A Country Bumpkin

Back From England

Arriving in England gave me culture shock. I didn't realise what a village country bumpkin I had become. It's not that long since I was last in London but that was just for an evening. The proliferation of crowds of people, cars, buses and houses all around was simply so unfamiliar. I was well aware that Bow, where my son Carl lives, is something of a Bangladeshi enclave but there were also significant numbers of Chinese, Turks and Caribbeans. There were most probably also many others from origins that I couldn't readily identify, a real racial melting pot.

However, I didn't witness or sense any racial tension, although there may be some. Voltaire once wrote of religion that if one were to have religion it was important to have something like twenty religions rather than just two; two would always be in conflict whilst twenty could live happily together.

Bow, I discovered, is an area of London that is due a makeover and, indeed, in the process of getting it. Whilst many of the main streets could probably do with wome demolition, the side streets were full of Georgian houses that, renovated, would form sublime roads. No doubt the speculators will be in there in force before long.

The shops in the main streets were much better than the dreary line-up of financial outlets and betting and charity shops that is the lot of many high streets in towns where all the best shops have moved into malls. The food shops, most of which proclaimed themselves Food Centres, all seemed to have a very wide selection of fruit, vegetables and « exotic » provisions, reflecting the cultural diversity of the area. They were complemented by a similar variety of retaurants and takeaways, many very good and cheap.

And I discovered the Oyster card, the cheap way of using public transport in London. It works brilliantly as do the buses and tube trains, all cleaner than I remembered them, frequent and the former relatively fast even in areas of traffic congestion.

Wandering around Oxford Street I acquired some garb that I had wanted for a long time: the most garish Union Jack T-shirt I could find and a black bowler hat, garb to wind up my French friends at boules or for England-France games watched in the Bar du Pont. I duly wore them to the first boules game on my return, to laughter and jokes all round.

What didn't go well in England was the weather. I had anticipated spending some time in the many good parks, reading and watching the world go by. But windy, cold and often wet conditions ruled that out. I did manage a trip out to see one of my favourite National Trust gardens, Mottisfont, with friend Margaret, but although the garden still looked beautiful it was a good two weeks away from the peak it should have been at at that time of the year. Mercifully, the rain that fell on the way to it ceased when we got there athough the cold conditions didn't help appreciation of the scents for which it is rightly famous.

What most surprised me about my trip was the realisation that, despite having lived almost all of my life in and around towns, I have quite quickly become a contented villager of southern France. Driving back from the airport I was immediately at peace rediscovering the calm, the wooded hills all around, the sense of space and the sun.