Day 10

An All Saints Day

Let me tell you a little about my Sunday. I went to three churches, attended two and a half services and an organ recital.

I attended my usual service at St Augustine's Church Highbury New Park from 10:30-12. Actually, I stayed until 12:30 talking. It is Anglican, but clearly a believer’s church, very friendly, informal and family friendly. Lots of kids. Great pastor about my age.

My comment, “Anglican but clearly a believer’s church” comes from my background, I am afraid. We used to say, with a large hint of incredulity in our voices, “he’s Catholic, but he’s a Christian.” We often treated main-line denominations this way, sometimes as a matter of course. Living in London and attending St. Augustine’s has been humbling for me in this respect.

Before service at St. Augustine’s, I attended Mattins at an old old church abutting Clissold Park, a 10 minute walk from our flat. We have gone many times after dinner to walk the paths. We passed this old church building many times, and I wanted to see the inside, but the gates have always been locked. So I noted the service time in case I should have opportunity in the future.

Yesterday I went.

Mattins is a service of prayer, hymns, liturgy, and Bible readings. The term as I understand it essentially refers to the time of day, morning, and indicates worship. I walked in at 9, midway into the first hymn. There were four of us in the pews, all older people, as one might expect. I was the only young person there, but my white hair helps me disguise it. Then there was a priest leading the service and directing the liturgy, and also an organist.

The interior is tiny, with latched doors on the well worn pews, cracks in the plaster on the walls, marks of use everywhere, and different building materials. Columns made of sand stone on one side, red bricks on the other; to the front, wood panels about five feet high with faded gold-painted inscriptions below the stained glass window showing Mary and the Christ child.

I sat in the last pew, trying to be inconspicuous, clumsy as I was finding my way through the book of common prayer, the hymnal, the order of service, and the liturgy pamphlet. Too many things for a plainspoken Baptist to handle; too many places to look. Five rows ahead of me, the other three congregants occupied the front row!

To my great amazement, in this tiny place, being played with great skill and sensitivity by a man with a great grey beard and a tweed jacket, was a pipe organ!

Anyway, I felt the service, strange as it was to me, was spiritually meaningful. I prayed for many people, including myself, during intercession time. The word of scripture spoke to me.

Originally built in 1563 to replace an earlier church on that site dating from 1100, St. Mary’s had taken a direct hit during the Nazi blitz, now 70 years past. The demolished brick wall was replaced with sandstone blocks. The other male congregant told me the post-war rebuilders had done a poor job, so the church was raising money to reconstruct the reconstruction.

He noted that St. Mary’s is one of very few surviving Elizabethan churches. Besides dating from Shakespeare's era (!), I found his little footnote both puzzling and humbling. Puzzling because of the destruction and rebuilding: How much need be saved to let us say the church “survives”?

Humbling because uncounted generations of believers, the Church itself, have worshiped in that place.

In the late afternoon I went to St Paul's Cathedral, which is very very high church. Huge, ornate, prosperous, well maintained, impressive and noteworthy in many respects. And clearly, too, a believer’s church, although one might miss that for all the magnificence.

What I missed was the early part of Evensong because the buses run less frequently on Sundays and I had not accounted for a travel delay.

This service, too, was without a sermon. Most of it was sung by an all male choir, professional essentially, which sounded other worldly in that huge space. After Evensong I stayed for an organ recital, which was compelling and profound. I say as much even though organ is not always my favorite instrument.

My notebook records this: The organ fills the enormous space like a deep and prolonged thunder on a hot summer afternoon. One has the feeling that a great dark bank of clouds should be rolling in. We expect the ray of sunlight to break through. I look up and the word GREATNESS on a gold background seems to jump out at me.

When it ended, I was somehow both energized and exhausted.

Then I walked several miles through center London to the spot where I often pick up the 19 bus home. I could have taken another bus from right outside St Paul's, but it had stopped raining and dusk had not descended. And I needed to walk. I needed time for my day of worship to work itself out in my heart.

Day 9

Welcome to London

My first memories of Russia include a certain unpleasantness.

We had been primed for customs when we landed in Moscow. Stand in line, papers in hand and in proper order. Keep your mouth shut. Certainly no joking or horsing around.

Border crossing in our time has become a exacting, tense experience. Even the US - Canadian border at the Peace Bridge in Buffalo, that used to be "Hi" and "U.S." to the citizenship question, now requires a passport and twenty no nonsense questions -- if you are lucky. If you very lucky, the Canadian customs agent will give you a smile too.

But in Russia it is all serious business, even though, I am told, things have lightened up considerably. Step up to the booth when the soldier inside signals. Hand him the passport, visa, and entry declarations. Know how much money you are carrying when he asks so you don't have to dig it out and count it. Smile if you can't help it -- they expect that from Americans -- but no jokes.

So we did that, one at a time, as summoned. The soldier turned out to look extremely young. He may have been a teenager, for all I know. But for any child of the cold war, as I am, the familiar Russian military uniform is sobering regardless of the person wearing it. The difference between Russian Federation and Soviet Union seems negligable as you stand there rigid with concentration. This was 2004, but it could have been 1964 for the residual fears that somehow bob to the surface. A few tense moments while he examines the paper and looks you in the face, then relief when he waves you through.

Once through, the first thing we wanted was a bathroom. Relief from all that tension comes in many forms. And we had a long ride ahead of us. We had heard the toilet stories and had been told to expect the worst.

The bathroom when we found it tucked in under a set of stairs reminded me of older sections of the New York City subway system. A whole lot better, all in all, than the-hole-in-the-floor stories we had been treated to; however dated, this was a good bathroom.

So, I had taken my turn and was waiting to wash my hands in the sink when an old man lurched through the door, staggered over to the lone sink, and vomited into it with great force and noise.

Stunned, we all stepped back as the old man, with his long white hair, long white beard, and dark clothes, layered and deeply soiled, straightened up and lurched back out the door.

So, my friends: Welcome to Russia.

I was reminded of that sobering experience Tuesday morning on the streets of London. I was returning from Heathrow, where my wife had just left for home to see a new grandchild into the world, and had decided to walk through center London to pick up a knife-sharpening steel at John Lewis.

Heading down Tottenham Court Road in the general though distant direction of Foyles, the landmark book store, I encountered twenty-five young people pulling large suitcases traveling slowly in the same direction and effectively obstructing the sidewalk. Feeling confident from my four weeks as a Londoner and, no doubt, a tad amused at that familiar initial suitcase hauling ordeal, I made my way to the front of the suitcase crowd by side-stepping and moving up into gaps.

I had just reached the front of the crowd, where an efficient sounding young woman was shouting directions toward the sluggish stragglers, when a tall young man coming toward us, suddenly bent over and vomited with great force and noise in the middle of the sidewalk.

He was almost upon us, I might add. I managed to avoid splatter by hopping to the side.

I turned quickly to gauge for myself if the young man was sick. He straightened himself, mostly, and staggered forward. I recognized on his face the same mask of drunkenness I had seen on the old drunk in Moscow, the same flushed skin, at once abnormally pink and colorless, the same concentration of the eyes that focus on nothing but the next step, the same set jaw and fixed mouth as if grim determination will get them through just this one more time. His sports jacket and slacks had the sheen and varigated staining of many nights on the ground.

Many things might be said here, but they've been said before. And those who need to hear them most aren't listening just now. The differences between the young drunk in London and the old drunk in Moscow -- or the ones I used to walk past sleeping in doorways in San Francisco -- are almost incidental compared with the damning similarities.

Oh, my young friends, no one starts out thinking he -- or she -- will end up a public drunk. But sure as you are reading this tale to its end, when you reach that point, the rest of us will have only one option -- to step aside and move away as quickly as possible.

Day 8

Villages and Cow Paths

The appeal of London is legion, varied, and personal. It is also, sometimes, self-contradictory: what draws one may also be what repels.

One aspect of the city that I have found fascinating as well as difficult is the apparently unplanned layout of roadways. A younger me might call it "random."

A few days ago, my wife and I went in search of St Martin's Theatre, hoping for a matinee of The Mouse Trap, an Agatha Christy mystery play that has been running continuously for 58 years. St. Martin's is in the heart of the theatre district, just a short walk from the National Gallery, Trafalgar Square, and Charing Cross -- landmarks I have used many times already to orient myself as I head out for other places.

We found St. Martin's without a lot of fuss -- but no matinee for The Mouse Trap. Just steps away, however, we discovered the Ambassadors Theatre with Stomp on the marquee and a matinee about to begin. As Stomp was also on our short list, we bought tickets and went inside. Our seats were perfect in every way in terms of seeing the performance, but were clearly built for people closer to my wife's height, 5'4", than to my own six foot one.

I don't know how genuinely tall people manage the short spaces between rows of seats in places like this; but once I had gotten myself wedged in and the seats next to us filled, I was locked in. I need movement to keep my joints from hurting, but there was none here. In a 100 minute performance of wordless drumming, dancing, and pantomimed vignettes I was not able to get into it with so much as a toe tap. The theatre was cramped and temporarily crippling, but the show itself was nothing short of masterful entertainment -- precise, inventive, funny, and astonishingly performed.

When we emerged from the theatre both energized and exhausted, we decided to wander around the neighborhood shops before heading home. Ambassadors Theatre is on one of seven street that converge at a roundabout, or circus, called Seven Dials. Cars zip through the intersection as though randomly syncronized. The shops, small and ecclectic, offer interesting displays.

We wandered about, ducking into a few book stores (because we are readers) and into a few toy stores (because we are grandparents). We found a store with inexpensive books, rare in central London, so we bought a few (because, in fact, you can never have enough).

Tired now both from theatre and from discovering this new, interesting neighborhood, we tried to find our way out -- but couldn't. We knew we were only a 3 or 4 minute walk from Charing Cross Road and another 3 or 4 minute walk to the bus stop we wanted, but it took us a good twenty minutes to find our way. We were thoroughly disoriented.

Initially the problem involved locating familiar street signs. That is a story in itself. Some streets are a hundred feet long. Or less. Many appear essentially unmarked. Many are bisected at odd angles by other tiny streets or alleys. I am good with maps, but the map I was carrying omitted many of the streets and alleys because there are simply too many for space. The detail is overwhelming.

Then once we managed to locate Charing Cross Road, I could not tell which direction I should head. I had gotten so thoroughly turned around, I could not make my way even though I had managed from that very spot many times. In such circumstances, I am generally able to use the sun to give me headings -- that is the country boy in me -- but here too I was lost. In late afternoon, with partial clouds, in a canyon of five or six story buildings, I could not tell with certainty where the sunlight was coming from.

Guidebooks explain the layout of London by giving capsule versions of London history, which by American standards is very long and very complicated. We don't commonly have the patience.

But I have another explanation, which if not entirely historical at least allows me to imagine how the city came by its present layout. I live in a village in western New York that owes its present shape to its geography, that is, to its many hills and to the river that runs through the valley. It also owes its shape to its main industries, namely, dairy farming, the canal and railroad that once ran through and beside the river, and education, the college and secondary school that have given the village purpose and focus for the last 125 years.

My village, Houghton, has a logical layout only in relation to its geography and its present industry. Multiply this village by one thousand, fill in the farmland and the hills between Houghton and Fillmore to the north and Belfast to the south with new villages, each with its own road-shaping industries. Then double, triple, quadruple the population of each village in the process. Build rows of houses where single houses stand and business along the central streets. Let the towns grow into one another.

Eventually, you will have a metropolitan area that resembles the labyrinth of London.
My ninety year old London neighbor explained the London tangle this way in response to my comments about London roads: "Oh, they're all paved over cow paths, you know."

I have never seen cows wandering through my home village, but I can imagine it easily enough. Our agriculatural past is still present at the edge of town. I have a harder time imagining London developing from the city planning of cows.

Still, my neighbor claims to have lived in the same flat for 69 years. That ought to be long enough to know a place. Long enough to have weighed the charms against the frustrations of London street. History may be more complicated than that but who am I to argue?

Day 7

Drive on the Left, Look Right

There are no intersection lights in the village I have lived in for a quarter century. For us, a busy intersection is hitting a stop sign before someone else has pulled away, requiring we stop twice. On the open road, we occasionally find ourselves behind a "local" driver, which you can take here as a disparaging label bordering on name calling. Such people require us to slow down to a safe speed comfortably under the speed limit. I say this despite the fact that I have been around long enough to be considered local, however much I may still fancy myself an outsider.

Or, because I live in countryside where the Amish have farms and communities, I frequently find myself slowing for little black buggies on the back roads. Well, to be honest, all the roads are "back roads," but that is my point. For a country boy like me, any real traffic requires adjustment. So, going off to London presents certain road "challenges."

Received wisdom in America is that the British practice of driving on the left creates two problems: one is learning to look right instead of left for on-coming traffic and the other is driving on what for us is the awkward side of the car. These are not unique problems for Americans; many other countries drive on the right, that is to say, correct, side of the road.

That the British drive where they do and with as much ease and instinct is, perhaps, a further reason to admire the British mind. A little voice in the head seems to say, "They are superior, you know."

In our two and a half weeks here, the traffic problem seems to me not so much that vehicles drive opposite as that drivers are always apparently in a hurry and they show up at the precise instant you step into the street. Sometimes they seem to appear out of nowhere, even after you have looked right/left/right/left/right as required by mothers everywhere. A trip anywhere with my wife involves one of us grabbing a sleeve to pull the other back from the brink of collision. We call these "near death" experiences.

One conclusion I have drawn is that the "look right" advice is essentially irrelevant. Or at least insufficient. Speed, as I have already indicated, is a bigger danger. Speed and the tendency of drivers to do the in-and-out lane change. The in-and-out combined with the out-and-around keep the stakes high. Drivers have a sense of privilege everywhere, but one senses that here maybe more than other places drivers are primitive and primal. Shut the door on that little motorized capsule and an ordinarily gentle soul turns feral.

And then there are the narrow roads. One of the strangest experiences I have had so far is to have a bus pass within inches of my arm as I walked along the sidewalk next to the curb. It is surprising at first. It has made me jump, although the jumping demonstrates just how slow reaction is to these dangers -- you jump after the bus passes. This, too, feels like a near death experience.

None of this is frightening, I have found. In fact, the sudden rush of a double-decker blowing past my shoulder is, I hesitate to suggest, exhilirating. As a parent and teacher I do not have to tell you that my reactions in themselves raise concern. Am I at risk of becoming a danger junkie? Will I find myself some weeks into this London experience daring traffic with ever more risky attempts to walk on the edge, to cross ever more daring though invisible lines? Am I the pedestrian daredevil?

To counter my little secret, I advise my charges to be cautious, to pay attention, to stay on the curb until the little green man replaces the little red man.

Be a good pedestrian and live longer.

And forget driving. I am going to do everyone a favor and ride the bus.

Day 6

Adjustments

In America, common responses to news that you are planning travel to England usually begin with "how exciting!"

If the exchange lasts long enough to require details, you have done well. Between "how exciting!" or its cousin "Are you excited?" you might encounter an array of similar questions or comments regarding nuggets of smoothed up truth about jet lag, the high cost of staying/eating/living in London, and the abnormality of driving on the left. And as the conversation ends, you might well hear, "Well, at least they speak the same language!"

I am chagrined to admit I may have uttered these sentiments myself in some earlier incarnation.

At the same time, in America, "at least they speak the same language" is a bit of a joke. Like many commonplaces it requires that we laugh together. Socially it allows us to have a conversation, getting around the inevitable foot shuffling by providing common ground, however predictable that may be.

Embedded somehow in our "common" and predictable understanding is the correct notion that English American-style and English British-style are dogs of contrasting breeds. Or at least dogs of different temperament. Whether we can name it or not we all instinctively embrace playwright Bernard Shaw's famous comment that "England and America are two countries separated by a common language."

I have thought about the language question a great deal in the week we have been in London. Language is different here -- it is pronounced differently, it is used differently, it employs a different vocabulary. But the differences in language that a rural New Yorker like me encounters in London is about the same as the differences I would face moving to Atlanta, say, or to New Orleans, where I would still sound funny speaking my English and where I would still have to listen carefully to understand what the locals are saying. These are not at all like the differences in language I encountered in Russia in 2004, where even the few phrases we had practiced beforehand did little to move barriers. For Russia our tranlator was the most important person in the world. In England, an American sometimes needs patience, imagination, and focus -- things we don't necessarily cultivate at home.

What I think is really at issue here is not so much language problems, although I have encounterd some, as it is language adjustment. In fact, the principle issue of travel would seem to be one of adjustment itself. And adjustment, it seems clear, is primarily a matter of attitude.

Think of the areas of adjustment already mentioned. Jet lag, for instance, is adjustment of the body's wake/sleeping cycle. Insignificant for some, debilitating for others, and minor discomfort for most, but temporary for all. The high cost of living requires an adjustment, or rather constant adjustments, of priorities and resources and expectations. Cost, of course, is a constant and complicated issue requiring complex responses, unless you are one for whom money is never an concern, whereas jetlag is fairly simple and of no consequence after 48 hours or so.

A short list of differences that have arisen for us that do not make the casual conversations in America might begin with the difficulty of making cookies. Yes, that's right, cookies. In short order I finished off the cookies we brought along to fuel the flight over or to fend off starvation should we get stranded in a waiting room somewhere for days on end. The flight was not good to the cookies. They had begun to crumble and were nearing their expiration date, so I had to finish them off the day after we arrived. What can I say?

Well, in order to make cookies we needed to buy ingredients, a task that required we find a grocery store and then find ingredients in the grocery store that fit the recipes my wife has used for decades. Brand, packaging, units of measure, placement in store (what logic will simplify the hunt?) all come into play on top of the questions of supply (do they have a product called shortening?) and what is in the package itself once you find it. After my wife had conducted a time consuming, diligent, but unsuccessful search for "stew beef" in one of the larger markets we have been in, I took over the hunt. Eventually I located a package well above her eye level marked "stew beef." Having never seen it uncut at the grocer's before, we had to study the package carefully before concluding that it was likely the same cut of beef we had always known.

So shopping requires a bit of detective work, considerable imagination, and not a little time and energy. At least at first. But we are managing -- even without chocolate chips as we have always known them.

Note how things are, do not assume that the familiar forms and methods are necessarily superior, experiment to see what works for you, be flexible and adaptable -- these are the stuff of adjustment. Pay attention. Above all, have a sense of humor: be able to laugh at yourself. These are the ingredients of successful adjustment.

I may have to return to the issue of driving on the wrong side -- that is, driving on the left -- but in the meantime we getting by. We are making do. One has to make the best of it, you know.