En Angleterre

Visited the mother country in June.  An interesting and revealling trip in ways I was not expecting.

First of all, I was very taken with how lovely it all was. Just beautiful.  And here was I fresh off the plane from the fabled South of France!  Frankly, where I was (Durham, the Dales, Raby Castle) really held its own, perhaps even excelled thanks to the castles, monasteries, ruins etc. casually scattered everywhere, the deer grazing in the woodlands, the quaint and picturesque villages one after the other in lush emerald countryside. 

I loved the vintage horse-drawn gypsy caravans meandering through country lanes following Appleby Fair, the jaunty bunting strung along every street and square in honour of the Queen's diamond jubilee.  The food was delicious and varied and the coffee wonderful - I even drank a perfect Flat White!  I was delighted to see the endless walls entirely free of any sort of graffiti, streets featuring total lack of dog poo, revelled in the pristine condition of national monuments, stately homes and just about every house I saw, wanted to partake of a pint in each one of the ridiculously quaint pubs, and - most importantly - basked in the warm, friendly, smiling, funny people I came across everywhere. Gosh, why did I ever leave??!

The weather, that's why. It was NINE DEGREES for most of my stay. Nine degrees centigrade. Nine degrees at midday, in mid summer.  NINE.  I went to bed in pyjamas with an electric blanket and the central heating on. In mid summer.  I had packed a coat, a scarf, woolly tights, a thick cardigan and I wore them all, all the time.  Incredible to me was the general up-beat approach of the locals to all this - overheard on an escalator in a department store "for all the rain, it's not that cold is it?".  I felt like screaming "IT'S NINE DEGREES!!!!! THAT'S BEYOND COLD!!".  

Despite the cold, I had a wonderful time.  It was a huge relief not to be struggling with the inferiority of one's French language abilities.  When the sun did shine (for three days of my seven day stay) it was truly inspirational; when it didn't it the warmth of my welcome made up for it.  I think the dismal weather has also given people a humourous, resiliant outlook to life, one full of optimism and one to learn from.  And it isn't always thus - we know it's some bizarre Gulf Stream variable causing the worst summer weather 'since records began', so the papers were happy to reassure the nation that there would be 'Summer in September'!  Glad to hear it, these people and this Sceptred Isle deserve better!