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The price of a peeSeptember 2002
In the twelve wonderful days I had in England this month, there were some memorable highlights. On tour with Dad, I visited ancient Stonehenge and saw an original copy of the Magna Carta at Salisbury Cathedral. I spent a busy Friday getting a photo with David Beckham at Madame Toussaud's, taking in the view of London from the top of St Paul's Cathedral, and finally getting my mouth around the decent bit of steak I'd been missing this past year in Japan at a restaurant in Piccadilly. In the good company of old friends, I wandered through the streets and by the river in Oxford, knocked back a few pappadums in Nottingham, and caught a blockbuster musical in the city. And just when I thought I'd done it all, for the first time in my life, I paid to use a public toilet. Sensational! :)
I was a bit taken aback to find that it's 20p for a pee at London's Victoria Station. That's 40 yen or 60 Australian cents, in case you were wondering, though I heard that peeing at Harrod's will set you back a full pound and guess that at 20p I was getting a good deal. Of course, you can't spend your time in the UK converting everything to your home currency, you'll never get anywhere doing that. If I were able to find a decent job in London, then living there would be affordable and would deserve serious thought. Someday, I hope I will.
But I'm getting a bit ahead of myself. Let's backtrack to September 2 when I took off from Kansai International Airport in the morning and arrived at Heathrow a scant six hours later, arriving with time enough for dinner and a shower before going to bed. Met by my uncle, grandmother and Dad, who had flown in just an hour before me, the first thing that struck me about England was the English. Yes, it sounds stupid, but landing in a sea of understandable information after a year in the land of nonsense Engrish would leave you a bit gobsmacked, too. In fact, I didn't really get over it until I was back in Japan. It was just nice to understand everything.
The next thing that hit me was the space. Although there was lots of traffic, the roads and highways were truly spacious, as compared to what I am used to here on Shikoku. My uncle's flat in London had very tall ceilings - it's nice not to worry about ducking your head under every doorway. And when I was on the train or driving with Dad in the countryside between villages, all I could see were hills rolling on into the distance. An Australian calling England spacious is a bit out of order, perhaps, but your sense of distances contracts when you live in the mountains. It was good to be able to look somewhere and see the land fade into the horizon, just for a change.
Then it was the people. So many different sorts of people in London! Japan, for one reason or another, is still quite homogeneous - seeing someone who doesn't look Japanese is relatively rare - but London is the very definition of cosmopolitan. Sitting at a cafe in Victoria Station, just prior to my experience with the aforementioned loo, I found myself simply enjoying watching people go by. Dad might tell you that I was just looking at the girls, and he might be right, but it was the diversity of the crowd that got me wondering about what it would be like to live in London. Expensive toilets aside, this sort of cosmopolitan culture is just what I'll be looking for when my time in Japan is done.
Finally, I couldn't miss the architecture. There's something very quaint about England, cities and villages both, and a sense of history missing in Australia. However, I can only take so much of contiguous rows of cottages that all look the same. It's like the duplex housing estate craze that sprang up on the Gold Coast about 10 years ago, but such homes in Britain are older, more tightly packed, and even less variable. Other than that, the buildings generally have a lot of character. The fact that a lot of them were built in Queen Victoria's day only makes them more impressive.
Older and more impressive still was the Tower of London, where a few Queens of old lost their heads and the current Queen keeps her Crown Jewels. I'm glad I had the whole day free to see it - the Tower needed a good couple of hours to be fully appreciated. I could have spent another half hour basking in the twinkle of the Crown Jewels. Quite amazing.
September 5 was my Granny's birthday, the main reason for my trip, and it was blessed with clear skies. Granny lives in a beautiful old cottage in Reigate, south of London, sitting next to the lake and within walking distance of the town centre. She had the good company of family and friends to celebrate her 85th as we lunched and talked in the garden. I'd been hearing stories about my extended family in England for years, but only started piecing it together at this party. I was glad to learn that I share a few genes with such nice people. And I think Granny enjoyed the day, too. She certainly picked up a few presents before the day was done. It was good to see her after so long.
No sooner had we recovered from the party than I was on the train back to London to begin my weekend of catching up with old buddies. On Friday, Susie in London - great night on the town. On Saturday, Caitlin in Nottingham - a few good laughs over curry and beer. And then Sunday, Natalie in Oxford - fantastic place. It ended up being a lot of travel to get around and see these people, but it was well worth it.
Back to Reigate on Monday to meet another relative on the only rainy day I saw in the whole time I was in Britain. The next two days touring around the country with Dad were back to blue skies and great views - the morning at Stonehenge was particularly stunning. We were really very lucky to get such fantastic weather.
Driving around with Dad was great. We found the old house where he grew up in Bicester, just north of Oxford, and were kindly welcomed in by the current tenant for a quick nostalgia tour. Just the other side of Oxford is Radley College, a rather impressive boarding school where Dad studied for six years. Then we wound down to Newport to stay the night with a friend before kicking onto Stonehenge in the morning and beautiful Salisbury Cathedral that afternoon. We covered about 250 miles in two days on the road, not a bad effort.
After wishing Granny a fond farewell on Thursday morning, we hopped a train back to my uncle's place to take it easy before a big night at the Victoria Palace theatre. Andrew Lloyd Webber's latest musical, Bombay Dreams, opened there recently. My very well connected uncle Paul managed to pick up three seats at short notice, so I went along with Dad and Susie, and enjoyed a top night's entertainment. Having done a bit of Indian dancing myself, it was all a bit "natsukashii", bringing back some very fond memories of college. Well worth seeing.
All too soon, my last day in Britain dawned and brought us to one last mission. Dad and I trekked across town to the Family Records Office to try and find out where this Cowland-Cooper name came from in the first place. Thinking it would be easy enough to find birth certificates and work backwards, we found instead that getting a look at copies of documents like that takes both time and money. The only things freely accessible are the indices of births, deaths and marriages. After some painstaking cross-referencing, we managed to work back to my great-great-grandfather. He turns out, at our best guess, to be a Cooper. There are no Cowlands in the family, but it seems that my great-grandfather decided to add that bit some time before his marriage in 1909. The mystery that remains is when and why, which is something we might never know. It will have to wait until next we visit England.
The flight back to Osaka, via Seoul, left late in the evening England time and arrived early evening Japan time. It's about 13 hours in the air, all up, but I had to follow that with the five-hour journey back to the Iya Valley, and then back up for a school sports carnival on Sunday morning. It was a long haul, but I had a couple of days rest to prepare for Dad's visit. With only four days stopover in Japan, Dad just wanted to see where I live and take a ride on the bullet train. I managed to throw in a Japanese mountain driving experience second-to-none, quick visits to all of my schools, and a few drinks with my fellow teachers before he had to head home. And now I'm looking forward to heading home myself this December. It's just turned cold here - come on the Aussie summer!
Now that I'm back and preparing to teach again after a two month break, I can see why some people go away for a holiday in familiar territory and start wondering what the hell they're doing living in Japan. Thankfully, though, I've come back feeling pretty good about being here for a year or two yet. There's plenty to keep me busy and I even get to turn up to school on my birthday this Sunday, woohoo! Better get back to catching up on work.
Take it easy,
Dave