Longing for home

A friend of mine just posted this blog to FB and said that he thought he was just about going to curl up into a little green puddle of jealousy.

Even for me, "jealous" hardly covers my feelings:

"But, in all seriousness, my family and I are so blessed to be here. Some people dream of playing professional sports, some doctors, some teachers. For the last dozen years my dream job was to be a caretaker of a monastery. I remember the first guy I met with that job. For years I spun that pea around in my little head trying to figure out how to land that gig. And here I am."

A few years ago I visited a friend at Christmas time who lives in a caretaker's apartment built into the old servants' quarters of a 17th century National Trust stately home in Scotland. I don't remember ever wanting a gig that much. Then it got worse. I was taken on a little tour of the estate grounds, and got to see the large walled "kitchen garden" that was about 1/2 an acre but completely unused. It was just bare raised beds and an empty glass house. I was told that the Trust was looking for someone to hire to start gardening here again.

Then, if you can imagine it, it got even worse when my friend introduced me to the "estate naturalist" - who proceeded to show us where there were barn owls nesting - and I thought I was going to have an envy-aneurysm and just drop dead of acute longing right there on the spot.

When I lived in England I gave some very serious thought to going to a local agricultural college and taking their two-year countryside and wilderness conservation programme. All hands-on, outdoorsy work, building stone walls, laying hedges, learning botany and zoology... I still kind of yearn for it.

Since my visit to Scotland, I've moved to Norcia, which is pretty darn nice, I have to admit. But in truth, it's not my natural habitat. I'm fine with that, and there are of course loads of compensations but Italy will forever be a foreign exile for me. Britain, cold, rainy, overcast, drizzly Britain - with black pudding and fried mushrooms for breakfast and the smell of coal fires wafting through the crisp November air - is where I'm from, down to the level of my DNA. I won't ever stop wishing I could go back, go home, even if I never actually do it.



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Cheshire drawl

When I listen to this, it's like being briefly transported back to my childhood. 1972 was the year we went back to England. And then when we came back to Canada again, Grandma listened to Coronation Street every day.

(Note, in Grandma's house, we didn't watch, we "listened" to television programmes. The television was often referred to absentmindedly as the "wireless". When people wonder how I ended up being such a temporal anomaly, a walking anachronism one might say, five minutes glimpse into my upbringing would answer all questions. It's often the way with colonials, we tend to live in time-bubbles. While the mother country moved on, Victoria and the Island was stuck in a kind of temporal amber. Sadly, it's since broken free and caught up. There's no going back via that route, unfortunately.)

Accent is still a huge deal in Britain, with the way you speak marking you in both your region and your class. Children with an accent considered "lower class" or from an unfashionable region are still ridiculed and even bullied, and not by other kids, but by teachers! When this happened in the village school to one of my little cousins, who grew up in Blackburn, Lancashire, I was beside myself with rage, and had to be stopped from marching down to the school to tear a strip up one side his teacher and down the other.

With my Canadian accent, no one seemed to know where I fit, and it was rather nice because, being outside the scale, I was accepted by everyone.

In my family, that is to the very bottom of its collective gene pool from Cheshire and Manchester, I was a bit of an oddity. One of my cousins, known for his bluntness and at the age of about ten, I think, said one day, "Well, you're posh." I responded that it might be so, but it wasn't my fault. He graciously agreed.


But when I was little, I sounded pretty much exactly like this kid.

One day, I was riding the train into Rome and a big group of tourists came on and they all spoke with the Manchester accent, and I couldn't resist talking to them. We got on famously.



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Love the English!

Just found these. When I was little, I had the same accent as the two dogs, husband and wife, on the sofa. It's Cheshire. I sounded like a child extra from Coronation Street.

This video made me laugh and cry in equal parts, and generated such a pang of homesickness for Cheshire and the Fam that I looked around the flat and started wondering briefly how much it might cost to rent a big van and just drive me and the stuff and Winnie back again.


Me and Uncle Mike, Sept. 2007



The gang in the garden on Sophie's 11th birthday...

We could camp in the van for a bit...Maybe get a flat in Chester...

But then, Council Tax...

Sigh...



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Life in the country

I really miss the English country.

The Countryside Alliance does good work.


And check out those cool Welsh accents!



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Autumn in the Hedge

Also, honourable mention, and a silver star, for the Evil Vicar who sent me a note last night yesterday some day recently from a really far-away time zone:

How did you know that we all wanted to live in the Brambly Hedge books? I did once have a source for them. Let me see if I can dig it up again.

But only silver because I do seem to recall a similar promise regarding a certain Young Fogey's Handbook, that never materialised.

I'm still trying to find an online copy of the Brambly Hedge picture I have framed in my apartment. My cold, marble-floored Italian apartment. Not a lot of gingham or tiny floral pattern stuff in this country.

The picture is of the place I hope to wake up in when I've breathed my last. It is of a large room in one of the Brambly Hedge houses, a four poster bed, tea under the cozy steaming from the spout, toast in the toast rack, sun streaming in past the fireplace. My archetypal vision of home.

I've never really been all that keen on heaven, at least not as it is usually depicted. I don't think the Glorious Amazing Magnificalness of the Heavenly Hosts praising God in his Glorious Amazing Wonderfulness really does it for me.

I'm more a feet up by the fireplace with a good book sort of person. With maybe a daily walk through the heavenly version of the Cheshire fields and tea with the little old ladies after Evensong.

Where do I sign up for that afterlife? Maybe in the Brambly Hedge afterlife, I could finally get around to memorizing some poetry.


UPDATE:

SCORE!!

Thanks Sue! What would I do without my loyal readers?!



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England England England

Well, I'm off. Two weeks. Oooo...

Stilton. Fry-ups. English bacon. Black pudding. Fish, chips and mushy peas!...

Oh baby!

Six more sleeps

Cheshire's area is 2,343 square kilometres (905 sq mi) and its population is just over a million.

And on that cheery note...

Talked to my Uncle Mike today. First time in way too long. Just to give him my flight times to Manchester. I can't tell you how good it was to hear a homey Manchester accent.


Here's something to cheer you up. Toffs on parade.

Gawd, but I miss England!

Going back over in a couple of weeks...

making a list of things to buy to bring back a little shred of civilisation


one of which will be all the back issues of the Chap and the Oldie that I can get.

And a bottle of Bovril. And a supply of lamb Oxo.

And I'm gonna hit the charity shops.

Mmmmm...

old stuff...



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Winter

I'd just like to say that I really really REALLY miss living in a temperate zone. Palm trees and orange and olive trees are all very well for a holiday, but they get pretty tired pretty fast.

The Cup of Tea of Peace

["Seraphic" hmmmm...have to assign an O's P -friendly pseudonym here, I think. I'll call her...]

Janet has a very amusing post about how to actively participate in the Tea n' Snax after a Trad Mass in England. (Part of a series, I guess)

...there is a time for socialising, and it is both BEFORE and AFTER Mass, not DURING.

Some of the rudest Novusordinarian experiences I have ever had were at a Nervous Disorder Masses in England. I was shocked. I generally remain kneeling through the whole thing on the occasions when I am forced to go to them, and especially give off, as hard as I can the "please don't bother me with your annoying hand-shake o' peace" signals. But there I was, mantilla pulled down over eyes, kneeling with hands together praying [admittedly praying to be left alone] and I suddenly feel someone's clammy hand reaching under the lace, grabbing my hand and yanking it out for a shake.

"Peace be with you" she said. "It was, thanks" I replied.

Un-fricken-BELIEVABLE.

And there is a place for socialising, and it is OUTSIDE the quiet House of Prayer, not INSIDE.

When forced to attend Mass at the hovel in Tattenhall, I used to escape the ear-splitting racket that was normal behaviour before Mass by standing around outside reading my Mass devotional. It unnerved them, I think.

Instead of the Kiss of Peace, Trids have the Cup of Tea of Peace,

Habit they appear to have picked up nicely from the Anglos. Anglican tea n' snax after err... the "service", was so nice and so friendly in Halifax, it almost made me start imaginging going over...well not really.

and by the end of Mass, you need it. All that active participation, that paying attention to booklet, sheet, men's schola, priest and your own interior disposition is EXHAUSTING. So off you go in the tea ladies' wake, digging once again in your wallet or bag to find a heavy coin with which to buy a copy of your favourite Catholic newspaper on the way.

Strangely, after Tridentine Masses The Tablet goes untouched [heh].

You leave the church with some trepidation, for, lo, Triddies have a reputation for being mean people. Will they beat you to death when you emerge? But no, there is John gulping down cigarette smoke as fast as he can, while talking to me...

In the parish hall, the Trids cluster around the tea table for tea or instant coffee and a biscuit and then reluctantly drift away to sit at tables in the room.

OK, important English etiquette note here for ... well, let's face it ... Americans visiting Masses in England. It's all about the approach.

This being BRITAIN, there is no forced jollity or joining of groups of strangers with a whoop and a "Hai, Ah'm Sally Sue, and Ah'm new heah!" Instead there is a lot of standing around and looking shyly at the various groupings until one has judged which grouping one might safely and politely join without embarrassment to all.

Homesick 2

I'm homesick.

Ohhhh, I don't want no more of army life! I want my little house.







We've had about two weeks of rain in this part of Italy. The Tiber has gone down quite a bit in the last few days and it seems to have slowed down, but I discovered that the apartment leaks.

Through. The. Walls.

Yes, the water, pelting down for days at a time, has actually just seeped through the ridiculous walls of our flat, that seem to have been constructed of cardboard and plaster, and into my room. Santa Marinella is supposed to be a summer resort town, where you are supposed to live out doors on the terrace for the most part, and only for a couple of months at a time. It is certainly not a place for those of us with hobbitish tendencies.