Winchester, 19.6.90: Sunlit Cathedrals and Hawaiian Shirts

We got settled late last night and were so tired, I got to write nothing in the journal. Now the 2nd night we’re in England. Writing this at a b and b in Winchester as sun sets, 8:50 P.M.

We arrived in England yesterday by jet foil at 12:15 English time. I was so tired I slept on the foil—especially after a lunch on the foil of salmon in a cloyingly sweet pink sauce, a meat salad in an equally sweet sauce, a good potato salad in a mustard vinaigrette, and frangipani and chocolate.

Things very tense with Steve and K. and A. in afternoon. K. almost hysterical as we passed through customs, a quality British inspectors apparently do not appreciate. We managed to get through, got the rental car, and drove on to Canterbury. Was beginning to get gray and drizzly in Canterbury, and with the tensions and growing headache, all is a fog.

We did a quick and perfunctory tour of the cathedral, which was full of (other) tourists, especially Germans. Then went to St. Margaret’s church, now converted into a rather hideous sound and statue and olfactory show of the Canterbury Tales. Since the guidebook said it, we went!

The real show were two English middle-aged couples, one from Sheffield, others from some place I didn’t understand. The men were both pot-bellied, one in a hat saying, “It used to be wine, women, and song; now it’s beer, the old lady, and telly.” The other had a loud Hawaiian shirt. One woman had long curly brown hair pulled into a top-of-head ponytail, a loud blouse, shorts, and sandals—very large and simpering. Shades of H.E. Bates.

From Canterbury through a beautiful Kentish village, Chilham. Had whitewashed buildings, one of them a Clements Cottage. A little bookstore in the village was lovely—went in to buy a map.

Then to Rye, by then full rain. We got in around 6 P.M. and found a b and b on the outskirts, chi-chi name Little S. Very middle-class gnomes in garden and ugly bright flowers. Owner, a Mrs. P., false-jolly with little shrewd eyes screwed up in merriment but actually piercing and evaluating.

Went out to eat in Rye and found the experience depressing. The fish and chips place we wanted to go to closed at 7, and A., misunderstanding, caused a scene.

So we went to a restaurant next door with local, high-priced food. I had lamb chops with tomatoes, mushrooms, and peas. K. trout and fennel, Steve and A. grilled lemon sole. With this came six vegetables. Not bad, but rude waiter named Jeremy. In fact, many tradesfolk we’ve encountered here seem mercenary and rude, with false bonhomie.

Today, got up at 7:30 and took hour’s walk down a lane. Sunny—took photos of Rye from a distance. Think I heard a cuckoo. Thought of home as we walked up some lanes—sheep and rabbits and green verges.

After frugal breakfast, drove to Winchelsea and went in pretty 14th-century church. Took pictures. Then through Hastings and up to a little village with 16th- and 17th-century pubs, Sedelscombe. Then over to Brighton—hideous, what we saw—and a little village called Alfriston, which was lovely. Another 14th-century church and a 13th-century clergy house, which we toured. Then had a pub lunch of stilton and bread and celery, chutney, cucumber, tomato, and ale.

After that, through Arundel, Lewes, and Petworth, where we didn’t stop, then on to Winchester. Somewhere along the way, something clicked—I felt a sense of belonging or something. Shortly after this, we passed from Sussex into Hampshire.

Got into Winchester after driving through beautiful South Downs Hills, many with ripe wheat. Winchester beautiful when we arrived at 5 P.M.—full sun. Got our b and b and walked to cathedral as it closed at 6:30. Then to St. Swithuns church and afterward to Wyckham Arms pub for country paté and cider. After that to St. Giles Hill, where we saw sun setting over the city. Then along Itchen River to b and b.

Glasgow-Atlanta, 3.8.01: Scottish Smiles and Egg Custard

In Atlanta airport, after the long purgatorial flight from London. Our flight to Little Rock is in two hours. Purgatory increased by magno homine loquente pleno voce beside me, into a cell phone. I’m always absolutely amazed by people who do this, so casually extending themselves and their own space out, out, to consume the space of others. As if we’re not there, or are intently interested in their conversation, or what?

Disparate impressions of Scotland: I noticed more than once a strange habit people have, of smiling full and then suddenly suppressing the smile. Kate at the b and b did this—smiled big, then when I returned the smile, snapped her mouth shut, looking suspicious. This also happened to me with some other folks.

The Irish don’t seem to be afraid to smile and to return a smile. With the Scots, I get the impression that smiles come naturally (and can also be put on quickly in a commercial situation), but they’re also afraid of what might enter through the smile, if it’s not closely guarded.

Perhaps that split personality of which the novel I’m reading—James Robertson’s The Fanatic­—speaks. Hospitality and suspicion, friendliness and caution, intermingled. The Celtic soul overlaid with British strictures, imprisoned by formalities alien to it.

The impression one has assaulted someone by returning his or her smile is made even stronger by the fact that a certain type of Scot has a foxy face: the mouth drops open in a grin that seems predatory, even when it may not be.

Probably not a profound insight, but seems to be one essential difference between the Irish and the Scottish character, is that the latter have been more successfully colonialized—to the very marrow—by the English. Though the former still suffer immensely from what centuries of colonization have done to them, they’re self-consciously aware of their need to fight and continue fighting the oppression.

For the Scots, not so. Their identity is distinct, and they know this, but it’s everywhere encumbered by English laws, English polity, the English rubric through which they read their identity and access their cultural uniqueness. This has to chafe and tire and wear tremendously, after centuries of it.

It also has to produce a hopelessness that the Irish appear to have, but don’t, essentially. They did, after all, free themselves from the yoke. And even under it, they seem to have remained aware of who they were, apart from the English. Even their ability to laugh and excuse asserts their distinctiveness, and I think they know it.

I certainly don’t say all this lightly or with a lack of awareness of the inferiority complex against which the Irish continue to struggle, as they compare themselves to the English. But even when that sense of self-scrutiny is bitterest and most caustic, there’s still a sense of self being scrutinized. I believe the Scots have lost that sense of essential self, and suffer from the crippling malaise that such a loss brings with it.

10.8.01

I keep thinking of various turns of phrase I read or heard in Scotland. In a store, I saw egg custard tarts for sale—so labeled. Exactly the usage of the American South. I’ve always wondered why egg custard. Isn’t the egg implied in the custard?

In the Scottish novel I’ve just read, Robertson’s The Fanatic, the verb “stay” is used for “live, dwell”: i.e., I stay at 519 Ridgeway. Do African Americans get this usage from Scotland? Or is it an earlier English usage now generally gone?

13. 8.01

And that novel also uses the phrase “the spitting image” of. Doesn’t Shakespeare say “the very spit and image of”?