~Winston Churchill
The colors of this space are purples, browns, black and creme. It is stylish and homey, cheerful and refined. From the very little I've seen thus far, England seems to be more dignified and grounded than Wales or Ireland. The houses of Buckinghamshire are stout and stately, built of grey and brown and red brick and stone, curtained windows trimmed with white. A vibrant Irish door would seem very much out of place swinging on an English hinge. The lawns are manicured and flowers bloom, hedges and fences creating a small degree of privacy between properties
People in the UK shower their gardens and dogs with more devotion than anywhere else I've traveled thus far. They don't garden primarily for sustenance, though -- they garden for the joy of getting their hands in the dirt and creating a beautiful space.
Green and white looks good on England.
I'm starting this post from the family room of my new short-term home in Buckinghamshire, England. Amber honey wooden shelves line the walls, bursting with interesting books on cooking, natural horsemanship, gardening, painting and homeopathy. Two world atlases rest on the coffee table in front of the TV. The room still smells faintly of the candles lit yesterday afternoon, before the family loaded up their camping supplies and drove off for a solid four days of fun. The soft lamp overhead creates a perfectly tranquil space, warm light accenting warm honey. I sprawl out lengthwise across one of the luxurious black sofas and wonder at my good fortune.
It's always a positive sign when you find yourself wanting to read (or having already read) every book on someone's shelf.
Trinkets, crafts and speakers perch atop the shelves, imbuing the room with the comfy lived-in quality that moms are always apologizing for but no one else ever minds. I'd go so far as to say that people prefer houses where the light filtering in through the expansive windows exposes dog hair on the floor and the occasional childish hand print or puckered lips on the glass. The space assumes a playful personality. In America, we all have city names and street names and house numbers. In Wales (I'm not sure about England yet), people have house names as well.
I think I'd name this Buckinghamshire house, "Oscar". After the family's two-year-old yellow lab.
A particularly chunky red vase rests about 3 feet to my left and stares at me blankly through its Picasso-esque vertical eyes. Perhaps this alien clay creation is supposed to hold candles. The holes throughout render it a rather defective vase. Oscar has covered the carpet and wood floor with an impressive trail of white/golden fur, and as I prepare to vacuum the house, I come across tennis balls in varying stages of deterioration and a plethora of foam darts behind/under/inside all the sofas and chairs.
It's easy to tell that I happy family lives in this house.
Birds chirp. Horses whinny. Cars speed by on the pothole-less roads. After spending ten days in the large (relatively speaking), bustling city of Cardiff, I find myself fully appreciating the calm of this not quite urban and not quite rural environment.
Leaving Cardiff was wonderful. I loved the city, my hosts, spent an absolutely fabulous week and a half exploring Welsh (and African) culture -- and I left it in a good way. I left new friends and happy memories.
As Jeremy and Eddy were walking me to the station Wednesday morning, I turned to Jeremy and blurted, "God, I'm so happy right now."
"Happy to be leaving?"
"Happy to be leaving a good place and heading to a good place. I don't think people get to feel that very often -- I don't, anyway. It's generally the excitement of leaving a bad situation for a good situation, the fear of leaving a good situation for a bad situation, or the resignation of leaving a bad situation for another bad situation... it's not often that I experience the peaceful happiness of leaving a good situation for another good situation. It's a lovely sort of transition."
Of course, that entire paragraph is rife with value judgments of "good" and "bad", which is generally something I strive to avoid. I have no idea whether or not an event is "good" or "bad". When my friend in Ireland failed to return my messages and I felt stranded and alone, I definitely thought that was bad.
But then I got to meet Hanne, experience the Burren, and spend a couple more days with Lochlann and his international guests.
Which I presumed to be all manner of good. But I suppose we'll see how those events influence my life in the future.
I arrived at Oxford station exactly on time, and my English family was waiting in front of the stop to greet me. I kissed the mother on the cheek in an awkward attempt to perform a European greeting, and smiled warmly as I was introduced to the two kids.
Greetings are hard and I'm never sure how to go about performing them. Should I kiss one cheek as most people in the UK seem to do? What if they go for a handshake knowing that I'm American and I go for a kiss knowing they're European? What if I go for the wrong cheek and we collide (this happens frequently with me). Should I just let loose and give everyone I meet a bear hug?
In the USA, we generally shake hands. If we know the person (and are on friendly terms), hugs are involved. During passionate manhugs, back pounding plays an integral part. If we are intimate with the person, lips make an appearance in the greeting (although never on the cheek).
In the UK, people seem to go for the left cheek. Or a handshake. I'm never sure which and have an excellent track record of botching up my first impressions by closing in for the kiss when they're extending a hand or by extending my hand when they're puckering their lips. I'm now fairly certain that strangers shake hands and friends kiss, so my mind is made to go for handshakes henceforth. Perhaps if I'm not so wishy-washy about the whole thing, I'll create far less confusion and fewer tolerant smiles from people I've just head-butted.
In Latin America, a kiss on each cheek is the perfunctory greeting between a man and a woman and between two women, although in Columbia, the kiss is confined to the right cheek alone. If a man should kiss another man, it is viewed as homosexuality. In countries like Chile, men who know each other and would prefer a more intimate greeting than the standoffish handshake, stand side by and give each other resounding pats on the back. In the non-homosexual manner.
In Southern Europe, men kiss women and women kiss women and men shake hands with other men. Strangers generally get the handshake, unless (in my experience) they're being introduced by a mutual friend. Then it seems to be a matter of "a friend of yours is a friend of mine, and a friend of mine gets an air kiss on each cheek." And if you're from Serbia or Montenegro, you get an extra kiss. For good measure.
In Western Europe, the kiss makes its appearance as both a two step and three step greeting, handshakes once again reserved for strangers and men.
People kiss in the Philipines (beso-beso), in Macau and in Indonesia.
Men get to kiss in the Middle East -- but best keep your lips off the ladies, gentlemen. Man on woman kissing is considered inappropriate unless you're family.
A nod in China
A bow in Japan
A salame in Malaysia
A bow and handshake in Korea
A namaste in India
A wai in Thailand
Got it? Good. Now make sure not to kiss and salame when you're supposed to bow and namaste. 'Cos that would be weird.
The drive back to the family home was longer than I expected and I felt a smidgeon of guilt that my host had to journey so far out of her way to collect me. However, there wasn't a whole lot of time to dwell on anything at all, as the children chatted up a storm in the backseat and kept me quite busy answering questions and avoiding being splattered with orange soda.
I love kids.
I spent the evening settling in and chatting with my hosts. We talked about food, religion, food, gardening, food, yoga, food, and horses.
God, I'm happy to be here.
They left the next afternoon for a four day trip to a music festival, piling the back of the car from floor to roof with camping equipment, buckling the kids into the backseat, and rumbling off through the white gates. I was left with a short list of things to clean while they were away, a refrigerator full of food, and instructions on how to care for a Dartmoor pony down the road, two chickens, and a female praying mantis.
I anticipate a lovely four days.
Challenges: None so far.
Preconceptions: The weather is glorious. Still in the heatwave of the century, so the preconception that England's weather is consistent crap is busted. Also, the preconception about the English being cold and standoffish has most certainly not been my experience of the English thus far. The social group in which I've found myself is far more outgoing than most of the people I've met in the rest of the UK, as a matter of fact. And they have good teeth.
General Observations: Morrisons and Tesco are probably the cheapest English places to shop whilst in England. The Co-operative and Sainsbury's have slightly higher quality food, but are also more expensive.
Saying: popped her cloggs' = died
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