Cathedral Church of St John the Baptist

If you know me, you know I'm a fool for Gothic architecture. In our current social and political climate, fears about the future inspire hatred, ignorance, and bigotry. A thousand years ago, while these negative emotions were not absent, fear that the end of the first millennium would bring the end of the world inspired jaw-dropping architecture. The intention behind all those Gothic pointed arch windows and fan vaulting was to reach toward heaven and to God and the divine. What can be bad about that?

The Roman Catholic Cathedral Church of St John the Baptist was donated by the 15th Duke of Norfolk in 1894, and is a wonderful demonstration of 19th Century Gothic. This cathedral is the second largest Roman Catholic Cathedral in the United Kingdom. St John the Baptist Cathedral Church, along with the Anglican Norwich Cathedral, makes Norwich one of the few cities in the UK to have two cathedrals. And I'm telling you, this city is lousy with amazing churches, too. Prepare yourself to see a lot of them in the coming months.

A populated place in the UK earned the designation of "city" by one of two means: either it was granted city status by royal charter, or it had a cathedral. This tradition of tying the idea of a "city" with a cathedral originated, ironically enough, with Henry VIII in the early 1540s, when he founded six diocese and granted them city status at the same time.

When Graham and I arrived in Norwich last week, we found our hotel by following the signs to the "RC Cathedral." Our hotel, The Beeches, was just two doors away, and we enjoyed looking for the cathedral each time we returned to the hotel from a day of exploring. Seeing that large square tower looming over the city let us know we were headed toward Earlham Road, and kept us from getting too lost too often.

Our hotel, on the other hand, offered anything but sanctuary and peace. We gained access to the hotel and to our room by means of a keypad at each door. This meant there is no staff on hand. Which means that every teenager in Norwich knows if they want to party with all the comforts of home and none of those pesky parents, then the thing to do is to rent a room for the night from the MJB Group, who will put them up at one of their several hotels--The Beeches among them. What follows is a nightly parade of drunken teenagers, young girls dressed like hookers, and screaming, shouting, loud music and obscenity. I'm sure it's fun for the teenagers. It is absolutely no fun at all for any adults staying in the hotel. Complaints to the management didn't seem to have any effect other than to annoy the teenagers, and make us feel as if we were under siege. We deliberately chose a cheap hotel, not expecting luxury. But we really hadn't expected to be living over the slamming front door of Party Central, either.

So to keep our sanity, we made a point of taking day trips or walks as often as possible. Our first walk was next door, to the cathedral. And this is what we found.

It is amazing, and I took more pictures than you really want to know about. You'll be pleased that I weeded through my millions of photos and got the number down to ninety-eight, which you can view here. If you decide to open a Dropbox.com account of your own (which you really should have, anyway, it is incredibly handy and roomy storage for files and photos, in case your computer ever dies, as mine recently did), could you mention me? I get more storage space, which I'm going to need at the rate I'm throwing photos in here.

We spent about an hour wandering around the cathedral itself, and then the cathedral gift store--I love a good gift store--and the cafe, and the back garden. What awed me especially were the fan vaulting, the stained glass and leaded glass windows, and the detailed stone work. When I first came to the UK about fifteen years ago and saw the wood and stone carving in the various cathedrals and palaces I visited, it seemed impossible to me that any human could carve those materials to look like leaves and flowers and birds, and make them so life-like. I will always remember a garland of oak leaves and acorns at Hampton Court Palace, carved by Grinling Gibbons, that was exquisite. This particular cathedral appeared to have a theme of lilies and doves, the former forming the capitals of the columns--which are made of dark, fossilized marble--and the latter ornamenting the bases of the columns.

So grab a cup of tea, sit down, and take a tour through the Cathedral Church of St John the Baptist, in Norwich. I hope it thrills you as much as it did Graham and me.

You Say Chips, I Say Fries

A Typical Non-Existant Shoulder on a 50 mph A Road

 "The United States and Great Britain are two countries separated by a common language." 

George Bernard Shaw  (and my husband, Graham)

"We have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language."

Oscar Wilde

I told you yesterday how the shoulders of roads are non-existant, and people park their cars in the streets. I told you about those marvels of patience and engineering and sheer British courage called "roundabouts."  I thought you might be interested in some other differences I've noted so far. It should be said that I am not making judgements of one way being better than the other, it is just a chance to puzzle over how such simple things can be so different from the US to the UK. Which is why I'm here.

Shopping carts: You wouldn't think there was much room to play with the shopping cart, it is such a simple and efficient bit of engineering, yet it turns out to be so. Unlike America, in Britain the shopping trolleys are not large enough to transport a full-sized spitted pig, but are probably half the depth, and not quite as wide or long, as their American counterparts. Trolleys have wheels that actually turn in a coordinated manner, in a weird way that makes the carts seem to glide through the aisles. And they have these funny handles that stick up from either side of the conventional American bar handles, which allow the shopper to steer more precisely. Now, I've been shopping since infancy, and can steer an American grocery cart well enough to win any slalom, but these things are pretty amazing.

Sliced and fried potatoes: My husband has spent the last 11 years bemoaning that he couldn't find a decent chip in America. I couldn't figure what the heck he was whining about. Turns out chips and fries are different in more than name. Chips are generally cut thicker, and just cooked. Where fries are cooked to a nice golden tan, chips are pallid, pasty. Like British legs on a summer day. Graham is so delighted with chips he's almost giddy. I am ready to whine. What the Americas call chips are here called crisps, and come in weird flavors like prawn (shrimp), and barbecued steak.

Fried eggs: Two semesters ago I wrote a paean to the perfect fried egg, and described the precise method for achieving same. I'm thinking of printing it out and distributing it to every Brit I meet. What these people have missed. Fried eggs here, in my experience so far (aside from Angie's Roach Coach this morning, on the A47 between Norwich and Dereham), are pale, floppy things, like poached eggs given a chance to spread out. None of that crispy goodness that comes with a decent egg fried in butter or bacon fat. Eggs in grocery stores are not refrigerated.

Lemonade: When an American orders a lemonade, they expect a beverage that has more than a passing acquaintance with the fruit for which it is named. Here, ordering a lemonade gets you a fizzy drink poured from a 7-Up can at best, or seltzer water flavored with a little dish soap (fairy liquid) at worst. Ask for lemon squash.

Car rentals are car hires. Renting an apartment means calling a lettings agent to arrange to view a flat. A parking lot is a car park, the front hood of a car is the bonnet, the trunk is the boot. The crossing guard is the lollipop man. 

Sausages. I'm a person who cannot get near chorizo, but appreciates breakfast sausages and Italian sausages with a deep and abiding love for their herby, spicey, savory goodness that hits at the back sides of one's tongue. Here, when ordering a sausage at breakfast, be prepared for something the size of an Italian sausage, but with a very bland taste. They call them bangers. I'm not certain why. They aren't as exciting as the name implies.

Bacon: The Brits call American bacon "streaky bacon," and not in a way that makes you believe they think this a good thing. British bacon is what Americans would call thinly sliced ham. Not bad. 

Beans. Every meal is served with beans. I'm pretty sure it's a right guaranteed in the Magna Carta. The brand is Heinz (Americans, think Campbell's beans), and they are ubiquitous.

Baby carrots sold in a British grocery store are actual baby carrots. Not adult carrots that have been whittled down to size in a giant pencil sharpener.

A semester is a term. Otherwise, when you tell people you are here for a semester at the university this fall, they won't know what you mean unless you tell then you are here for the autumn term at uni. Sneakers are trainers. Pillows are sometimes sold in grocery stores, as are iPads and cell-phones. Yarn is wool, regardless of fiber content. Cookies are biscuits. Pepperoni, when you can find it, is made either in Denmark or in Germany. It tastes very little like pepperoni.

Lastly, if you want to make millions, introduce the Brits to American toilet paper.

Record Straw Harvest in East Anglia

If I were to do the logical thing and begin to tell you about our travels since we left Tucson in chronological order, I would be far, far behind, and never able to catch up to the present. Instead I will update you on events since we arrived in Norfolk, and throw in bits of the Hudson Valley as we go along.

The short version of the beginning of the story is to tell you that the day after my last posting, we found out there is no need for a student visa if one is going to be in the UK for less than six months. All those weeks of emailing back and forth and investigating the UK Border Agency website were spent merely spinning our wheels, living in frustration, and wasting time and tears.  In fact, when we got to London I went through Border Control in about two minutes. The agent didn't even ask to see any of the huge pile of paperwork I had spent weeks collecting. He asked why I was there, what I will be studying, and when I'm going back. Stamp. Stamp. And I was through.

When we found out about the student-visa-at-the-border thingy, Graham and I booked our tickets to New York for ten days later--giving ourselves two weeks there so I could do research for my Honors Thesis--and went on a mad spree of sorting, yard sales, and moving things into storage. Our friends Joe Wingate and Jason Hall helped Graham on moving day, and everything went past so quickly (perhaps moreso for me, because I wasn't moving furniture in Tucson at the end of July). We spent our last night with Joe and his wife Becky, and then jetted out of Tucson, not sad to see the back end of it, all hot and brown and hellish, but regretful to be leaving such good friends, even if only for a few months.

I'll tell you about the Hudson Valley portion of our trip later, but let me tell you about Norfolk and Norwich.

Today is Sunday, and we arrived early on Wednesday morning. Everything travel-related went very smoothly, both to New York and to London. We rented a car at the airport, and launched ourselves on what we have referred to over the last few months as "Our Adventure."

Poor Graham. He is our native Brit and designated driver. We are in a car with the largest dashboard in history, like a bulbous encephalitic forehead, so that one cannot see the front (bonnet) of the car. Or the road, really. So although he is getting used to the car and the roads, he can't see where the car is in relation to the street. And the streets here are very narrow. I'm surprised to find there are no shoulders to any of the roads. From the painted line at the side of the lane there is perhaps six inches of pavement, and then a short curb, maybe four inches high. Just enough to cause serious problems if you should run into it at forty miles an hour. The other side of the curb, with no room to spare, is either an eight foot tall untrimmed hedge; or trees that are shorn at the sides facing the road to form a green wall, so that they don't grow into the roadway; or tall, springy, dense grasses. There's no room for error here.

The motorways such as M roads and A roads are slightly wider, but any interchange is handled by a roundabout. This is the British solution to traffic control that sends cars--which enter the roundabout from all directions--around in circles until something spins out the sides onto another route.

I'll admit, the combination of going from the dry air of the plane to air so thick with humidity that we could quite literally see it, sent me into the worst asthma attack I've ever had. So the first hour of our car trip from London to Norwich was spent convincing myself I wasn't having a heart attack (no pain) or another embolism (no panting or racing heart). So I figured I must have been having a panic attack, because admittedly, to find yourself hurtling along at 80 mph at the wrong side of the car on the wrong side of the road is a little disconcerting at first. It isn't the ideal introduction to driving or being driven in Britain. After a while I got the brilliant idea of using my inhaler, and within 15 minutes had great relief. Not having had an asthma attack like that in the past, I didn't recognize it when it happened. Now I know.

Along the way we drove through Surrey, Berskshire, Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire, Cambridgeshire (including the city of Cambridge, where we were briefly but happily lost), Suffolk, and Norfolk.

In the city of Norwich itself, with its twisting narrow streets, people park their cars right in the road. Note I didn't say on the street, but in it. Where there are cars are parked in your lane, you must to swerve into the oncoming lane in order to get by. The oncoming traffic, meanwhile, is forced to do the same thing. This gets to be quite thrilling in places. Every car should come with big rubber bumpers on all sides.

This morning, as we drove down single narrow lanes of cobblestone in the city center, barely wide enough for our sub-compact car, Graham and I talked about how I hadn't expected streets this narrow and this old. They look like something out of a movie, or from four-hundred years ago (which they are--the latter). I've been to London twice before and never saw anything like these streets. Then I realized, between the Great Fire of 1666 and the rebuilding that took place after, as well as the destruction of the Blitz, a large part of London has been rebuilt since Medieval times. Not so much in Norwich. This makes the architecture and the streets interesting and quaint, while being a PITA for the driver.

On that first morning we by-passed Norwich to go to Brundall to look at a houseboat on the River Yare, which we were considering as a place to live. We found it easily enough in spite of the directions we were given, but were disappointed in the boat itself. It was somewhat shabbier than the photos showed. The carpets were in need of cleaning, there were spider webs here and there, the bathroom and kitchen weren't clean, the chairs in the living area were stained. And there were a suspicious number of space heaters stowed in every room, as well as two lovely large square foil contraptions. Our hostess demonstrated how she props the foil squares in the windows of the living room at night to "keep out the damp." The boatyard itself was old and dirty and stank of fiberglass, and in between the buildings were piles of boards and junk, and one could picture how this would be a great setting for a murder story about a student returning home on a dark evening after classes at the university (my nubile coed days are long since gone).

The boat lady poos in the public bathrooms of the boatyard, and didn't seem remotely open to the idea of us using the toilet on the houseboat for all bodily waste functions, and hiring someone to pump it out for us regularly. I'm sorry, I can get used to a lot of things, and as a kid I spent whole summers camping in the back of beyond, using an outhouse in woods inhabited by bears. But having to poo in a boatyard bathroom, and putting my used toilet paper in the wastepaper basket in the boat's bathroom when I pee is more than I can face. I had to draw the line. Besides, there was no internet connectivity. We got out as soon as we could politely excuse ourselves, and drove back to Norwich.

Check-in for our hotel, The Beeches, wasn't until 4, and it was only just after 11. We drove around in a confused and tired daze for several hours. We tried in vain to find a quiet place to park and take a nap in the car, just to refresh and get a second or third wind. Finally we ended up in Castle Mall,  at the Phones 4 U shop (I call them "Phones R Us") trying to get cell phones that will work in the UK. The short part of the story is that there is no accessible SIM card in our old phones, so we couldn't switch them to UK SIM cards.

This brings up what I refer to as the Bermuda Triangle of Newcomers to Britain: You cannot get a month-to-month cell phone plan unless you have a UK bank account and a UK place of address. You cannot get a UK bank account unless you have a UK address and a UK phone. You cannot get a UK address until you have a UK phone and a UK bank account to move your damned money into.

We finally gave up for the day and drove to our hotel. I'll stop here for today, because that is a whole story in itself, and I don't want to lose you before we get to the good parts.

I am planning to open some sort of photo sharing file, because I am taking millions of photos, too many to post them all here each day. Check back, and I will tell you all about The Beeches, about the Roman Catholic Cathedral that was near our hotel (still is, it just isn't our hotel any longer, that's part of the story), and the incredible private garden next to it called Plantation Gardens, as well as our trip yesterday to Great Yarmouth, our amazing pub meal in Costessy, and our trip to the Hudson Valley so that I could do research for my Honors Thesis. It has been an amazing experience so far.

Waiting For Something to Happen Gets Old

I can't be the first woman on the planet to decide that house-cleaning is a futile exercise. It is every bit as Sisyphean a task as pushing a boulder up a steep hill every day, only to have it roll down as soon as you reach the top, before you have even finished wiping the grit off your palms. I was raised by a mother who kept a pretty faultless house, and she made it look easy. Perhaps this was helped by the fact that she had four kids. Each fall and spring we deep cleaned every niche and corner. We moved furniture, washed the wooden floors, washed the walls and the woodwork and windows and curtains. The shower doors and all wood were scrubbed with vinegar, and between that association and my years spent working in photographic darkrooms by the hour, the smell of vinegar--or glacial acetic acid--is a pleasant one to me, the way that some people like the smell of gasoline, or cow or horse manure. 

Even when I moved out of my parent's house, Saturday was about housecleaning. I spent hours with rubber gloves and a can of Comet, a duster and the vacuum and a spray bottle of Windex, a wad of clean paper towels stuck in my back pocket. I knew how to make my own fun. I always had the bizarre thought that if I were ever murdered at home on a Sunday, at least the police would have the perfect environment to look for fingerprints. But for me, an orderly house is about comfort. It is about safety and security, nesting and what the Danes call "hyggelig," or cozy, snug. My home is shelter from the world. If my home is in chaos, so is my heart and mind.

As we plan our move to the U.K. this summer, the whole process for the last two months has been about being up in the air and uncertain, the opposite, in fact, of hyggelig. I am a planner, a list maker and ticker of boxes as tasks are fulfilled. Yet I have had such conflicting information about which visa to apply for, what documentation is required to apply for any of the various visas, and who to ask for that documentation. An email to my host university takes more than a week to produce information, and the days slide by, one after the other, without any progress being made. An email to the UK Border Authority comes back with the reply, "Sorry, but we are not allowed to give advice about visas." The visa specialist who is supposed to be "helping" me through the process tells me one thing one week, and something different the next, and I don't know which bit of information is right. This is an exercise in frustration. I am the kind of person who makes a decision and is ready to go, standing at the door with my shoes on, my purse over my shoulder, and keys in hand, like a dog who hears the leash jingle.

Instead, we don't yet know if we are able to leave Tucson at the end of July--in twelve days--or if it will be at the end of August. We don't know whether to have the blow-out killer yard sale next weekend, only to find ourselves sitting on packing boxes and eating off paper plates for another month, or to wait. Buy plane tickets, or no? Tell our landlord this is finally it, or not quite? 

And it is too hot to make much of an effort, or for very long. It is a Sonoran desert summer during a time when extreme drought covers more than sixty per cent of the country. There may be no water falling from the sky, but sweat rolls off us with the least exertion. 

In the meantime, in half-hearted, dispirited bursts, we sort and pack, increment by increment. I don't want to pack away our wedding photos yet, or my pictures of my mother. But family heirlooms have been wound around tight with miles of bubble wrap, and put into the boxes that are stacked against the wall in our bedroom. In the living room, empty boxes are piled at the ready, folded into shape and their bottoms taped, or flattened and stored against the walls. The entranceway has doubled paper bags full of books earmarked for a trip to the used bookstore, or the hospice where Mom died and I was desperately grateful for something mindless and distracting to read. There are half-filled packages to mail. Videotape-sized mailing boxes that I keep putting out for the trash, and my husband keeps rescuing. An empty bread-machine box with "MOVING SALE" taped to its side.

Every object in my studio, which I sorted a month ago for a yard sale, is tagged with labels and prices. I type in the middle of a retail store of used goods, many of which I really don't want to part with. They are worth so little to anyone else, but precious to me. I have to part with my sewing machines, my felting machine, my boxes of wool and buttons and ribbons and supplies and tools. It would be less painful make a swift, brutal decision and watch these things go out the door, but to sit among them day after day is discouraging.

So it has come to the point where I no longer care to push the rock uphill. I see no point in straightening up the living room each day just so I can sit on a neat couch, surrounded by boxes and my husband's tools and a shelves full of things waiting for a yard sale that never happens. It will look like this again by evening. No point in making the bed. It will look like this again tomorrow morning. No point in rinsing the dishes that are stacked in the sink and loading them in the dishwasher. More dishes will replace them. Why wipe down the counters when in an hour one of us will come in and cut bread for a sandwich, and then walk away? I've scrubbed splatters of curry sauce off of the stove so many times, that I just can't be bothered anymore. I'll clean them when we leave.

Just give me a quiet corner with a good book, some knitting and weaving, a blank book and a pencil, and let me get lost in a different place and time, in a world where chaos is resolved in two-hundred pages, or I can make something of beauty and utility out of nothing, something that will last. Give me my corner where I can watch hawks float above our little canyon, and listen to Bud the Colorado River Toad sing songs of romance at night. Give me some news. Give me some resolution.

What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been

It has always been either one of my worst--or one of my best--characteristics, that throughout my life, every now and again I get a wild hair up my snout and decide to turn my world upside down. This was easier to accomplish when I was younger. In October of 1980, at twenty-two, all my worldly goods could fit into my beige '62 Beetle, Ophelia. Back then I could pack up and drive across the continental US from upstate New York to Berkeley via Phoenix with just a pair of finches in a bamboo cage, strapped into the passenger seat to keep me company.

I look at my travel diary from that trip and wonder if Bert and Louise Stegerman still run the Howard Hughes Motor Lodge in Greenfield, Indiana--but I suspect they don't--and wonder, also, if it is still as difficult to find ladies' sanitary items in the stores of Greenfield as it was on that apparently desperate afternoon nearly thirty-two years ago. I hope it is not.

I later moved to Tucson on a similar whim, started cosmetology school likewise, married a man I met through friends on the internet, started our own business, and, finally, went back to college at age fifty. Did I have a moment's trepidation before doing any of these things? A speck of time and a whiff of insight when I thought, Gee, what if this won't be as easy as I imagine? What if I hate the weather in Tucson, develop asthma because of my years of exposure to the chemicals used in cosmetology, which causes us to have to close our salon, and college in my fifties is rather stressful? (Note there are no doubts about the marriage or the husband.) Would I have done any of these things if I known?

I used to experience what I call Blinding Flashes of the Obvious: those moments when, like Wile E. Coyote, I understand I have stepped over the edge of the cliff, and I look into the camera with a thought bubble that reads, "Uh-oh!" I experienced this my first time snow skiing in high-school, when I realized: "Hey. Wait just one second. Here I am, whizzing down an icy hill with two boards strapped to my feet, and only these sticks with which to control my headlong, precipitous flight." This was just before I plowed face-first through the snow fence at the bottom of the hill, unstrapped and unbuckled myself, and told my friends, "I'll meet you in the lodge when you're finished."

Or the time a few years later, that last, green August before I left New York, when I was water skiing like a pro my first day out, enjoying the summer day, the sunshine, and the wonder of being me, before thinking, "Hey. Wait just one second. Here I am, standing on a board on the surface of a seemingly bottomless, black, cold lake (a lake probably fraught with long-necked reptilian monsters and the decaying bodies of other hapless water skiers of years past). I'm holding onto a rope, the other end of which is attached to a boat driven by an un-sober maniac, and flying across the lake at dangerous speeds." Needless to say, I don't rock-climb, sky-dive, travel by bus in third world countries, or eat ethnic foods.

I thought the sleepless nights and the zombie days of owning our own business had finally taught me not to leap into anything with thoughts of, "What the heck, other people do this all the time!" I thought I realized, at last, that I'm not like those people. I don't have the temperament or the intestinal fortitude to sleep three hours a night and run a Fortune 500 company brilliantly, or do brain surgery, or hold political office. My speed is slow, and usually couch-bound.

Yet here I've done it again. Here my husband and I are, about to set forth on another adventure of my devising. This fall, my penultimate semester in college, we plan to sell nearly everything we have, store the rest, and take off for Norwich, England, where I will do a semester abroad (wait until they see what their exchange has brought them. Do they send two twenty-seven year olds to take my place?) at the University of East Anglia. On the way we will stop in my hometown of Hyde Park, New York, so I can do research for my Honors thesis (oh, yeah, did I mention I thought I should take on an Honors program? Hmmm, I thought not).

Follow our adventures as we make our way east and north, to places where the overnight temperature dips below eighty degrees Fahrenheit, trees are more than overgrown shrubs, rain is not a spectator sport, and the architecture is more than ten years old. I have no clue what will happen. I suspect it won't always be as easy as I thought it would be. But I do know it's going to be an amazing ride.