An American family of four walked into the tube. They marched into their seats in two files like paratroopers. The father had picked up a ragged copy of The Sun from his seat and now opened it. His eyes widened, his hands twitched, his wife leaned over and squealed. He closed it quickly, and folded it neatly.

The kids wanted to see. The parents tried to talk them out of it. Some mild psychological wrestling ensued and the children won. (when do they not?) The kids pulled back the front page. The little girl was terribly confused, her younger brother was horrified.

What a strange place England must seem to an American.

---//---

On the paper today:

Sure, I bet that's exactly what she said.

 At the British museum:

     I saw a lady try to describe and explain what the animals were on the gryphon bowl to a blind man. He was a sixty year old American with long grey hair and his dog smelled around the bird's lion-paws with half a mind at giving them a little polish. It was the most commonplace poetic thing I've witnessed in a long time. 

     I played hide and seek with a little girl in a long red coat all along the Enlightenment Room (to which I'm quite partial, especially during the last minutes before they close down the museum). I think I won.

     A grandfather from India, trying to pose with three of the Nereids, sat on my back and didn't move until the picture was taken.

     An old lady took to talking to me in Brazilian and was quite surprised that I understood her. I'm not very sure why she was speaking in Brazilian to a presumed Englishman. She was very friendly and introduced me to her daughter after that and I wished her happy travelling, which is really the second best thing somebody can wish on anybody else, I think. She was just starting a Classical Tour, like the Innocents of Twain's time. She was happy to be visiting Paris but absolutely hysterical about going to Rome where she was going to see the Pope. I didn't mention the man's nationality. It seemed like the politest way to go about.

     I thought I was going to be attacked by an escaped wild ram. I wasn't.

 Horary by Frederick Muller, Enligthenment Room

Gryphon Bowl, Enlightenment Room

 

What I thought was going to happen, but didn't.

In a Pub at Glastonbury, it was suggested I may be interested in Paulo Coelho. It was more or less inevitable.

"He says, right there in the opening page, that the language is symbolic, so you can't take his stories for their face value. But they're books crammed in with revelations and lessons and he does deal a lot in stuff that you're interested, the bizarre, the occult."

"Sure, sure. But I can't read Paulo Coelho," I excuse myself. "It's like having sex with a hooker. No matter how good it is,  you'll never look at yourself the same way."

"So, where did you come from?" the man who yelled at his phone asked the posh lady.

"Glastonbury," she told him. You wouldn't believe it if you saw her, all poisture and poise, fine gloves, peacock makeup, brand-new pink carry-on, but it was true. She had been getting on and off all the same stations as we were and we had boarded that first bus six hours away.

"Glastonbury? It must be like a nuthouse over there!" He lived half an hour away but he had never been. It's not the kind of place you go to if you're sane and practically sober.

No, it's a town for those who walk with chicken-hats on, for blonde troubadours with tye-dye ponchos, for hitch-hikers and hippy-van owners, for sixteen year old single mothers and their beautiful babies dressed like maharajas in Indian rags, for people who sell crystals to buy drinks, for men who don't believe the Russian beard fell out of fashion after the 19th century and for men who only wear them because it did. England's Berkeley, New-Age, spiritual, crazy Glastonbury: a town for the rest of us.

The busker was sitting on a step, huddled between two buildings, doubled over a three-stringed guitar, in front of one of the many black-beamed, fishermen pub of this fisherman town (more on it in a later post, perhaps). He had almost no hair, except for a dirty mohawk which had collapsed like a breaking wave. He hammered the strings and the guitar wailed out in pain. He yelled in a raven's breaking voice:

"Ding, dong! The witch is dead, the witch is gone!"

If I had known he was announcing old Thatcher's death, like that - somewhere between a medieval herald and a fool - I might have flicked a pound his way. But at the time I didn't think much of it and walked away.

He was the first in the town to know. The news hit the rest of Penzance six hours later, over the local radio news report at the end of the day. It just goes to show, doesn't it, that old Sherlock's sources are still as sharp as ever.

Walking out of the cold and into the railway station's café, to have a cup of hot chocolate just before the first flurry of snow starts to fall: these are some of the little things that make us smile.

At the top of Glastonbury Tor there stands a lonely church tower, the only thing still standing of an old and tragic abbey. It had open doors on both sides and walking up them, these look like gateways to the sky.

There was a red-faced angry child there and he shouted at his mother and he slapped his little brother. A vicious little punk: the kind the Telegraph prints pictures and stories of on its Benefits Scandals witch-hunts.

At one point, this eight year old with anger management issues jumped up and started running down the path. His mother called after him but he kept running, he ran right past us and went straight for the edge of the hill. The ground fell at a steep angle through a herd of sheep to the small brick town.

“Careful,” his mother said. “If you fall, you’ll only stop in town. And the sheep will eat you.”

Hands on his hips, his little eyes shining on his red red face. Don’t be ridiculous, he scoffed at her. “Sheep don’t eat people. They eat bacon!”

Salisbury was empty and closed. Shop after shop, one street after the other. A city after a hurricane and an English town during a bank holiday aren’t as different from each other as one would expect.

As soon as we saw the cathedral, we did what anybody else would have done and set out to find a pub. We found The New Inn, which was really anything but new. It had everything you want in a pub: ceiling beams, good red ale, hot food, and beautiful young barmaids rating solid sevens and eights on the wench scale, with serious revealing tops, and so much to show, the kind that make old men smile behind their pipes in the utmost satisfaction and say: “ah, the English way of life.”

About a quarter of the villagers was there too: the families, a few couples, and a handful of men in shirts and pullovers who talked about rugby and golf. One of the finer pubs so far.

Ah, the English way of life.