Tell me About England: A responsive letter

September 20.
I got up early to let the dogs out and do some tutoring.  It's a grey windy day, with rain in the offing, so I'm just sitting around the house today. Part of this is because I don't really feel like driving around, and part of it is because  I need to add petrol to the little Ford that my hostess is loaning me, and I'm waiting for her to tell me where she prefers I gas up.

Tavistock is a World Heritage site, an old Stannary Market town on the edge of Dartmoor.  It's green and hilly and full of grey stone walls (so is the moor.)  My home is just up the hill from the Pannier Market, which is carved out of the old Benedictine Abbey.  This means lots of winding streets and stone buildings.  Just above is an old railroad viaduct that is now a nice walking path, so that's my default non-driving place to walk the dogs.  The other dog walking place is across the Tavy and up the hill to the golf course and cricket pitch.  The golf course is filled with moor hill ponies, and it has a lovely view of the area.  My hostess introduced me to her dog walking friends, but I tend to get there after they've been and gone:  I often tutor until 9 am, and it takes me awhile to get the dogs motivated. 

On Monday my hostess was around until 2, so I went to Lydford Gorge, which was full of waterfalls, ferns, moss, and punch bowls:  it felt very Pacific Northwest.  I hiked for around 4 hours. Tuesday was harrowing, driving narrow one-lane roads with no shoulders and tall hedges lining the verge. The roads are also curvy and hilly, with lovely views, but I could not take my eyes from the roads to enjoy them. The older poodle Chip likes to climb into my lap and look out the window as I drive, and when I hit a hill with him in that position, I tended to kill the engine.  Every time I met a car it was nerve-wracking.  On one occasion I was overtaking two bicyclists on a hill while a bus was coming down.  I got way too close to the cyclists, trying to squeeze between, and when they passed me shortly afterwards as I sat shaking in a layby, the gent of the pair said "A little more room next time."  I said, "So sorry," and was grateful for the British understatement.

Still, it was a lovely drive.  I stopped at Dartmeet (East Dart River meets West Dart River) and walked along the water and back via a public footpath along a field hedgerow.  I also stopped at Two Bridge Hotel for a Devon Cream Tea.  I LOVE clotted cream! It's thick, rich and yellow and cuts the sweetness of the jam beautifully. They allowed dogs in the bar parlor, but Pekoe, the younger poodle, barked at another dog and after a short trial I put them out in the car for the duration.  Prior to that, Teaser, the tiny neurotic Maltese, got away from me and raced around the parking lot with me shrieking "TEEEEzuh!  Teeezuh!" trying to sound like her mum.  It amused my fellow guests:  I heard one say "that's a good name for that dog." 

I visited the subscription (aka independent) library last week and looked at some of the books about the area.  It's more a reading room than anything else, and the collection is very small.  I found a book about the Three Hares motif, which is scattered about the moor churches, and I may try to seek them out, roads and nerve permitting.  It's nice to have a focus like that.

The trip to London was great.  I like E and R's home, and it's a pleasure watching them parent.  They are very happy.  I visited Tate Modern and attended Evensong at St. Paul's on one evening.  Another day I attended a free noon concert at St. Martin in the Fields and visited the National Portrait Gallery.  But I also took a day off just hanging around the house and reading. I like having no real agenda:  I can take time to absorb what I'm seeing and experiencing.

V is very fun, isn't she?  The night I babysat was actually pretty low-key.  They took care of food and dressing for bed and she hadn't napped much during the day so she conked out early.  I think they were a little worried that I would be overwhelmed, and E set up a play area and gave me lots of suggestions and tips. But, as I said, I didn't have to do much before she fell asleep.  I sent them a haiku text to reassure them, and I think they enjoyed having a stress-free date night.  Since they are providing me with Oyster cards and food and board, I want to repay in some way.

Haiku exchange:

Me:

Cousin Violet 

Stopped playing and went to sleep.

She coughs a tad bit.

He:

We are quite happy.

Surrounded by art and friends.

Enjoying a drink.

Mainly, I'm just chilling and enjoying my freedom.  The dogs provide a focus, and I'm writing and processing pictures and tutoring, so there is some creativity, too.  I borrowed a very apt book from R about the aging process.  Food for thought.

Feeling tentative

I've done a fair amount of tutoring and knitting and TV watching since I arrived, and it makes me feel a little guilty.   I'm not a TV watcher, and British TV is no better than American TV.  In fact, a lot of it is late 20th-century re-runs (Columbo, Quincy, The Saint), as well as reality TV.  I've watched Storage Wars and Judge Judy.  I did check out some PBS stuff like Foyles War and Midsomer Murders, but I can see all of this in the States.  So, why am I sitting around watching this dreck now instead of getting out and about?  I don't want to leave the dogs for very long, because Chip suffers separation anxiety and howls, but I could explore for a few hours, and I don't melt in a shower of rain.

Mainly, I'm feeling tentative.  As with Claremont, when I spent most of my first month in the house, I don't have any goals for my exploration, and I'm very sleepy.  Part of that is jet-lag, part the poor sleep caused by the dogs' howling and barking in the wee hours of the morning.  But mainly, I don't want to drive.  In Claremont, it was the LA freeways and the heat that daunted me.  Here in Tavistock, it's the right-hand drive and narrow lanes, along with the rain.  Weather is the excuse, but the transport is the issue.

My host took me up the moors on my first day, and that was a wonderful introduction to the area.  She stopped in various lay-bys and I walked up into the heather and rocks and breathed deeply.  She was actually a bit worried at Grimspound, because I was gone for so long, and the weather comes down quickly.  It's easy to get lost in the fog.

She also showed me the two main walks (the "Pimple" by the golf course and the viaduct path) and introduced me to fellow dog walkers.  However, the next day she took me out in "my" car, and while she was patient with me, I felt fairly incompetent.  I drive too close to the left edge of the lane, I look in the right-hand side mirror instead of the rear view mirror, I gun the engine shifting into first, and I kill it on the tiniest of hills.  She suggested I practice in the Council Offices parking lot up the hill in the evenings when it's empty.  However, it's been raining since she left, and that's been a perfect excuse to avoid the golf course walk of a morning and take the viaduct walk of an afternoon.

Tomorrow I go up to London to visit my cousin, and I'm sure I'll be active there.  But why can't I get myself motivated when I'm by myself?  And why should I?  It makes me wonder afresh what I think I'm doing with this year.  Am I just hanging with dogs?  Am I just texting friends when I should/could be spending actual time with them? Am I actually experiencing the world and meeting people or am I just sitting inside my own head?  And what is inside that head?  I love seeing the greens and greys and purples of Devon, I love eating the local cheese and bread, I love watching the goldfinches at the feeders.  But I am learning nothing.  And Pekoe, the young poodle, is leaping upon me, as if to say, "come on, get up and out and take me for a walk!"  Okay, since the sun is out and my tutor schedule has been met, I have no excuse. 

Travel vignettes

1.  I was standing on the jet-way, waiting for my carry-on bag, which did not fit on the small AA-operated short-hop plane from ABQ to Dallas.  I was first in line, so I could see everyone deplaning.  I noticed a thin woman with short grey hair and a pointed nose:  she seemed the quintessential single retired traveler. Sensibly dressed, wearing good walking shoes and a backpack, she seemed like B's Tante Helga, grey, spare, wiry, intelligent, and focused.  I met her a few moments later on the shuttle to Terminal D, the place for international flights.  We got into conversation because there were issues with the shuttle:  a large and genial airport employee had us all evacuate and the shuttle was sent on its way empty.  We waited, talking of our upcoming journeys, as two more empty shuttles zipped by.  She was en route to a coach tour, via Berlin, with a final destination in Budapest, where she planned to see a 50-year retrospective of photographer Peter Korniss. In between my various trips to the agent counter, getting my ticket problem resolved, we spent the 3-hour wait looking at his black and white photographs of a changing peoples.  She actually had met the artist, because her Tesuque Gallery had run an exhibit of his work, many years back, and she owned a few of his photographs. It's always interesting to meet like-minded individuals so serendipitously.  It appears I'm not the only person who travels to see art.  It reminded me of the time in 1999 when I traveled the Lake District and Yorkshire, tracking down Andy Goldsworthy Millennial project works and locations.  A little obsession helps to focus a trip, and you meet some unexpected people.  My current trip doesn't have that sort of focus, but it does have the flexibility of being open to the unexpected.  I think that I'm noticing people as well as art, light, patterns, smells and sounds. After years of figuring out how I can help people to information or services, I'm now looking for the interaction, the new ideas I can learn.

2.  The GWR train from Paddington to Plymouth goes through green hills and along the southern coast.  I was so jet-lagged, it was difficult to keep my eyes open.  I sat backwards at a table, next to a young man wearing earbuds.  He paid no attention to me or the scenery.  The elderly couple that boarded at the first stop were more attentive.  They were on holiday to visit friends and had packed food for the journey.  They read the paper and watched the view and talked quietly between themselves and sipped at bottles of tea.  When we passed three canal boats, they explained that they were usually vacation sites. The train filled up with a mix of chatty teens, middle-aged vacationers, and couples.  I couldn't suss out what the purpose of travel was for the teens and 20-somethings, but they made up the majority.  I saw the white horse and heard one of the teen girls say in a strong accent "look, a horse!"  Halfway along, I moved over to a vacated window seat facing forward.  Eventually that meant I was watching the coastline.  The train followed a cement path along the coast, and the sands and path were full of walkers.  I noted lines of short stone or wooden spikes and learned later that they had been placed to prevent silting up.  The sun came and went, and I was joined by a young man and woman.  They seemed to be mates, not a couple.  He sat facing backwards, and she sat next to me.  They shared sandwiches and she worked a crossword while he listened to something on his mobile.  She shared a clue with the boy, and I smiled, thinking of G and P and their habit of working crosswords together.  Eventually I offered a solution, and then I was involved to the end.  My big contribution was the word "fatigues" for "military garb."  She'd never heard of such a thing.

3. Tavistock market town is one of the few places in England to boast a subscription library, aka, independent library.  It's housed to the side of Bedford Square and the Pannier Market, next to the Museum which now takes over the space that used to be the library, above the old gate way.  The library is now totally housed in the old reading room on the ground floor.  There is nothing imposing about the architecture, furniture, or books.  It's a small room.  The center is filled by a wooden table, covered in magazines and newspapers, surrounded by wooden chairs.  Glass-fronted bookcases line one wall.  On the opposite wall are pictures and a fireplace.  The wall facing the doorway is a tall window facing the Abbey-turned-Town Hall and the open entry to the Pannier Market.  When I visited, a busker was sitting under the window playing a harp and singing folk songs:  I recorded her singing The Raggle-Taggle Gypsy and could hear her from inside the library.  Three elderly subscribers sat to the right of the door, and a portly gentleman with handlebar mustache, glasses, and a beaming smile greeted me as I entered.  It took awhile to learn who he was (the Chairman of the Committee), but he was voluble and welcoming and gave me the history of the library and its collection most happily.  It's an archive, but the books are not particularly valuable, being previous library books and not much older than the 1800s.  So, there is no climate control, although the glassed in area creates a small microclimate.  According to the Chairman, mold is created by a combination of moisture and people germs, so the books are fairly well preserved.

I met Graham, a short octogenarian with a shock of grey-white hair.  He held a book up for me so I could photograph the inside cover, where the lending information was stored. It was a memoir of Joshua Reynolds.  The books in the Tavistock Subscription Library have been winnowed down to only covered local information, so Reynolds' Devon birth is what put him in the collection. Graham is the Old Man of the Library and still shows up to do some work.  He smelled of urine, but was outwardly clean, if rumpled, and he smiled at me with watery blue eyes saying, "no don't take my picture, it'll crack your lens."

The Subscription Library is open to non-subscribers on Saturdays, which is when I visited.  I stopped first at the bi-weekly Farmer's Market and picked up Bread of Devon for my host and beetroot, a pasty, and honey for myself.  The purchases were dropped on the floor, along with umbrella and walking stick, as I wandered around the table.  On display by the door I found a new book by a local author:  it was all about the 3-hare motif.  Apparently the Tavistock church is one of many Devon locations for the motif, so I took a picture of the map in the book and plan to roam the moors, looking for rabbits.  This assumes I get over my nervousness about driving a stick shift through English country lanes.

Towards the end of my hour-long visit, a woman newly-moved to Mary Tavy came in to research her home.  As I left, she was filling out the membership application and receiving the code to the door (a punch button affair.)  If I'd wanted, I could have wangled the code out of the Chairman, but I decided to not take advantage of his good nature.

4.  My first sight of Brangwyn Cottage came through the arch of a viaduct.  It's concrete/stone house, buried in greenery, surrounded by crenelated stone walls.  Plants line the walls and the house, and a green lawn fills in the bowl.  There's a messy orchard with long grass and leaning apple trees next to the kitchen and a walled garden below that.  You walk through an arch in the wall, down some slippery stone stairs to a door at the far end and further down a grassy bramble tunnel to reach the old Abbey area and market.  Walking up the hill takes you to the entrance of the viaduct trail.  The viaduct used to be a railway bridge, and now it's a cycling/running/dogwalking haven.  The viaduct has high stone walls over which I can view the town.  After that, the paved trail is like a green roofless tunnel, with water running to one side and granite cliffs filled with mosses and other wet area plants. Occasionally one passes beneath a high road through a short tunnel:  I usually sing a high note to hear the echo. It feels like hiking in the Gorge, without the hills.  Sadly, the dogs don't seem to want to go all the way down the trail. Perhaps it's the rain.

Exploring Claremont

Before I came here, I only knew that the town was nicknamed "The City of Trees and PhDs," and that David Foster Wallace lived here until he killed himself.  But I don't think anyone blames Claremont for that.  And my friend M lived here as a youth and his father owned a liquor store in Pomona, I think; at least he was in one of the nearby towns into which Claremont merges.  I noted that it was 30 miles east of LA, and up against the foothills, and my hostess said that down the street from the house was a trail up into those very foothills.  I have yet to take that trail:  the daily dog walk goes past the trail-head, but apparently it's not a good venue for Cookie and Didi, and it's been too hot to hike later in the day after the walk.

I figured I'd probably go into LA several times and that there would be wineries and parks and things to do in the area.  Well, that is true, but it took some time to get out of the house.  Halfway through the stay, I finally planned a trip to LA, to the Mark Taper Forum.  I hadn't heard of the play, Heisenberg, but many of my favorite actors have worked there, so it's been on my list.  Otherwise, I've let fear of traffic and the non-pedestrian-friendly vibes keep me solidly home-based.

My first week was spent getting the dogs and cat to love me.  Actually, that was very easy.  They are affectionate critters, and they miss their peeps, so they have snuggled with me from the very start.  After the first week or so, they stopped taking C and S's tshirts into the living room when left alone, and started toting my clothes instead. Fortunately, all they seem to do is lick them:  the fabric is still intact.

My first Friday here I checked out the downtown music scene:  there are 4 outdoor venues scattered about, and different music is featured in each.  Jazz seems to be centered in the Plaza area, which is where I located the local cinema and some really nice looking restaurants.  The other nice restaurants seem to be around College and 2nd street, near the Library (which I didn't visit until the end of my stay.) I didn't get a picture of the fountain that night, because it was surrounded and filled with people, and it's architectural and winding in nature, so it isn't easy to capture the stone and metal dragon that it seemed to be.

I used the online city calendar to locate events and places to visit, and C left a list of places to check out.  I developed a shopping routine and a schedule for walks and swimming in the pool:  the former needed to happen when it was coolest, and the latter when I felt like taking a nap or when I returned from an excursion, hot and sweaty. And, as I've said in other posts, I have enjoyed not being forced to explore the city or the area.

Now I am embarking on my last week.  I'm at the Huntington Gardens, watching people wander into the ornate and mannered structures of the Chinese Garden, listening to their inanities (but somehow it's okay if the words are tinged with an Asian accent or the people are speaking French:  those are the most common voices.) I bought a membership after the first visit, because I had not managed to make it to the Library, and at $25 a visit, it seemed to make sense.  It actually doesn't, but I will likely break even, and it's good to take some time to absorb the beauty.  It also feels like I did something besides sit under a dog.

In addition to exploring the neighborhood on my walks and joining the Vocal Forum, I have explored some of Claremont. I went to the art museum and learned about the Russian Village and heritage trees.  I attended the Butterflies and Brews event at the Santa Ana Botannic Gardens.  I wandered around Pomona College at the fireworks and attended a play at the Greek Theatre (but left early because I was sooo sleepy.)  I did some research at the Library, which looks like a bunker but is blissfully free of the smell of the unwashed which characterizes most downtown libraries.

If I lived here, I'd probably go to Pasadena for most things:  I've fallen in love with the various museums and have discovered some fabulous ice cream places.  But, Claremont is a pretty community.  The trees and architecture make for pleasant walks and drives.  There are outlets for music and the arts, especially because of the Claremont colleges.  I met up with some people attended a string quartet workshop at Scripps:  if I'd been aware in January that I was coming here, I could have done that!