Field Notes on Visiting a Country for the Ninth Time

The restrooms in England that are most accommodating (the best at “commoding,”) are the ones that most resemble American bathrooms.

In some more rural areas of England, in the cramped privies hidden in the back of pubs, the toilets have a sort of hand-pump system that feels a tad bit undignified. You shouldn’t be made to feel like you’re rowing a boat in the loo. I can devote that kind of cardio to starting lawnmowers, but not toilets.

On day four of four, on the last mile of our Cotswolds hike, a man took off his shirt.

This gent was rotund and pasty white like a marshmallow and was our view for what should’ve been a meaningful and contemplative end to our hike. I don’t think he knew we were coming round the bend. I say this because his wife gave a nervous laugh as he was midway through stripping. He believed—and I agreed— that he was too far gone to put the shirt back on. He couldn’t say, “Whoops,” and emerge back through the neck hole upon seeing us three girls coming along. It’d look like he was about to go full naked. The best course of action would be to do exactly what he did: get it over with quickly as possible and pretend everything was swell. He swung his white arms in the sunshine, whipping his empty shirt around, and occasionally he took a sip of his sparkling water. As a last resort (I’m interpreting his motives, here. I don’t know why else he did this), he thrust his hands up to the sky, to the tip top of the ancient beech trees and sang the end part of Bryan Adams’ “I Do it For You.” It was…well, it wasn’t lovely. But it did happen. And so we followed about twenty feet behind, escorted through the grand crescendo of our 45-mile hike by our own private herald.

On a train from Bath to Chippenham, two teenage lovers kissed fourteen times.

I had to count and make a sort of game out of it, or else the ASMR of their wet smacking would’ve driven me to new, uncharted behavior. I’m reminded of Andrew, a friend from college who worked in the school’s library and stood at the dwarfish height of 4’11. He was famously driven to a similar insanity by the football players that partied all night on his hall. Andrew was magnificently, terrifyingly calm, and also efficient in how he handled the situation. He paid a visit to their room, said, “Stop it,” and also happened to be holding a hammer. Apparently it worked really well. I was on the verge of a Code Andrew in this situation, except I had only a granola bar at my disposal.

What’s interesting about the number fourteen is that Chippenham is a thirteen-minute train ride from Bath. That’s simple enough math. A smooch per minute and one more for good measure. Two stops after Chippenham—two stops after I stopped counting their kisses and decided to blast Elton John in my headphones—I got off at Didcot and left the young lovers to plunge each other’s faces ad infinitum.

England has the same friendly-to-unfriendly ratio of people as America. 

In Bill Bryson’s The Road to Little Dribbling, he makes the bold comment that London’s underground employees are “Unfailingly helpful and courteous.” We’ll have to agree to disagree. The woman supervising us on the Elizabeth Line was cantankerous. Her favorite phrase was, “That’s what I just said,” or any similar phrase meant to suggest that the inquirer was an idiot. But I do think she was a fluke. With each of her barbs, I would scan the faces of the people around me, the people I determined to be local based on their minimal luggage, and they all uniformly stared at her in horrified silence. As I boarded the train (unsure if it was the right train but not brave enough to ask), I cast a final glimpse to the platform and discovered that the woman had been discretely swapped out with a kinder, calmer young woman who didn’t seem to hate her job or humanity in general.

I missed home more than I usually do, but it wasn’t mutual.

Franz Kafka called his homeland “a mother with claws,” and I think that rightly describes my relationship with the US. In the absurd complexity of the Atlanta airport, it felt like I was being herded into a flea dip. They whistled us down a football field’s worth of Tensabarriers™, one person yelling for us to have our passports “out and open” and the next person yelling for us to put our passports away. Of course, at all times we were doing it wrong. That much was made clear. But then a pro football player showed up in the crowd and suddenly members of TSA were asking for his picture, and I probably could’ve pushed past them wearing a flame thrower, or waving around a passport that was defiantly closed, and they would’ve said nothing. We really like our football over here.

I look forward to heaven.

That’s not the jet lag talking, although as I’m writing this, it’s 7pm, and I’m trying to type while lying flat in bed. By my being excited about heaven, I mean that the ideas of “home” and “belonging” are all sort of jumbled. I imagine we have all felt that way in some place and at some time. My mother would like me to say that “home” is in my old bedroom, on the second floor, directly above hers. I can see her wince when I refer to Jackson as “home.” “Up in the capital city where that house is that I temporarily live in,” would, I think, be more agreeable to her. But then even Jackson—the “claw” part of my motherland—can be a little unwelcoming when it decides to withhold clean water or a decent stretch of paved road.

Heaven will one day sort all that out. Along with every thing else. I think the honeymoon phase of my relationship with England ended because the illusion of place has at last been invaded by real people. And I’m glad about that. The moments on my trip that were most meaningful to me were the talks with my friends, the chats with strangers, the adorable government signage that begins with “Polite notice…”

I look forward to trip number ten.

And now that I’m looking at England through a more truthful lens, a real bond with a country I’ve always loved can at last begin. I have tentative plans to attend the UK Hutchmoot next year in July. Anyone else going? Anyone want to go for a wee hike before or after? We can tell stories and stay in 400-year-old farmhouses and eat wild blackberries along the way. If you’re lucky, a merry bard with blond, curly back hair might usher us along with Bryan Adams songs.