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Art & Culture

various essays on, well, art and culture

Bookbinding & Conservation

lessons learned from this profession

Humor

ok, I'm not the guy from SNL,
but I still have a sense of humor

'Jim Downey' Stories

mostly true stories from my
adolescence

Personal Essays

more "it's all about me"

Politics

I’m at -7.13/-7.33 on The Political Compass.  Where
are you?

Society

observations on the human condition

Travel

Europe 1994
      Kronach
      Coburg
      Vienna
      Mödling
      Vättis
      Ramsgate
      Chester

Wales 1998
Wales 2003
Wales 2006
CCGA Vignettes

Chester


Yes, Marshal Dillon?


Sorry.

We left the nice little inn there at Battle, and got into the car.  Starting with more of the little roads, we started the 75 miles or so north.  Funny, I had figured it was maybe an hour and a half or two hours driving time, basing the estimate on driving a similar distance in rural America.

Wrong.  It is a little known fact, but just like there are "Imperial Gallons" which are actually larger than the gallons we use here, there are "Imperial Miles" which are equal to about six of the similar measurement in the States.  Consequently, Americans tend to think of Britain as this little place, when actually it is easily the size of Australia.  At least that is the best explanation I have come up with for why it takes so long to drive anywhere in Britain.  The nice fellow at the ticket booth for the Battlefield had warned us it would take three or four hours to drive to London.  He was right.

But the little roads gradually gave way to bigger roads, the scenery was just incredible . . . these wonderful little fields, separated by the distinctive hedges of Essex, scattered across rolling hills . . . thatched roofs . . . small churches which are centuries old and too lovely to do away with, but too expensive to maintain for the local parishes.  Even on the highways the Brits make use of the demon roundabouts, as it saves on traffic lights, exit ramps, and so forth.  It isn't unusual to encounter a series of these things as you come near a town, and we quickly learned a shorthand way for Alix to tell me which of the several roads to take when leaving the circle through the expedient of referring to the roundabout as a 'clock' you always entered at 6.  That way I didn't have to look for the too-small roadsigns while simultaneously watching to see that I was properly merging, giving right of way, et cetera.  Besides, if you miss your road, you just loop around the roundabout a time or two until you can catch it on another pass.  This is even fun to just sometimes do for the hell of it, like 'cutting donuts' in the local mall parking lot at 3:30 am when you were in high school.

All was fine even after we got onto the British version of an 'Interstate', to bypass the bulk of London.  Good road, nice to drive on, with minimal stress.  I could almost take my concentration away from driving in mirror image long enough to look around the countryside.  But not quite.  All of the several maps we had agreed . . . there was a straight-forward way to get to Euston train station (where we had to drop off the car and catch our train to Chester) without ever really getting off the highway.  Alix was confident that it would be no problem at all.

Of course, she forgot my karma.  I had a debt to pay in purgatory, and the most expeditious way to accomplish that was to have to drive in London traffic for a while, lost, as she madly searched the maps to find a way out for us.  I had been driving for a little over three hours when this is exactly what happened.  I felt like I had been driving for at least six hours, all the time having to force myself away from the damned center line, and checking over my LEFT shoulder to see who was merging onto the highway from secondary roads.  Sigh.

It really wasn't noteworthy, except that minor incident with the poor traffic cop, who could only shake his head in painful understanding once he saw the sign in the back window.  At least the British cops don't regularly carry guns, or we may have come home with additional stories to tell.  Anyway, after playing tag with the roads we thought we needed to be on, we found the station, parked the car, and went inside.  Eventually the Hertz guy showed up (don't know if he had a mistress, liked to drink in the afternoon, or had a doctor's appointment, but it was over an hour before he got around to stopping by the office . . . and then he was gone again about fifteen minutes after we checked the car in).  We figured out where and when we needed to catch our train, and did so.

Heading northwest out of London in the late afternoon.  Through the surrounding suburbs (not the American variety, but the European counterpart . . . meaning that there's row houses, apartment buildings, all of what you consider a city to be but on a somewhat less intense scale) industrial areas, and warehouse districts near the various rivers.

I enjoyed looking at the narrow but long houseboats I saw on the rivers, boats well adapted to the system of canals which is now a couple of centuries old in Britain.  A memory from my undergraduate studies, reminding me that England went through the industrial revolution first, a hundred years before America did, basing the 'takeoff' phase of this development on a combination of small waterways adapted for transportation and power, and the mines and mills which needed those rivers, just as our own industrial revolution was based on the development of the railroad and its forward and backward economic 'linkages.'  Of course the railroad had additional impact on Britain, but by this time their economy had already made the transition to being essentially industrial, they had made that jump, and there was no jumping back.

But the boats . . . wonderful.  I don't know if they were actual houseboats, or just pleasure boats, or what.  I didn't get to see that many close up, and could only speculate.  At least on that weekday afternoon I saw no one on the boats, and few were moving in the channels.  Long and narrow, low to the water, with no masts for even a hope of sailing.  Boats ideally suited to their environment, adapted like some small animal to a land where there are no predators, no threats, just calm waters and casual movement.  Decorated with bright paints, what would be called 'gingerbread' on an old Midwest home, and fanciful names.  Most of the boat was a covered cabin, with windows and doors which reflected the typical British housing styles.  Means of propulsion was presumably a motor of some sort at the aft end, but it wouldn't have surprised me to discover that some of the boats were still towed along by a rope tied to a man or donkey walking along the shore, as they were some two hundred years ago.  It had that sort of feeling to it . . . no rush, no hurry, no place in particular to go, just a cruise down a narrow railroad of water, calm and quiet.  It would be interesting to buy or rent such a boat, and see how far you could travel through Britain using just that means of transportation.

What was left of the day slowly faded, with us sitting there in the train watching the land roll by.  Mostly just gentle rolling hills, fields divided up by overgrown fences or hedges (I couldn't tell which from the train), and moderate sized towns spaced evenly across the countryside.  Sometimes we caught a glimpse of spire or tower, but not often.  We were treated to a wonderful sunset, gold deepening to burnt orange and a heavy red, in a narrow band across the horizon under a bank of clouds.  As darkness settled in those hideous low-pressure sodium lights came on, flares of ugliness indicating where each of the towns were.  I dug out my travel copy of Twain, and turned my attention to reading until we pulled into Chester.

The station was small, we were tired and I was a little hungry, since I had only a light lunch and nothing for dinner (I wasn't so inclined when Alix got something from the vendor on the train).  There was an information center there in the station, but it was just closing up for the night (it was 8:00), so we bought a city map, asked the clerk if he could direct us to the hotel where we had booked a room, and wandered out of the station.  The hotel was just a stone's throw from the station, so we went there, got checked in, dropped off the bags, and then went out to explore the town a bit.  It was cold, and things were mostly quiet on the streets of the city.  Up into the old town area we went, turning right just after we went through one of the gates in the old city walls, toward the church.  As soon as we crossed into the old town, memories of what I had read about Chester in some of the travel literature came flooding back . . . that it was one of the best-preserved medieval cities in Britain, with the old merchant rows largely intact as they had been five hundred years previously.  We passed a couple of nice half-timbered homes which now did duty as Optometrist shops, and came to the church.  Wonderful, late gothic, all in sandstone.  At night it was lit up in a fashion after the cathedral of Cologne . . . lights up between the buttresses, showing the detail of the capping towers . . . but on a scale that was human, rather than majestic.  If it had been a modern church, or a mock-up at a Disney theme park, the resulting effect would have been bad parody, but this actually worked quite well with no sense of pretense or presumption.  A nice wrought-iron fence enclosed the courtyard just a few yards from the church, giving one a perfect place to lean and look at the church for some time.

But as I said, it was cold and we didn't want to stand around too long.  We explored the main plaza near the church, then went down one of those well-preserved merchant rows.  They are still used as shops today, the walkway under the first story fronting along the shops in a natural loggia.  Presumably there are apartments and offices in the rooms above, just as there would have been in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.  All the buildings were well cared for, their timbers painted jet black, the plaster between fresh white, with little bits of design incorporating the dates when the buildings were built (and usually also when they had last been restored) worked somewhere in the front.  Down that street we went, looking for a likely pub or restaurant where we could relax, warm up, and get a little something to eat.

We found 'The Falcon,' one of the city's main attractions during the tourist season, guessing from the literature on the town.  But this wasn't the tourist season, the place looked warm, and they had a sign indicating that they handled the traditional ales of Samuel Smith . . . who makes my favorite import beer (Nut Brown Ale).  I couldn't resist.  We went in.

A 14th century public house, not suffering too much from later revisions from what we could tell.  I got a pint of mild brown, some applejuice for Alix, and found out that we were too late to get any food.  No matter.  We settled in, enjoyed our beverages, and warmed up in the atmosphere and good will of the place.  Just us and the locals there, mostly a young crowd, playing music like you'd find in a quiet American bar that graduate students frequented.  Everyone smoked, of course, something I found surprising these days, but very typical of the British pubs we visited.  I suppose I'd find much the same here in the States if I ever went to bars.

Afterwards, feeling tired (it was getting late) we wandered out, heading in the general direction of the hotel.  We stopped at a little 'take-away' food joint and I got something vaguely Middle-eastern to go, with 'chips,' of course.  The food was hot, spicy, and delicious, and on the way back to the room I munched down, steam rising from my fingers as I popped food in my mouth.  We climbed the grand old staircase to the first story, walked down the sagging and canted hallway, and managed to make it in the maze of the entryway to our room.  Why is it that all British doors open inwards?  Very awkward.


The next morning we had breakfast in the hotel, and went out to see things in daylight.  It was bright and sunny, still cold, but with a promise of being warmer than it had been since we arrived in Britain.  Alix got some photos of the Optometrists shops mentioned before for a friend.  The little church was just as lovely in the daylight.  We had some time to kill, so we went off to walk the city walls, passing by the shopkeepers who were loading up the latest produce, sweeping their stoops, getting ready for the day.  We climbed up to the city wall, and started walking . . . and in just a few paces noted a sign which said "Paul Delrue, Bookbinder, Number 1 City Walls, Northgate, Chester" and pointed to one of the little buildings built right alongside the wall, with access from the walk there.

Of course, I couldn't help but step in.  Climbed a couple flights of steps, came to a nice little entryway where a somewhat sleepy looking fellow was startled by us as he collected the mail and made himself a cup of tea.  His start was compounded by my brusqueness as I introduced myself as a bookbinder from the States who just happened by.

After catching his breath, he sort of stumbled about a bit, finally asked if we could come back in a half hour or so, when he would be more awake and have his shop open.  Certainly!

So we went back out on the walls, walking about some.  We stopped and relaxed at the corner tower where King Charles watched his army defeated by the Roundheads.  The light was coming in low and clean, reflecting off the heavy dew in the yard of the church (for we had come around to the back side of that complex).  All the scene needed was a few sheep.

We back-tracked from there, wanting to see the locks of the little river (the Dee?).  Neat stuff . . . clearly recent (meaning redone sometime this century), but also clearly not much different from the way they were done up centuries ago.  A series of three locks, all hand-operated, just large enough to accommodate one of those narrow boats I had admired the evening before.  A fellow with a boat carrying some produce was going through them at the time, and we just watched the process.

The half hour had passed, and I wanted to stop back by the bookbindery before we got our car and left for Wales.  This time Mr. Delrue was somewhat up and running, ready to receive the public and even odd bookbinders from America.  He compensated for his earlier confusion by being the epitome of British calm and reservedness, coming off to us as being more than a little full of himself.  But he was pleasant enough, polite, took joy in showing off his little shop, his bindings, and the work of his apprentice.  He was very good . . . a modern fine binder, who was somewhat disdainful of librarians and conservators, and not afraid to say so, in his reserved, understated manner, of course.  We only chatted for a while, exchanged a sort of professional comparison of the people we knew, or knew of, sizing each other up in the quiet little way that bookbinders do when they aren't sure of one another.  He came off the better, and I was happy to let him know it, and that I respected the things he could do with leather . . . things which are well beyond my ability.  It would have been grossly impolite for me to do otherwise.  I'll drop him a tube with some of my marbled papers here sometime soon, thanking him for his time and courtesy.

But we had to leave.  We wanted to get the car and drive to Wales, giving ourselves at least enough time to visit Conwy and Beaumaris before we had to find a place to sleep.  So we left Mr. Delrue and Andrew, his apprentice.  We got to the Hertz office, they had our reservation and a car ready . . . a nice LITTLE Fiat, which I would be much more comfortable driving on the narrow roads of rural Wales.  We stopped by the hotel long enough to collect our things and check out, and throwing the luggage in the back, we set off . . . it was 10:00.
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