Sore Roots Trip Log--Day 2: Knackered and Soggy
Robert & Laura
Sore Roots Trip Log--Day 2: Knackered and Soggy
April 9, 2012
Okay, we're getting the hang of this "British" thing now: no coffee, no internet, but lovely people who are sometimes "knackered."
7:00 am
We're staying in what is usually the Girls Dormitory for the Kingham Boarding School. If you, like us, grew up in the US, this probably calls forth visions of hallways lined with identical rooms (so nobody can argue about who got the better room) and centralized shower and toilet facilities.
"Ha ha," says England, "We're not going to fall prey to any of that Standardization nonsense! It's all pish-tosh!"
Nothing about this dormitory is standard. To get to our room, you first go up a flight of stairs that's barely wider than we are, and almost as steep as what you find on Naval warships. Then you open a door, take a jog to the left to pass the first dorm room, then the kitchen, then up a step and a yard later back down a step past the second room. Jog right around some kind of chimney, and go through another door (step up) and then jog left again and you're there!
We keep expecting to find cheese in our room as our reward for finding it each time.
There are at least four restrooms that we've found so far and every one of them is different. The two next to our room consist of one with a tub, toilet and shower. The other (co-ed one) consists of two cubicle showers and a cubicle toilet.
Oh, and the hot water from the tap is about 300 degrees (none of that nanny-state nonsense for our sturdy and scalded Brits!), and there's a hot water tap and a cold water tap, so the best move is to put the plug in the drain, start the hot water, start the cold water and then catch a train back to London and take a shower at a hotel.
After he gets cleaned up and properly scalded, Robert heads out on foot for the "town" of Kingham, which according to all authorities (Google, the School, the British Government) is a mile down the one and only road. They are all wrong. It's a mile and a half from the school gate to the edge of town.
But it's a lovely walk, very picturesque. In fact, it's like someone took a bucket of picturesque and just painted everything with it. There are rolling green hills, fields criss-crossed with hedges, other fields filled with yellow plants (mustard?), sheep, and the occasional horse. Everything looks like a jigsaw puzzle titled "English Countryside."
There's light mist and it's overcast, so it's pretty familiar weather. Robert gets to "town" in about 30 minutes. Using his iPod touch to do some war driving, he finds that there's a pub/inn/restaurant that has an unsecured wireless network. It is also, unfortunately, closed, so Robert has to crouch in their driveway out of the rain while he connects to their network and zaps out the trip log.
We note the pub hours (noon to midnight) and plan to send this trip log at a more leisurely time that can also involve beer. Although Kingham is about three blocks big, there are thee pubs in town, and one more just outside of town. And that seems to be all the commerce that's commercing in Kingham, as Robert didn't see any other stores or shops.
9:00 am
We're in a big hall, waiting to be told what's going on at our morning assembly. There are 300 students here, and 400 of them play the banjo and almost half of them are gathered in the big hall waiting.
There's a small problem with the food service, which is that it moves at a snail's pace. And when you've got 300 people, snail's pace is not a good pace. We waited in line last night for an hour before we got to dinner. (British people call this "queuing" and one of them explained that it's a national pastime to queue up for events, so they thought it was a good introduction to the British lifestyle for us foreigners who hate waiting in lines.)
Breakfast is a little better, partly because Robert made it back with ten minutes to spare before they stopped serving. Breakfast is also a bit weird. They have flavorless bacon that was sort of like ham, sausage with no texture, triangular hash browns, beans (?!?), and stewed tomatoes. They do have cereal, but it is something called "Wheatabix," which is compressed blocks of cardboard that dissolve in milk, only it's not as tasty as it sounds.
And no coffee. Anywhere.
Now, it may sound like we just stumble into places with no idea of what's going on or how things work, but the reality is that we go to some trouble to be prepared by checking with folks who have been there before.
Our anonymous sources (Cathy Britell, who lives in Magnolia) neglected to tell us about this complete lack of coffee. We even own a travel-sized French Press we could have brought ("It weighs next to nothing!" exclaims Laura), but we didn't. We figured that if Cathy didn't say anything about the dearth of coffee, there must be lots of good hot coffee on offer.
Pot loads of tea (although the Britishers complain that no one brings it out to you; you have to go get it yourself), but the only coffee is instant. Robert was so desperate he tried some, and it was every bit as nasty as he recalled.
No wonder we rebelled against British Anti-Coffee tyranny! Down with King George and his tea-sipping ways!
The assembly finally starts and they go over rules and regulations, which is right about when we stop listening. But we did make a few notes:
- "Things aren't as they used to be." Which is something that really should be a motto, since it applies to just about everything everywhere. And here, too, apparently.
- We all wear badges on lanyards. If we see somebody without a badge, we're supposed to "challenge" them, presumably to a duel of some sort, because it means that they are crashing the event and that's Bad.
- They spend an inordinate amount of time talking about drinking and cleaning up after you've been drinking in class, and how to stack glasses in the pub, and how "In the school's culture, it's a classroom" (and in ours, it's a pub!). Apparently, drinking is pretty popular with British people.
- "If someone falls over in front of you and you can't make them get up, let us know." This was NOT in the drinking context, but in the "We should look after each other and report anyone who passes out or has a stroke or a heart attack." Because bodies stacking up like cordwood messes up the vibe of the school.
- We find out that a "sleeping policeman" is a speed bump. Which means they say things like, "Don't drive too fast over that sleeping policeman!" This is probably why they don't call them that in America, because, seriously, it would totally put the idea in our heads.
- "…we'll divide the sheets from the ghosts." Most British sayings we run across can be eventually deciphered. This one we have no clue whatsoever what it means. And we have no Internet access, so we can't do a quick Google and find out. We *think* it means, separating the phonies ("sheets") from the real ones ("ghosts") but it could also refer to food. [Note from Laura: What they really said was, "sheep from the goats," which, although a recognizable Biblical cliche, didn't make any sense, either.]
12:30 pm
Lunchtime!
Robert has been in double-bass class all morning. He was supposed to be using a bass loaned by a British musician, who completely forgot to deliver it (this is pretty typical for bass players, they only play two notes, so they don't have to be the sharpest quid in the pot). But, fortunately, another guy brought two basses, so Robert borrowed one of them.
There's a wide range of skill levels in the class, including one lady who bought her first bass last Tuesday, but has done lots of Appalachian clog dancing.
There's a lot of time spent talking about hand position and strings and how to hold the bass, and eventually Robert gets to learn how to approximately play five notes. The "approximately" comes in because there are no frets on a double-bass and so you have to kind of guess at where you should put your fingers.
During "tea time" we pay two pounds (which might be either four quid or one-third of a quid) for two cups of coffee made with coffee inside a tea bag. The idea is it steeps in your cup and you have a fresh, hot cut of coffee! The reality is it sits there in your cup and produces stronger and stronger coffee that tastes terrible. And costs three bucks for the privilege
Robert also chats with Lynda, who's a one-armed bass player (her right arm ends just below the elbow). And since Robert is Mr. Tact, he asks about her prosthetic that she uses to pluck the strings and she's delighted to talk about how she makes them herself and tries different types and which ones she thinks works well and Robert and Lynda are now best mates (in the British sense, not the American sense).
Laura has a grand intermediate autoharp class, with lots of playing, useful lecture, and she's having a good old time. She didn't mention any one-armed autoharp players, so there probably weren't any.
We've also sorted the coffee situation, we hope. (See how we're slowly acclimating? "Sorted" is British for "figured out" only it sounds more elegant.)
Seems that the instructors get a "goodie bag" that includes a French Press and some coffee for the Americans. And we know the only Americans here who don't like coffee (and can't figure out how to use a French press) and they are happy to let us use it.
3:45 pm
We're back in class.
We have the opportunity to join "scratch bands," which are bands "made up from scratch" with whoever is around. Laura would be in demand because she's a pretty good player. Robert would be in demand, even though he's only played five notes on the stand-up bass, because bass players are ALWAYS in demand. Bands need somebody to keep the tempo and everybody wants to play lead.
There's only one problem with this: we'd probably end up playing "I'll Fly Away" with a bunch of folks who think of this as Good Music. And we'd have to attend the Scratch Band Concert and listen to 18 other bands play "I'll Fly Away" in various keys (sometimes everybody in the same band playing in the same key!).
It's sort of a drawback attending a school for American Old Time and Bluegrass music, when neither of us particularly care for it, but we're both learning lots of stuff. Even if we do have to listen to "Will the Circle Be Unbroken?" sung by thirty people at lunchtime (we amuse ourselves by singing the version we know, which is "Will The Turtle Be Unbroken?" and covers the trials and tribulations of Myrtle, the turtle, who is hurtled out a window).
The bass that was supposed to be there this morning showed up over lunch. This one has the note positions helpfully marked with scotch tape. On electric bass, there's frets so you know where to put your fingers. The stand-up bass is fretless, so you have to "know" where the notes are. Beginning bass players usually mark the neck with the spots until they learn them, and this bass came pre-marked!
This afternoon, the bass players work on right hand technique (how to play even louder!) and do a riff or two before it's time to break for dinner.
Laura's class continues to learn interesting new techniques and strumming patterns and all kinds of what all. Laura is happy and learning more than she expected to.
5:15 pm
We might not be the brightest nobs on the hill, but we're smart enough to figure out that if there's a huge line for dinner on Sunday night, then we're going to show up early for dinner on Monday night! We do, and we're about tenth in line, so we get our dinner with only a ten minute wait.
We notice that potatoes are big here. Not "big" as in "big as a man's head" but "big" as in "every freaking meal features at least two potato dishes." Tonight, there're potatoes, boiled, mashed and even a salad made by boiling potatoes and covering them with dill dressing.
6:50 pm
We're now sitting in a genuine English pub in the picturesque village of Kingham. Laura is working on a pint of Cotswold Premium Lager, which she says is absolutely splendid and Robert is quaffing a pint of hard cider. It's quiet and best of all, they have Wi-Fi, so we're able to check our mail and send out today's trip log (which you are reading right now!).
It's raining pretty steadily, and the British people are whining about it, but we're happy that it's warm rain. Apparently, they had a couple of weeks of nice, warm weather back in March (which Seattle did not) and now they're all wimped out by the rain.
Ha! Suck it up, soggy Brits. This is nothing.
And on that superior note, we'll sign off and play a few rounds of "Words With Friends" and see if we can get tossed out of a pub.
Robert & Laura
Sore Roots Tour