Mood:
brightWe returned from England several weeks ago and this is the first opportunity I’ve had to Blog about it. I doubt anyone is interested in the process of going from Eden, Utah to Rushall, England, so I’ll just say it involved my husband and I driving to Salt Lake, a flight to Dallas/Fort Worth, a flight to Heathrow, a bus to Reading, a train to Pewsey and a bus to Rushall! And not a wink of sleep the entire time.
For most of the visit we were with my mother, which was the point of the trip. Mother’s house is tiny and was once a “two-up, two-down” cottage, a bit bigger than the original floor plan with the extension of a bathroom and storage room. She has a huge and lovely garden and never a year goes by and she doesn’t win first prizes for her flowers and vegetables at the local horticultural shows. Guess who was put to weeding that huge and beautiful garden? Yes, some things never change – to Mother I’m still her little girl who must do as she’s told. I would rather have lounged in the garden as the weather was fantastic – warm, sunny, blue skies dotted with fluffy little white clouds, etc. – apart from one overcast day and one of rain.
You’d think that in a damp place like England, with so much precipitation, the ground would hold the moisture, but a week of hot weather and the soil dries out and everything starts to die. So most people are out there with watering cans and buckets, watering their plants one by one. Just up above Mother’s house is an allotment sans a water supply and every day people drive up there, their cars loaded with containers, to water their vegetables by hand.
Apart from trips to Pewsey for groceries and one to the lovely old town of Marlborough just to look around, we mostly stayed close to home. Traveling is not a simple process as the service bus goes through Rushall only once a day, at 9:17 in the morning. It goes to Pewsey, Marlborough and on to Swindon. If you want to go anywhere at any other time you must book a seat on the Connect2 bus, which also goes to Devizes. For trips to Salisbury one must walk miles to catch the service bus at another stop. Going anywhere by train necessitates booking a seat on Connect2 to Pewsey station and then waiting there an hour for your train.
Still, we managed to get around. We stayed with my sister in my old home town of Newbury for a weekend, during which time we went up to Brighton to visit my niece. Brighton is my favorite town – diverse and very alive. We didn’t look around the shops as we’ve done that so many times before but we took a long, leisurely walk along the beachfront and stopped at Jamie Oliver’s “Jamie’s Italian” restaurant for lunch, which was very yummy. I was urged to visit the bathroom (loo) even if I didn’t need to, just to experience the automatic hand dryers. So I washed my hands and used the dryer, and stood there bemused while it howled like a jet engine and I watched the skin on the back of my hands literally ripple up and down. One woman checked to make sure all her fingers were still there.
We also met up with Janet, an old school friend, and her husband and went to lunch at a local pub carvery. A carvery is like a self-serve restaurant only servers carve the meat from the joint for you. Oh, and by the way, don’t believe anyone who tells you that dining in Britain sucks. It definitely does not. In fact, an incredible variety of ethnic foods are available not only in restaurants and pubs but in the supermarkets and I would bet the frozen foodstuffs are the best in the world. Especially the desserts! And to top that, pub food is great and cheaper than anywhere else.
The four of us went to my old secondary school, Shaw House, which is now open to the public. Back when I attended, Shaw House was a girls-only school and I loved being in that stately, sixteenth-century manor house. I always thought it a shame the old house had to have noisy little kids running riot in it. No longer a school, it was left in disrepair until the Heritage Society took it over and did extensive restoration. To my disgust, not all the rooms were open to the public, but I enjoyed pointing out the plaque to commemorate a day in October 1644 when a Roundhead soldier fired a bullet into the room during the Battle of Newbury. He was aiming at King Charles I. Also the beautiful Chandos Dining Room which now boasts beautiful Chinese wallpaper as it would have back in the old days. I was able to show them the servants’ stairs, now hidden behind a door. I wanted to look in the old library where the doorstep and floors have been worn into grooves by countless feet, but it was not open to the public. HOWEVER, as I spoke to one of the guides, she asked if I took typing classes while attending Shaw. I said I did, and she led me to where an ancient black 1850s typewriter sat. They didn’t know how to thread the ribbon. I did it for them and they very kindly let me see a number of rooms not open to the public, including the library.
This is my old school: http://www.shawhouse.org.uk
The following Friday I went alone to Paddington Station and met a new friend. Carol and I have chatted and emailed for about six months and swore to meet in London. We recognized one another right off. Before we set out I had another adventure in another bathroom, this one in Paddington. They too had ferocious hand dryer, advertised at the fastest dryers in the world! To use this one, you point your hands down. They should have some safety bar down there to hang on so you don’t risk getting blown across the room. When I was done I realized my rings had been blown right off my fingers, and I hadn’t felt a thing. Happily I found them on the floor. After that Carol led me through the Tube and various underground trains to our destination, which was vague, seeing as her map consisted of a few words jotted on a tiny piece of paper. We were looking for a certain restaurant off Leicester Square, but first we had to find Leicester Square. Carol is a London girl but she lives near Wimbleton and rarely ventures into “the City.” We wandered up and down for 15 minutes, found we had passed it by, and finally walked into the square. Finding the restaurant was harder. We walked around, and around, and around, looking for a certain street. Didn’t find it. Eventually we asked someone. Then we walked around and around a couple more times. We asked someone else, and lo and behold there was the street and we couldn’t figure out how we’d missed it before. Anyway, we had a nice lunch, then sat in the square chatting. All too soon we had to head back to Paddington. Meeting Carol was the hi-light of my trip.
The following weekend we attended my brother and wife’s 40th anniversary bash and I got to see my cousins and their broods again. We had a great time. Rob played 70s music, the meal was fantastic and best of all the company was great.
And then home we came, to thunderous skies and deluging rain. At least the garden didn’t die while we were away. All in all we had a great time.
