passport and said, “You don’t have a work visa here.” Remembering the conversation we had had three months ago at Heathrow when we tried to explain our reason for being in England and the difficulty that ensued there, I tried to backtrack without seeming guilty of anything, but I was feeling a little like the American spy in an old black-and-white movie who gets tripped up because he held his fork in his right hand rather than his left. Finally, I said that we were chaperoning a group of American students, and he let me pass. Shawn and Lisa and Jan were ushered through quickly, but the officer wanted to chat a little with Beth as well. She told him essentially the same thing that I had—without all of the hemming and hawing—and joined the rest of us. She recalled, as we were boarding the ferry, that we had been told to bring our appointment letters explaining the arrangement with Christ Church anytime we left the country. It didn’t seem to be a big deal, though, so we found comfortable couches and headed back to England.

We had pretty much forgotten the incident—in part because we were all drowsy from the trip—until we started through the Dover terminal and were met by four immigration/customs/security officers who were spaced the width of the hallway and seemed ready for action should we say or do the wrong thing.

“Do you have British passports?” one of them asked.

We said no, we have American passports, and suddenly the tension was gone, and they let us pass by. The ferryman we had met in Calais was right behind us, and I asked him what that was all about.

“They took your picture on the other side and sent it over here. They knew what you look like, and they were waiting for you.”

“Why?”

He just shrugged.

The only thing we could figure out was the exchange I had had with the agent prior to our boarding, but even that didn’t seem to warrant any kind of alert. It wasn’t a big deal, as I said before, but it was just weird and unsettling enough to be memorable.

On Wednesdays in London, matinee ticket prices for most of the theatres are half-price, so while Beth and I had a workday ahead of us, our guests were going off to the city. We broke out some of the French bread for breakfast, and Lisa ate a whole loaf by herself (she didn’t really, but she was so afraid that I’d say she did that I had to put it in here). We haven’t seen any productions yet, but we plan to go up this Friday to see a show and were happy that the intrepid trio came back from their adventure with good advice for us. They did a musical double feature: The Lord of the Rings in the afternoon at half-price (which all three said was stunning to watch) and We Will Rock You, a musical featuring the music of Queen, for full price in the evening. They didn’t have much time to eat, so when they got back to Canterbury after midnight, food was a high priority. About the only place open at that time is Efe’s Kabobs, where Shawn ordered a chicken sandwich with a “to-may-to,” which caused the rest of the customers and the entire staff to shout back at him in unison, “It’s to-mah-to!”

We really enjoyed having the three friends visit—just as we’ve enjoyed the rest of our visitors (we are envied by the other Americans)—and were sad to see them go on Saturday morning. Because the bags were heavier than when they arrived—we convinced them to take some of our stuff home with them—we called for a taxi. Shawn and I were going to ride with the bags, but Jan and Lisa and Beth decided to walk. A couple of minutes after they left—and just before the taxi arrived—we realized that they were going to the wrong station. So, with almost as much cinematic resonance as my “Follow that taxi” line from Dover, our driver said he would get us to the correct station on time and went wheeling through Canterbury’s narrow streets until we caught up with the three walkers. They jumped in, and we raced to the right destination with just three minutes to spare before the train left. Shawn and Lisa got tickets, while Jan and Beth and I hustled the bags down and under the rails to the correct platform and then convinced the conductor to please, please wait because our friends would miss their flight. He grumbled a bit about people missing their train connections, but he did hold the train until Sean and Lisa came flying up the steps and, literally, jumped into the train just as he was closing the doors.

The tone of the day changed after the train pulled away. I think it was because we had just said goodbye to our last group of guests and that the next time somebody was leaving Canterbury it would be us. We went home, got out the suitcases and put them in one of the extra bedrooms, and then started to consolidate things we were going to bring home in that same room. It was the same routine we had followed at home two weeks before we flew over here, and there was a real sense of déjà vu to our actions.

At the cathedral on Saturday night, there was a special World AIDS Day service with Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, presiding. It was a moving service, held in the cathedral crypt, attended by 80 or so people. When the service ended, because the crowd was so small, we had a chance to chat for a few minutes with the Archbishop—a charming man with white hair and beard and fierce black eyebrows—and found out that Chicago is his favorite city in the U.S.. Now that we’ve met the leader of the Church of England and have seen the Queen, who else is left?

I’ll end this dispatch with a quick report about an outing we took yesterday to Deal, a delightful seaside town with three castles—one of them the home of the late Queen Mum—and a beautiful view of the sea that stretches from Ramsgate to the north, Dover and its cliffs to the south, and the coast of France to the east. We were guests of Mandy Cooper, who teaches in the American Studies Department and has lived in Deal for the past twenty years. After a tour of the town, we headed to St. Margaret’s Bay, an even more picturesque place nestled between two white cliffs, for the best fish pie I’ve had since we got here. Mandy told us that a good number of celebrities—including Roger Moore of James Bond fame—have or used to have homes nearby. After the meal, we drove to the top of the cliffs and took a walk. The light and the clouds, the gulls hanging over the waves, the wind blowing the long grass along the path: I wished I was a painter struggling to get the scene down on canvas exactly right. Instead, I snapped a couple of pictures and hoped I captured a bit of the place.

These last two weeks are going to be very busy with us trying to get as many last-minute trips and activities completed before we have to leave, so the next dispatch—which will be the final account of our time here—will be a little different. As I noted before, I’ve been putting together a Top Ten list, and that’s what I’ll send along.

Thanks for reading…

Dispatch #11In Which We Introduce Our Children To Our Life Abroad, Learn That Most of England Closes in November & Still Manage to Have A Good Time
I don’t know if there is a gene for tough luck or for hapless traveling, but if there is, then our kids certainly inherited it. As I mentioned in the last dispatch, we had spent a quiet week awaiting the arrival of Andrew and Elise on Sunday. The weather had been wonderful—clear and cool but dry—until the day their plane touched down. That morning, as we headed for the train to meet them at Gatwick Airport, the wind was sharp and strong and often accompanied by a stinging rain. Despite the gloominess, however, we were extremely happy to see those two familiar, slightly dazed faces among the other travelers who made their way through the arrivals gate.

On the ride back to Canterbury, the sky lightened a bit, and we were hopeful that the umbrellas we had brought wouldn’t be necessary for the walk from the station to our house on Monastery Street. The rain, in fact, did hold off for the rest of the day, but the wind and cold remained, which meant our introductory tour of the city was a bit abbreviated. Beth and Andrew did duck into the cathedral for a quick look around, while Elise and I waited in the cloisters for them to finish. (In addition to the gene for luck, we share a penchant for phobias. Mine is heights, Beth does not care for bridges, Elise is uncomfortable in vast interior spaces—like the cathedral—and Andrew fears turtleneck sweaters.) That night, after dinner, we played cards and laughed a lot, as we are wont to do when the four of us get together. It was a great way to end a gray day, and we looked forward to our first full day of exploring, even though the weather forecast once again called for rain.

We decided to let the kids sleep as long as they felt like sleeping, but, eventually, had to wake Andrew because the morning was nearly over. He said he had not slept soundly, which was why he was still in bed, but Elise made it through the night. She did arrive with a cold, though, so we made a quick side trip to a pharmacy to get the British equivalent of DayQuil on our way to the bus station. The night before, we had decided to go to Whitstable so that the kids could see the North Sea, and we could all enjoy seafood at the East Quay Restaurant where we had eaten in October when Beth’s sister, Ginger, was visiting. We tempted fate and did not take umbrellas despite the dark, ragged clouds.

The bus ride was a treat. We were on the top deck of a double-decker and could see the countryside in a way that is not possible from a train. We also had a better vantage point from which to see the narrowness of the roads and the wideness of the buses. On more than one occasion, I was sure we were going to hit something—an oncoming car, a pedestrian on the sidewalk next to us—but the driver maneuvered skillfully the entire route. I should note that the trip took us about thirty minutes, even though Whitstable and Canterbury are only about six miles apart. In addition to a number of stops along the way, it is the narrowness of the roads and the constant need to slow down or stop to avoid collisions that accounts for the sluggish pace. We were not in any hurry, though, and didn’t really note how much time had passed until we disembarked in Whitstable and headed for the seafront.

About the time we got off the bus, the sun came out. Like the day before, it was still cold, but the sun and only a mild wind promised a good day of walking on the beach, picking up shells and skipping rocks. We walked along cobblestone streets until there was a gap between houses, and we could get to the sea. At the point in time, we had not yet begun to realize the familiar pattern of our previous travels, so when we emerged to find ourselves next to the commercial fishing wharves rather than the public beach area, we still believed this was going to be a day filled with fun and wonder. As we stood and looked out at the sea, the first thing we saw was that the tide was out—way out—which meant that any rock-skipping would entail slogging across a hundred yards of seaweed-strewn, dead-fish-smelling, slimy sand to the water’s edge. It was at this point, with the sea breeze blowing in our faces, that Elise noted that she could, despite the congestion caused by her cold, smell the fish and mollusks—not only the ones on the beach but those in the great wooden crates a few yards away—with perfect clarity, and it was not good.

The roof of the East Quay Restaurant was visible above the warehouses, so we made our way around the docks—where fishing boats sat at a tilt on the sand and the aroma grew more intense—looking forward to lunch.

A note to any of you who plan to visit Whitstable: don’t do it in November. When we got to the door of the restaurant, not only was the door locked, it and the windows were shuttered and chained, giving us good reason to believe that we were just a few minutes early. So, with heavy hearts and rumbling stomachs, we turned away from the water and resigned ourselves to a less memorable repast. After deciding not to eat at the health club/restaurant or at the snooker club/restaurant, we settled, instead, for the Hotel Continental where we had rather ordinary sandwiches. The sky, by this time, was starting to darken and the wind was picking up, so we wandered up the hill to the main thoroughfare and caught a bus back to Canterbury where we visited the Roman museum on Butchery Lane and learned about the city at its earliest. Established around 43 A.D., the town of Durovernum Cantiacorum thrived on the spot of contemporary Canterbury for nearly 400 years. The museum is below street level and includes actual archaeological excavations. The most impressive is the mosaic floor from the house that had stood on that spot and a section beneath that floor where hot water circulated to heat the house. The site, along with an even larger part of the Roman town, was uncovered during wartime bombing.

After the museum, which is small but very much worth a visit, Andrew and I went back to the cathedral, so he could have a longer look at the place, while Beth and Elise went to climb up in the West Gate Tower at the other end of High Street. I was giving Andrew my tour of the cathedral (most of it accurate and true) when I got a phone call from Beth telling me that the tower had closed just five minutes before the two of them arrived. By this time, Elise—more than Andrew—had begun to understand what it was like to travel with her parents. Andrew’s turn to learn would come the next day.

Beth and I had to attend a meeting on Tuesday—the only meeting we’ve had to attend since we got here—so we put the kids on the bus to Dover to visit the castle and the Wartime Tunnels. Again, the weather was blustery, overcast and cold, but bolstered by my story about the ghost that we had seen down one of the corridors, they headed out on their adventure. The plan was for them to be back in time for dinner with Phil and Jo Vandrey, who had been here in 2004 doing what we were doing. Phil was a colleague of Beth’s before he retired and was, in fact, the first Kishwaukee faculty member to serve as mentor/instructor.

An hour into the meeting, my phone rang, and I excused myself, embarrassed that I hadn’t turned it off. I missed the call but saw that it was from Andrew, so I called him back.

“It’s closed,” he said, in that flat way he has of passing along bad news.

“What’s closed?”

“The castle. It’s closed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays until March.”

“Oh. I didn’t know that.”

“I hope not.”

Not only was the castle closed, but the bus only took them to the bottom of the very high hill (actually the top of the famed White Cliffs) rather than at the ticket booth, and they were forced to trudge up the a long and steep stairway in a steady drizzle only to find the gates locked and no one to tell them when the next bus might be by. I suggested that they find the bus station rather than stand out in the rain and hung up, knowing that the next time I saw them they would be bedraggled and cranky and more than happy to denounce their kinship with their mother and me. I was pretty much on target, except that they weren’t as angry with us for sending them off on a misguided mission as they were at each other. Elise was angry at Andrew because he would not ask for directions to the bus station, resulting in their having to wait an extra hour because they missed a bus by four minutes; Andrew was angry at Elise for being angry at him. We thought we could placate them by feeding them—they hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and it was 2:30 p.m.—so we took them to the place our students said had the best fish and chips in the city, but neither they nor Beth were overly impressed, and I can’t eat food that greasy, so we went to the ruins of the Norman castle built next to the city walls then ducked in and out of shops to avoid the increasingly steady rain. Luckily, dinner with the Vandreys was such a pleasant outing that it salvaged the day, and we went to bed that night looking forward to an overnight trip to London on Wednesday.

The next morning, the kids and I boarded the train for London while Beth—who would meet us in the evening—prepared for her class. Everything went smoothly on the trip—except for one man who felt it was necessary to let us all hear his mobile phone conversation—and we pulled in at Victoria Station around 11:30 a.m. After a typical “What should we do now? I don’t know, what?” conversation—and after discovering I had forgotten to leave my little pen knife at home, the same one that got me kicked out of the Scottish Parliament and would get me into trouble when we rode the London Eye—we decided to check into out hotel to drop off backpacks and weaponry.

Our first stop of the day was going to be the Royal Mews—the Queen’s stables—at Buckingham Palace, a place at the top of Elise’s list. I remembered where it was from our previous visit and took us to the Visitors’ Entrance without a false step.

“It’s closed,” Andrew said, echoing his message of bad news from Dover.

“What?” This could not be happening again, could it?

Andrew pointed to a sign next to the locked door: Closed from November 2007-March 2008, which Elise photographed.

"This is my souvenir from England," she said in a voice not unlike her brother's. "A Closed sign."

I wish I could say that, at this point, we all chuckled about our tough luck—“Bad timing, innit?”—and pressed on bravely, but that was not the case. What’s next? I asked myself, as I led my two suspicious offspring around the wall to the front of Buckingham Palace. Will the Eye be shut down for repair? Is Westminster Abbey on fire? Did Big Ben collapse? Has the Thames dried up? At least, I thought, as we came around to the grand statue of Queen Victoria that fronts Buckingham Palace, this is all intact.

The sun was shining, so we were able to get good pictures of the palace, and I noticed that the Union Jack was flying, which meant that the Queen was not in. In keeping with my theory that she’s trailing me around England, I checked every few minutes to see if the Royal Standard would appear, and then I remembered an offhand comment I had made when someone asked where we were going when the kids arrived. “Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “Uganda, maybe.” Well, guess where “E II R” spent last week?

We were about to move on when I heard the tramping of feet and orders being barked from somewhere inside the wall surrounding the palace, and I could see a group of gray-uniformed soldiers marching in our direction.

“Come on!” I shouted to the kids. “It’s the changing of the guard.”

There were probably 30 or 40 other people at the foot of Victoria’s statue when I made my announcement, and all of them apparently thought I knew what I was talking about and ran along with us. We wedged ourselves in close to the iron spikes of the fence and started snapping pictures. When they were only a few yards away, the squad stopped—which, in retrospect, should have been a clue that I had completely misread the situation; the guardhouses were well behind this little cluster of soldiers—and, at their leader’s command, fell out willy-nilly came over to the fence where they each picked up a music stand (left behind, no doubt, when the real changing of the guard had happened), returned to their formation and marched away, leaving me in the middle of a crowd which had just realized, as my children had come to realize many years ago, that I am just not to be listened to. Before any harm could come to any of us, I grabbed the kids by the arm and ran.

The rest of the afternoon was less disasterous. We visited Westminster Abbey, rode the Eye at dusk—where we watched the lights of London blink on—walked through Trafalgar Square and Picadilly Circus and then took the Underground back to Victoria Station. This was also the day of the big England-Croatia soccer match which would decide whether or not England would advance in the European championship tournament, and we had seen, all day long, gangs of Croatian fans dressed in red-and-white checked shirts roaming the city, most of them clutching giant cans of Foster’s Lager. As we walked through the tunnel to our tube line, we could hear them singing in one of the other tunnels, and we were glad that Wembley Stadium was located in a completely different direction from where we were staying.

Our hotel was one of several small hotels along Belgrave Road. They all appeared to have been built as private homes and converted into lodgings. Beth had booked a family room, so we had three single and one double bed crammed into a rather small, but comfortable room. Had Andrew and Elise been younger, they would have had a great time jumping from one bed to another, but, instead, we all lounged around and watched British game shows, waiting for Beth to call. When she did, I walked back to Victoria to meet her. The weather had taken a sharp downturn while we were in the hotel, and I had to hurry through a downpour without an umbrella or a hooded jacket. By the time we returned to the hotel, I was soaked to the skin, and I draped everything I was wearing over the radiators, hoping it would all be dry the next morning.

I went back to Canterbury on Thursday morning while Beth and the kids went to Windsor Castle. When I found out later that they had actually seen the changing of the guard there, I began to think maybe I’m the source of the hapless traveling gene. But I did get home in time for class without a hitch—and I met a priest from Dallas who trusted me to give him directions to the cathedral—so I’m not yet ready to accept full responsibility. When the trio left Windsor, they went back into London where Andrew went off on his own for a lightning-fast trip to the British Museum to see the Rosetta Stone and the Elgin Marbles, among a few other things he had time to see, and Beth and Elise went to King’s Cross so that Elise could get a photograph of Platform 9 ¾ (Harry Potter’s point of departure for Hogwarts School) and then they saw the changing of the horse guard near Whitehall. The three of them met up at the British Museum and got home to Canterbury in time for Thanksgiving dinner, which was provided by the university. While a couple of things weren't quite right--instead of stuffing, we had stuffing balls; the pumpkin pie lacked nutmeg--it was a very kind thing for the school to have for us and a very filling meal. Several of the students had family members and/or friends who flew over for the week, so there was a real holiday feel to the whole thing, and we were all appropriately thankful.

Friday was our last—and best—field trip: The Tower of London and The Globe Theatre. There was room on the bus, so Andrew and Elise were able to come along, and they, like all of the students, were completely taken with both places. The Tower, which sits at one end of the Tower Bridge—the one most Americans always assume is the London Bridge we used to sing about when we were kids—and is not really a tower but a palace. There are, in fact, 11 towers on the site and most of them house a museum of some kind. In St. Thomas’ Tower, for example, visitors get a look at how the royals lived in the Middle Ages, and in the White Tower, there is an armaments museum. The Tower is also home to the Beefeaters, a torture museum, a memorial to those who were beheaded over the years (Anne Boleyn among them) and, of course, the Crown Jewels, which you view from a treadmill that moves you along at a steady pace—an setup necessary, I’m sure, at the height of tourist season, but not in November. Interestingly, after viewing the jewels and other treasures, there’s a collection box where you can contribute a pound or two to the upkeep of the place. I’d recommend they sell just one of the two-foot high gold flagons, but I doubt if anyone would pay attention.

The Globe was equally worth the time. Completed in 1997, the theatre looks as close to the one torn down in 1642 by the Puritans as possible. An American actor, Sam Wanamaker, was the driving force behind the reconstruction—which includes not only the open air theatre but an exhibition hall and a restaurant as well—but he died in 1993 and never got to see a performance. Our guide explained to us that there are 900 seats in the three-story building and room around the stage for another 600 groundlings. Because authenticity is of utmost importance, modern-day groundlings are encouraged to act like those who would have paid a penny in Shakespeare’s time, so it is not uncommon for people to lean on the stage, to talk back to the actors and to come and go during a performance—a far cry from the formality of theatre in London’s West End or on Broadway, but it is, according to our guide, an exciting way to experience a play. Once the tour was ended, Beth and the kids and I spent another hour or so in the exhibition hall where displays told of the history of the theatre in London, the life of Shakespeare, life in Elizabethan times and in an Elizabethan theatre. We ended the day with a quick trip to the Tate Modern art gallery to see “Shibboleth,” which is a crack that runs the length of the ground floor—and it’s art not bad masonry—along a few paintings before it was time to catch the coach.

Saturday was the day we took Andrew and Elise to Gatwick for their flight back to the States. After we watched them head off to their gate, we returned to Canterbury and met up with Phil and Jo again and went to the German Christmas Market, which is set up in White Friars’ Plaza—an open air mall—and will remain there until December 24. Our lunch that day was “currywurst,” an odd, but delicious combination of German sausage and Indian spices on a bun. Phil and Jo were off to Paris and then Strasbourg and other places, so we said goodbye to them and went home to wash sheets and towels before our next guests arrived on Sunday.

We’re now in our final three weeks of the visit, which is a bit astonishing; it seems like we just arrived. I’m not sure how many more adventures we’ll have during these last days—I know I’ll be reading student essays for a few days, but who wants to hear about that?—so I’ve been compiling a Top 10 sort of list that I’ll post sometime in the next couple of weeks (I was chastised recently because I said I’d address some subjects but never did, so I’m hoping to make up for the oversight) in case we don’t do anything worth passing along.

Cheers!

Dispatch #10In Which We Are Largely Idle, Except For a Bicycle Ride & Some Christmas Shopping
For the first time since we arrived, we had a pretty uneventful week. We spent most of the time in anticipation of our kids, Andrew and Elise, arriving on Sunday to celebrate Thanksgiving with us. A number of our students—and those from Missouri and New York—have family coming, too, so we’re looking forward to Thursday’s feast. The International Studies Department, as it has since the program began, is hosting the dinner, and we are all anxious to seeing how the Brits serve up an American meal. (There is no canned pumpkin in the country, but, luckily, a number of us asked our guests to pack a can, so we should have enough for a few pies.)

This is also the time when our students are preparing papers to be submitted to their instructors, and though it was suggested to them that they begin early, a good number let the time slip away and are now looking at long, sleepless nights. The British students in my class face an even more daunting task this term. They each have six classes and, as a result, must submit six major papers on the same day. This is the first term that first-year (freshmen) students like mine will have their grades decided entirely on the merit of papers rather than their writing plus a final exam. I am not sure I’m entirely sold on this pedagogy—especially given that the U.S. system incorporates a good deal of assessment during a semester rather than checking for understanding once at the end. But I’m trying to learn from the experience as much as possible and not be too skeptical; it could be that the papers I’ll receive in a week will be wonderful and profound and be a reasonable measure of the students’ accomplishments.

With the submission—and subsequent grading—of these final papers, it has occurred to both Beth and to me that our time here is growing short. We have, in fact, less than a month before we bid Canterbury adieu and board a plane for Illinois. Rather than lapse into nostalgia at this point, though, we are trying to use these last four weeks to do new things as well as to revisit some of the things we did and enjoyed. It was with that in mind that we decided to take another bicycle ride through the countryside, hoping that, this time, we would be better oriented to the landscape and could read the map more effectively than we did on our last outing. Chances were pretty good that we would not repeat our mistakes because Beth had already toured the country lanes a couple of times with guests, and, too, we have, over time, gotten a better sense of our surroundings.

So, on a cool and sunny Tuesday afternoon, we set out for the town of Bridge, a place I wanted to visit because they have an equestrian shop, and I thought I might be able to get Christmas presents for my “horsey” friends there. Rather than strike out in the wrong direction—which is what happened before—we went in the right direction, along city streets and, finally, onto a public byway. As we rode, it was clear that late autumn has settled in and that winter can’t be far behind. Farm fields are now plowed and bare, trees are nearly leafless, and the countryside, in general, has a washed-out quality we had not seen back in September. The hills had not changed, however, and we alternated for a couple of miles between lung-burning climbs and wild descents. The pathways are paved and in pretty good shape, but with the bright sunlight flashing through the trees as we flew downhill, it was hard to see the few potholes and buckled spots that threatened to unseat us. Luckily, neither of us took a spill, and we cruised into Bridge, found the shop, did a little shopping and then took to the bikes again.

Because it was such a perfect day, we decided to take a more roundabout way back to Canterbury. The first leg was a re-tracing of the route from Canterbury to Bridge, which took us through the little village of Patrixbourne. We stopped and took pictures of the church and of some of the cottages. Beth said that she couldn’t see moving to England to live in a city, but that she could easily settle in Patrixbourne. I had to agree. There is a peacefulness to the place and—to use a word I don’t much like but can find no other suitable replacement—a quaintness that seem to promise a life to match. But judging from the cars parked next to the homes (Mercedes, Jaguar, Porsche), the quaint and peaceful life is not cheap, so we pedaled on, knowing that we would not be spending our golden years in a vine-covered cottage here.

From Patrixbourne, we went toward Stodmarsh, a town we have visited two or three times, and then turned north to Fordwich, England’s Smallest Town. Along the way, we saw a sign for a farm shop and decided it might be fun to stop for some locally grown fruits and/or vegetables—one of the great treats of living in Kent County—but when we turned into the drive, we discovered the farm shop was part of Hewlett’s Wild Animal Farm, a kind of second-rate Busch Gardens (I guess; we only read the sign) that features gorillas (again guessing from the sign) and, presumably, other non-native wildlife. After tooling through the parking lot and discovering that the farm shop was closed and that there was no way we might glimpse a British primate in its natural habitat because of high wooden walls, we continued on to Fordwich.

As advertised, Fordwich is a tiny place, with two pubs and a church and a town hall. We stopped in at one of the pubs, The Fordwich Arms, where there was a fire going in the fireplace and a few of the regulars stood at the bar reading the newspaper and, occasionally commenting on the state of the world. We found a table next to the fire and had a pint of bitters. We don’t make a habit of mid-afternoon pub stops, but it’s easy to see why this is such a strong element in British culture. Some people, obviously, come to drink and can down three or four pints in short order, but most of the people do what we did, which is to nurse an ale for an hour or more and spend the time talking. Stopping for lunch is often a good idea, too, because some of the “pub grub” is among the best food we’ve had here. The sun was starting to get a little low in the sky by the time we finished our drinks—it’s setting now before 4 p.m.—so we hightailed it back to Canterbury.

Saturday was the only other day we did anything out of the ordinary. We had seen, in the free weekly paper, an advertisement for a Christmas Fair at the local leisure center—which is like a YMCA—and decided to go see if there were any gifts we might pick up. Sue, a secretary in the American Studies office, thought that it might include vendors from the continent because they were charging an admission fee, which made it sound even more likely that we would enjoy wandering around the stalls.

It did not take more than a few steps into the area where the vendors were set up to know that our hopes were going to be dashed. Rather than looking at Bavarian cuckoo clocks and Belgian lace and French whatever, we had, instead, wandered into a very American feeling flea market. There were old paperbacks and videotapes, clothes, knock-off Louis Vuitton bags and cheap jewelry. A few stands did feature handmade things, but it was mainly crocheted monkeys, soap and candles, a few wooden bowls. The only thing we found to buy were jars of marmalade and jams. We left with our Christmas spirit a little rattled, but not enough that it stopped us from heading to High Street, where we turned into shopping dervishes and got just presents for nearly everyone on our list. The major requirements were that the gift had to be flat or lightweight or, preferably, both. As we started for home, we heard someone talking over a loudspeaker on Palace Street, so we went to investigate where the local radio station was doing a remote broadcast and found out that the city’s Christmas lights were going to be lit that evening at 5 p.m..

So, at the appointed hour, that’s where we were, standing in the midst of happy Brits—some dressed up in odd, non-Christmas outfits (pirates, for example) and many armed with some kind of Star Wars light sabers (my second reference to this piece of American pop culture in two weeks!). When the lights finally went on, it was a bit anti-climactic—maybe we’re too used to American extravagance when it comes to Christmas decorations—but the crowd was genuinely charged with the spirit of the season, and many headed off in the direction of department stores and other shops singing along with the music blaring from the loudspeakers. We weren’t singing—or doing anymore shopping—but the cold night air and the families and the lights all served to remind us that Christmas is very nearly here.

First, though, is Thanksgiving. I’ll let you know how that goes in the next dispatch.