|
.....so.....where were we? ah, yes...just arriving to sunny england... it was perhaps my best landing yet...armed, so to speak, with my sumptuous salad and rations of peggy's 420 cookies, a big glass jar for water (woman sitting next to me exclaimed, "how did you get on the plane with that???" "just walked on through, ma'am." glug glug....luckily she turned down my ill-placed cookie offer...) ...so, back to england... well, from minutes off the plane, i tried to make it a culinary affair, which is more out of humor than anything, and did quite well. first stop was keith's mum's for some champagne and cheese toast. you make cheese toast by putting the bread under the broiler in the oven...keeping to the english theme, i enjoyed heaps of milk tea, pasties, cheese toast, crumpets, fritters, marmite (it's actually quite fantastic), and even indulged in fish & chips a few times (batter on fish-yummy; fish iteself-could take it or leave it; chips-consistently really horrible, actually, but i kept on trying)....and although not interested in drinking, i did manage to sip some hard cider in the pub from time to time. the brits can't make a cake to save their lives, or a cookie for that matter, but i kept trying that as well.... never give up. moving right along, i delighted in all things british...the tiny little lanes rambling through the countryside, the footpaths and hedgerows, the thatched cottage rooftops and itsy bitsy little doors. oh and the gardens!! everyone has a lovely back garden resplendent with flowers and herbs. alec's mum's garden was my hands-down favorite with her fish ponds, weather-worn gnomes and statues, flowering nooks and cascading vines turning bright red in the autumn chill.... straight away i went to chichester with noam and helped with the herb (pronounced h-h-h-e-e-e-r-r-b, not e-erb) stand, smiling all the while from everyone's enthusiasm for hhhheeerrrbs and flowers and back gardens and the lot. love it love it love it. i learned something...i don't speak english, darling, i speak a-mer-ican (mildly disdainful emphasis there). a truck is a lorrie and a shopping cart is a trolley. pants are trousers and underpants are pants. a bag is a sack and a fanny is not where you think. that's a bum. it's not how are you? but ya'aright? which was quite challenging to get used to, as i thought i must look quite bothered to be prompting such concern all the time. incidentally, it's not, 'i don't care,' or, 'it doesn't matter,' but, 'i'm not bothered, really.' a stove is a hob, a teapot a kettle. in your car, the hood is the bonnet and the trunk is the boot. try that one when you see a sign that says, 'car boot sale this saturday!' first time, i was left thinking, why the hell would you buy a car boot? to put on your friend's car as a joke? a car boot sale...it's really a flea market. indeed, i was quite surprised by how difficult i found the accents of england, of which there are many. half the time i didn't know what they were on about (you get to do the linguistic translatations yourself from now on), but at least when i had no idea what anyone was saying, they could understand my clueless musings (the shop girl asked me three times something along the lines of, ya'aright with the sack? and after three times of not getting it, i finally just smiled and said, i don't actually know what you're saying, so i'm just gonna keep on doing what i'm doing over here, okay? (i was putting the things in the bag). she laughed and nodded and left me alone. in korea in that situation, i used to sing-song mullah-yo mullah-yo mullah-yo-o-o...(i don't know i don't know i don't kno-o-ow...) 'twas nice, though, when folks asked me where i was from, and when i answered the u.s., they not only understood that part, but upon furthering questioning actually knew where new hampshire was!!! unbelievable. most people think i'm french or israeli or some such thing. oh, what else...the niceties! i laughed to witness the brits stumble over themselves with sorry-sorry and thank you-thank you: when helping noam with the h-h-h-e-e-e-rb stand people would generally thank me four times for the 1-pound plant they'd just purchased, and sorry means about the same as excuse me, but that comes with the assumption that the other person is always in your way. but this part of british culture wasn't a huge surprise to me, coming from a british-american bloodline where we ourselves trip over our family and new england niceties. what i realise we missed, however, in continuing on the practices of the homeland, was the counter-balance to all that politeness... like when the crazy twiggy girl was kicking the hell out of keith's empty car, yelling, "middle class c--t!" or the inebriated pikey was screaming at the gigantic train conductor to f--k off, he wasn't paying to get on the train and she couldn't make him...or the random acts of vandalism like throwing rocks through pensioners' car windscreens or stabbing an unassuming passer-by, just because you can... i delighted in england, and was disgusted as well. i witnessed first-hand the grave shortcomings of national health, a system which runs on rampant inefficiency and spends all its funds on programs that don't actually exist beyond the paperwork. as for privacy, wow...big brother is watching...every move you make. cctv cameras overlap one another on every building, street corner, and public place~all in the name of your safety, but when you watch things like, 'big brother is watching,' on tv~a show where the host guides viewers along as the camera zooms in from satellite into the window of mary-on-the-seventh-floor , and they call mary and say, 'hey, smile, big brother is watching!' wow, what great fun! completely insane. it was disturbing to come to understand the difference between 'the british' as seen on television and 'the british' in real life. it's incredibly expensive, impossibly so for far too many. i had difficulty rememberi ng to make the exchange conversion& nbsp;from pounds to dollars (yes, i still think like that to ascertain value and worth) because everything was so expensive that i assumed it had to be in dollars, only to realise no, it's 2 dollars! that fish & chips isn't 8 dollars, which would be a lot for roadside greasy food in the u.s., it's 16 dollars!! whaaat?? and that brings me to banksy. i suppose he could be described as a street artist, a vandal, or a revoluntionary, depending on who you talk to. but i think he captures something very british, however you describe him. banksy goes about england adding his impressions here and there and photographing them. i discovered his work through a seemingly classic banksy book of photographs that i think each of my friends had. thought-provoking, challenging the status-quo, mischievious, and for me really funny. he captures british society at face value. then he captures its restrictions, ironies, and contradictions. then he pushes the limits on what is acceptable, and shares some of the consequences of going too far. please take a minute to search his work out and see what i mean. good stuff. i loved brighton for its street art. we walked for hours, meandering through the neighborhoods, admiring the work of so many artists. i loved saffron-walden for its lanes and villages, i loved hampshire for its heaths and flowers. i loved wales!! wow!! i was only there a few days, in powys, and fell madly in love with the land. rolling, lush green hills, dark soft soil, really, really interesting people. i am intrigued. i will return. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~ in the course of things, i left england and went to a rainbow in serbia. we were in the east of serbia, high in the mountains. after the gathering we spent some time wandering around, hitching about, and meeting lovely local people who shared with us their homes, their lives, their endless hospitality. we hitched out of serbia with a turkish trucker who brought us in a few days' time to central germany, where we hitched the rest of the way back to england. a few weeks with alec's mum, and it was time for a transition. i needed to work. thoughts and ideas were many, and finally, over a morning cup of coffee, alec said, 'how about alaska?' and here we are. we're in anchorage, and i'm a waitress. ha! straight away i got work at the white spot~oldest diner in anchorage. spending my days slinging coffee and burgers to folks, listening with rapt attention to the talk of the locals, to what motivates them, what is important to folks up here, and what they thought of their 'girl' running for v.p....oh, to be a fly on the wall.... our visit here is short-too short. we'll be leaving again end of the year and returning to england. i'm hopeful we can get out and see some of this vast country up here~the glaciers to the southeast, denali park, the aurora borealis from the north. it's wonderful being here, even just in anchorage we're quite enjoying. it is surrounded by snow-covered mountains and sits on the cook inlet, where i like to watch the shipyard and listen to the train. another one worth coming back for. so many great places, so little time. so, there you have it, briefly. i haven't been on the internet much these past months, and even less now in anchorage. i have many photos to share, but have yet to get on that one. i'm a bit surprised to share so little of the serbia story with you, but a bit overwhelmed playing catch-up here for not writing for so long. anyway, i'll next work on getting photos up. how's that? please forgive my cyber-silence~it's not intentional. please write and tell me what's what...i'll write again soon!!! lovelovelove, karin
|
