This is England
Thursday – Day One
London – Seeing Things From Another Point Of View
As I was walking to the toliet on my first (early) morning in London, I heard church bells ringing to tell of some unknown time through an open window. The city was lit up and looked beautiful. There was a breeze blowing and to complete the romantic picture, a bird started it early morning performance. It was then that I had my first moment of perfectness. It was contentment, happiness and thankfulness to God for the opportunity to be doing this. Here I was in London, on holidays and about to begin an adventure. So there I was in my moment, of “wohoo I’m in London”, when I misjudged the height of the windown and hit my head. Ouch. (I’m sure that there is some metaphor in that about the need to balance pleasure and pain but mostly it just kinda hurt). Welcome to London.
At breakfast the next morning, there was a guy availing himself of the breakfast spreads – one of which was Vegemite. Now I know I should have said something but I thought I should let him try and see if he liked it. Mind you, he was spreading it on rather thickly. A few minutes later there was much hilarity from me as the guy realised that Vegemite, is not another form of Nutella but in fact something black, salty and made from yeast. Well that last bit I had to explain.
I decided that today would be a quieter day with just a stroll round the city to re-aquaint myself with it. I was staying in the opposite side of London to where I’d stayed previously so nothing was familiar. According to the hostel they were in walking distance of the “Major Attractions”, so I was going to see if they were right. I eventually found my way onto one of the major roads that took you into London. I came to St James’ Park, where the trees were in bloom and the ducks quacking. As I was walking through I heard a brass band and decided to walk and see what it was all about. What I stumbled upon was the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace. As everyone cleared off after the first part of the ceremony, I managed to secure a place right near the palace gates for part b of the spectacle. While I was standing there I heard England’s finest play a selection of classical music – you know the theme from James Bond and Michael’s Flatley’s Lord of the Dance (he’s not even English). After the finished playing, there was much stamping and yelling of commands and then one band came out with a company of troops behind them and just when you thought it was over, another band with a company troops playing different songs came out as well. So it was kind of cool to see but from my rather colonial (rather than colonical) view, I kind of wondered what was the point.
I continued my walk into the centre of London, which took me passed Westminster Abbey, the Houses of Parliament and the horrible blight on the landscape, the London Eye. All of this I had seen before but it was also new. Staying at the other end of London was giving me a different perspective on things I had seen before. Although I remembered it, all these sights of London seemed fresh and as beautiful as at my first viewing. Where before I saw the whole, now I could stop and see the details. There were also things that were hidden that were revealed because I was walking from a different direction. For instance there is a chapel beside West Minster called St Margaret’s, I spent several hours in WM last time I was there and I don’t ever remember seeing it before. It’s not new it’s been there for a couple of hundred centuries but because the tourist path doesn’t take you that way, you wouldn’t see it.
There was really nothing I needed to do tourist wise in London so I decided to go to the National Potrait Gallery for a while. The museums and galleries are mostly free in London, so you don’t feel obligated to see everything. In there are potraits of famous Britons starting with Tudors. People as diverse as Edward Jenner (a point for anyone who knows who he is), the royals, poets, writers, artists and politicans. Going there for me though was all about the Chandos potrait of Shakespeare.
As you know, I’m slightly obsessed with Shakespeare, so to see the only picture of him that can claim to be painted in his lifetime was going to be special. So there was standing in front of it and it was so much more rich than any copies of it I’d ever seen. I stood there for a while and just looked. He had a bit of a Mona Lisa smile – slightly amused, slightly knowing but his eyes had real warmth that told of his humanity and intelligence. So there I was with the single greatest writer in the history of the world or to quote Dr Who – the most human human ever. I wondered what he might have made of it – probably write something about gawking strangers.
I had good first day in London. I found a city that was both historical and full of life and colour. If the highest compliment you can pay to a place is to say you could live there, then London gets that from me…
Friday – Day 2
The British Museum had lost it’s charm.
I went to Breakfast this morning with a girl from my dorm. We had a full English breakfast, which included bake beans, eggs, bacon, sausage, hash browns, toast, tomatoes and chips. That’s right chips, it was really disgusting. I was so turned off by the presence of chips in my brekky. Who the hell what’s to eat fat, greasy chips at 8.30 in the morning? British people obviously.
The British Museum is usually on everyone’s to do list for London. Except mine – it was one of those places I know I should see but wasn’t really a priority. Anyway off I trudged to one of the most famous and best museums in the world. I walked through the gates passed the school groups – an ominous start.
Here’s the first thing about the British Museum you learn, there’s very little in it about British history. In fact it’s all stuff they pilfered from other places when the Empire was in full swing. So why do they call it the British Museum?
I started in the gallery with all the Egyptian Statues – including the head of the Ramasess the Second. There were heaps of Egyptian artefacts all of which was really interesting and well perserved. But I found myself being really annoyed by the other museum goers. Everyone was looking at things through the back of a lens, not with their eyes. They were not even reading things just taking photos of them and moving on. In fact I think I may have been the only person not taking photos but because they were I had to make sure I wasn’t in the way of some nuff nuff wanting to take the picture of their nan/child/second cousin twice removed in front of a statue.
This raises questions about why people do this? Why take a photo of something without first looking at it to find out whether it means something to you? I only take photos of things that have meaning – photos for me are memories of thoughts and feelings when I saw something. I don’t just take a photo so I can go home and say oh look here’s the British Museum. I what to be able to tell people about the way it looked – the colour of the stone or the uneven grain or a story that I thought was interesting or something. Besides it’s rude! It impedes other people’s viewing.
Away from the big statues there as less of this nonsense and I was better able to enjoy the artefacts. I actually really got into the stuff from Nineveh in Assyria. They had these massive statues of Lions that guarded some temple and whole rooms with panels telling the stories that were sacred to those people. It thought they were a lot more impressive then the Egyptian stuff. I always think it’s remarkable how the ancients managed to do all this stuff using the sun and the moon to measure things. Now it seems we can’t do anything without a computer, which does the thinking for us – so are we really more advanced?
The British Museum is most famous for the Elgin Marbles – stuff they managed to secure from Pathenon, when Greece was ruled by the Ottoman Empire. Elgin sold these statues to the British government who built a whole museum around them. It’s a matter of some controversy as the Greeks want them back and the British won’t hand them over. I think at this point the Greeks are asking that instead of giving them back, the British let the Greeks put them in a museum on permanant loan – which to my thinking is the same thing but then I’m not a diplomat.
The thing is the British will never give them back. They quite rightly point out that they are in a first class, world famous museum and that more people will see them there then in Greece. On the other hand, they are Greek history and should be with the other stuff the British didn’t manage to nick. I think it will be a very long time in the future before the marble from the Pathenon are reunited.
Saturday – Day Three
There’ll be bluebirds over…
Today I started on my travels around England. I took a train from London to Canterbury, which was my first stop. I got to my hostel to find out I’d been upgraded to a single room, with a double bed – for no extra cost (yay). The hostel thought they should check with me to make sure it was alright. To which I replied “No actually I’d rather sleep in a dorm with ten other people thank you very much”. But this is not about my sleeping arrangements. It’s all about a song sung over 60 years ago that is intimately tied with the place I visited – Dover. A song I wanted to sing too.
I went to Dover for one reason only, the White Cliffs… After seeing them in countless movies, I really wanted to see them too. And there I was, on a boat sailing around Dover harbour, with those white cliffs in all the glory. They were beautiful, you could see the sun glistening off them making them seem translucent. Those cliffs are as English as Man United, tea and scones and a pint of warm ale – they are a symbol of leaving and coming home. I think one of the kings said when he saw the cliffs that “this is England” or something of that sort. They were so lovely. My one disappointment is that the boat only goes round the harbour and not actually passed them. I guess you need to pay for a ferry ride to France to see that.
After the cliffs, I filled in some time at Dover Castle, which has been there in one form or another since William conquered England. It was a pretty large castle, although most of it is in ruins now. More interesting than the castle was the secret world war two tunnels (although obviously not secret anymore). From these tunnels under the cliffs, operation Dynamo (to get the British troops out of Dunkirk) was run. The tunnels had a telephone exchange where women of the Naval services worked at least twelve hour shifts, with no outside light and lots of smoking. There was also a hospital dressing station where MASH like operations where conducted on mostly pilots pulled out of the English Channel. Most interesting to note is that the anti-aircraft operations for South-East England were run from here but no one knew that. The guys standing on top of the cliffs with their guns ready to fire on command didn’t know they were being controlled from below. Apparently also Winston Churchill came here and personally ordered the firing of big guns (pointed at the Germans in France). It was amazing to think of all that happening underground.
Sunday – Day Four
Snowflakes that stay on my nose and eye lashes.
It snowed today. Like really proper, snow. It was amazing. Fortunately I’d packed my long-johns and with my trusty coat and hiking boats I was able to still get around. All the English were grumbling but I was like this is the most amazing thing ever.
I started out by going to service at Canterbury Cathedral, which is massive and the home of Anglicanism in the world. It was a nice service – if rather formal, with singing in Latin and everything (I thought that was a Catholic thing). Here’s the funny thing though, the preacher was from Melbourne.
The real highlight was seeing where Thomas Beckett was murdered and where his shrine lay until Henry VIII ordered it pulled down when he broke away from the Catholic church and ordered Britian to become protestant. Mind you he didn’t mind running off with the jewels from the tomb. Now there is just a solitary candle where it stood. It burns night and day in memorial to a man who was not loved by the King (Henry II) or until after his death the clergy he was in charge of. Other highlights of the cathedral were the tomb of Henry IV and Edward the Black Prince with his vestments some 700 years old are still on show.
Finally today I went to the Augustine Abbey, which was again pulled down by Henry VIII at the dissolution of the monastries (that man has a lot to answer for). But by this time, it was snowing so hard that I really couldn’t manage to see much as it was hard to take photos, hold the audio guide and follow the path. Still it made for some great self potraits of me in snow.
Monday – Day Four
Canterbury Tales.
Would you believe it? Today the sun was shining and there was more blue than white in the sky. Although it was rather cold still. I spent the day in Canterbury doing not much really. I went to see the Roman Museum and the Museum of Canterbury and finally finished with Evensong at the Cathedral. Mostly it was just wandering around looking at old buildings and chilling out. There was really nothing remarkable to note about it at all except that I really loved sung Evensong. It was probably better than the Sunday service. I found the quire of the cathedral (where the service was) to be a peaceful, if rather grandiose sort of place. The only problem I have with such places is that it’s hard to feel the intimacy with God. It’s all so vast that you can be uplifted but I think it’s hard to feel enclosed. I’m sure that really doesn’t make a lot of sense to most of you – so I’ll briefly explain. Christian’s talk about knowing God on a personal level, a relationship just between you and him. In a small parish church that relationship is easier to find because things are smaller. In a grand cathedral like Canterbury, everything is doubled in size so God is harder to find. I don’t know that I’d want to worship there as a parishoner. I was nice to visit and yeah I was uplifted but it’s the place for big things not for the small and humble.
Tuesday – Day Five
The bright lights of Brighton.
In complete contrast to the refinement of Canterbury, I’m now in Brighton. I’ve been here for about five hours. I’ve seen everything I want to see. It’s loud, brash and a bit tacky really. The Royal Pavilion, however, was amazing. It’s built like a moorish palace but decorated with chinese motifs inside. It’s stunning. The dining room and the music room were just spectacular. There were beautiful wallpapers and a roof that was made of 11,000 gilded cockle shells. It was really lovely. If only the rest of Brighton were like this. I’m only staying here because it’s in reach of some days trips I’m going to take. And yep the beaches are really covered with coarse sand (a euphemism for pebbles that the guy from my hostel came up with).
Tags: Travel
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