Westward ho...

My dream is of a place and a time where America will once again be seen as the last best hope of earth.
Abraham Lincoln

Back in the UK and finding myself gently settling into the early spring now. The contrast on my return from Phnom Penh where temperatures were regularly 30 degrees centigrade plus to the cold of the first few weeks in Thetford where we experienced the dubious pleasures of -10 was stark indeed. Added to the basic challenge were the joys of jet lag, some sort of cold probably contracted whilst enjoying the recirculated breathing of 600 and odd people on an Airbus 380 and, finally, the inconvenience of a little bit of food poisoning likely due to the consumption of what seemed to be a reheated veggie breakfast at a local hostelry. This latter made any thoughts of further travel somewhat uninviting. Once or twice in the past when I have returned to olde Albion a bit too soon I have succumbed to the temptations of escaping to more tropical climes when faced with the realities of a British winter. This time though, it seems that I will have to stay for at least the next month or so.

Added to the list of reasons to stay is also a promise I made to an American neighbour to look after his garden whilst he himself has to do some enforced travelling. He is a pleasant young man who shares with many of his compatriots the rather endearing habit of calling his seniors ‘sir’. As I am very much in this category (senior), I find myself treated in this slightly over-respectful manner on a regular basis. By no means is every American youngster quite so respectful, but during my visits to the States I was somewhat pleasantly surprised at just how often this was the case.

Much like the UK, and maybe like many other cultures, my experience of the US was that folks seemed very much more friendly, as well as more polite, the further you got from the main metropolises. New York was perhaps the least friendly place I have ever been on this planet. Nobody seemed to have even the time for the most rudimentary manners. Orders were the norm, rather than requests, and scarcely if ever were they followed by a ‘please’ or a ‘thank you’. When I tried to order a coffee in a cafe in central Manhattan I made the mistake of hesitating for perhaps a millisecond. This pause was all too much for the barista serving me who took it as his cue to move on to the next customer without so much as a by your leave. On another occasion I had accompanied my elderly father to the city back in the 80s. I remember him asking a policeman if he knew the way to the Empire State Building. This particular representative of New York’s Finest simply answered ‘yes’ and turned away.

On the other hand, a visit to the Lancaster county in Pensylvania a few years later with my girlfriend of the time, Natalia, led to us discovering the joys of the Amish culture flourishing there. Driving through the rolling countryside and leaving the turnpike with its anonymous shopping malls behind, it felt as if we had suddenly entered a time warp. Horse draw carriages of a type scarcely seen for over a century in the UK plied the narrow lanes. Men with hugely impressive beards and very courteous manners greeted you openly, if a little cautiously at times, their wives and daughters adorned in a manner that would not have looked out of place in pre-Victorian England. We rented a small room for a few days just outside the oddly name town of Intercourse. Our hosts could not have been friendlier or more helpful. The local area was quite lovely too, though the early signs of creeping commercialisation were already apparent even back then. I would guess that a return to Lancaster now might leave one a tad disappointed …

After experiencing Intercourse a few times (apologies, but some lines are just too difficult to resist…) we drove on South to the inaptly named Paradise and then turned West in the direction of Gettysburg. Given the hugely influential events that occurred there, the town itself was remarkably unprepossessing. We had a coffee in the quiet and pleasant Carlisle Street before heading out to the site of the battle itself. During the American Civil War the Confederate troops, led by General Robert E. Lee, had experienced a series of victories that took them to within 50 miles of Washington. For a few weeks it was looking quite probable that the South would emerge victorious. History hung in the balance. Their advance was halted in a large and open field just South of the town of Gettysburg. I sat with Natalia on a large rock that formed part of Little Round Top. On the early spring day we visited the area struck one as utterly pleasant, a gentle breeze blew across the high ground where we sat gazing down across a gently rising field below us that led into a wood about a mile away. It was hard to believe looking down on that peaceful scene the sheer carnage that had taken place there 130 years before. 15,000 Confederate troops had directly charged across the uphill, open ground trying in vain to take the dominating position that was occupied by Union army on the hilltop. 6,000 of those men died and many more were injured. The assault became known as Pickett’s charge and, in many ways, it marked the turning point of the war.

The cherry trees were in blossom by the time we reached Washington, the capital of this great yet perplexing nation. There had been yet another drive-by shooting the day before we arrived and Natalia was understandably nervous. A quarter of a century later and this all-American problem only seems to have grown worse. At the time, it was as much as I could do to persuade Natalia to leave the safety of our hotel room and head into the centre of town. Compared to New York at least, the capital was somewhat more civilised. We visited the normal attractions; the Smithsonian, Congress, the Lincoln Memorial yet it felt somehow soulless. Mightily impressive yes, but in a way that was so obviously designed to be impressive. It left the two of us less than impressed…

All in all, I visited the US a grand total of six times but I am not sure if I will ever go back now. It is very much a subjective opinion, but for me there was something oddly unsettling in the culture. Everything but everything seemed to be in hock to commercial interests. The realisation dawned early that visiting a mall in Miami was much the same as visiting a mall in Washington or Boston or Philadelphia or any one of a hundred other cities. This was back in the early 1990s and of course now much the same phenomenon has been visited upon the UK and, indeed, on the rest of the planet. At the time though, I remember thinking how terribly similar everything was; the J.C. Penneys and the Walmarts, the McDonalds and the Wendys, the Starbucks and the Dunkin’ Donuts.

It is hard to express exactly the reasons for my lack of desire to return, but perhaps it comes down to the feeling that I was never really able to feel like a traveller there but always merely a tourist. On almost every occasion it had felt as if I had been processed, as if I had entered via the airport at one end, had the requisite experiences in the requisite way, seen the right sights, got the right photographs, bought the right mementos, and then exited via the same airport on the way out. Somehow, the experience had never felt quite genuine, never quite ‘real’.

Back home in the UK amidst the sounds of a gurgling central heating system struggling manfully to cope with the demands of yet another cold evening whilst the freezing rain spatters noisily against the window panes, I find myself wondering where my nomadic tendencies will lead me next. Madrid in April is looking quite likely (I promised to help a friend sell a flat there) although the temptation of Greece in early May is also quite alluring. There is a big World out there waiting to be explored, although it would seem that I am forever drawn Eastwards to the depths of Europe and Asia rather than the more structured temptations of the U.S.

Leaving on a Jet Plane...

 “No one realizes how beautiful it is to travel until he comes home and rests his head on his old, familiar pillow. ” 

Lin Yutang

It seems that, after a mere four week break, that my more far-flung flaneurial duties will be once more resumed in the coming weeks with trips to South China and Thailand. It is a tough job, but someone's gotta do it. In the meantime, I spent the weekend preparing the few odds and sods needed for such a trip. This task was not particularly onerous, chiefly consisting of the obtaining of sufficient funds to get by in my first few weeks in China. This is something one needs to arrange before visiting that particular country, unless one enjoys the hour and a half proceedings that tend to occur every time one endeavours to change money in a Chinese bank in any place other than the most obvious of tourist destinations.
If one already has visas and insurance in place, then it is a simple matter to prepare for such a trip, even when that trip is planned over a period of months rather than weeks. I am sometimes asked by friends and relatives how I set about these things. The answer is surprisingly straightforward; once one has completed such technicalities as visas, insurance and funds, it is simply a matter of getting on a train, then a plane, then….well, that's it...really, that is all there is to it. In the interconnected world in which we live today, such travel is no longer that much of a challenge. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that the biggest part of the challenge is the ennui of long journeys on aircraft. Personally, I usually find the 'entertainment' on offer through various films and TV shows very dull, the films being almost invariably of the more commercial type, popular but vacuous. Every now and then a little gem somehow sneaks in, but often as not I scarcely bother these days. Thank heavens for the invention of the e-reader! With this in hand I find I can happily wile away many an hour tucking into the delights of Henry Miller or Anais Nin, or any one of about fifty authors that I am currently indulging in, whilst suspended 40,000 feet above the planet's surface.
In retrospect, I think that the return to the UK at this time of year was perhaps not the best notion that every crossed my mind. The pleasurable part has been catching up with various friends. Oddly, it seems to matter little how far one has travelled or what adventures one has indulged in, on return such relationships, after an obligatory handshake or hug, return to much the same as they were before. This is something that I appreciate very much. Time and distance seem to make little difference, the core of such friendships remains essentially unaffected.
The country itself...hmm, let us just say that absence makes the heart grow fonder, whilst confrontation with the reality of its fundamentally parochial nature, its class struggles, its asinine politics and, on a more banal note, just how cold it is this time of year, soon dissipate one's delusions about the place. The UK can be a very beautiful country, from the end of April to the end of September. If one is fortunate, even October can be reasonably pleasant, the rest of the year it is a struggle simply to survive the cold, the wet, the wind, the mud, the ice and the snow. The days themselves are incredibly short at this time of year, seemingly consisting of a sunrise and a sunset, with scarcely anything in between.
The inward-looking nature of the country can also be a tad wearisome, the somewhat dated beliefs as to its significance bearing little relation to today's reality. There was a time, many, many moons ago now, when Britain was indeed very influential on a global scale. Whether this influence was at all beneficial is another matter. Much of what was done in the name of Empire now looks very dubious with the benefit of hindsight. Numerous examples spring to mind: running India as a company, rather than as a country, the Opium War in which we forced the Chinese to import the drug in return for access to their markets (tea, interestingly, in particular), our efforts in Africa (such dubious efforts as the setting up of the first concentration camps by the British in the course of the Boer War – not as fundamentally awful, admittedly, as later iterations, but still very unpleasant), and...well, I could go on, but suffice it to say that much of the British contribution was not exactly positive in nature, mainly consisting of a ruthless exploitation of raw materials and local populations. Much of the 'civilising' influence claimed was something of an afterthought, the very notion betrays a level of smugness that looks remarkably ill-founded given the pecuniary motivation for almost all of the British interventions.
To be fair, almost every country one visits suffers from similar delusions as to its own influence. America seems to be forever wagging a finger at the rest of the World and lecturing about human rights, whilst conveniently ignoring them on their own escapades around the globe. The Japanese to this day remain in denial of the nature of their occupations during World War Two, a subject that causes much friction with its Asian neighbours. The Chinese and the Russians adopt a slightly different approach wherein they portray themselves as forever victims of foreign aggression, conveniently ignoring the fact that their own leaders were responsible for far more suffering than any invading armies ever inflicted.
And so it goes…
Personally, I rather liked the words of the venerable Thomas Paine on nationalism. This old Thetfordian (interestingly, as I write these words, I am a mere few hundred feet from his birthplace) simply stated:
“My country is the world, and my religion is to do good.”
I could not argue with such noble sentiments.