I flew into Luton Airport, which meant passing through London on my way to points further south. And since I was changing trains at St Pancras anyway...I hopped out to have a brief look around. Knew I was in London at the latest when a red doubledecker bus came around the corner!
St Pancras (where Eurostar trains arrive after crossing the Channel tunnel) is right next to King's Cross (Harry Potter? Hogwarts Express? Ringing any bells?) so I made a little pilgrimmage.
Luckily, I was forewarned that there isn't actually a barrier between platforms 9 and 10 - J. K. Rowling was thinking of a different station when she invented the magical barrier that leads to Platform 9 3/4. I knew there was a little monument - of a luggage trolley appearing half-way sunk into a station wall - elsewhere in the station, but hadn't bothered to look up where. On a whim, though, I walked a little ways down platform 8... and when I spotted a suspiciously large crowd of teenagers, I suspected I'd found my goal.
"There's just a wall... with a trolley in it... So he had to take a picture," an older woman was explaining to an older man near me. They were rejoined by a middle-aged man looking embarrassed yet pleased with himself - precisely how I figured I'd look very shortly, after photographing the thing myself.
Here's one of the Australian teens, pushing her luggage trolley into Harry Potter Land...
First stop was to visit Peter, a friend I made by chance in a cafe in southern India! I remembered he'd said he lived somewhere south of London (turned out to be Southampton), so I wrote to him when I started planning this trip and he wrote back, ever British, "Yes, you must come and stay if you're in the area."
Residents of Southampton freely admit that one of the best things about their city is how easily you can leave it to get to other places (people even commute to London from there, since the cost of living is so much more manageable) so I was surprised by how nice it was. Tidy street of semi-detached houses with gorgeous gardens out back, friendly neighbors who actually stop for a chat whenever they see each other.
Peter invited some of said neighbors over for a barbecue (the neighbors were more my age, while Peter is my parents' generation) and we hung out until late in the night, enjoying the lovely garden terrace and the summery weather. (And yes, since they're English, there were many of the requisite conversations about the weather!)
Here's the back yard crew:
Peter's only caveat about my visit was that he was categorically NOT willing to get involved in the endless discussions about royal wedding details (Prince William marries Kate Middleton tomorrow at Westminster Abbey in London, for anyone who's somehow missed this), but the rest of the country is in the grip of royal wedding fever.
Me, on opening the refrigerator: "...Why is your tonic water 'celebrating the royal wedding'?"
Peter also took me to Dorset, as a kind of compromise between Southampton and Devon (Dartmoor! Hound of the Baskervilles!), where I'd wanted to go, but which proved just a bit too far away to be practical for this trip.
In Dorset, we walked along chalk cliffs above the sea, amid rolling green fields and a profusion of wildflowers, then had a meal (and plenty of tea!) at a fish and chips shop, then checked out a castle and had a pint at a countryside pub, so I'd say I got my fill of Englishness for the day. This is a bit of countryside in Dorset:
Next I went to Brighton, a laidback town by the sea with a distinctive hippie vibe and a seemingly endless stretch of pebble beach. Here's my breakfast my last morning in Brighton: vegetable pasty, fruit and an unimpeded view of the English Channel.
In Brighton, I stayed with Dave, a friend of a friend who's a musician/producer/artist. Among the things I experienced: looking out the window of a pub to see a young man swallow entire inflated balloon (the long kind, the ones people twist into balloon animals), which never reappeared in any fashion; getting on a train and finding a book about fairy tales abandoned on a street, just as an odd, jovial man who cleaned the train came by and started asking me riddles, seeming rather like a fairy tale figure himself; playing guitar by the sea at midnight; finally trying a quintessentially English "cream tea" (which has less to do with tea and more with scones and a very large amount of cream) together with an Australian and an Irish guy in a cafe that seemed to be run by Eastern Europeans and frequented by Asians.
Dave also joined me for a day wandering the South Downs (rolling chalk hills dotted with sheep and fences), where there was picnicking and much photographing of sheep. I was practically asleep, dozing on the grass, when the farmer whose land we were on (we'd hopped a couple of fences, after the supposed path petered out) pulled up on his ride-on mower.
"You know, there's no footpath here," he said. (Translation from overly polite British to normal people speak: "You're trespassing on my land.") Oh, sorry, I said, we were trying to follow the path and couldn't tell where it went.
And the farmer said, Oh, okay, and wished us a nice day and rode off! Can you imagine?
The English are an understated people for whom the word "nice" is a high compliment (all foods they like are "nice") but who also say "Thank you so much" in response to pretty much anything.
Anyway, here are some sheep:
And one last picture: my "office" this week, consisting of my new netbook and wifi access at the inestimable Riki Tik in Brighton.
All part of a plan to try to use my freelance flexibility to do a bit more of this, working while traveling. It worked out well this time and I'm feeling pretty grateful right about now.
Next up: Part Two, London and the royal wedding!
No comments:
Post a Comment