DOVER August 16 - Staying at a great little hostel, ate the "vegetarian fried breakfast" since it seemed wrong to be in England & not eat fried food. Last night I crashed & slept well after playing a game of pool with Donna the Aussie (on a working holiday across the UK with friends) which was the most evenly matched game I ever played: neither of us could hit anything. My jokes about this were not well received - I think she either thought she was good at pool or hoped to be, or else I'm just not funny.
Dover is mostly made up of a High St. with restaurants & hotels, a pedestrian shopping street, a castle, and the waterfront. I had an idea of taking a boat out in the morning to see the cliffs, but no one has boats till the afternoon and so I won't see sunlight on the cliffs, unless the sun rises in the west. So I thought of taking a day trip to Folkestone. I had some vague ideas of doing some Riddley Walker research - trying to figure out where he was going in the Ashford & Folkestone part, and maybe finding a way to get to Wye.
FOLKESTONE - What I ended up doing was renting a bicycle (Reilly's Cycles - the older guy seemed to think I was crazy, but his helper was very helpful) and riding to the edge of Ashford - about 2 hours out & 3 hours back, with lots of stops for photos, map-checking & exhaustion. I'm in crappy shape but then again the last time I biked through country hills was about 13 years ago, when I went from Lancaster to my summer job in Mountville every day (and that was the most exercise I ever had before then, & probably since). It reminds me of Lanc. County too - hills, farms, woods being eaten up by development, little villages strung out along the road, the occasional half-hearted sidewalk or bike lane & then scary stretches of hills with trees up on either side & no shoulder. This is the A20 which is an "A" road, like a state highway I guess, but just a 2-lane winding thing, shadowing the big 6-lane M20. Once in a while there's a 4- or 5-way roundabout, a little confusing & scary to take with a bike - once I started to get on the M20 by mistake, and had to walk the bike back up the exit ramp through the weeds (damn, exit ramps are long!). This was all much more fun on the way out - once I got close to Ashford I realized I was going to be very tired very soon & might not make it back in time to return the bike. My idea of heading up to Wye was insane - not only was it too far but it's all tiny roads up there with people driving down them like maniacs. Too bad, I was very curious to see on the map (great 1:25,000 Ordnance Survey maps) something near Wye called "St. Eustace's Well."
Entirely used up by the time I limped back to the bus station - also my ass hurts, but fortunately it's not the same spots you use to sit on chairs, so as long as I'm not on a bicycle I'll be okay.
Fish & chips at a kebab shop, & a pint (this at least was not fried) at a decent pub where I learned the rules of U.K. 8-ball but didn't attempt any.
I sure am tired but I don't feel the least bit sick any more. 3 days, that's the shortest cold I ever had. Gevalt!
August 17 - I woke up around 5:30 to a chorus of the loudest seagulls ever. (They grow them big here. In Folkestone I saw one crossing the street very slowly on foot - the size of three chihuahuas, but much more self-assured than three chihuahuas.) Having left my alarm clock at home, I find that my own timer is getting better - if I decide to close my eyes another 10 minutes, then 10 minutes go by rather than 100.
Long bus to London & to go on hopefully to Oxford. (The 8:50 never arrived & when it looked like the 9:10 might be full, a stringy old guy with a huge boil on his neck cackled: "You think that bus is going anywhere without me on it? No fuckin' way!")
Near New Cross Gate there's a store for mobile phone equipment called "Rivers of Water."
(Big boxy housing blocks remind me of last night's TV news feature: a fashion designer who's "always been interested in architecture" says that by providing bigger lawns & diverting car traffic underneath the buildings, he will create "utopia." Turns out he's not actually the one designing the buildings. He had made a slick ridiculous little video of happy children playing... on "20/20" that would've been the whole show; on the BBC it was just the prelude to a 15-minute talk with two others who ripped him to shreds.)
At the London station I stood in line for a long long time. The ticket windows have a recorded summoning voice: "window 8, please" - these were all recorded by one pleasant-sounding lady, except for window 17, which sounded like her evil stepmother.
OXFORD - It sure is lovely and it sure is small. The hostel (full of Australian rowdies - those must be the young people I'm seeing on the street, if the university students are all away) is right across a little creek from the bus station, and Caption is right across the other way.
Caption is also very lovely and very small... a few tables in an elegant old college building, with a lot of very mellow people drinking beer and drawing at random. I missed most of the events but heard Jean-Paul Jennequin do a very good talk on how to get published in Europe. J-P is a name I knew from his translations of various American friends. He's an energetic & opinionated guy - several times got a nervous laugh from the audience by his willingness to disparage certain publishers - & spoke to me about my comics (which Alban had shown him) in gratifyingly specific terms, i.e. he hadn't just glanced at them. Also got to meet Al Davison who had some new Spiral Dreams mini-comics.
Still much too shy to mingle, but my helpless tourist status brought sympathetic conversation from several of the charming staff. Still I can only stand around in one spot for so long & took off while there was some light out.
More buildings, empty streets now. Would rather walk around in the day, at a loss for what else to do so I went back to the hostel where the Aussies were just getting started - there is a full bar in the hostel (and it's decorated with big cartoon murals in a John Holmstrom gaga style - makes me feel about 50 years too old) - oh fuck it, I'm going to sleep. Noisy, hot, eventually I slept some.
August 18 - Out early - my roommates of course were in comas except for several who had never returned to their beds. 9:30 worship service at the Friends Meeting House which has a good many people even with many away for holidays. Silent except for one person who spoke about the recent child murders in Cambridgeshire. I was welcomed afterward and talked to several members including an American from Michigan, and an English woman named Peggy Weeks who had spent some time at Pendle Hill and knew Nancy Bieber there (from Lancaster).
Seems like my luck has changed in some way because the way things usually go, I would have gone through Oxford and not found out about Caption or the Meeting until I left.
Covered the whole center of town & over to the fields at Merton/Christchurch & the Botanic garden. Watched ducks, swans, couples in boats. Small wonder Bill & Hillary believed they were destined to rule the world if this is where they spent their time. Back in town there are very many beggars, mostly my age, some looking like junkies, others like drifters who stopped here indefinitely.
(I was unfair to my fellow hostelers earlier - apparently many of them are staying for weeks at a time while they're studying and/or working in the town. So the summer-camp antics & acting like they've known each other for weeks, though it's still fucking annoying if you're not in on it, makes more sense under the circumstances.)
It's all American movies here and inevitably I went to see Austin Powers in Goldmember. It's not perfect but there were tears of brain juice coming from my eyes, which felt good.
Wandering around some more I ended up at the Horse & Jockey. The pub has a cute little brick round tower that stood out against a great pink-n-blue sunset so I had to go in. Four pints later I wobbled home & felt a silly pride that I wasn't the first one going to sleep this time (though the party was still going strong at the hostel).
Two of the pints were bought for me by half-mad regulars Phil & Rog. Phil the construction worker who's had some trouble with the law and believes in ruthless competition in all things ("It's a man's world is what I think. Or a woman's for that matter") and always seemed on the verge of turning hostile over some weird leap of drunk logic, but never did. Rog is his landlord who drinks all the time, loves George Bush, worked for the college his whole life and now has a plan to go on a tropical holiday with his girlfriend & two secretaries, using money he won by drinking a huge amount of Kronenbourg. They were very amused that an American tourist with vaguely yuppie and/or girly tendencies had ended up at the Horse & Jockey.
Not that it was such a tough place - it was mostly empty anyway, just Phil & Rog arguing & the barman amusing a couple of his friends with magic tricks etc. (How to balance 2 forks & a match on a wineglass without crossing over or going inside the glass - ha!) Phil was philosophical & sentimental and swore that if he ever saw me again, he'd bring me to his mum's house for dinner. It was a little like being back in the hospital with some of my pleasant but heavily medicated and slightly volatile patients, but I was medicated too.
CANTERBURY August 19 - Bus through London again - left my last giveaway book, The Things They Carried, in Victoria station (I was rereading it on the bus - if I can get rid of that book, I guess I can let go of just about anything) - into town at about 2.
It's nearly as small as Dover with a shiny-scrubbed downtown huddled around the High Street, then some mazy little Lancasterish back streets before you reach the old city wall and the suburbs. I went right to my lodgings - the house of a cheerful Irish couple who have cottages out back with bunk beds. (I'm here because the YHA was full, but I was very glad of the change.) Not busy now - my only roommate is an Australian guy just out of high school (boarding school in India) who's been here for 3 weeks looking for a job so as to be near his girlfriend. Curfew at 11 - OK.
With my mind set on Riddley Walker research I headed for the cathedral - but first found Hoban's recent novel Amaryllis Night and Day, bought it and read half of it in a fish & chip shop. Having only ordered a "small" portion in Dover, I was unprepared for the slab of fish I got - a little bigger than a ping-pong paddle and an inch thick not counting the batter. But I was so relieved to be free of the panicky smoldering hangover that had gripped me in the morning (which hadn't been helped by my strange choice of breakfast: two spicy vegetable samosas and coffee) that I ate everything with glee.
In the cathedral I made the rounds quickly taking pictures, then round again more slowly and stopped to sit in some of the chapels. I saw some of Tristram's reconstructions of wall paintings and tapestries, but no sign of St. Eustace. Well I thought, it's been 28 years, who knows where they might have put it by now.
Down to the crypt, where there's no photography allowed, so I stayed sitting down there for more than an hour sketching the columns and arches. The library had closed - I browsed in the gift shop & bookstore but no one seems to have much to say about the paintings & carvings. They did have several exhaustive books on the Green Man though.
I walked to the south city wall & Dane John mound (from "donjon") and the ruined castle. The history signs around the castle politely refrain from passing judgement on those who let the castle be gutted & used for a gas company's storage tank in the 1920s. "Gas Street" is one of two tiny alleys that adjoin the castle; the other one is, I swear to God, "Gas Pass."
Those back streets I mentioned before were awfully quiet - is everyone on vacation, or still at work at 7 PM? A little uneasy, it seemed like a maze in which I might get chased by a mad granny. I searched for the River Stour and found it - a mossy trickle, just big enough to hold 3 big swans, one white and two gray. Some students were lounging around a little riverside park filled with clouds of gnats.
Got back up to the High St. & read the other half of Amaryllis over Indian food. Lite jazz on the radio; Westgate's big feet lurking around the corner.
Back to the house before 10, met a family who's just there for the night on their way from up north down to Dover. Turned in early & slept very soundly.
August 20 - Breakfast - corn flakes, toast & cheese served by Mary's husband Hugh - next to my plate was a case of large pinned insects that someone had brought from Africa. Also met very briefly a Japanese lodger who spoke almost no English except for "New York!? Wow!!!" It had rained overnight & was still cool - I savored the feeling of wearing jeans, boots & jacket after months of sweating in shorts & sandals.
The plan was to go to Broadstairs for the day, to take in some cheesy seaside-town spirit and more importantly to find the Punch & Judy show. First, back to the cathedral. More sketching in the crypt and the stone carvings I hadn't paid much attention to before, I was now amazed by.
Down to the crypt, where there's no photography allowed, so I stayed sitting I went up to the library asking for information on carvings and paintings (I was oddly shy about saying "I want to see St. Eustace, I read about it in a book") but they were embarrassed to find that their file had gone missing. I read a little in a huge dry book that talked mostly about how various archbishops had got along with their staff. Then I walked back to the cathedral and immediately saw the Eustace painting in plain sight in the north choir, along with Tristram's reconstructed versions (odd that the modern paintings are under glass and the real one isn't), and the commentary which, as I suspected, is exactly as Hoban presented it. I didn't try very hard to imagine the writer's epiphany standing in front of the thing in 1974, it was clearly not to be, but then again I had felt something like that when I saw that carving in the crypt -- the two figures with the fish and the bowl, containing some basic story that the carver must have either trusted me to recognize, or traced out without knowing what he was doing. I don't know beans about Gothic art but I know I never saw a piece of ornament with so much going on in it.
BROADSTAIRS - After all that, I went back into the town carrying a ridiculously large buzz of intellectual pleasure & self-satisfaction (converted instantly to plain silliness when the first thing I heard on the street was a busker doing "Hotel California" incredibly badly) and caught the bus to Broadstairs.
A few shops selling practical things, some ice cream and a little bedraggled beach - it was OK to me, but the Punch show was cancelled due to the gray weather. Try back tomorrow at noon, I think I will. I stayed for a while looking from the high-up promenade down at the reasonably happy people. I drank a milkshake and answered dozens of questions for a market researcher hired by the county of Kent ("How much money have you spent on this holiday" - er - I have no idea and it scares me) - she was all smiles, and on the questions about "what is your idea of a good day out" I might have considered answering "when do you finish work?", but I could tell that she really liked her market research job and that's just too creepy for me (just to be sure, I asked "Do you really like doing market research?" Yes).
Back to the slightly bigger town & to the same Indian restaurant - better music this time. Thinking I must remember to talk to my roommate tonight & ask about his interesting story. He makes me nervous, just because he's younger & quieter than the other travelers I've met. But this turned out to be no problem as we got talking & brought out his file of photos and my sketchbook. Ty grew up in Australia, Scotland, oil company towns in the Middle East, then boarding school in India where he met his Bangladeshi girlfriend, who's starting school in Canterbury now (law). He wants to be a photojournalist, war correspondent - either that or run a mountain-climbing tour service in Nepal. Spent some time with a social-worker friend at a refugee job-training camp in Pakistan, last Christmas, from which he has some very good pictures. We talked some about cameras & film - I had to resist the temptation to act as if I knew something about these, which I don't.
I stayed up late reading this Ben Elton book, This Other Eden, which I had bought(!!) secondhand in Broadstairs. It's fast reading, flippant but sometimes thoughtful - Luke would like it but no way can I take it home.
August 21 - Finished the book before breakfast & left it for Ty. It was pretty good.
Breakfast with Hugh, talking politics. He calls Thatcher the worst thing to happen to England "probably ever," offers no objection to my distaste for the last 4 U.S. presidents, but thinks Tony Blair has gotten a bad rap from the press - should get more credit for improvements in social services, especially those for children (which Hugh had some role in administering in Kent). He puts the problems with National Health down to "unmanageability of the system" and the disinclination of most people to do their jobs well. No resentment, just bemused.
I finally asked Mary about how she started the hostel. 15 years ago, literally in answer to a prayer for something new to do in a difficult time, a backpacker with nowhere to stay showed up at the dor and they just took it from there. The name, "Let's Stay," was in answer to a guest's "Let's Go" book.
I wish I'd taken a look at the chickens but they were all locked up in the chickenhouse when I left.
On the way out of Canterbury, as if to remind me that all my resolutions are ridiculous, I was confronted with a flea market with a Lee Evans video. Twice as big as a book, and I'd have to dub it to US format. Bought it.
Back in Broadstairs - 12:00 - Professor Alexander's Punch and Judy show.
A very good turnout though a lot of freeloaders stayed outside the ropes to watch - this was not appreciated by the Professor & co. who had also had the bad luck of being buzzed by an air show (2 propeller planes that sounded like 200) that had started too early - the kids kept jumping up to see, and the show had to finish early, leaving out the doctor and the policeman.
The other characters were known to me from secondhand accounts, except for the stinky cheese worm. In this version Punch doesn't dish out quite so much abuse (though the baby and Judy are still doomed); he often ends up the butt of the jokes due to his easy frightenability. (Later when I said I hadn't gotten a good picture of Punch on the attack, the Professor muttered about Punch's violent reputation being greatly exaggerated; clearly I had said the wrong thing.) My favorite, and apparently the children's - this was before the planes started up - was the "walky walky" bit with the baby going back and forth. Also the crocodile eating the sausages. Also the sound of Punch & Judy kissing - like a cross between a zip-whistle and a motor scooter.
Well, Hugh seemed to think it was a little odd for me to go looking for the show but were he to read this, he'd think I had truly flipped. Prof. Alexander also may have found my enthusiasm a little odd, or not, but he kindly let me take a lot of pictures (which I promised to E-mail to him) and showed me the inside of the fit-up (which I didn't photograph - you'll never know what's in there).
Eggs & chips at Sue & Ray's Buttery Café. Wanted to get a smutty seaside postcard for Susan but couldn't find any - I guess they were all in Dover, sigh.
LONDON - Dog-tired from bus - checked in - washed - called Cian, made plan for tomorrow - walked down Oxford St. watching shoppers - went to bed.
August 22 - My room is a large room full of many sullen men. If I said the Paris hostel seemed "institutional" well this one has it beat. The toilets and showers are built into sort of modular self-contained boxes, so you could clean them each out with a fire-hose or maybe a small bomb, or just hoist the box out of the room and throw it in the sea. But today I have to move anyway because it's full, I ended up in something more like a college dorm with just 4 beds.
Regent's Park - Queen Mary's Garden - birds birds birds.
Favorite duck name on the bird guide: the ferruginous duck. Camden Town, Notting Hill, Tottenham Court Road - well yeah it's just another big city with people & cars & stores, but it's just different enough from New York. If I wanted to acquire heaps of old paperbacks & comics I'd go to the Book & Comic Exchange in Notting Hill. For new comics, Gosh, across from the British Museum (I stood there for 20 minutes reading the Steve Bell collections).
Quickly into the British Museum, should've thought of that earlier but it was closing soon. Two good exhibits: Dutch drawings, and Vietnamese wartime propaganda & documentary art.
The rest of the evening was meeting Cian, whom I knew before only from endless conversations on Usenet and comics message boards, and previous commiseration about computer jobs (which we both recently lost). He's also a maker of short films, an articulate leftie, and a good guy even when faced with the task of finding places to eat & drink in touristy neighborhoods. Not a huge amount of drinking was done because even in London, pubs close up insanely early.
But I did find a suitable pub in which to place the sticker that my dear friend had entrusted to me back home - found at a junk shop & apparently a 1960s original - which I had promised to put up somewhere to annoy & confuse the English:
AMERICA - LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT
And I might add: or both!
The end