Forever Britain

I miss the U.K.

I mean it, I really miss her. I am a pretty typical western European mutt as far as blood is concerned, but much of my blood can be traced to the UK- Wales, Scotland, York,..... all lovely places to visit incidentally. The first time I stepped off the plane in London, September 1980, I was home. I knew no one in the country, didn't even know for sure if I had a place to stay, and yet I was more comfortable there than I am to this day in Texas. Nothing felt odd to me, and I can only say I must have been there sometime before, because there was no other explanation.

i went mostly on business in '80, but trust me, I got in as much sightseeing as I could- but not to the standard places. Watching the changing of the Guard, or hanging out in Soho Square or Piccadilly were not, and are not still, my idea of London. The hidden quiet corners of Hype or Regent's Park, feeding black swans, walking through areas of the city I guarantee no tour bus goes....that's me.
Tea at 10 and 4 with the working class joes, riding the Tube out to distant places most tourists don't even know are on the map.....

I came to understand pretty quickly that to really know the English, one must get out of London. It's like NYC- so cosmopolitan that sometimes the truly English part gets submerged. I remember my mom's mother warning me before my first trip not to expect the British to be very nice. She found them tight lipped, in her words, and stuffy. I,on the other hand, found that to be quite untrue. When one lives in such close proximity to so many others- the UK is not a big place- one learns to stay within one's boundaries socially. It isn't that Brits are being cool; they are trying to be respectful of privacy, something often in short supply. When I needed help or started a chat with someone, that all dropped away quickly. It probably didn't hurt that JR had just been shot, and my coming from Texas had to mean I had some sort of insight into who-done-it. 'Course, when I had to ask who JR was, I probably blew that! (never watched even one episode of Dallas, and it wasn't filmed anywhere near Texas anyway!)

While I have loved being in England every time I have gone, I think my favourite trip was with my mom in '88. She deemed to rent a car, so we could be free to explore. I did all the driving (not in London!) and managed to not kill anybody!
Seriously, other than bashing my hand repeatedly on the door reaching for a stick shift that was now on my left, I don't think any of of my driving was any worse than it would've been in some unknown place in the US. When we got on a majour highway heading for Harrogate, I did get honked at a lot....until I realised that was turned around too, and I was in the fast lane.

My first day of driving might have been an unwise thing, but it worked out okay. I had gotten a touch of food poisoning (milk, which I am allergic to, I know now.)and was still woozy. It may have helped me be a little more relaxed than I might have been. We were in St. Ives, Cornwall, and to call the driving conditions tricky is to be overly polite! Harrowing, though good exercise, might be more accurate. Penzance is 8 miles from St Ives, as the crow flies. Apparently, whoever designed the road systems in the area thought it more appropriate to follow a midge fly on its route and make that into roads! The roads were not much wider than the car we were in ( a Ford Festiva) and there were walls of a sort, just high enough one couldn't see over them, lining a fair number of them. Any oncoming traffic was hard to see, and somebody had to get out of the other's way. So here are my mom and me looking for standing stones, trying to see any signage there might be, rocking from one butt cheek to the other every 50 feet, dodging traffic almost as often! At the very least, we got some good giggles out of it. Since one couldn't go more than 30 tops anywhere on this journey, it probably wouldn't have been too serious if there had been trouble.

I remember when we first got out of St Ives proper, we hit a patch of sea fog. Very few places in Cornwall do not have a view of the ocean. I was in a susceptible state of mind, but I swear as we passed one large hill on my left, i could hear the shuffling and snorting of horses...the clank of armour...the muffled voices of people talking. Tinatagel Castle is supposed to be the birthplace of Arthur Pendragon, the Once and Future King. I don't know how many battles actually took place in Cornwall, but that was what I felt I was hearing. Cornwall is a unique place, full of magick, holding on to the old Ways, without quite knowing it. I felt a strange connection to it that I would like to go back and explore.

(9-6- it is early am ish and I need to get rest...more later. )