The River Ooze

The River Ouse is about 64 kilometers long, born of the River Ure and coming to its conclusion at the River Trent. I don't know where those places are. The word 'ouse' is derived from the Celtic word 'usa,' which means 'water.' The river does have water in it. It often floods, dampening the houses of residents who complain at the time but don't really do anything about it. It flows slowly, so slowly I can't even think which way it flows, and is really just a straight-edged channel.

The apartment I'm staying in is very near the river. Upstream (we think, no one seems to know the river's directionp) a little way is an allotment, which Jessie has just taken a half-plot in. There's a good walking pathway along the banks, with some of the first blossoms of spring beginning to show on the branches, and melodic calls of birds unseen and delighting in the sunshine. I think it's the birdcalls that I noticed being the most different. The chill in the air reminded me of Dunedin, if I was to compare, and the trees aren't so different to many we have in New Zealand, but the bird calls make it clear you're in another land.

I like the idea of allotments - a piece of common land where you get to have your own plot to use as you choose (with two papers of basic regulations, sadly including the exclusion of animals in this particular place). It seems that often they're in demand - the one in two has a waiting list of 3 years, although the one Jessie has aquired had a waiting list of merely three as it's a little further out, though well within walking distance of her apartment.It's nice to think that people are so interested in growing their own food.

 

We had a look at her plot, which already contains asparagus and raspberry canes from the previous tenant, who simply decided it was becoming a little too much work for his later years. The raspberry canes need cutting back soon so that they can be ready to grow again and become bountiful. The rest of the plot needs turning over, and then planting. At this time of year, the allotment seems very barren, but I can imagine that from late spring through to autumn it must start to be quite an impressive sight.

Walking back, the temperature dropped suddenly and a few small - very small, tiny - flakes of snow swirled across us like a sun shower.

I've seen several magpies, which do make a cackling sound but one quite unlike those in NZ, and have impressively long black tails, and also seen and heard many crows. There were some little birds that may have been tits, but that is a guess - we need to get out the pocket guide to British birds that's hiding somewhere here, rumour has it, on a shelf. There are also many nests in trees composed soley of twigs. I suppose there's not much else to make them from at the moment.

St Mary's Abbey

Ivy on an old rain coat

The air smells like chocolate sometimes, fresh chocolate brownies of the richest sort, from a chocolate factory in a currently unknown location, and at night it smells like coal smoke. There are old buildings everywhere, from the mighty Minster and the Shambles leaning in on itself so that occupants in higher levels could shake hands above the street, to crumbling and lesser known buildings and walls. The museum gardens are also very close, with St Mary's Abbey and early spring bulbs and a bouncing squirrel. It's bouncy. Too bouncy.

Fly by night (and day. It's a long way.)

Air line food isn't so bad at all. Not including a few odd crackers and similar unremarkable dry snacks, here's what I ate:

• Dinner: Some kind of chicken thing with vegetables that came without a menu (Air NZ, Wellington to Sydney)
• Dinner: Tuna pasta salad, "warm bakery," lamb and lentil tangine with cumin spiced vegetable medley and basmati rice, creamy coffee mousse (Etihad, Sydney to Abu Dhabi)
• Breakfast: Yoghurt, fruit bits, bread roll aka cold bakery, hot sausage and crushed hash brown and scrambled egg (Etihad, Sydney to Abu Dhabi)
• Lunch: Potato and chicken salad, warm bakery, beef stew with sauteed potato cubes and roasted vegetable, chocolate cake in cream cheese mousse (Etihad, Abu Dhabi to Manchester)
• Snack: Some kind of chicken 'sandwhich' that was actually more like a calzone, and was probably my favourite dish although its flavour may also have been enhanced by being consumed a mere hour and a half from my final destination
• Mango juice, orange juice, 7 Up, water

I give you this list to demonstrate... well, I suppose, that I like food.

Sydney looked like a scene from Sim City, coming in for the approach over the ocean – a god’s eye view of straight-cut cliffs, the terrain shifting almost suddenly from a brownish rock texture to the mix of dark green shades that form trees, breaking only for little patches of brown that might have held water. It all seems very flat. It looked like Australia. Flying above, the buildings looked small and simplistic, and had been laid out with careful thought to attract people to increase the population. There was some kind of utility provider, perhaps, with round white tanks and strangely shaped buildings with bits jutting out and bits sticking up, with prongs and knobs and wires. Then, with roads to divide, it breaks into the housing area. I saw a net set up in the bay as we went over, and little ships making their lines in the ocean. One day there will be pods that will take off into the sky and someone will be hoping for the highscore.

Elvish-like, a feature rises from
the centre of Abu Dhabhi airport lounge.

It was dark flying into Abu Dhabi, but the city looked different from NZ cities I've seen from the sky, long solid strips of harsh yellow-orange light for main roads, and fuzzy dull glows for what I suppose must have been other buildings. This was flat. Sydney wasn't flat. Abu Dhabi was. There was a full moon, and it followed us out the window with its reflection in the water below, jumping and changing from clear round to a smear as it tried to drag itself through the shallower bits and keep pace. There was a lot more water than expected, but I didn't get to properly see it because when we flew out it was over the land - so incredibly flat, and so dry and barren. It looked like an Arab nation or something.

But of course, I didn't really see either country so very much because I was in their airports, which aren't real places. They have clocks, but I don't think they're measuring time. I wandered. I sat. The airports weren't as big as I thought, but they became very full of people. Airports breathe with the intake and release of people.

By the time I finally arrived in Manchester, I'd watched many films and can safely say that The Hobbit has suffered from being made into a trilogy and that I really, really still don't like Kiera Knightley. My bottom was also sore. The woman at passport control was quite firm and demanding and wouldn't let me through until I said, "No, listen, I'm not secretly an immigrant intending to stay illegally in Your Great Kingdom and attempt to take advantage of your goverment's generosity. But I did bring fejoas into your nation, promise not to tell?" Then I had to wait for my luggae, and finally walk the gauntlet of people hoping you are someone else and secretly damning you for not being their Arriving Loved One. But I had my own person waiting for me, who lept from the crowds with a mighty roar and led me to the train station. She just wanted her fejoas.

It's cold in England. There was snow on the ground, coming between Manchester and York, caught in little pockets and dips on the hills and in people's gardens. There was blue sky, which Jessie said she hadn't seen in quite some time. There were brick houses with slate roofs and bare birches, and magpies with long black tails and a friendly way of hopping about that's nothing like the devilish attitude of our Antipodean magpies.

 

And as for York, Jessie's flat, the sound of pigeons walking over the bridge? Not telling. Not in this post. You've suffered a dull description of a journey. I'll give you better stuff later.

Oh, and I don't seem to have jet lag.



A bridge I walked over. In York.



Did you mean "adventure"?

No. I meant ‘aventure.’ It’s an old word. It's mostly obsolete. I think it’s a good word. It does sound like ‘adventure’ and has a sense of that too, but its chief meaning as I use it – as Chaucer used it – is chance.

But I'm certainly not discouraging adventure.

It’s the end of March now, almost time for April and (I hope) its showers sweet in both hemispheres, to offer some relief from the summer droughts in much of New Zealand and to bring in the spring (flowers, many birds, etcetera) in the United Kingdom. I’m going on a pilgrimage of sorts, one could poetically imagine, though I’m no palmer. I want to see some of the places where some stories and dreams that I know began. Britain is full of literature, landscapes, and history – including some of my own. I am looking forward in particular to visiting Scotland where much of my ancestry on both sides lies, and particularly Ullapool where my great grandfather came from. Also, I want to see puffins, foxes and Highland cattle in their native landscape. I’m sure I’ll find squirrels to be cute from a distance, but I've read too many Robin Jarvis books to trust them (or alchemists).

So my pilgrimage begins tomorrow with a departure from Wellington airport and a long journey (two short stopovers in foreign airports) to arrive in Manchester airport bedraggled and confused and hoping like hell that my luggage is going to come out that other end. I haven’t been on an international flight before. Luckily, I will have a friend meeting me in the airport to rescue me and guide me on my first British rail journey to York, where I will properly prepare myself to wenden out on my adventure with a nice long horizontal sleep.

I have some plans, but I’m also hoping for that sense of serendipity, fortune and coincidence that comes with aventure. Chaucer’s narrator (‘General Prologue’ for “The Canterbury Tales,” just so we’re clear) first finds it when he, in that now-famous Tabard Tavern, encounters sundry folk who provide him with the fodder for an entire poem that is one of the most famous pieces of literature around. I’m not intending for the same thing to happen on my short two-month journey as I’m not as self-confident or skilled as perhaps Geoffrey was, but I do hope to practice my writing as I go along, and I do know that I will have a jolly good time ra-ther.

It's going to be fun.