England Southwest

The Car from 'L: The real dope on driving tests in the UK, redux

2012-01-23T14:25:00.001Z

Very well-marked learner car on unusually wide UK country road. (Wiki commons)

Well, it is in hand, my official UK driving license. Indeed, it has been in hand since last June. But not without a modicum of sturm und drang, to use the German term for lotsa trouble.

I continued driving lessons with a lovely instructor from Jenny Hayes School of Motoring, a lesson company headquartered in Bude. We had a lot of fun, mainly because he wasn't teaching me to drive; I had been doing that for 46 years without a single moving violation or prang. He was teaching me to pass the test. Period.

In May, my test date arrived, in the nick of time for the year's window I had. There should have been no problems.

THERE WERE BIG, BIG PROBLEMS.

The first problem was the examiner. When he got into the car, he rummaged around on his clipboard as if he couldn't quite figure out what to do next. Then he checked the lesson car's tax stamp, and flipped it onto the dashboard as if it were smelly. Then we began. We began by entering a housing estate with teensy roads and a 20 mph speed limit. Lots of speed humps. Lots of parked cars. Lots of curves and hills. No problem. Not for me, anyway. I did forget to compulsively check all my mirrors every time I shifted up after downshifting for first for the speed humps. But only once or twice.

Then we had to do the first one of the two out of four maneuvers they may require. The maneuvers are parallel parking, backing into parking bay, backing around a corner, or turn in road (formerly 3-point turn, although 5 turns are now allowed).

Reverse around a corner....say what?
I've mentioned it before, but no Yank in his or her right mind would back around a corner. Indeed, in some states, it's a traffic violation that will get you points and a fine. I contend that we are mentally and emotionally incapable of performing that maneuver after being drilled against it for years. So I hoped he would not choose that.

And he didn't. He chose parallel parking. So we went down a side street and he chose a target car. Yippee! Parallel parking! As a native of New York City, I had NO problems doing that, and in spaces tighter than anyone in Cornwall every dreamed of with more shouting motorists wanting you to hurry up so they could get by.

But NOOOOOOO. He decided that, as there was a person in the target car, I wouldn't want to parallel park there, as if it would make me nervous. If it had been Godzilla in the car it wouldn't have made me nervous. As I said, it's a maneuver any native New Yorker does as easily as breathing.

I drove on. He decided we would to a reverse around a corner instead.

It was horrible. My reverse was horrible...but not horrible enough to fail me. I was within the guidelines laid out by my instructor. And I compulsively checked all mirrors all the time. Remember this. It is a key point in passing the UK driving test. You'd be best off if your head swiveled like Linda Blair's in The Exorcist.

Next was merging onto a motorway. No problem. Then driving down a country lane. No problem. Then negotiating a 16th century bridge that was possibly seven inches wider than the car. No problem; my instructor had drilled me on that one. Then a drive into a small city where, as it happened, a motorbike lurched into my path and I had to do an emergency stop, which saved the examiner from having to ask for it later. And I did it perfectly, as I have been doing it for 46 years...must have, since I have never hit anything.

Then up around a hill where one had to keep the left turn signal on despite enough curve for the car to cancel it, and where, if you had someone poky in front--and I did--you'd also have to downshift once or maybe even twice. I did. So the signal was briefly cancelled. But I immediately put it back on when the downshift--and NOT stalling--was accomplished.

How many hands does it take to drive a car?

That, however, was apparently the kiss of death. The bugger failed me, said he had felt "endangered" on the hill. What if someone had come up behind me while the signal was off? I said, "What if someone had come up behind me if the car had stalled?" It was a choice. Had to have one hand on the wheel. He didn't like my choice. But actually, he didn't like me. He seemed to resent having a Yankee woman of some age moving permanently to England. He was reacting like an unsophisticated hick, I decided. And I decided I would NEVER take another driving test in Cornwall. I would go north, to a city where people had seen foreigners before, and didn't penalize them. Or do as the Cornwall examiner had done and instruct me to make an illegal turn, which I wouldn't do. (I wondered, at that point, if all examiners were sadistic cretins.)

I booked a week's tuition at Five-Day Intensive Driving in Norwich. I didn't need the intensive lessons...at least, I hadn't until the experience in Cornwall. And indeed, within fifteen minutes in the car, the instructor asked me point blank, Why are you here? I told him the Cornwall story and he told me I had just run into a louse and as far as he was concerned, I could book a test immediately. But the fees were paid, I was happy to be in a city for a break (I shopped mornings, and drove afternoons), and by the end of the week, the instructor and I had become good friends. Still are. But that, as it happens, is another story....for next time.

Meanwhile, my amazing experiences on UK roads seem to have become a novel, finally finished, and published, here. It's a humorous murder mystery, with even more mayhem than US drivers will experience during their first year on UK roads.

Getting a UK driver's license...sure, cinch.....NOT!

2011-03-13T19:01:00.000Z


Look down the road. Note the foreground is less than two cars wide. Note that in the distance, it is barely more than one compact car wide. Now imagine the same road with twists and turns--lots of them--and lots of steep hills, 14 percent grades and such. Now imagine bicycles, hikers and dogs also using the road. Then imagine a humongous truck coming at you. Ah...driving in Devon and Cornwall!

One has a year after becoming a legal resident to get a UK driver's license. I didn't become a legal resident, really, until we bought the house. Conceivably, I would have almost another year to accomplish the deed. However.....

I have started the process and there's no turning back. In November, I decided to get myself into the motor vehicle drivers' system, thus starting the year early. In January, I finally decided to have a look at the official government driving rule book and take the test. Thankfully, I had also bought a second book by a private firm, and that's the one that was most useful. Indeed, the government book is riddled with contradictions. In one place, it says that the reason one stops at a T-junction on a hilly curve is because things might come around the curve, and one is further admonished to look REALLY hard to ensure nothing is coming before joining the roadway. In another place, it says the curve is the reason for looking REALLY hard. What's the difference? To a driver, none. You're going to look REALLY hard either way. AHA! But on the test, they give both answers (and a couple of ringers) to choose from, and your guess is as good as mine which one they want on any given day.

On the given day I took the test, they wanted the other one, the one I did not choose. So I got one answer wrong, or a 98 percent on the test. One must get an 84 to pass. So I did pretty well, right? No. It pissed me off, not because I got one wrong but because it was so capricious.

And now comes the time I must book the practical test. In the US, these run from about 30 minutes on actual roads (New York State when I took it at 17 and passed) and Maryland, 10 minutes in a big parking lot proving one can go forward, backward and stop and not much more. (I think my dog can do that.)

In the UK, it's far, far different. It's a 40-50 minute test, and it goes like this:

Prove to the examiner that every last little thing on one's car is working properly.
Prove one can see a number plate at a distance of 20 0r 20.5 metres, depending on whether the examiner is using an old or new number plate. If you fail this, the test stops here.
If you pass the eye test, then it continues.
If one isn't using a car from a driving lesson company (the expected thing), then one must provide a stick-on mirror for the examiner to he can see behind you, too. I assume the lack of dual controls constitutes hazardous conditions and they probably get extra pay for examinees who use their own car.
Answer questions about the car itself. This may include how to check and top up all fluids, how to test power steering, what various warning lights look like, and more.
Then, perfectly execute a cockpit check, in the prescribed order.
Drive, according to instructions from examiner. The test will include all types of roads, except Motorways (equivalent to interstate highways). It will almost certainly include what I refer to as green tunnels (see above).

The Green Man, or Woman, Redux
When driving in a green tunnel, one must see around bends. And therein is the first difference from all I was taught when I first learned to drive. I was taught, on curves, to hug the shoulder in case oncoming traffic was over the center line. Here, they want drivers to pull slightly away from the shoulder, the sooner to see anything that is coming at you--head on--from the other direction. I wonder if that's so you can say a quick prayer before you die.

So, I have to overcome 45 years of safe driving in the US to deal with green tunnels. Nor is that all. Obviously, where there is only room for one car, something has to give. What gives is the car closest to a pull-off space, which one must look for and note for future reference as one drives through a green tunnel.

I loathe backing under the best of circumstances. But consider this: There may be another car roaring up behind one. There often is, in fact. So then one must halt in one's backing and wait for that car to back. I have seen it involve as many as five cars, all looking for that one-car-long pull-off spot in the hedgerow.

NOTE: A hedgerow isn't made of hedges. It's made of rocks thinly coated (if at all) with hedges. Not a soft landing for the side of one's car if on misjudges.

This can take a while, with one car replacing the other in the pull-off, even providing more cars aren't arriving from the other direction to complicate the issue.

And this can be on the test. It makes driving through small towns look like a piece of cake.

In-town driving: Exercise in dash and wait
Small towns: A collection of houses separated by a thoroughfare that is two cars wide, often has a center line, but also has cars parked higgledy-piggledy along its length.

So, if you are in the clear lane, you can proceed and oncoming cars must wait and then pull out and use your lane to go forward. If you are in the lane with the obstruction, you can pull out around it as long as nothing is coming the other way, and you can also proceed if you see that both cars are narrow and can, in fact, fit the roadway each going in its own direction without too much risk of a sideswipe one way or another. Needless to say, one doesn't play chicken on such roads with large trucks. Or old folks. Or grackles/emmits, that is, people visiting from northern counties that have roads built in recent memory to accommodate cars rather than ones built in 1360 to accommodate cows and the odd peripatetic saint going to find a holy well.

Backing into parking spots rather than out
But back to the test. One must also demonstrate an ability to back into a defined parking space, such as those in front of supermarkets. The British have the quaint idea that backing in is less dangerous than pulling in headfirst and backing out. I can't fathom this for the life of me. One is much more likely to spend more time getting into the spot--making sure of sufficient room for all passengers to exit, etc.--than pulling out backward when all one wants to do is exit without grazing the neighboring cars and get into the roadway. It's generally a faster operation to back out of a space than in. Faster, when entering a roadway other cars might be using, is safer than slower.

The other truly weird required maneuver is backing around a corner. WHAAAAT? If one backs around a corner in most states in the US, and a cop sees you, he or she will probably take your license and rip it up on the spot. I'm wondering if, having driven for 45 years with no accidents and no tickets--despite driving for my job often enough--I can actually do this insane thing. WHY would I do this insane thing? Why would I not, as my driver's ed teacher--one Mr. Fitzgerald who was, yes, related to the Kennedys--drive on and find a place for a legal u-turn where the sight lines in all directions were good, something certainly not true with BACKING AROUND A FREAKING CORNER! I suspect I shall do this insane thing exactly enough times to learn how, once on the test, and never, ever again. I think it would rattle my brain and destroy my soul, so much a part of me is NOT BACKING AROUND A FREAKING CORNER.

I've got to do all this before the second week in May. I have booked driving lessons with AA (Automobile Association, no need for American....same outfit). All I want them to do is drill me on the insanities: backing into a supermarket parking space and backing around corners.

Green tunnels? Got that whipped. Well, almost. Or at least I will have as soon as I get them to teach me how to tell where the hedges end and rocks begin 100 percent of the time. So far, I'm not quite batting 1000 on that.

A Yank in TolkienLand

2011-03-08T16:57:00.002Z

On a visit to England a few years back, before we had actually thought seriously about moving here, we saw a delivery van with a company name printed upon it, followed by the address. The business, it said, was located in “Polperro, Near England.” (It could have been some other town. Can’t recall. But I like Polperro a lot, so it gets the p.r.)

Polperro Harbor, Cornwall

Polperro is an incredibly quaint fishing village in Cornwall. Despite the existence of the Duke of Cornwall (and now his Duchess, propelled out of her jodhpurs and into relentlessly dowdy court couture) as part of the English royal family, the residents of Cornwall would just as soon be independent. Hanging off the nether end of the isle, it would seem reasonable. Almost separated from the mainland by the River Tavy, it would be easy enough to erect guard posts to enter and exit Cornwall. As it happens, the ancient toll houses, hard by the bridges, are still extant. A little exercise of eminent domain, and out go the householders and in go the uniformed denizens of Cornish purity.

You might think this is all quaint, not unlike the secession of Key West back on April 23, 1982, and the creation of the Conch Republic, in protest over a U.S. government roadblock in front of the Last Chance Saloon, the final watering hole before the trek down US1 to Key West. The feds were looking for drugs and illegal immigrants, unaware―apparently―that Key West is where drugs and illegal immigrants are simply a fact of life, no biggie, no worries. It’s Key Effing West, for crissakes!

Cornwall might well be compared to Monroe County, Florida. Both are centres of various sorts of fishing. Cornwall supplies fish of an amazing variety: bass, brill, cod, coley, conger eel, cuttlefish, dabs, Dover sole, haddock, lemon sole, mackerel, pilchard, plaice, mullet, sea bream, turbot and more, as well as shellfish. All in all, the seas provide an abundant cash crop for Cornish folk.

Just so, the seas around Key West provide abundantly for the locals. When the secession movement was at its peak, the waters off Monroe County were rife with square grouper, a crop responsible not only for filling coffers locally, but leading to more laughter and happiness than any dish of lemon sole ever would.

View from Pier House outdoor bar, Key West

The Key West secession movement was short-lived, although its usefulness as a tourist gimmick lives on. We had, flying from a deck-based flagpole, the official Conch Republic flag, until it wore to shreds through wind, rain and the occasional dousing with the jettisoned dregs from a martini shaker.

The secessionist movement in Cornwall, however, seems to keep rolling on...despite the fact that the last native speaker of the Cornish language, Dolly Pentreath, died in Mousehole in about 1777. (Mousehole is pronounced Mauzell.) We tried to find her house once. We asked in an ice cream shop close to the quay; Dolly Pentreath had been a fish-seller, so it was reasonable to think her house might be there. The local teen in the shop had no idea who Pentreath was. Later, we asked in an art gallery, and were directed to Pentreath’s house, or at least, the plaque adorning the building now standing on the land where Pentreath once spoke fluent Cornish.

Nowadays, people do learn it on purpose, as modern Irish people learn Irish. The Irish, except for the interlopers in the North, have already seceded from England. (Yes, spoken by someone who holds a Republic of Ireland passport! And one might assume would thereby get some love from the Cornish….)

Will the Cornish secede? A Facebook friend in deep southwest Cornwall wrote this morning: “For Cornish folk who’ve received the Census form: Tyr-Gwyr-Gweryn suggests that, on the title page, where it says ‘Household Questionnaire – England’, we don't obliterate the offending word, but instead add: ‘and Cornwall’.”

It seems like an uphill battle. The heir to the British throne is the Duke of the place, for crying out loud. No one speaks the language; there were far more speakers of Irish in 1916 when the Irish fought for independence and eventually won than there are now speakers of Cornish. In the 1980s, it was common to meet people in the west of Ireland whose first tongue was Irish, and even now, in Donegal, it’s somewhat easy to find truly native speakers, those whose first word might have been Máthair (pronounced Maw her) rather than Mum. But one won’t find a Cornish baban (baby) saying Mam rather than Mom or Mum. (Actually, with baby talk, how could one really tell? So perhaps they CAN claim native speaker status for any baban who says Mam or something that sounds suspiciously similar, as his/her first word.)

But there is something different about Cornwall. Even more different than Devon, and that’s pretty different as English counties go. Altogether more friendly, more down-to-earth than the Home Counties--the precious enclaves surrounding London, and even more different than Yorkshire. The people have a well-developed sense of humour, even if the interlopers don’t like being called grackles (tourists) in Devon and emmits (literally, ants, or so I’m told) in Cornwall.

I suppose, being a transplanted Yank, I am a super-emmit, and couldn’t possibly understand. But perhaps I’ll be accepted, as those from elsewhere who move to New York City are accepted on the basis of their love for the place. My new neighbour asked several times last week whether I truly liked it here, and was surprised, I think, to realize I really do, that I came by choice and stay by choice.

But I don’t think I’ll add learning Cornish to my lifetime achievements…at least not until they start labelling toilets in the language, as they do in Ireland, where a knowledge of Fir and Mna will keep one out of hot water, so to speak.

St. Just--in-Penwith, Cornwall, and holy ground

2010-08-16T14:57:00.001+01:00

Clock Tower, St. Just-in-Penwith Parish Church

I smelled Ireland last Friday….

The first time I visited Ireland, I bought a sweater made of very fine lamb’s wool. I wore it sitting in front of a turf fire, and it picked up the scent. I didn’t dry clean that sweater for years, as one whiff of it took me back to a very excellent time in a very beautiful place, what poet W.B. Yeats called, "the holy land of Ireland."

It wasn’t that smell.

What I smelled, standing in front of the fragmentary secco wall painting, “Christ of the Trades,”at St. Just-in-Penwith Parish Church, Cornwall, was the scent that reminds me of old buildings and fine furnishings, and also of the etheric remnants of lives lived, loves quickened, lives lost. A scent like no other, a scent heavy with meaning, and yet evanescent, grasped only a few times each decade, but prized, drawn into the nose like a heavenly perfume. And yet, I think that’s the first time I have come across it in a church.

My husband couldn’t smell it; by the time he responded to my silent beckoning, it was gone. He looked at the stone wall exposed below the secco (see below) painting and pointed out the mold growing there. But it was not that.

The evanescent scent arises from the interplay, I think, of old stone (moldy, or washed clean), old wood, old plaster, old dust, old fibers…old being. The information of the universe, rendered close and personal, the hologram of all that has gone before in that place. And in such places, on occasion, such perfumes arise.

I couldn’t get enough of it, and yet, I knew it would not linger long. Or perhaps it is just that I would become used to it and would cease to note it as a scent separate from the environment. So I moved along. The church was quite beautiful, in a very rough-hewn way. And of course, it had an enormous number of historic features. It was, in its own way, emblematic of all that has happened to England in the Christian era.

The secco painting―one of six, at least, that covered the gray stone walls of the parish church in St. Just-in-Penwith, making the medieval church vibrant and the Bible intelligible to an uneducated congregation―dates to the 15th century. In the next century, when the Reformation and the spread of Protestantism arrived in Cornwall, all the beautiful and colorful decoration was removed or hidden; no one in those puritanical times wanted to be thought of as Popish. During some decades, it was worth one’s life to appear to be allied with Rome.

The secco paintings remained hidden until the restoration of religious freedom beginning in 1865. And, although six paintings were discovered then, only two remain, with no record of what happened to the others. Those two are the one I stood before, “Christ of the Trades,” and “Saint George and the Dragon.” St. George is the patron saint of England, making it perhaps somewhat unusual that he was painted in St. Just-in-Penwith, Cornwall, where even now many Cornish people would like to separate from England. Indeed, Celtic Christianity still abounds in this part of Cornwall.

But for now, I’m just appreciating the arrival of that scent, a scent like no other, and instantly evocative of all the good in the world, and all its ancient history, still proceeding day by day.

Next time: Celtic Christianity

Secco paintings are done on moistened dry plaster, unlike frescoes, painted on wet plaster. Colors on secco paintings are less durable, and paint may flake off. That has happened at St. Just-in-Penwith; restoration of the paintings has been undertaken from time to time.

Love and humor, cats and kids: Love in the aftermath of war

2010-08-14T16:10:00.000+01:00

My husband is an only child. I never met his parents, both having died before my husband and I met when we were, to say the least, not in the first flush of youth.

But I was certain from things he had told me during our dating games that his parents loved him better than they loved anything else except each other. Which is, in my book, the way it should be. The parental love must come first, with the children enveloped and celebrated. Protected and nurtured. Disciplined and congratulated...all as the situation demands. But under it all, the parental love for each other must remain paramount. Only in that way, for instance, can they maintain their individual and mutual balance when troubles arise, with the child or any other facet of family life, as inevitably they will.

My husband's parents were older than the norm when they had him, World War II having intervened. That, and the subsequent rationing in the UK, forced them to wait until both were established well in professions--father in sales and mother in teaching English and French--to leap from couplehood to parenthood.

Although Mary was the teacher, Ronald wrote. He wrote and wrote and wrote. Poems, plays, even (I recently discovered on going through some old boxes) some children's stories. None were ever published, though not from lack of trying, until now.

Whatever else Ronald's writing may have been, it was both witty and expressive of his immense and intense love for Mary, and for their son. And, for that matter, for all the creatures resident in his household, at the time, the top floor of a building in Torquay.

Here, without further introduction, is one of the daily letters Ronald penned to Mary as she spent the then-obligatory week in hospital after giving birth, although he arrived nightly to visit as well.

***

The Old Court House

Sweetheart.

I thought I was going to have some trouble with Horty, and of course I have. She’s heard from outside. I told her quite quietly the other night that she was to have a little cousin, and though she looked down her nose a bit, she took it reasonably well. Judge my surprise this morning when she kicked down the door and shouldered her way in thus…

H. ‘ere, wot’s all this perishin’ nonsense they’re telling me abaht a nine pound prod.

R. Really, Horty, not this time in the morning, please. In any case, you should be proud and pleased.

H. (With deep disgust) Prahd. Wot ‘ave I got to be prahd abaht. Or pleased fer that matter. You said somefing abaht a little cousin, you did. It’s treating me a bit shabby I must say. An’ I always fought you were fond of little things…being a bit on the tiny side yerself, as yer might say. And now this.

R. Well, I know it has come as a bit of a shock all round, old girl, but we just have to accept these things. No point in getting all hot about the whiskers. There’s nothing we can do about it.

H. (Darkly) Isn’t there?

R. Of course not.

H. Well, you just wait and see. I’ve got friends, I ‘ave. Nine pounds indeed. A nice old fool I’ll look getting town to me Whiskas alongside the brute. If ’e’d been a nice little four pounds, I could ‘ave knocked ‘im abaht a bit if ‘e overstepped the mark, as they say. But wot chance ‘ave I got now…and me out of training, too.

R. (Coldly) I don’t think we want any rough stuff, if you don’t mind, Horty.

H. ‘Ark at ‘im. Don’t want any rough stuff. A cat’s got to look after ‘imself. I should ‘ave thought you would ‘ave realised that there ain’t room for any more of us in this ‘ere ‘house. You must be more stupid than you look.

R. (Firmly) I will not have you talking to me in that way. If you ask me, a nine pound cousin is just about the best thing for you in your present belligerent mood. It’ll do you a power of good. It’s time you had someone about your own weight to put you in your place.

H. There you go. Inciting the brute. Well let me tell you, mister, me and me friends won’t stand for any nonsense, see. Wait ‘til I tell them about this.

R. Pooh. I don’t believe you’ve got any friends.

H. (Contemptuously) Huh. I’m just about the most popular member of our working cat’s club, and wot I say goes. If I tell ‘em we ain’t going to stand any nonsense from this ‘ere ‘erbert of yours, then no nonsense it is, see.

R. Yes, I see all right. But your cousin’s name doesn’t happen to be Herbert. As a matter of fact, it’s Simon.

H. Simon. That’s a laugh. Wait ‘til I tell that to the boys. Simon. Can you beat it? You might at least ‘ave called ‘im Fred, and given the poor so and so a chance. Simon, I ask you.

R. I believe a lot of people think quite highly of the name. And I venture to suggest that there are more Simons in the Bible than Freds.

H. I wouldn’t know abaht that. It’s a long time since I went to Sunday school. No time for it. But you can take it from me, the boys are going to get a pretty good laugh out of Simon.

R. It strikes me you have some very queer friends.

H. Speak for yourself. (Making for the door) Well, if that’s all you’ve got to say to me, I’ll push off and tell the boys. (Going out the door) Simon. Sounds more like a rare kind of fish. Back about ten for me Whiskas. Don’t keep me waiting….

I have not been here since, darling, so I don’t quite know how matters stand between us. But I’ll keep you posted.

Now I must fly for the post and the hospital.

Tenderest love, my darling,

Ronald

***

I so wish I had met Ronald and Mary. But I have been awarded a high prize by whatever means, their son. So I'm thinking that, despite my often passionate expression of my opinions in terms that would have been anathema to them, and my ever-growing distaste for religion while the Church of England was central to both their lives, we would have loved each other (I might be a good substitute for Horty; attitude and all). Certainly, I love the thought of them, almost as much as I love their son.

Cape Cornwall Arts & Crafts Exhibit

2010-08-11T13:30:00.000+01:00

While Cornwall is a feast for beachgoers in the spring and summer, it’s also delightful for art lovers. Now through Friday, August 20, 2010, the Cape Cornwall Arts & Crafts Exhibition will offer a glimpse at both tradition and new arts and crafts being worked all over Cornwall. Two of my favourite artists, Mim and John Nash of the Old Well Studio, are involved.


Recently sold Celtic Ceremonial Chalice by Mim Nash, Old Well Studio


Moon over the Cove by John Nash

(The cove is Larmorna Cove, made famous by author Martha Grimes in her novel, The Lamorna Wink.)

The exhibit is held at the Cape Cornwall School, St. Just in Penwith, Penzance, Cornwall. It’s easy enough to find; the school is near a golf course (and in England, those are ALWAYS signposted) and Google maps does a grand job. Load your start point and then Saint Just, Penzance, Cornwall TR19 7JX, UK, and you’ll get all sorts of maps.

The admission charge is £1.00 for adults and 50p for children; fees are in aid of Cancer Research (reg charity 1089464).

There is wheelchair access to most areas at the exhibition, and you’ll find all sorts of things for sale.

Because of its location, you can make a day of it and visit any of several nearby sites, the Geevor Tin Mine Museum. Cornwall has been a source of tin since before Biblical times, with some reason to believe that Joseph of Arimathea visited, perhaps with a young man called Jesse, from Nazareth, in tow.

Exhibit at Geevor Tin Mine Museum (Wiki commons)

Better than McDonald's muffin things, and truly British

2010-08-05T17:42:00.001+01:00

Just a while ago, we got back from the weekly run to the Waitrose food store in Saltash, outside Plymouth. Today, we took our time and found amazing things, including Supasweet onions that you almost quarter but leave the bottom intact. Then you slather them with butter inside and out, and roast them in the oven to serve as a veg. Can't wait.

Still, I needed to get on the internet to check some things on another blog, and I got hungry, although dinner is a couple hours away. Then I checked the TV schedule for this evening--it's raining, we're bushed, and it looks like tube and ice cream after dinner. I noted the listing for an episode of the Hairy Bikers' food show.

When we first moved to Devon, I checked a cookbook by the Hairy Bikers out of the library. It was full of their mums' recipes for British favorites such as Yorkshire pudding and Cauliflower Cheese. I use the second of those, and even now I'm trying to figure out how to get a huge head of cauliflower into the tiny fridge (well, tiny next to US suburban standards.)

Anyway, here's a quick look at the two mountainous men and a really simple breakfast to make...and one which, it would appear, McDonald's more or less copied for all its McMuffin meals.

At McDonald's one orders the McMuffin things, just as in the states. But local breakfast sandwiches, predating the founding of McDonald's by a good bit, are called butties. The morning we landed, while waiting for the dog and cat to be cleared by DEFRA so we could all pile into the van and hustle to our beds after the red-eye flight, we had a breakfast buttie from the roach coach that pulled up outside the DEFRA building.

It was delicious, and not just because our last previous meal had been some kind of slop in a tiny plastic bowl and weak coffee served in mid-air 40 minutes before landing--which by then was a few hours back, what with immigration, luggage, car rental, getting lost, finding DEFRA....

We had bacon and egg butties. The ones in the video are bacon and sausage. Sounds even better. If I make them at home, I won't bake my own rolls; the bakery two doors away opens at 7. OK, they won't be as crusty as the Bikers'...but I'm not a morning person. I am, however, a sausagetarian...and I think the weekend shall not pass me by without a bacon and sausage buttie adding to what I need to walk off my hips on Dartmoor.

Maybe sprinkling the bacon before I cook it with some homemade sherry pepper sauce will burn off the calories!

England: The best place to die

2010-07-29T16:47:00.007+01:00

(Winter sunset, Sutton Harbour, Plymouth, England. Copyright S.P. Tiley/Muffindogpress)

The Economist Intelligence Unit has produced a white paper noting that the UK is No. 1 as the place to be when one is dying.

That was a comforting finding; lately, the morning talk shows on BBC radio have lamented the poor quality of British end-of-life care.

All things are relative. Next to the rest of the world, despite ranking very low on one aspect of end-of-life care, Britain is ranked No. 1 overall. It is in quality of life, toward the end of that life, that Britain apparently excels. The report notes that, “The UK has led the way in terms of its hospice care network and statutory involvement in end-of-life care, and ranks top of 40 countries measured in the Index.”

Possibly the ranking is high because palliative care is available, and there is even help for family and those others who are not medical professionals but are caring for the ill or dying.

I could ponder long about why this is so, but I won’t. I think I know, and I think I came to my conclusion long before becoming an ex-pat in Britain. For all its faults, and there are some to be sure, Britain remains dedicated at a fundamental level to the welfare of all its citizens. It was not, of course, always so. Just this morning, a talk show dealt in depth with the horrors of the workhouse, where the orphaned, widowed, poor, sick and elderly were once sent. The workhouses (think of the movie Oliver! if a visual escapes you) replaced community care; workhouses began to be replaced during Victoria’s reign and were, of course, history long before the National Health Service was created in the UK after WWII. Currently, the radio presenter noted, care for the aforementioned pressured groups has been returned to the community, with assistance from governments up the line.

Before my life took the unexpected turn of marriage to a Brit, making this the natural place to perch after we had decided to leave the US and its myriad fundamentalist brain- and spirit-bashing groups and movements, I had intended to live in France after retirement, but move to my ancestral Ireland (Republic of Ireland, not Northern Ireland, as in Ulster, as in UK) when I felt death would be imminent. Naturally, through it all, I remain a U.S. citizen, simply one on "extended leave."

I’m happy to say that, had I done that, I’d not be in bad shape. France’s health care system is generally regarded as among the best in the world, if not the absolute top. But it’s end-of-of-life ranking is quite low. So, living in France=good. Dying in France=not so good.

But Ireland is ranked No. 4 by The Economist in end-of-life care.

Unbeknownst to me, my original plan was pretty good.

But the plan I ended up with, married to Simon and living in incredibly gorgeous southwest England, is even better.

A worthy new Sherlock Holmes

2010-07-26T12:44:00.010+01:00

I really thought I would hate it, a modernized version of Sherlock Holmes. When I was a kid, I loved the old movies with Basil Rathbone in the title role, shown on late-night TV in the US. Later, I fell totally in love with the late Jeremy Brett (shown above) in the extensive series produced beginning in the 1980s by Granada TV and shown on PBS in the US. We have been watching them in England, as they are replayed frequently on ITV.

Now there is a new Sherlock, played by a young actor--much younger than Brett was when he originated his cerebral, brooding, eccentric version of Holmes--named Benedict Cumberbatch. OK, the actor's name is a bit daunting. But the actor, I am amazed to find myself saying, was quite good and, while maintaining the distance from the hoi polloi required by Conan Doyle's character, was also accessible without being either folksy or rad. Indeed, as a much younger Holmes than the Brett or Rathbone versions, he was unusually excellent. Take a look at him, and his Dr. Watson played by Martin Freeman, here.

The producers made three episodes, although who knows if it will become truly episodic. But at least for the next two Sunday evenings, I can round out the weekend by watching a new and astonishingly acceptable version of one of my favorite fictional character's exploits. True, the hansom cabs have been replaced by London taxis (much better, at least, than the motley collection of taxis one would get in New York). But there's still a Lestrade who is no smarter than he needs to be to retain his position with Scotland Yard.

Now, mind, I'm not saying anything against Scotland Yard; I'm just remarking on the view Conan Doyle took of official detection and wrote into the character of Lestrade. In short, Conan Doyle would not have written Law & Order, in which detectives are given a great deal of credit for intellect, nor certainly Wycliffe, a British series about an intelligent, compassionate chief detective inspector in Cornwall.

The building fronts used for the Baker Street lodgings are the same ones used in the Brett series, although now the very modern building across the side street appears. Sherlock still has certain addiction problems, portrayed as solved and in the past for this series, and he still plays the violin to help himself relax and think. Watson is perhaps a bit more active and less useless than in either the Brett series of the Rathbone series, but the portrayal wasn't annoying. Sherlock is still, without doubt, the brains of the outfit, and Watson the man of action, mustered out after an injury from service as a doctor in Afghanistan. Indeed, it is refreshing to see Watson as more than a lovable buffoon.

Apparently, I am not alone in my admiration for this updated version of a classic, something so few do well at all, never mind this well. See other reviews here and here.

Cumberbatch was involved in at least two other period movies, Amazing Grace (in which he played William Pitt, friend of William Wilberforce who virtually single-handedly ended slavery in Great Britain) and Darwin. Here, you can hear him speak about Creation, the movie about Charles Darwin, in which Cumberbatch played Joseph Hooker, one of Darwin's scientific supporters. Cumberbatch also played Stephen Hawking, a man of the ages, but also a thoroughly modern one, and one of supreme intellect.

Need one say it? In addition, Cumberbatch is easy on the eyes, if not as classically handsome as Jeremy Brett.

A tale of two seagulls - a fairy story for adults

2010-05-11T15:24:00.002+01:00

Once upon a time, a married couple was walking through the Barbican, the medieval port section of Plymouth, England, when they grew tired and fancied a cup of tea coffee. (The woman didn’t like tea; indeed, she knew she wasn’t well if she actually did want a cup of tea. The man didn’t care for it, either, despite being a Brit born and bred.)

Shortly, the couple came to a many-panelled window they had passed before. “Isn’t this the place we had lunch when we last came here?” the woman asked.

It was. The restaurant behind the windows was called the Tudor Rose Tea Rooms.

They entered, and were directed by a young woman–since it was a lovely spring day, as lovely as the woman herself who seemed much akin to the storied Queen of the May–to the tables in the back garden. Shortly, a very pleasant older woman entered the garden bower and asked if the couple had seen the juvenile seagull that had gotten trapped and wasn’t quite strong enough yet to fly back out. They young-as-springtime woman and the woman of a certain age were keeping him safe from evil trolls and feeding him while he grew to adult gullhood.

“Oh, there he is,” the man exclaimed, upsetting the tea coffee cups, but getting a fine photo of the feathered fellow.

This is the juvenile bird.

It has been two years since then. The juvenile bird is now probably an avian greybeard, and the man and woman don’t expect they’d recognize him now. For that matter, they don’t expect he would recognize them. They, too, have aged, although ever so slightly. One would hardly notice. Really.

After the man and woman met the juvenile bird, several months passed. Then they went journeying to the far south of England, farther even than Plymouth. Farther than almost anything except Land’s End, the westernmost point in the storied nation. Except for the Scilly Isles (pronounced silly). But that’s another tale.

Anyway, the man and woman went one day to Lamorna, there to visit a potter and her husband, who was a writer and painter. And to see their fine work, and to have delicious cakes and tea coffee with them as it was Christmastide and their shop and studios were closed to visitors. The man and woman had a dispensation, however, because they were on a magical journey. Today, others–on magical journeys or just a Sunday drive–can also visit the place, called The Old Well Studio.

The man and woman also saw a holy well.

But they didn’t see Hubert. Hubert must be a magical bird. Hubert has only recently arrived, tapping on Mim Nash’s office window. Mim is the woman, the potter. John Nash is her husband, the artist/writer.

This is Hubert.

(Photo copyright Mim Nash)

Hubert has been knocking on Mim’s window quite frequently. But she does have a favour to ask: If you are Hubert and you are reading this, please clean your beak before knocking. You are much more likely to get a good reception that way.

If you are not Hubert and you are reading this, why not spend some time in Lamorna, Cornwall, and see if you can help Mim out. Bring a soft cloth. Clean off Hubert’s beak. Pass by Plymouth first and stop at the Tudor Rose for tea coffee. You probably won’t see the juvenile seagull. But you’ll have a good time, anyway.

Cyprus: A dream fulfilled…perhaps

2010-05-11T15:22:00.000+01:00

Friday, May 7th, 2010

As it turns out, I could not duplicate, nor really in any way experience, the sights and sounds and tastes and smells and feelings of Lawrence Durrell, author of Bitter Lemons…the single book I have ever read that sent me on a voyage of discovery.
Durrell, for the three years the India-born British writer stayed in Cyprus, lived in Kyrenia, now in the no-man’s-land of northern Cyprus, grabbed at gunpoint by Turkey in 1974. Indeed, our travel advisor’s description of the 37.5 percent of Cyprus now claimed by Turkey almost made me cry. It is impoverished, while the Greek portion is booming. Famagusta, an ancient historic city, is now of blessed memory, a Turkish ghost town. Taken by force, the inhabitants fled, especially the Greeks, often biding their time and hiding their treasures for years before being able to cross the line into the republic that is an independent Cyprus.
Driving up into the Troodos Mountains, through which the dividing Green Line runs, was nerve-wracking for more than the rocks the mountains had spit onto the rain-slick roads. The ubiquitous transformation of Turkish coffee and Turkish delight into Cyprus coffee and Cyprus delight (why not Cypriot, to mimic the original usage?) was disheartening. It was like knowing one was in St. Petersburg, Russia, but having to call it Leningrad, USSR, during those bad days of the Cold War when unseen eyes would be upon one, waiting to ship one off to a Siberian gulag for defaming the Communist overlords. It was unsettling, the more so to me because I had cared deeply about seeing Cyprus, with all its wonderful edge-of-Asia-Minor/edge-of-the-Med magnificence, for more than forty years. I was dismayed that so much of it was lost to civilized commerce; cross into “Turkey” on an EU passport, stay after five pm, and one might not be allowed back into Cyprus. I couldn’t risk it on the first trip.

***

The summer after my senior year of college, I was working and waiting for my husband to finish his M.A. After four years of reading the great works of the English language―Chaucer in Middle High English (I still love it), Shakespeare, the Romantic poets, 20^th century American dramatists, Ernest Hemingway―and having not yet discovered the joys of truly light reading, such as Agatha Christie, I cast about for something entertaining to read. In the college bookstore, in the small section of paperbacks that had nothing to do with anyone’s coursework, I found Bitter Lemons by Lawrence Durrell. I had always loved lemons; as a child, I ate them as other kids ate oranges. Plus, the cover picture was really cool, sort of modern lemons with wobbly black outlines. At least, in 1968 it was cool.
I loved that book. I loved Durrell’s description of Cypriots sitting under branching trees in mismatched chairs eating local foods and drinking village wine. I loved his description of the beach, and the mountains. I was entranced by the idea that the island had an uneasy amalgamation of those with Greek or Turkish ancestry as residents, and that the once-almighty British government was preparing to cut the island loose to find its own way, encouraged most by Greek partisans. I lost the original copy somewhere on my journey to 2003; I found a used copy on the Internet, ordered it, reread it, and got fired up all over again. That book didn’t come with us to England, but is―thankfully―in transit as of yesterday, along with lots of its kith and kin.
I did have a book about Cyprus to read before the trip, though. My restaurateur friend, Suzanne Oldfield (Steps Restaurant; see April 26th post), on hearing of our upcoming trip, loaned me a book she had just read, Small Wars by Sophie Jones. Like Durrell, Jones is a Brit, and she writes about the same time period, the “emergency” that began in 1956, as the British began to tinker with the Pandora’s box that was, and still is, Cyprus. But I haven’t read it yet. Jones has written fiction; Durrell wrote the truth as he saw it. A brief glance at the Jones book tells me that either women are more cruel, or Durrell truly did love Cyprus, and Jones does not. But I do her an injustice; I will read the book anon. I could not touch it, not even open a single page, until after I had seen my longed-for island for myself.
I have seen it now. Some of it. I have seen some beaches, the mountains, the Green Line. I have eaten its food, met its restaurateurs and hoteliers, its Vietnamese hotel staff seeking a better life, its Bulgarian waiters with an amazing facility for languages peaking in an Irish brogue or French-accented English or prime Brit and studying accounting.
I have eaten mosfilo, not enough mosfilo; it’s delicious and unique. I have eaten souvlaki, far too much souvlaki. Chicken, lamb or pork, souvlaki is all pretty much alike. I have eaten halloumi, and loved that which was made from milk of goats that fed on the wild thyme on the mountainsides. Feta I have never liked, so I didn’t eat it. Nor olives: I love the oil, but not the fruit itself. Lemons….well, one cannot have too many lemons, nor the big, sweet juicy oranges either.
I have, at last, been swimming in the Mediterranean…. I have seen olive trees growing wild, with fruit ready to be picked by reaching out the car window…. A front-porch table with a bowl full of lemons…. Geraniums growing in bushes three feet tall and three feet wide, geraniums in all the colours we know―the pinks, salmons, reds, whites―and an amazing purple. The mating dance of a tiny bird….Two ubiquitous Cypriot cats in a restaurant patio making more cats….A man with a moustache that makes Hercule Poirot’s moustache look like the moustache of a man afflicted with minimal hair growth….A totally gorgeous young woman with raven hair and green eyes eating bread and tomatoes in a taverna….Several old women dressed all in black in the blistering sun, walking to town or back with heavy bags, up hills steep enough to stop a goat….
I don’t know a single thing about Cyprus. I have not gauged the Cypriots, as I gauged the Irish on first meeting, or the Parisians. Or Bahamians, or Canadians. There remains about Cyprus and the Cypriots something very un-European, very un-British, despite virtually everyone being at least minimally bilingual in Greek and English.
I think the British did the Cypriots a favour by being there, something I would not say about America or Ireland. I haven’t yet put my finger on it, not totally.
Perhaps I shall, as I explore Cyprus in retrospect, through my eyes and ears and the camera of my British husband in a few upcoming posts.

An ex-pat visits Cyprus

Sunday, May 2nd, 2010

To be truthful, Cyprus has fine internet service, and I’m on it right now, obviously. I don’t find it at all difficult to sit on a breezy balcony with a view of the Mediterranean drinking Cypriot coffee.
A trip up to Kykkos Monastery in the high mountains yesterday–two hours over rock-strewn switchbacks, including lack of tarmac in spots and slippery mud, was a bit less enjoyable…although the monastery was incredible. Passing very close to the dividing line between Greek Cyprus and Turkish Cyprus was spine-tingling, and very sad, really.
I have wanted to visit Cyprus since I was in college and read Bitter Lemons by Lawrence Durrell, right before the British left and handed it over to the never very placid Greek/Turk communities. It muddled along, until 1974 when Turkey invaded….but that’s another story, and one I will tell at the end of this week or beginning of next.
I view it as a three-layer cake: American expat from England visits formerly British Cyprus.
Anyway, the husband person got lots of lovely shots of truly Cypriot stuff, and I’ll be back with it all on May 7. Until then, before I throw this teensy keyboard off the balcony,
Yamas (which is Cypriot for Cheers!)

Tales of Three Martinis

Monday, April 26th, 2010

Do not, whatever you do, order a martini in southwest England. You may at first be confused when the server asks if you want it with lemonade. (I had this concoction once, which was a sweet white vermouth with a mixer that is more akin to Schweppes Bitter Lemon than anything an American would call lemonade.) To all such questions, just say no. But then explain that you are probably using an Americanism, and what you really want is some gin or vodka, shaken vigorously over ice after a dash of the driest possible Martini has been added. Ask for it to be served either over ice with a slice of lemon (or an olive), or in a cocktail glass.
Regarding the cocktail glass: DO NOT stand on ceremony. Accept a champagne flute, or a fishbowl if need be. Being willing to instruct and able to accommodate is about the only way you’ll ever get what Americans call a martini in southwest England…at least now that The Waterfront restaurant is gone.
In case you’re wondering, Martini is a brand of white vermouth, but usually it is a relatively sweet vermouth, as slung about in southwest England, although there is a dry form. It’s still not as dry as what Americans think of as dry vermouth, but it will do unless, like me, you’d just as soon have unadorned Bombay Sapphire or Hendricks (very hard to come by), shaken over ice until very cold and adorned with a bit of lemon.
***
Following are tales of three southwest England martinis:

The Barbican, a medieval section of Plymouth near the waterfront and the Hoe

The Waterfront
The day after we moved to Devon, we had to do two things: Buy a car and return the rental van to Enterprise in Plymouth. Not just in Plymouth, but in the Barbican, a maze of tiny medieval streets. For walking, it’s charming. For driving, not so much.
First, buying the car. My husband has an old friend who owns a big car repair shop. As it happens, one of his customers had just bought a brand new second car and wanted to sell her old Ford Escort. It met the specs. It was four on the floor, air-conditioned (one needs it approximately twice in an average summer), grey (so no fade), and in tip-top shape despite suffering advanced age. Plus it was cheap. In fact, we paid as much for the insurance as we did for the car. Best of all, we could just run downtown, buy the insurance, bring the papers and the money back to Paul, and drive off.
That’s what we did. Simon drove the rental van, as only his name was on the contract, and I followed in the new old car. There are good roads between our house and Plymouth, mainly. The drive of about 22 miles generally takes about 30 minutes. There are, of course, roundabouts or what Americans call traffic circles. Lots of them. Two layer. Some with traffic lights, some without. By the time we got underway on a really lovely Friday afternoon―sweater weather in the end of November―rush hour had begun. I followed Simon as best I could. I ground the gears a couple of times; I had junked my standard transmission junker a couple of years earlier, and had been driving a big automatic Land Rover in the States. On big roads. This was none of the above.
By the time we got to the Barbican, I was frazzled. And then there was the problem of finding a parking space. Finally, we did, and Simon honked and sped off, while I parked. Shortly, he returned. Not there, he told me, but around the corner. Oh. OK. I had to back up…a lot. But I got it round the corner, locked it and went to Enterprise, where I am now certain I set down and left forever the spiral notebook containing the entire packing list of our possessions still to be shipped from the states.
We were very hungry and decided to find a restaurant on the sea front for a late lunch. We found The Waterfront. It presented another parking problem, beginning with a steep turn from the main road around the Hoe (the place where Sir Francis Drake played bowls while waiting for the Spanish Armada to heave into view), and ending in a relatively nice private car park requiring documentation from the restaurant.
It quickly became clear we were a tad underdressed. It was an elegant restaurant. The owner didn’t hesitate to seat us, however, and he took our drinks order immediately. He came back to the table with a big, lovely, clear, frigid, lemon-zested very large martini in an oversized glass. He set it down before me and said, “You looked like you needed this. I’ll be right back with your husband’s G&T.” I LOVE England. So sensible. So kind. Unfortunately, the recession seems to have killed off The Waterfront. I am highly disappointed. In addition to the martini, I had luscious local mussels.
Sigh.

Widemouth Bay on a sunny, breezy April afternoon

The Bay View Inn, Widemouth Bay

First, it’s not wide mouth; it’s pronounced widmith. OK. Once you’ve got that, then you walk into the bar to order, and they bring your food to inside or, weather permitting, outside tables. We have lunch there quite often, but only a month or so ago did I notice a martini shaker and martini glasses. I asked the bartender if she could make a martini. She said she could if I would tell her how.

The masterful martini-slinging of The Waterfront is far from the norm in Devon and Cornwall. But being willing to have a go is quite common. So, we told her how to make a martini. The bartender was pleased with her new knowledge, but wondered how many people would come in and order one. I wonder, too. Drinking pints is much more common, or a glass of wine, or whiskey neat, or the ubiquitous British Gin and Tonic. Gin and Tonic was such a standard, frequent and common drink in my house before I became a martini aficionado that I simply called the thing Vitamin G. We still refer to the major ingredient as Vitamin G.
Bay View Inn
Marina Drive, Widemouth Bay
Bude EX23 0AW
01288 361 273

St. Eustachius Church tower, Tavistock, with Dartmoor in the background at dusk

Steps Restaurant, Tavistock
This restaurant is on the main street in Tavistock and is, as the name implies, up a flight of steps. Thirteen to be precise. At the top, Suzanne Oldfield awaits to serve you; in the kitchen, her husband, Adrian, awaits to cook good English food in the very best way. If I never had another potato, Adrian Oldfield’s sautéed potatoes would do very nicely, thank you. My recent dinner of poached salmon was sublime. The cottage pie is exquisite. For dessert, the crème brulee is wonderful. In fact, I’ve never had a bad meal there, nor has anyone who has visited us and been taken there; they always ask to go back.
The wine is good as well. Suzanne’s list is reasonably priced, but well-chosen and served at the proper temperature.
The cocktails are created by Suzanne herself. My husband’s G and T is easy. My martini is more demanding, as I think I’m her only customer who orders one. Nonetheless, she happily shakes the gin over ice, pours it into a champagne trumpet with a slice of lemon peel, and serves it up. Fine with me, especially as the crab-meat stuffed mushrooms arrive right behind it. One always knows, because one can hear Adrian furiously ringing the bell to carry through to the front dining room if need be, and Suzanne hurrying back to gather the plates.
Steps
75 West Street
Tavistock PL19 8AJ
Phone: 01822 614 280

How to Make a Dog Incredibly Happy

Friday, April 23rd, 2010

Take one rescued mutt from Baltimore. Love it. At great expense and a good deal of trouble, move that dog to Devon, England. Take it to run on Dartmoor.

Find the best places to park among those provided by a thoughtful government. Preferably find one with a stream, like this one.

Take the aforementioned dog to play in the stream, jumping across it or plunging into it, as the spirit moves her, as one climbs up the local tor, or mountain. (Really, they are big hills, but nonetheless, they are tors.)
Allow the dog to sniff in the reeds, roll on the short, sheep-cropped grass and bark at the bubbles made by two dozen little waterfalls.

Let dog get really, really wet, then dry it off and head home.
Dog sleeps the sleep of angels.
You? You are rewarded by knowing you have just made one small, cute creature as happy as it is possible for a living thing to be.

Ewe

Wednesday, April 21st, 2010

This is all about ewe, isn’t it?
Yes, it is. Springtime on Dartmoor is mainly about ewe. And lambs. at the moment, they’ll serve for a few very personal ponderings on the nature of Britishness.
While most people think being British is all about a stiff upper lip and all that, perhaps I had inklings that this was not so when I was about 14. That summer, my father decided one day to tell me the drawbacks of the nationalities I might encounter as I began dating. I don’t recall all of his biases, but I do recall one. “The English,” he said, “are sentimental. It will drive you nuts.”
Yes and no. They are sentimental, but it doesn’t drive me nuts. Indeed, just the opposite. A true story to illustrate:
We wanted to sell our house in Maryland and move to England. So we hired an agent who came, the next day, to take pictures. Two stuffed animals, a Grinch and his dog Max, sit on the back of our living room sofa all the time. They were put there five years ago, and my husband, who is British, couldn’t bear to put them away in a box, so there they stayed. We also had the two little “sleeping bears” on our bed. One was a gift to me several years ago when I was feeling ill, to comfort me. The other was a companion for that bear that my husband and I bought in England a few years ago. They always sleep with us, and they always travel with us. They are much better than sleeping pills.
Anyway…the US realtor said, “You’ll have to put away the stuffed animals for the photographs.” US buyers want to see a house as if no one had ever lived in it. (Why not just buy new?) Stuffed animals clearly reveal the sentimentality, in great particularity, of the sellers. Goodness, gracious…can’t have any of THAT, can we? The great American society of rugged individuals must be homogenized into oblivion to sell them a “used” house.
A month or two later, we flew to England to put our flat (apartment) on the market so we could buy a house when the house in the States sold, and maybe have it ready to move into when it all came together. We hired an agent and he came the next day to take pictures. Sure enough, the two little travelling sleeping bears were on our bed. “Should I put them in a drawer for now?” I asked.
“Oh, no,” he replied. “Leave them there. It gives the buyer a nice feeling that real people are enjoying living here.”
To me, our agent’s statement is the major difference between Brits and Yanks. The Brits are comfortable in their own skins, so comfortable that they are able to enjoy seeing what others enjoy. When buying a house, they’d much rather see evidence of someone else’s reality than be left to imagine whether a house has good or bad vibes. They don’t really care about the décor (which in the US must be all neutral and motel-like); they figure if they don’t like it, they’ll change it. Apparently, Americans have the imaginations of a tub of Crisco, in comparison.
In the end, we didn’t sell the flat. We got an exceptionally good offer in only about six weeks during the meltdown, when there was no movement whatsoever on our house within commuting distance to DC. We turned it down. We didn’t know how long it would take the US house to sell, and we didn’t want to be without a perch in England.
In the end, we moved to England before the US house sold because we could, since we already had a home. And we are planning on staying in it; the little sleeping bears are happy here, and so are the Grinch and Max, who are perched on the back of the sofa. Plus my raccoon (how many people have a stuffed toy raccoon?) likes it on my nightstand. And the real animals―the cat and dog―are quite happy with their living arrangements as well. Romeo (the cat, also known as Sir Compton Pauncefoot after one of our favorite towns on the way from home to Heathrow) has a picture window to sleep in when it’s sunny, and a fireplace to sleep near when it’s not. Brownie (the dog, also known as Lady Bronwen Marbella McGee, because she was a rescue and deserved a grand moniker) has walks on the moor, romps on the beach, swims in streams, and the sheer joy of hoping (fruitlessly, as she stays on the lead then) for a fowl lunch when we take her to the canal where children and old folks and everyone in between feed the ducks.
What’s this got to do with ewe? Perhaps the English like their stuffed animals, and other animal art forms, so much because there are so many animals about. For the past six weeks or more, the green fields have been dotted with large, dirty white lumps and small, bright and clean white lumps. Ewes and lambs abound. On Dartmoor, while some are kept behind fences, most are simply marked with the owner’s colour on the owner’s selected spot, and allowed to wander the moor at will. Often, they wander across the road, which is one reason for the frequent signs to “Take Moor Care” and “Keep dogs on leads; lambing.” There are others that say, “Kill your speed, not a pony.” Dartmoor ponies are just now foaling; we saw the first two with their Mums just Sunday.
In England, cars might have the back window strewn with stuffed lambs, and not just teenagers’ cars, either. Houses often have stuffed toys laying about, and almost certainly there will be small statuary of horses or dogs or birds or cats or camels or anything the person particularly likes. The little sheep sculptures pictured are in a gift shop in Widecome-In-the-Moor, a town tucked into Dartmoor, rather than on its edge. I thought about buying one, but our totems really are raccoons, bear and pelicans. (England has no raccoons, but I imagine badgers are close relatives and serve the same function; I always liked Badger when I was a child reading and rereading The Wind in the Willows. Click here to see a wonderful photo of an original Wind in the Willows illustration . Click here for a downloadable copy of the book.)
I’m sorry we decided not to sell the flat for only one reason; the agent worked hard and well for us, and didn’t earn a commission. But if we ever do decide we need a house, he’ll be the first to know, and then he can get two commissions, one on selling the flat to someone else, and one from finding us a proper house for two people, one dog, one cat and a still-growing family of very British stuffed animals and other animal images.

A wonderful springtime with strawberries and a really REALLY old pub, flowers and a great house

Aside from the fact that the high pressure weather system we’ve been enjoying in England Southwest for the past two weeks is holding the volcanic ash cloud in place…and potentially derailing our trip to Cyprus in less than ten days…this has got to be the absolute best of spring times in England.
To prove it, here are a few facts:
1) The strawberries I bought in the supermarket in plastic clam shells were grown in Kent in a hothouse and looked anaemic at the tops. They were delicious. Tender. Sweet. Flavourful. British growers just use a different variety than the ruby red, hard-as-rocks things I was used to in the States. Well, correction: That I got used to after the English-type strawberries disappeared sometime between my youth and middle age. I do, vaguely, recall tender berries, from which the stem end could be plucked away, leaving luscious, pinky-red edible fruit behind. The only way to get recent US store-bought strawberries to the edible stage was to cut out the hull, mash them a little, drown them in sugar, and hope for the best.
All winter, we have had strawberries from Spain. Even those, after their trip, were tastier and less wooden than their US counterparts. But there is nothing at all like an English strawberry, except another English strawberry. They only come in good, better and best. Acceptable is simply not acceptable.
So, come to England Southwest for the berries. The local Devon and Cornwall berries come in June and July and every roadside lay-by seems to offer a station-wagon full of them for sale. (The ones pictured were at a food fair in Tavistock in July, 2008.)
2) An 11^th century inn looks a lot like a 15^th century inn from the outside. Yesterday, we were rushing to Coleton Fishacre, the vacation home of the D’Oyly-Cartes (the family hat produced Gilbert & Sullivan), and noted a sign for an 11^th century inn. On the way back, we drove down the appointed road. Sure enough, in a place called Rattery ― no more than a crossroads, really ― there was the Church House Inn, with a “founded” sign reading 1028. 1028! To an American who loves history and grew up with so little, that was amazing. So what if it looked like all the 15^th and 16^th and 17^th century inns? (I’m getting so jaded.)
In fact, I looked up the inn’s home page today, and found that there was a building there in 1028, but the current building itself dates only (ONLY) from 16^th century. Humph! Catch me in a new building like that, will you?
Actually, yes, you will. But not yesterday. The climb up from the lower part of the Coleton Fishacre gardens had done me in, and I wanted only to get home and take a nap before dinner. Dinner would be enhanced by yet another National Trust CD, Sophisticated Lady, containing great songs of the swing era, including a rendition of Anything Goes by the composer himself, Noel Coward.
3) Coleton Fishacre is a wondrous house, despite it being an infant in terms of historic homes in the UK, built in the 1920s in the Arts & Crafts style. The grand piano in the salon is open to visitor musicians, amazingly enough, as they wander through and would like to canoodle for a while; yesterday, a man we met while resting on a park bench from the upward climb said the visitor who sat down during his wander through the house was playing Debussy.
(It should be noted, one is not escorted on most National Trust visits, as in US historic homes. One wanders at will to the open rooms, in each of which a volunteer docent stands. Some are informative, some are not so much. Some are chatty; some are all business. But, either way, one can avail one’s self of their knowledge, or not; it’s totally up to you. I usually just pick up the information card at the door and let myself experience the house as itself. Once, though, I was mad to see an original bargello tapestry-covered chair from the 16^th century at one home. They had it covered with a facsimile to protect it from light and dust. My disappointment registered with the docent and he lifted a little corner for me to feast my eyes on the genuine article, bless him.)
After our stroll, we went to the restaurant instead of the house and had ice cream cones outdoors in the truly hot sun. Simon had mint chip, one of his favourites, and I had vanilla honeycomb. Why is it not possible to find odd flavours in the States? A little local chain in Maryland used to make raspberry soft serve, but that’s as adventurous as I ever saw it get. Rocky Road. Ho hum. Coffee. Snore. Artificial strawberry flavour and the colour of a toy fire engine. Egad. Please see the section on actual strawberries, above. Although I do love Ben & Jerry’s interesting Cherries Garcia, and one can get it here, it still pales in comparison to local flavours that use local delicacies, and the honeycomb is one.
3) Coleton Fishacre gardens offer acres and acres of walks and plants, even in early spring, and a view to the English Channel.
I am convinced that actually, England is a jungle. There’s a profusion of plants, peeking through the minute there’s half a day of weak sun. Bees emerge at the first warm zephyr. Lambs begin to appear with their mothers on the moor, like little balls of fluff overnighted from sheep heaven. This year, that was in February, when we also began taking the dog to the beach to run and splash in tidal pools.
Still, we didn’t think the foliage would be so grand at Coleton Fishacre yet, and certainly not much in the way of flowers. But we were very wrong. Its location on a hillside running down to the Channel allows it lots of sun; the sheltering arms of two higher cliffs to either side of the site keeps a lot of the wind off. No wonder the D’Oyly-Cartes bought the place. It’s hard to imagine what it took to take it from nothing to the botanical treasure it is now, kept up by the National Trust, possibly my favourite non-profit in the world after dog/cat rescues.
The National Trust, which gets its share of criticism for a panoply of supposed ills depending on who’s speaking, nonetheless restores and protects an enormous amount of both the built and natural environments with mainly volunteer labour. The yearly memberships are not expensive, considering that one then has access to the house and grounds of the stately homes, the seaside walks and beaches, a number of oddities such as a Cornish tin mine…and more. I have considered making a visit to every single National Trust property a lifetime goal. I may yet decide on it, which will also mean I’ll get to know a lot more about Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland as well, not to mention Lundy, island of puffins.
Coleton Fishacre, below:

Wednesday, April 14th, 2010

Perhaps it comes just from being so close to it all the time, but I can’t imagine any public authority in the US being as cavalier about the possibility of plunging 100 feet to a rocky death on the way to a final splashdown as they are in England.
On the first day of our recent four-day escapade in the early springtime sun, we ended our tour at Carnewas, a cliff walk administered by the National Trust, and sporting the usual tea room, gift shop and toilets.
A word on the toilets (yes, I know, I seem obsessed with toilets, having written on examiner.com that they were a big part of the reason I moved here): The ones at Carnewas are prime toilets. For women, three little self-contained rooms with the expected facility, a small sink and a rapid air hand dryer. The end one had a window that opened. What more could one desire? All the comforts of home, and fresh sea air.
But, back to the cliff. At intervals along the edge were fairly small signs saying “Great Danger. Sheer Cliffs.” You can just see the edge of one in the photo.

Subtle. But apparently enough. So much enough that when someone found some sort of human-looking bones at Widemouth Bay last Saturday evening, it brought out the police helicopter, police launches, and a copper with a sniffer Alsatian walking the beaches there Sunday afternoon. As it turned out, the bones were not human at all, but seal. Still, it would be unusual for the police to get such a call, as very few people go over the cliffs in England. Except at Beachy Head in Sussex. In fact, at 530 feet the tallest cliff in England, Beachy Head is renowned for up to 20 suicides a year, being just behind the Golden Gate Bridge as a preferred venue. But a suicide is not an accident.
Beachy Head notwithstanding (it has patrols and signs directing jumper wannabes to a help line), why do the British think, in general, that some small signs a few feet back from the cliff edge of most cliffs will suffice when Americans would festoon the place with high fences topped with razor wire, at the very least?
For the same reason, I think, that British people do anything else: Because it’s sufficient, whatever it is.
My husband’s mother, on refusing offers of another helping of food, is reputed always to have said, “I’ve had sufficient, thank you.” I always thought that a bit cold. On the other hand, it is possibly emblematic of doing that which suffices, and not doing that which is, in modern terms, over the top. An America would be much more effusive in his or her refusal.
Common sense might explain a lot. If you take one quick look at the cliffs to either side of you, anywhere on the south coast of England, you will have very little inclination to run up to the edge or let your children run up to the edge, or your dogs…and dogs are basically welcome everywhere, although there will often be a sign saying, “Well-behaved dogs welcome.”
That’s sufficient. It also implies that well-behaved children, and for that matter adults, will also be welcomed at the establishment.
And it implies that it is one’s personal responsibility to present well-behaved dogs and children, and to ensure that they don’t run amok, or off a cliff.
One might say that the signs, whether about the danger of cliffs or behaviour of dogs, are sufficient. Once you’ve been told what your own senses should have long-since revealed, it’s your responsibility. Period.
Sensible. Sufficient. Workable.
Come visit, and see all this from as many feet back as you like.

A sufficiency of (more) fun in the Cornwall sun…
Tags: cliffs
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Monday, April 12th, 2010

It’s very difficult to find time to write about Southwestern England when one is actually in it; there’s way too much to do, especially when the weather is as fine as it has been now for five solid days―between 60 and 65 degrees, no wind, sunny.
Still, the sun has to set sometime, and then, I can write and my husband can process photos, like the ones from last Thursday posted here.
In our odd division of labour, Simon found out something about a beach we had been to several times before to let Brownie swim in tidal pools at low tide. We never really ventured off the beach, except to buy coffee at the beachside lunch restaurant to have with our sandwiches. (Funny thing: There are lots of little restaurants and pubs all over south-western England, but we have found a great deal of pleasure in packing a lunch and, even on cold, windy days when only the dog is really totally gleeful outdoors, finding a spot overlooking the sea and eating there, even in the car. Brownie has discovered a passion for yoghurt cereal bars that are only sold at one supermarket in town, and not my usual one either. I buy nine at a time and hope to have four on hand for dog degustation, as Simon has also discovered them and since he has hands and can open the pantry….)
But, back to the beach. Dogs are not allowed on the beach at Trevone between Easter Sunday and October 1. But they are allowed in the car park, and from there, one can reach the coast path, a footpath that literally rings southwest England and skirts not only the ocean on top of sheer cliffs, but farms and pastures and hamlets and towns. We didn’t mean to walk far, just up and over the first cliff and past the Round Hole.
Each time we came to the beach during the winter and early spring, we had noticed a sort of big ditch―maybe something agricultural?―in the grass stretching from the car park to the sky. Thursday, we walked toward what Simon said was The Round Hole. I had no idea.

I still have no idea. There was absolutely, positively no way I was getting any closer than ten feet from the thing. As we approached, I heard waves crashing…as if they were crashing inside the Round Hole. They were. There was sea water pouring in as the waves sought shore for the approaching high tide. They splashed up, but not so high as the rim. I thought about lying down on my stomach and inching forward to peer into the hole. No. Couldn’t. No way. I prevailed upon Simon to stay well back, also, although it didn’t seem to take much persuasion. It’s one heck of a hole. Sheer dirt and rock walls all the way down to where the waves crash in from the sea 80 feet below. Indeed, the hole is actually a collapsed sea cave. Sea caves dot the Devon and Cornwall coasts, a great boon to the smugglers who once preferred the area to all others. The rocky coast made for extra loot from wrecked ships, but also offered hundreds of coves in which, especially those with caves, any sort of contraband could be stashed.
We didn’t really intend to go much beyond the Round Hole, but we did. We didn’t go to the really scary stile at the edge of a cliff between two great slopes overlooking a serious indentation in the coastline. If it sounds as if clambering over it scares me, you’re right. Especially with our bouncy little terrier, also known as a terrier-ist, along. Too dangerous by half. But if we keep doing bits of the coast path all year, maybe sometime without the strain of holding onto the bouncing doggie, I’ll do some of the more challenging things.
But we did sit down on the grass on the second slope past the Round Hole to just look at the sea and the gulls nesting on the cliff face to our left. There was a fishing boat down below, checking lines. There was a sailboat cruising past one of the rock outcrops that is charming in fine weather, but chilling in a gale. The gulls whirled overhead, and sometimes disappeared out of sight below the edge of the green field, that edge marking the difference between land and sea a deadly drop below. A few early bees buzzed, the odd serious hiker came by, pants legs rolled up, making time around the south coast to get to…perhaps Padstow for lunch at celebrity chef Rich Stein’s restaurant.
Or one of his four. We have had lunch at Rick Stein’s Café, a tiny charmingly European almost-waterfront restaurant in Padstow. I’m a pushover for mussels, and the River Fal mussels with tomato, chilli and parsley was wonderful. I liked the duck noodle soup…but after world-class mussels, for a mussel lover, nothing can measure up completely. I had no room for dessert, but next time, I will leave room for Colston Bassett Stilton served with nuts and honey…and fool myself into thinking it is not at all fattening, being mostly protein and a natural sweetener.
Hunger did, finally, cause us to arise and head for the car and the day’s sandwiches (shredded cheddar and onions in mayonnaise and spread like tuna salad on a medium-dark bread) and coffee in the new thermos. Brownie had her yoghurt cereal bar and water. And a few barks at doggies passing our parked car on the road.
Simon convinced me to walk back down not between the Round Hole and a farmer’s field, as we had gone up, but between the Round Hole and the cliff edge. I’m certain other people see quite a bit from that vantage point.
I more or less saw only my own shoes.

The Round Hole at Trevone Beach…fear and beauty on a sunny afternoon
Tags: Beaches, cliffs, Devon, Round Hole, Trevone
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Friday, March 12th, 2010

Entrance to Pannier Market

There is one wonderful reason to move to England, and specifically, southwest England: Toilets.
I’ll grant you that some of them are mighty cold. For example, the first Little Chef restaurant on the A303 from Heathrow southward to Devon has a ladies loo that will ensure your enjoyment of your hot coffee and full English breakfast. Cold, but clean, clean, clean. Best, of course, the cleanliness doesn’t depend only on attendants’ efforts; English women seem actually to know how to plunk that magic twanger (I can’t answer for their skills with any other magic twangers.)
I simply love the loos. I love the cleanliness of them, but I also love the ubiquitousness of them. Every town has at least one Ladies and Gents, centrally located and free to the public. Did I mention clean? Most have plenty of paper products in the stalls, but many, these days, have combination soap/water/hot air dispensers that work amazingly well. Even in such few as had a bum part (in Crackington Haven, last week, the soap part wasn’t working), the rest is magnificent. Imagine, for instance, that you didn’t have to stand in front of the hand dryer long enough to get a manicure, as is the case in most US ladies’ facilities. Generally speaking, the dryers in England are so powerful, the skin on your hands ruffles back like the flews on a dog’s mouth when he’s airing himself out a car window.
I don’t usually spend time thinking about loos. Wait. Yes I do. I thought about them again when, while shopping, I needed relief badly. In New York―or DC, or Maryland, or Georgia or Florida or anywhere in the US―I’d be wracking my brain to figure out what coffee shop I could sneak into, past the staff, and “spend a penny.” Or I’d just buy coffee and not drink it (especially considering the reason for being there to begin with, which often has to do with coffee).
But in England, there’s no need. Simply head for the nearest free, public toilets and be assured you won’t be asked to buy anything; unlike in Paris (many of them at least), you won’t even be asked to put a coin in a slot. Plus, the public toilets are safe. In my town, they are located right next to the police station, and it doesn’t get much safer than that.
But alas! When all this crossed my mind as I crossed my legs a couple of days back, I had actually forgotten about the toilets by the police station. But I remembered the lovely ones at the back of the Pannier Market, so the day was saved. Plus I got to look at all the things on offer in the stalls selling everything from antique spoons to dog beds to locksmith service to cakes….and no one pressured me to buy anything.
I went home with clean hands and a purse not lightened at all by my need to do what comes naturally to us all.
Long live the English loo!

Heaven is clean, convenient toilets
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Dear Friends in Devon: Thank Goodness, It's Barack Obama. Huzzah!*

2008-11-16T16:51:00.017Z

Throughout the recent long presidential campaign, this blogger was banjaxed, as they would say in England. Totally destroyed by the mere thought that John McCain might win the presidency, with the horrifying spectre of Sarah Palin waiting in the wings. I shared my intense desire for Mr. Obama to win with friends in Tavistock, and they applauded my choice, as I knew they would. I had been embarrassed to admit being an American on my many visits the past few years; at last, I was beginning to see a way clear to join them not as an abashed outsider, but as a member of an upstanding community, that community that wanted change—Mr. Obama’s concept of change—more than anything except life itself.
As a journalist, I have spent more than three decades refusing to mention my political preferences to anyone except very close friends and family, and certainly, I never made monetary contributions.
But as my friends and family heard me say many times, desperate times call for desperate measures.
This year, I broadcast my preference far and wide, I gave money and time, and pasted Obama/Biden stickers all over both family cars. I wrote letters to the editor; I posted commentary on the most popular political blogs that accepted outside commentary. In short, I did every possible thing I could to ensure the election of Barack Obama.
This nation needs hope; it needs to rejoin the community of nations as a benevolent leader (if, indeed, that presumed leadership has not been squandered). It needs its friends. Particularly, it needs its friends in the U.K., the EU and, well, everywhere.
The United States needs, finally, to acquire some of the texture of British and European society, for a start. Here, we have had a Johnny One-Note banging the war drums for almost a decade. A Martian visiting might think this nation was all about war, and nothing but war, exported as far and as fast as we can.
We have literal Bully Pulpits singing one other note, anti-choice, and making a political issue out of something that is a spiritual and personal issue and no more need be on a national agenda than the size of my panties. It is personal; taking it into a public context makes it a cheap symbol of dissolution of something very personal in the most degrading possible way. I'm sorry to say, my own stepdaughter has been infected with this singular devotion to proselytizing for a spiritual/personal issue and would have voted based on that, had she voted. (I often wonder, knowing how otherwise sensitive and sensible the young woman is, if she didn't fail to vote simply because her conscience and belief systems were torn about it.)
We have secessionists, and not only in Alaska, who would make this nation into two or more simply so they can continue to befoul the environment, shoot things that don't need shooting, and live in squalor. They can live in all the squalor they can create, I should think, if they will put their actions where their posing is and trek off with a Bowie knife and a can of beans for the farthest wilderness they can find.
We have nascent assassins on college campuses, if one wants to define "universities" founded by fundamentalist religious zealots to be such. One, at Liberty University (can you say oxymoron?) said, in the Washington Post, that if Mr. Obama won, she hoped someone would "reverse" it "asap."
It chilled my soul.
But it brought me directly to the following conclusion:
The single thing this nation needs more than any other is education. Not, you understand, that intellectually impoverished and completely despicable so-called educational program in modern times, No Child Left Behind. No, this nation needs real, honest, bona fide education in the classical--or perhaps even British--mode. Education in which children are taught not only to read, but to think, to examine, to compare, to draw conclusions and, perhaps most of all, to support those conclusions through logical discourse either internal or external.
And we need vocabulary drills, if only so that the populace can use language to see through the smoke and mirrors tossed up by those bent on perverting the language for their own, usually nefarious, uses. A writer named Barry Beck explains why as well as anyone could, using George Orwell’s novel, 1984, to explicate the ways the Bush administration has hoodwinked an ill-educated population through use of language. In the novel, Beck points out, major government agencies are “the Ministry of Peace (which conducts war), the Ministry of Love (which tortures people), the Ministry of Plenty (which keeps people in bare subsistence), and the Ministry of Truth (which alters the description of events until they are outright lies.)
Just so, Bush’s administration enacted the Clear Skies Initiative (in which polluters of many sorts were given carte blanche to dump garbage aloft), Tax Relief (only for a miniscule portion of the population) and No Child Left Behind (a failure of gargantuan proportions, but which, at least, allowed comedians to properly rename the Tax Relief program as No Millionaire Left Behind.)
While this is not a subtle tactic, it is tricky. I think Americans’ first response is, generally, to accept things on face value and to attribute benign motives to any action unless convinced otherwise. This is unfortunate, because, lacking a true university education or a British-style education in grade schools, we are unable to assess the true intent and meaning of words, even a word such as university, a definition that needs to be known to properly assess the function of such institutions as Liberty University.
How many Americans know, for example, that university is meant to be a place in which the totality of knowledge is studied? That the word itself is based on universe, defined as "the totality of all the things that exist; creation; the cosmos" by Webster's New World Dictionary. These days, looking the word up on the web will bring about such answers as "An institution for higher learning with teaching and research facilities constituting a graduate school and professional schools that award master's degrees and doctorates and an undergraduate division that awards bachelor's degrees."
This says nothing about the quality of those degrees. What could the quality of a degree possibly be if it were granted on the basis of studying one particular and narrowly defined version of the cosmos? And yet, Liberty University fills the bill in common American thought these days. Emphasis on common, emphasis on American.
We must learn words in order to learn critical thinking. We must learn critical thinking so that otherwise intelligent people are not so easily led down the garden path as they were by the powers of the evil cadre, God willing now in its last days, in Washington, D.C.
It would be easy to say that we also need to learn again how to be generous and inclusive, as we were when, however reluctantly, we abolished slavery and later, finally, made sure the equality was total, by fiat if not at first in practice.
It would be easy to say that we need to reclaim our Constitution, and we do. But we must first be sure the entire nation is capable of understanding the consequences of its loss. And for that, we must properly, classically, educate the population. Everything hangs upon this. Everything. There is no United States with out its Constitution; there is no Constitution as long as good people are ignorant of its methodical destruction by power-mad zealots whose unfortunately good powers of discernment are bent to the effort of hoodwinking those of us who lack those powers...because we lack education.
I am lobbying, then, for the export of classic British education, the education in which, come hell, high water, or Conservatives in Parliament, every British schoolboy and schoolgirl leaves school knowing how to read and how to think. British schoolchildren are exposed to uncomfortable thoughts and uncomfortable subjects (with much less emphasis on political correctness, as far as I can tell), if for no other reason than to have something sensible to say in the stop at the pub on the way home after a trying day. I might be deluded into thinking that British education is far superior to the drivel that masquerades under that name in the United States, but I don't think so. No Child Left Behind has been widely reviled by educators of all stripes in the United States, as well it should be. “Teaching to test” reached its pinnacle in No Child Left Behind, with nothing at all to show for it except good teachers leaving the profession in droves, and bad ones stumbling along as best they could with no funding to achieve the demands of the program, a fact also well documented.
University teachers in the United States have been censured and fired for expressing non-politically correct thoughts. All thoughts, popular or unpopular, considered or knee-jerk, deserve airing. The essential response of an intelligent society is to allow the thoughts to emerge, and then allow the debate to ensue. If the university fires the professors who express honest thoughts of any variety, debate is stillborn. Without the quickening of ideas clashing with other ideas, being debated and being refined through that debate, we are destined to live forever as it is at this moment, or until someone with a larger gun decides to define things for us as they would have things be, without the intrusion of considered thought.
Mr. Obama is a thoughtful man, and more than once, I heard otherwise intelligent Americans say they were afraid of him because the "didn't know him." Meaning what? They don't know him because he uses thoughts, and he expresses those thoughts in words. Well-chosen words. Not garbled words. Words with meaning, unlike those used by the “misunderestimated” Mr. Bush. (A complete oxymoron; think about it. Not to mention, the outer is a reflection of the inner.)
Words, after decades of the dumbing down of U.S. education culminating in No Child Left Behind, have left the nation behind, incapable of logically separating the sheep from the goats because we cannot define either one, and thus cannot logically defend our position, nor defend our nation from attack from within.

* The term Huzzah is thought to come from the Hebrew, Hosanna, meaning "Save now!"

Like the Mythical "Nessie," JK Rowling Lives in Scotland: Hurrah!

2008-09-09T16:13:00.005+01:00

J.K. Rowling lives in Scotland. She was born near Bristol, England, however. One can only be thankful that she moved to, as one of her bios on the Internet says, "another country." This proves two things: Firstly, Scotland is not England, and is, furthermore, prepared to accept England's damaged goods. And, secondly, it might be wise for England to just let Scotland go.

It is true that Cornwall would like to become a duchy, and that is as likely to actually happen as Scotland becoming independent. In the case of Scotland, however, perhaps England ought to give it some serious consideration. I predicate this suggestion on Rowling's recent lawsuits. In one, the world's first publishing billionaire decided it would irreparably harm her reputation and ability to make further income from her Harry Potter books if a fansite operator were allowed to publish his own concordance to her books. A judge in New York agreed with her, leaving the door open, however, because he had made himself the arbiter of how much is too much quotation. It is almost certain additional suits will be needed to develop case law to ultimately decide this issue.

Second, a judge in Scotland decided that for paparazzi to take photographs of Rowling's children was a violation of the children's right to privacy. An English judge had thrown the same case out. The English judge was right; when one has purposely sought fame and fortune to the extent Ms. Rowling has, there can be no expectation of privacy for one's self, and frankly, one's heirs and assigns had better be apprised of this, too. Certainly, one cannot tell this to a toddler and expect him to shove off to Buffalo to live incognito. But one can expect the parent to either protect him as best he or she can, or live with it, and teach the kids how to live with it. Hollywood brats do. The Royals do. I guess, then, that Ms. Rowling's spawn is better than that.

This woman needs to fade into oblivion, fast. She is singlehandedly undermining society, British and otherwise. Her work is derivative at best, plagiarism in its own right at worst. (Please see http://www.linearpublishing.com/rhinostory.html) Her public actions are despicable, her posturing reprehensible. American college students, according to a recent headline, think she's a "flash in the pan."

I hope they are right. This may be the beginning of a sea change for me: I am not known for my acceptance of the opinions of today's Generation Z college students. But I can learn. I hope the rest of the world can. I hope it can develop a good doody detection system, and begin to know when something really stinks.

Meanwhile, Rowling may think she smells like a rose (and you can use your own platitude here, about what stinks and what doesn't, if you like), but, in fact, the scent has rather eroded and might better be characterized these days as a nose-wrinkling, gorge-raising "Eeeew."

Knowing Where You Live

2008-09-03T23:04:00.008+01:00

I got an email this morning from Len, a lovely gentleman who writes a column for my website, www.Englandsouthwest.com. In it, he included a photo of the block of flats where he lives, and where I, also, have a holiday residence. It's really a very uninspired looking block (see photo, by Len Chester, left), despite Len having gotten a very good angle on it and a good photo, to boot.
But the truth, of course, is often hidden in a plain wrapper. The Methodist Chapel had once stood on the site, and the great preacher John Wesley had visited it at least five times, the last in 1789. At the time, of course, the United States had just recently become a nation in its own right, something portions of England's West Country, in which the block of flats stands, have done from time to time.
Indeed, Cornwall has not yet given up the fight. On a recent visit to Polperro, I noted a commercial van bearing the company name and the location: "Cornwall, near England."
Those who would have Cornwall be granted greater autonomy note that the county has never been formally annexed to England via an Act of Union. They claim it is a duchy, a distinctive nation. To that end, the Cornish nationalists want the Crown to recognize Cornwall as one of the constituent nations of the UK, not unlike Northern Ireland.
One advantage of gaining that independence might be a certain distancing from the current Duchess of Cornwall, whom many non-Cornish see as a usurper of various sorts. The former Camilla Parker-Bowles is almost certainly more popular in England than in the U.S., of course. Yanks cannot seem to forget the beautiful young princess, Diana, whose trials and tribulations are at least partly due to Camilla's influence over Prince Charles. Perhaps Camilla herself will want to dump Cornwall when Prince Charles becomes King Charles and she, as is planned, becomes HRH The Queen Consort. Queen trumps duchess any day, I should think.
Still, regardless of the high doings of the royals, many Cornish want autonomy. Cornwall is, like Sicily, at the far southern corner of its parent nation. Like Sicily, it has a cultural life somewhat different from that of the mother country, although, unlike Sicily, as far as I know, it has not contributed crime families along with Cornish pasties, as Sicily has contributed Mafia lineages along with veal marsala.
Some locals, even those from Devon (where the apartment block is), think official England is trying to turn the southwest into a sort of chilly Disneyland. If this is so, it is because of the relative lack of industry in the region now that the tin mines are played out. The beaches, though, are magnificent. And, despite the pallor caused by rising damp most of the year, the British do love their seaside sojourns.
As an outsider hoping to become an insider, it is only talking through my hat I am, to put things into a sort of Celtic cadence, Cornish being a Celtic tongue close to Irish and Welsh. Still, knowing a few things about one's home, or even one's habitual vacation spot, seems the least one can do not to become just another tourist, but rather a resident, if only an intermittent one, of the area.

What’s so bad about Frankenfood? Can you say Son of Mad Cow?

2008-08-31T19:54:00.002+01:00

Can the nation that gave the rest of us fear of Mad Cow Disease be on the cutting edge of saving us from genetically modified (GM) crops? Is there any such thing as Crazy Corn Disease? Not that humans know of. But for certain, according to a recent British study, GM crops kill off (or at least scare off) bees. After half of 65 fields were planted with a GM crop and the other with its conventional counterpart, only half as many bees were found in the GM field, and butterflies had fallen by a third. Nor were the GM fields kind to birds; those sections contained only one-third the skylark- and sparrow-friendly seeds the birds rely upon for food. Another study, this time of spring-sown oilseed rape, demonstrated that the GM plants suffered an astonishing 80 percent reduction in seeds. After this 2003 study, scientists concluded that planting this seed could cause the skylark to become extinct in two decades.

Before you dismiss this birds and bees stuff as meaningless, think about this; bees pollinate flowers and grains and also provide a natural sweetener. In the United States, there has been a lot of press about the diminishing population of honeybees…and yet, as far as I know, no one has connected it to the enormous numbers of GM crops planted in the U.S.

Think about this, as well; birds feed on annoying insects, like mosquitoes. Mosquitoes are more bothersome than dangerous to man in most developed nations. But that need not always be the case, and, in fact, mosquitoes are a vector for serious diseases in horses.

Tempted by saying “so what” again? Aside from their obvious use for human enjoyment as pleasure mounts, horses also make up a large part of the economy of many places, both as “recreational vehicles” that further support farmers growing grains and hay, and as part of the multi-billion dollar racing and gaming industry.

Which brings us to the GM maize experiment, maize being the British term for corn. (Birds eat corn, and, in Britain more than in the U.S., horses eat corn.) GM maize did not get a bad rap from the experiments—but only because an incredibly harmful pesticide was used on the conventional fields, invalidating results. That pesticide has since been banned in Britain.

The GM section also contained a third as many broadleaved weeds, such as chickweed, on which birds such as skylarks and tree sparrows rely for food. Studies also showed that the frankengenes from the GM crops were spreading and contaminating nearby conventional and organic produce, as well as creating MegaWeeds.

Monsanto and, arguably, the U.S. government and its shill, Tony Blair, were behind this avowed attempt by Blair to make Britain an EU “technology hub.”

Sounds good. Maybe their technology can come up with a cure for Mad Cow disease, and any deadly anomalies in humans the Killer Tomatoes might bestow.

To be fair – and to point out again why England is better than the U.S. – Conservatives in government banned use of GM crops until their safety had been proven (as opposed to, after the fact, ginning out studies saying the garbage is safe), and the Daily Mail has stayed firmly on the case of big Parma agriculture. But credit goes to the British people as well; only 8 percent of them, in supermarket surveys, said they would buy foods they knew were GM. The supermarkets took such few GM foods as they stocked off the shelves.

British Life: A Livable Society, Thank Goodness

2008-08-28T16:10:00.000+01:00

For several years, ever since I married him, I've been trying to explain to my resident Brit , a/k/a my husband, why I believe British society is more livable than American society. Most Americans have grown up brainwashed to think that 'equality' and a 'classless society' are better than societies with strata (that is to say, those with well-defined populations of people of noble birth, ordinary people, and the untouchables).

Perhaps you haven't noticed; American society is classless, but in a whole different sense. Its underclass (yes, we have one) has been elevated to become heroes. We glorify trashy young women like Britney Spears. We spend endless years debating whether O.J. Simpson offed his wife and her friend. We seem to have invented the rent-a-cop, now showing (double feature!) at an airport near you. Try as they might, in my recent travels in Britain, I did not find a single one so obnoxious as the most professional among the so-called security personnel at U.S. airports.

It is in the dealings between groups of people that the superiority of British manners and ways of life to U.S. manners and ways of life is most pronounced.

Take George W. Bush, for example. This is not going to be Bush-bashing in the usual sense. It is, however, going to bash the idea that someone who portrays himself as the common man (the moronic laugh, the giggly shoulders) is good for the country, or any country. Why would any intelligent person want someone so laughably ordinary to lead the once-most-powerful nation on earth? Wouldn't one want a person with a little more education than the norm? Wouldn't one want this when the lowest common denominator of human conduct is extolled in any number of implausible survival and reality shows?

The American public has become so dumbed down that it doesn't understand that if one is led by idiots, then one is an even bigger idiot.

Of course, one will hear in England that Gordon Brown (the Prime Minister, roughly equivalent to our president, for those who would fail Jay Walking) is a dolt, a puppet of America's puppet regime, and so on. In fact, he is not of noble birth. Prime Ministers generally are not. But England has its royalty to protect it from the excesses of the untutored, even when they manage to ride a monkey's coattails into office. (I didn't refer to any particular monkey, and, indeed, Brown's predecessor was more like a lynx, if one is shopping for comparisons.)

The royals have a duty to become educated concerning all the issues concerning their subjects. Fortunately, because they don't have to spend time getting elected or accept bad-faith monetary support as elected officials do, they are free to actually seek to understand what's needed by the population, rather than what they need to line their own pockets or get elected again.

Granted, the royals do get richer, via the lands they own and investments made, not to mention taxes. So one must look to another aspect of human life to explain why it is that a stratified society (royals, nobles, squires, and so on) is preferable. That aspect is noblesse oblige. While it is certainly true that there are ignoble nobles who care not a fig for anyone but themselves, by and large, they are aware of a duty to comport themselves in at least acceptable, if not admirable, ways. They know the eyes of those less blessed is upon them. As a result, it seems to me, even the lowliest Brit is prone to accept responsibility for his own actions, something that can certainly not be said of the lowliest in the United States. You can debate that; or you can pick up a newspaper and read the blacksploitation articles and so on.

By now, perhaps, you are--if you are a standard-issue, PC-conscious American--steaming. Well, steam on. Because the truth is, one needs a top level of society, engaged in studying the great works and with money enough to actually live a balanced, thoughtful and ethical life based on them, to show the rest of us how it is done.

One day years ago, I realized a main difference between Americans who get ahead (usually those who began ahead) and those struggling was this: the upper classes in the United States (read preppies) do not berate each other for kicks, as do the working and lower middle classes. In preppy households, the 'rank out' is unknown. Nor have I ever seen it done in England, not once. Not in uppercrust households, not in the middle or working class households I've known. This has proven to me that, at least in terms of human conduct, the trickle-down theory works quite well.

We all enjoy the Horatio Alger sorts of stories about those of modest beginnings who become wealthy. It seems to me those sorts of stories must have been all the rage in Britain in about 1066, or even earlier. It takes a few generations to sort out the aggressive, self-aggrandizing, inhumane behavior that is often the source of the amassing of great wealth by those who started penniless.

In the United States, we also have the problem of media that paints so-called heroes as much better than they are. Tiger Woods, who is so squeaky clean in the U.S. press, is somewhat blemished abroad. Nasty disposition, I've read over there. Is this befitting someone who has so much talent and earned so much money and influences so many others? We don't need to delve further into O.J. Simpson. Nor need we dissect the short, unhappy life of Anna Nicole Smith.

Sir Paul McCartney, on the other hand, has been through the wringer of late and steadfastly refused to stoop to his ex-wife's level. He seems a thoroughly nice man. He was, yes, born a commoner. But he was elevated, via his talent and personal integrity, to knighthood. Her Majesty doesn't knight the benighted. So, one might say, Sir Paul has become, from small beginnings, an essential factor in England's stratified society, and one who, moreover, carries on the tradition of noblesse oblige. He had to learn it someplace: I submit it was by watching the uppercrust, and emulating them until he became one of them.

And therein lies the value in a stratified society. One needs a certain number of those who accept that they are responsible to live a decent life in return for their fortunes; in short, they attend to the niceties of human intercourse. (And yes, I did throw that in so that the unschooled would titter.)

It is not impossible for up-and-comers from the American hodgepodge to achieve this, to develop a sense of noblesse oblige that might help ease the conduct of a frazzled society, but such folks are truly difficult to find in America. The Kennedy family? Well, to a point. Possibly to the point that, despite his own personal shortcomings, Ted Kennedy has been a steadfast voice for humane causes in Congress. But the Kennedy family is tragic, and has always been. Maybe it is not far enough away, yet, from the rum-running days of its modern founder to have transmuted the aggression completely; that family traces its modern history only to old Joe's exploits during Prohibition (itself a prime example of how raw American society can be; anyone for a repeat? Thank MADD...a group of people who certainly could benefit from some noblesse oblige.)

Who are the American peers? What families or groups might make a counterpart to the nobles and knights of Britain? The corporate captains? Enron's Kenneth Lay, for instance? Hardly. We have no Sir Richard Bransons, making a safe, affordable airline, Virgin Atlantic, for everyone. I hasten to add that his "First Class" cabin is called, shamelessly, thank goodness, Upper Class. It seems to me that the occupants of those bigger, softer seats, provided with champagne and filet mignon before they doze in comfort across the Atlantic, are less resented by the hoi polloi in economy (Virgin Atlantic's counterpart to coach) than similar passengers are on U.S. carriers. Or maybe it's my imagination.

But I don't think so...and I've studied both sides at close quarters.

Real Strawberries: Reason Enough to Love England

2008-08-28T16:06:00.000+01:00

(First published in early August, 2008)

It has now been one almost ten days since I last ate a locally grown English strawberries. I have eaten some U.S.-grown strawberries, shipped to Maryland from California, and didn't enjoy them at all. They were suffering--as does most of our fruit--from genetic engineering.

I'm not saying that the almost-edible heart-shaped red things from California are actually genetically engineered, in the scientific sense. Maybe they are, maybe they aren't (I'm not investigating them at the moment, simply writing a nice little story about the wondrous British strawberry.) But assuredly, the ultra-firm flesh and too-firmly-attached stems on U.S. supermarket strawberries signify that something has rendered a tender fruit tough.

That something would be, perhaps, our demand to have strawberries year-round, making it imperative to make them shipping-proof. It is, actually, strawberry season at the moment in the East, where I live. But to obtain local strawberries, probably of the same case-hardened variety as the California ones and therefore unsatisfactory, I'd have to scour at least a 100-square-mile area with no reasonable hope of success. So, I will just continue to long for the next English strawberries I encounter. In England.

So now, I have decided, to avoid disappointment, that my strawberry consumption must be limited to England, requiring trips in spring and summer.

I had already determined that Christmas must be in England. The stores are closed. The restaurants are, by and large, closed, except those in hotels so that the guests may dine. Boxing Day, the day after Christmas, most things are closed. This is as refreshing to a person living in a genetically modified society such as the U.S. as are the English strawberries.

Best of all, one CANNOT get strawberries in England at Christmas. Sure, because of the EU, some sort of imported strawberries can be had. And, frankly, because they come from Spain, they actually travel a much shorter distance than the ones from California or even Argentina that we get in Maryland. I don't buy them, though. Why? Because at Christmas, there are actual seasonally appropriate goodies to feast upon, creating unique taste memories. In short, there are gastronomic treats that add texture to life that is not possible in the texturally impoverished United States.

There is, for example, Christmas pudding. Americans, by and large, won't eat prunes and some won't even eat raisins. And certainly, they'll eat no other forms of dried fruit. Most Americans loathe fruitcake, making rude jokes about it; it does leave one to wonder who, then, buys the abundance of them on offer during the artificially long Christmas season. But that, too, is a tale for another day.

A proper English Christmas pudding (like the ones from Creber's, a world-class gourmet shop in Tavistock, Devon) is mainly dried fruit and some booze and--oh, yes--suet. Americans can't bring themselves to eat suet. Of course, it isn't really eating suet; like any fat, it melts into the confection and serves the same function as peanut oil. Artery clogging? Perhaps. But one doesn't eat Christmas pudding every day. Only at Christmas.

Or, one can always drink what my friend Steve Waller, wine-merchant with Charles Steevenson Wines, Ltd, in Tavistock, Devon, calls "Christmas pudding in a glass." It is, quite simply, a heady, romantic, luscious muscat wine. Americans, by and large, don't do dessert wines, either. As a people, we are libatorily boring.

Well, there it is. First I was longing for a good strawberry. A tender, sweet, ripe, and relatively small strawberry; U.S. versions are the Arnold Schwartzenegger of strawberries. Now I long for a nice Christmas pudding, or a wee tot of that muscat. Steve? Can you ship?

Probably not; U.S. blue laws prohibit the individual import of global delicacies. So I'd better wrap it up; I need to book the Christmas trip before jet fuel prices go up any further.

Banking Blues: But I STILL Love England Best

2008-08-28T15:56:00.000+01:00

The British are very polite; everyone knows that. And they are. Except, perhaps, for a few bank tellers. The fact that it had taken me a year to get my name on my husband’s pre-existing account notwithstanding, when the moment came for it to be all ‘sorted’ as the British say--once and for all--I threw a spanner into the process. I didn’t mean to; it resulted just from a misunderstanding. And, indeed, the glitch really made no difference to my finally being able to access our funds. No, rather it was a painful reminder that while the British have a sense of humor, it doesn’t extend to unintended slights. And I felt as if the entire incident marked me as a hopelessly crass, abundantly ignorant Yank.

For Americans reading this, you should know that a spanner, in Brit-speak, is a monkey wrench; sorted means straightened out. If I go back and forth between U.S. and U.K. idioms and spellings, please forgive me. I’m in process of sorting a bi-continental life and, like someone undergoing a sex-change process, am adopting my new country’s ways little by little.

When I first went to southwest England, it was only because I had married an expat Brit who had been living in the U.S. for 25 years. As a bona fide granddaughter of an Irish woman, I was seeking dual citizenship in the Republic of Ireland. Nothing in my past would have suggested a desire to become British or to live in that nation, so at odds for so long with my own ancestral home. However, once you meet the people of southwest England en masse, you can instantly begin to love them almost as much as I loved the single specimen who had become my husband.

Financial feet first

After a while, it seemed we were shuttling back and forth so frequently that I had to put more than a toe in the British waters, and a logical first step was adding myself to my husband’s existing bank account, maintained over the years as a convenience for his trips home. It was not sufficient to show my passport, as I had done decades earlier in opening an account in the Republic of Ireland for much the same reason. I had to have a piece of mail addressed to me in England, or a utility bill. I had neither. However, it was fairly simple to get the electric on our pied a terre put into my name. The thing is, of course, the posted notice showing the change didn’t arrive until after we had returned to the U.S.

The next time we went to England, I gathered up the envelope, put it in my carryon, and went to the bank as soon as we arrived. At first, the bank employee handling such special situations didn’t want to add me as I do not use my husband’s last name, neither on my passport, nor my driving license, nor for anything else except the convenience of strangers who can’t get around a woman keeping her original surname. Finally, when I dragged out the abundance of maiden-name plastic in my wallet, my passport and our marriage license from the U.S., the banker decided that, in fact, I was not a terrorist and could probably be trusted with accessing the few quid in the account.

Not rapid access

The banker did not offer a debit card automatically as U.S. bankers do, and it was our next trip before I thought to ask for one. It had finally occurred to me that I might need some cash sometime after the banks were closed and my husband was not with me.

They were quite pleasant about it, and offered to send it right out within ten days. Of course, I was back in the United States by then. But no matter; I wouldn’t need access until the next trip.

It came, of course, in a bit over ten days, but not much. So I celebrated. I was free at last, free to stand in front of gray stone walls with ATMs sticking incongruously out of them, queuing with everyone else on a U.K. market day morning!

Endless pursuit of money

Not. I had left at home the envelope containing the all-important PIN. I needed it to activate the card, I knew. I couldn’t activate it from the U.S. because the call-in number to do so was toll-free only to the U.K., and there was no way around that. I felt pretty stupid leaving that one envelope—among all the documents one travels with these days—at home. But no matter; surely a visit to the bank itself would result in their changing my pin, informing me of it, and sending me to the ATM outside to activate.

Again, not. They could change my PIN, all right, but they’d have to either keep it at the bank or send it to my statement address. This seems innocuous until one realizes that my statement address is in the U.S. (they have no problem, apparently, spending money on the royal mail), and the new PIN would not be generated for five business days…by which time we would have left for the U.S.

Again, however, I received an envelope from the bank a few days after I got home. I am now keeping it constantly at my side so that I do not forget it on our next trip; I shall not leave Heathrow before I shove the thing into an ATM slot and accomplish total access to our funds, something currently about 18 months in the making and counting.

Where’s the problem?

But what about that sense of humor thing? Right. The teller, when I was trying to get that PIN changed, said, “We can keep the new number here or send it to you in five business days.” I, thinking she meant to send it to my British address, pondered aloud, “Well, I guess my friend Sue is trustworthy enough to send it on to me when she picks up our mail.” I meant from our U.K. address of course, having forgotten about their willingness to spring for foreign postage for my measly account.

It was then that the teller got all shirty. “And we aren’t trustworthy at the bank, I suppose,” she flung back at me as she walked away to do some magic function or other that would finally result in my being a 100 percent owner of my own funds in the U.K. Soon. On the next trip. Unless I forget that benighted envelope, and have to start the last lap of the process all over again.

Is there such a thing as transcultural surgery?

2008-08-28T15:52:00.000+01:00

I have never felt like a man trapped in a woman's body. Nor have I ever felt attracted to anything except men.

When it comes to cultures, however, it is a whole different story. I should have been born in Europe. It is written on my face, quite literally. I am not, however, monolithic in that regard. In times past, some have taken me for Irish, others for French. One or two people have taken me for Italian, and one for a Sephardic Jew. It all amuses me, but also indicates that my angst at living where I do is very probably genetic.

Moving malaise

Some guru or another said that the level of one's discomfort equals the size of the lie one is living.

I have spent my entire adult life moving in a futile attempt to escape the lie of my birth in the New World. I moved from New York (eastern Long Island and Binghamton, where I went to university) to Big Pine Key, Florida, back to New York (Binghamton), then to Denver, then to Sapelo Island, Georgia (a very odd move, that one) to Athens, Georgia, to New York City, to Stamford, Connecticut, to New York City again....and then to Newburgh, New York and then Lighthouse Point, Florida and then Delray Beach, Florida...and then New York City again. And then to Boca Raton, Florida, to Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, Florida, to Arnold, Maryland, to Bristol, Tennessee, to Bristol, Virginia (I made that trek back and forth a few times in ten years, with a year's hiatus in Richmond, Virginia), to Sykesville, Maryland, to Baltimore, Maryland, to New Windsor, Maryland. Which is where I am now. And where my discontent has assumed major proportions.

All the other venues of my life had something European to offer. New York is obvious; it is cosmopolitan, a melting pot, and there are abundant French restaurants, and also--for a time--there were English restaurants. Perhaps there are still, but I have decided to find my British food in Britain. Every spare moment and dime is spent on a trip to Devon and Cornwall; I must begin exploring Dorset, Wiltshire and other points west soon, however. No funds available for relatively unsatisfying trips to Manhattan to eat ersatz bangers and mash.

Devoid, devoid, devoid

South Florida boasted quite a few foreign restaurants, even if it boasted less the Anglican lifestyle flavor of Manhattan's East Side and coastal Connecticut. Of course, some places--notably Athens, Georgia and Denver--are virtually devoid of any sort of meaningful transoceanic enticements, British or otherwise. Some of the other places I've lived in my continual quest to feed the inner Brit (and I forgot a six-month sojourn in Brooklyn!) were too minor in the timeline to matter; my transcultural angst had no time to build in those places, what with moving in and moving out.

But I've been in New Windsor for three years now. Three LONG years. The closest it comes to a transcultural enticement of any sort is K&B Family Restaurant. Note the word Family. In Maryland, this means no booze. I don't think there are any booze-less restaurants in Europe, and certainly not in the England I've seen. It's ludicrous, this shielding of children from the mere sight of alcohol. Frankly, the kids in families that frequent "Family" restaurants in the U.S. usually exhibit behavior that would make the rest of the diners virtually require booze to get by. Needless to say, the proximity of K&B (while its owners are very pleasant people and I'm sure do a fine job on fried chicken and bourbonless sweet potatoes) does nothing to assuage my transcultural desires. Indeed, it simply makes them all the more stringent.

Calcutta on the Chesapeake Bay

They must be fed, these desires. The odd trip to Baltimore to shop (there are no food stores in New Windsor, and none worth frequenting in nearby Westminster) is hardly enough to satisfy my suddenly rapacious appetite for European-ness in general, and Britishness in particular.

Baltimore is, for the uninitiated, an odd combination of Parisian charm (the Mount Vernon section of the city) and the dregs of Calcutta (the rest). It is, oddly enough, a foodie town, and has abundant foreign restaurants, with the Ambassador Dining Room near Johns Hopkins University offering world-class Indian cuisine in an upscale and very European setting. It is on a par with Thariks, the Indian restaurant across the street from my digs in Devon, England.

Aha! And there's the answer to my discontent. I must drive for an hour to get to the Ambassador Dining Room; I merely go out the front door and cross a tiny, 700-year-old street to get to Thariks. Living in the suburban (not to say rural, although it would be more accurate) United States, when one is inhabited by a European consciousness, is all but intolerable.

Going Batty Where Most Go Barmy

2008-08-24T22:26:00.000+01:00

There's no question that British English is not American English. Where Yanks would say a person went batty, Brits would say that person went barmy. This is a shame, because it has almost completely ruined my update about bats outside the belfry in rural Devon, England. It seems, just recently, that rare Bechstein's bats have been discovered on Dartmoor. The way they were discovered makes the age-old British pastime of "birding" look very inconsequential indeed. It seems a PhD student from Bristol University, about an hour from Dartmoor, set up his equipment in the Bovey and Dart valleys. That equipment included acoustic lures that play back the bats' calls and attract them into a net. That might pretty much lay to rest such possibilities as bats knowing each other's calls. I mean, why would an animal answer its own voice...unless, of course, they had recording devices of their own and, like humans, were quite used to their own voices speaking to them, and simply toddled along to see who might be playing their latest voice mail. Or, for instance, suppose Mr. Batt has installed an answering machine, and thought perhaps he was checking it, bats not being among the more intelligent species, like pigs. "Good evening. This is Benjamin Batt...that's with two Ts, please...speaking. But I'm out at the moment catching my dinner, or my death of cold. I do live in England, after all. In any case, please leave your message, and I'll emit some inaudible sounds later which, if you are a bat, too, you will hear. Otherwise, if you are of some other species, just hang up."

***

I would think spending 25 thousand pounds on luring bats was excessive. Or maybe not. After all, finding the Bechstein's Bat was a bonus. (Good headline: Bernie's Bat Brings in a Bonus for Bristol Bat-Boy...but I digress.) In any case, the research was supported by grants from the Dartmoor National Park Authority (DNPA), the Woodland Trust, and the National Trust to find out the ecology of the Barbastelle bat. There are supposed to be more of them than Bechsteins, 5,000 to a mere 1,500. According to an article on teh BBC website, "Both species of bat roost under peeling bark and in splits and holes in damaged and dead trees." It seems to me quite a lot is already known about bat ecology, at least for the two British "B" bats. I'm assuming they both catch moths, mosquitoes and beetles, although the article only noted that the Bechstein's diet consists of those tasty bits.