The First Days in the U.K.

                                                                             

   I think I’m getting over jetlag, but I’m not over it yet.  We have managed to get through two performances so far.  The first we played as a four piece with our good friend John Montague and his percussionist friend Alex.  Both of them are excellent players.  I did record that performance.  I haven’t listened to it yet.
     On the plane coming over here we sat next to a young Australian who works for amazon.com.  We both talked about our respective lives.  He was of Maylasian descent, and had gone to college in London.  He had been living in London for a number of years while he got his education, and made his first steps toward having a career.  He reads non-fiction nearly exclusively, is a  nose to the grindstone kinda guy (I think).  He is a vey friendly guy who will be living in China working for Amazon.com very soon.  He has a girlfriend who lives in Hong Kong, and he will be living close enough to Hong Kong to at least see her on weekends.
     Before I left on this trip I read “Down and Out in Paris and London”s by George Orwell.  I also read  “A Fine Balance” by Rohinton Mistry.  Both of these books deal with extreme poverty, and the oppression inherent in the societies where these conditions exist.  “Down and Out in Paris and London” is listed as a memoire.  I’ve had the subject of poverty on my mind anyway.  These two books immersed me in the experience.  I’m starting to get over that immersion now, but I have written a number of songs dealing with the subject, and we sing something like that every night.
    Jonathan, who I met on the plane over, was interesting to talk to.  He had had some experiences that put him face to face with poverty, although I’m not certain how much thought he had given to it.  He told me that his girlfriend, who lives in Hong Kong, visited the quarters where her servant women lived, and she was shocked at the shabby conditions they were living in.  We talked a bit about Australia where he is from, and he made it clear that Australia is the country which holds his loyalty, and first love.
     We didn’t have to play anywhere for the first couple of days and we went to stay with our  friends Geoff, and Jacqui Leeds in Sawbridgeworth.  Jacqui is disabled, and Geoff is still working.  He works in security for a large insurance firm in London.  We were trying to get over our jetlag, which has been pretty bad this trip.  When we arrived at the Leeds Geoff said we were a day early.  We think that it was just a glitch with Jacqui, as Kristi was quite sure she had arranged for us to be there at that time.  Unfortunately they had had a leak in their bathroom and Geoff was busy fixing that.  He also put some new lights in the kitchen which they had had some work done on.  They have bamboo floors now, and a new stove with one oven that does both regular oven heating, and is also a microwave oven.  Kinda cool.

     By now it is a few days later and we have played three bookings:  Monty’s Acoustic Club was the first, and we played it as a four piece band with John Montague on guitar and Alex Warwick on percussion.  We rocked pretty well.
     Next we played at St. Neot’s Folk club.  This is run by our old friends, Patti, and Roger Pitt.  They are both retired now, Patti from teaching, and Roger from drafting and design.  The night there went very well.  It was a more conservative scene than Monty’s Music, but we were well received.  We have been used to being around a fairly progressive crowd.  Roger is a climate change denyer.  He doesn’t use the internet, can’t tell you exactly why, but I guess it gives him the heeby jeebies.  We spent the day after that in Cambridge, which Kristi and I had visited a few times before.  Even more interesting to me than Cambridge was the trip over there which took us around to a number of villages, and we looked at old houses.  These were really old houses as in older than the United States.  Roger explained to me that house construction in England varies around the country according to the natural materials that are available to build with.   The houses around that area used to be mainly mud, and wood construction with thatched roofs.  Kristi took this closeup of thatch which was on a thatched fence.
                                                                           

Closeup of thatch

                                                                                

Thatched Wall

     In the drive around the villages there was a discussion of the aristocracy, the workers houses that we saw, and the larger houses that were owned by the “lord of the manor” so-to-speak.  I am aware that this culture was similar in the North American continent, but not quite the same.  I also read a book called “Paris” by Edward Rutherfurd recently that described the aristocracy in France.  The book was what my friend David Gilmour referred to as “faction”.  It had made an impression on me and it described the relationship of the wealthy, and privileged to the poor.  It is something that doesn’t go away.
     In Cambridge bicycles are a very major form of transportation.  I have seen this in Japan as well.  I suppose that this is true in almost any college town these days, although in my day it was walking or the automobile, and not so much the bicycle.
                                                                         

     I think there was an agenda that went somewhat awry as there were a number of attractions that were closed.  We mostly walked around Cambridge with a walking commentary from our hosts, Roger and Patti.  It is an attractive town full of many colleges.  That's something that I have not seen so much in the USA.  A lot of times where we live colleges are placed in small towns such as Ellensburg, or Cheney, or Bellingham and there is only one college, maybe two there.

                                                                                     

King's College from the rear

At Lunch

Goose Eggs (don't see these often in our local farmer's market)

Market color

Lots of this there

I am going to put some more pictures from Cambridge here simply because they are a little bit interesting.   There was a market outdoors, which may have been an everyday occurence mainly aimed at tourists.  I don't know.  It didn't look particularly local in produce, and there was quite a bit of touristy stuff.  

     Today we walked around Blyth with our friends Jimmy and Val Monteith-Towler.  I bought a sweater at a thrift store, and Jimmy and Val had errands picking up a package from the post office, and also they delivered a package to another post office annex.  We have spent a lot of time talking about songwriting, and bands, booking etc.  I’ve got to admit that I feel quite comfortable talking about these subjects that we have been grappling with for so long.  We tried out their PA system which we will be using tomorrow night, and maybe on Monday night as well.  This is realizing that using a PA system creates something of a boundary between you and them.  You must avoid moving your head around, so when looking at an audience while singing it is a little bit different than just playing the room.  The last couple of gigs have been all acoustic, and I’ve got to admit that I wonder how much we were being heard, and understood.  The room in Fleetwood was very prone to making the guitars/instruments louder than the vocals.  I only hope that I recognized this and kept the guitar out of their faces.  We did sell a few CDs.
      People do ask me if we have a new CD.  I knew that we should have recorded one before we came, but there really hasn’t been the time lately.  I really doubt that there has been anyone who owns all of our CDs.  We have quite a few titles with us.  They should be able to find something that suits them that is part of our old repertoire of CDs.  I really worry a bit about CDs becoming obsolete.  We are going to be stuck with a large archive of them when, if this happens.

Concrete Railroad ties

     I thought that this little piece of track was interesting as we have wooden railroad ties in the U.S., or at least we did when I was young.  These rails are not in use now.  Jimmy hasn't seen these rails be used since they have been living in the neighborhood.  He is a railroad afictionado. 

The other side of the tracks

     Here is another remnant of the railroad that once ran through this neighborhood.  There are rails nearby that are still in use as well.

Ladder to a ghost switch.

    The first post office we went to was a "rental".  We have these in the states as well.  It seems like business here all has its' analog in the U.S.  

     I'll call it a day for now.  I hope you've enjoyed our first blog.  Steve N.3/09/014

FROM KRISTI
We're on route now day ten of thirty-three.  It's such a pleasure to arrive at a place in an alien continent where there is familiarity, comfort, welcoming, commonalities, and safety.  We're at such an oasis now, the home of Jimmy and Val in a town near Newcastle.  We've finished three gigs without mishap, all well-received, in three towns in the midlands of England.  At last I can relax and feel as if I'm on vacation this day between gigs.  Ethnocentricity is an exercise of such pleasant arrogance that we comfortably call it exotic.  I'm forever looking at this and thinking "WE" don't have that back home so isn't it very interesting!

We had a day of vacation in Cambridge with our excellent hosts Patti and Roger Pitt.  We strolled past dead people on pillars and I of course wondered why "WE" don't have any on our buildings.  It would appear our monumental edifices such as governmental or religious buildings aren't important enough to be adorned with statues high up.  These guys peer down on us from various pedestals all over Cambridge, and they aren't all important people.  Of course that barefoot king with the pigeon on his head is the exception.  And needless to say Cambridge considers itself to be as ubiquitously important as any ancient institution in the world.  But one building is festooned with carved wedding-cake swags of bric-a-brac caught up at intervals with faces of people nobody could ever identify, yet immortalized in stone.  Maybe we should have that back home, and I could be one of those faces.  Who were these people and why did they wind up on buildings?  Was that brother-in-law of the sculptor happy with the portrayal of his face on that building?

As Bill Bryson points out, the names of places have a very different character here as well.  I noticed as we passed a sign post, two names placed consecutively, "Yelling" and then "Gravely".  I pondered those two locations.  Then it came to me what it would sound like: "I'M SORRY BUT YOUR CAT HAS BEEN RUN OVER BY A TRUCK!"  That would be an example of yelling gravely.

I included the above photo as an example of an exotic northern delicacy.  We encountered this while shopping for lunch groceries at the ASDA supermarket, England's equivalent of Walmart, owned by the same guys.  The black pudding in the center peels off with the slice of lunchmeat.  It consists of congealed pig's blood with globules of fat visible.  I thought, what will those Waltons think of next?  They really know what will be CLASSIC, as the package boasts.