England

England

There is something very comforting about MacDonald’s. Ja, Ja, Ja - I’ve also heard that the Big Mac has virtually no nutritional value at all and that MacDonald’s French fries are just fat plus salt and that their Diet Coke is mostly chemicals, possibly carcinogenic ones. But here’s the thing. At least you know what you are getting. And you don’t feel ripped off. At least I don’t.

At home I hardly ever go to MacDonald’s. No more than I go to Kentucky Fried Chicken or Steer’s – we make the occasional sojourn, usually at the instigation of the princesses. But somehow when I travel I end up at the MacDonald’s. Like today. I had an overnight flight from DC to London. So I was up early yesterday, worked the whole day, caught a 10 pm flight and didn’t sleep very well. Result: not feeling wonderful when we touched down at Heathrow. Add to that waiting for an hour for my luggage, which never came, only to be told that the United Airlines check in lady in Washington had got it wrong: it was booked through to Cape Town (she said I would definitely need to collect it and recheck it since my onward flight is SAA). 

I have an 11 hour layover. Not great but there are worse places than London to spend 11 hours. Actually it is more like 5 hours now. Anyway, I saw a sign to “SAA arrivals lounge – by invitation only”. To be frank, I didn’t expect they would let me in, but I thought I’d try my luck anyway. “No,” I was told, “you have to be Gold”. “Thank you, I understand completely,” I said, aiming for a bit of thinly veiled sarcasm, which I think was lost on the lounge staff. OK, so no airport lounge. Don’t like them anyway. Try a hotel – all I really want is a shower, change, possibly a sleep, and somewhere to work for the day until check in time.

I caught the U3 bus up to Bath Road in Drayton West. This is a trick I learned from my boss. You can take the National Express Hotel Hopper but it costs four pounds and they drive you about 1km. Nice work if you can get it! But here’s the secret – the buses which leave from the Central Bus Station are free for the first three stops – something to do with the fact that it is impossible to walk to Heathrow so they have to provide you with free public transport.

“Yes,” said the check in clerk at the Heathrow Sheraton, “we do have day rooms. They are 85 pounds plus tax so that will be around 100 pounds plus 15 pounds for internet access for the day.” And of course there would be food – I think the lunch is about 20 quid. So about 150 pounds or nearly R1800 for the privilege – that is 6 tanks of petrol in our cars – a month’s supply for both cars. Which is how I ended up at MacDonald’s, just across the road. Four quid bought me a Big Mac, fries and a large soda. I got to sit at a comfortable and clean table where I could do some work in peace at no extra cost. The guys next to me have their laptops out as well. They are babbling away in what sounds like Portuguese but I am not sure – anyway it doesn’t bother me. Every few minutes there is a roar as a plane takes off – we are right next to one of the main runways. It doesn’t worry me – I can see that if you lived here you might eventually stop hearing it. Not just because of hearing loss – I think you would become accustomed to it.

It has been a long trip – 2 weeks away from home is not my preference but it seemed to make sense this time. It was foul when I left Cape Town – the weather I mean – one of those winter frontal systems which really remind you why it was called the Cape of Storms. I sat in the business lounge at the airport (Silver was good enough there), with the rain pelting the windows and obscuring the view across the apron and runway, struggling to hear what was being said on the telecom I had dialled in to. My travel agent had secured me a decent seat – don’t ask me which one but I had a wall in front of me not a seat with the result that I could stretch my legs a bit and there wasn’t anyone kicking back and tilting theirs into my French salad dressing.

I had a couple of meetings in London – I was staying at the hotel where the meetings were being held, the Heathrow Sheraton. The meetings were ... meetings. What can I say? I got a chance to have a look around the area though – I went for a run one afternoon up to the nearby village of Harmondsworth. This is the crazy thing – here you have one of the world’s busiest airports, with 40 planes landing / departing every hour, I am told. Surrounding it you have the usual array of warehouses, businesses and hotels, which feed it and feed off it. But just beyond that you have fields of lurid yellow flax, sleepy villages, old stone churches, manor houses and quaint little pubs ... it is all a bit unreal ... and then beyond that again the motorway.

The White Horse pub, just up the road from the Sheraton Heathrow. It was quite cold the night we went so we elected not to sit outside. Inside it was warm and welcoming. The ceiling was quite low and I expect the building is a good few hundred years old. I asked for a “local beer” and was given a Foster’s! Ah well, I tried. I don’t mind Foster’s. The one negative was the Juke Box - looked and sounded really out of place, but I guess the publican has to keep his clients happy.

Flax fields: The bright yellow field just behind the hotel. I have called it flax. I shall have to find out whether that is correct. It is certainly striking. Is this what Sting was singing about in his song “We’ll walk in fields of gold”? I wonder.

Harmond House and Harmondsworth Hall: These are all shots of what I took to be the Manor House of the village of Harmondsworth. I know nothing of their history but I thought them quite pretty, especially the flower baskets.

Harmondsworth Church: This is the church in the village of Harmondsworth. I forget the name – St Peter’s, maybe. The vicar’s name looked Nigerian. Certainly not English. I wandered around the adjacent graveyard for a while. Many of the gravestones were illegible on account of weathering and erosion, but some I could read – they seemed to be mainly 19^th and 20^th century. The church, on the other hand, looks much older. There was no sign of life in the place – in fact the pub across the road was a lot more lively than the church, which I guess is about par for the course.

Harmondsworth Moor: I thought this was quite charming – wedged between factories and warehouses, a little bit of heaven – Harmondsworth Moor. But the interesting thing is that it is reclaimed landfill. I walked around, took some pictures, wondered whether I should buy some property here ... until I found out it is owned and managed by British Airways ... but quite delightful. Full marks to the worthies who created it.

Do I like England? Do I feel drawn to the place? There is definitely a lot about it that attracts me. Maybe it is just that I feel like I better understand the people here – not totally – they are not South African and I am not British, despite my passport, but I think they are that little bit closer to us (by which I mean English speaking white South Africans, my “home base”), than Americans are, which is strange given that America is also 350 years out from being colonised by England and other European powers. I watched the UK elections on BBC and then I listened to American political debate on National Public Radio in the USA and I have to confess that I understood the former and not the latter. The same applies to sport – try and I might I just cannot fathom American football, struggle with basketball and can just about figure out baseball. On the other hand football (soccer), rugby and cricket, which dominate the English sporting scene, are the stuff of my youth, like second languages to me. And of course the British drive on the correct (not the right) side of the road. Maybe we should spend some time here. It is just the climate that is a bit of a killer. I have a dream of spending the UK summer here and the SA summer in SA. We have friends who do that. Best of both worlds – never have to be cold or wet!

Churches

One of the great things about being a Christian is that virtually anywhere you go in the world you can find a church to worship in and people to worship with. Another is that you are very unlikely to have the same experience twice, such is the heterogeneity of the Christian church and yet you always feel like you at least know the basic plot.

I have visited 3 churches in the last week. The first was the Rotunda of St. Martin (11th century) in the Vysehrad Castle grounds in Prague. I was walking past and heard what I thought was a sizeable choir singing plainsong. It turned out to be just a priest and 2 assistants celebrating mass but due to the smallness and acoustics of the venue (it seats about 10, 20 at a push) it sounded like many more. There were only 2 congregants and both looked like they were in their 70's. Reminded me of the Magna Carta song "Father John", about "Miss Pringle and Miss Prendergast and George who does the brass are there / to say the words they've said for twenty years and noone knows or cares." Which got me wondering whether it matters whether nobody knows or cares. Presumably God both knows and cares. The liturgy and song were in Czech so I didn't understand a word, (Latin would have been easier) but it was such a beautiful setting and the people looked so friendly and genuine, that I decided to stay and sat down. No sooner had I done so than the mass ended and they started packing away. Ah well, better luck next time - I should have read the notice on the door. Maybe it was the setting, maybe it was the people - but the place had an air of lightness, of joy, of sunniness, which made me happy.

The second was the Basilica of St Peter and St Paul, also at Vysehrad Castle, just down the road from the chapel. There was no service going on, but the church was open for visitors (at a price of 30 krone, about 1 euro, which I was glad to pay). The lady caretaker was a little late opening and appeared flustered and unhappy. Inside it was very ornate, beautiful, peaceful, but somehow seemed sad (to me at any rate). Maybe it was the absence of any worshippers or music. I read some of the displays - it seems that the place suffered a bad fire many years ago and had to be rebuilt. It also appeared as though many of the ancient treasures had disappeared in the years of Communist rule and those on display now were considerably less ancient and had mostly been donated from private collections. I felt a heaviness about the place and did not stay long. I wondered what those heavy walls have witnessed over the centuries. Rulers and their people thankfully celebrating God's providence after they return from a campaign, having successfully decimated and enslaved their enemies, or following the birth of a male heir to the throne, or maybe crying out in hopelessness for protection as invading armies advance? The walls were mute - clearly they were not going to yield their secrets to me.

Today I went to church three times. That is a record even for me! Well, not exactly. I attended Matins at Westminster Abbey at 10 a.m. and learned that there was an organ recital at 5.45 p.m., preceded by evensong at 3 p.m., so I figured what the heck, I may as well do both. I love all sacred choral music, but am particularly fond of English cathedral music, so this was like a three course meal, with all three courses being desert. I won't bore you with all tre details, but in the two services I heard music by Mendelssohn, Clucas, Turle, Vaughan Williams, Tomkins, Monsell, Ross, Leighton, Taverner (the 16th century one), Wesley and Vierne. It was sung by arguably one of England's finest choirs, accompanied by a world class organist playing one of the world's greatest instruments, in a stunning acoustic and in a setting which would surely lift the spirit of even the most miserable. The language of the liturgy was formal but not archaic and I found it beautiful to listen to. Added to that we had two well constructed, pithy, thought provoking (and short!) sermons by the resident canon, Robert Wright and later the head of theology at Christian Aid, Paula Clifford. As if that wasn't enough I also got to go to the recital by James McVinnie, assistant organist (how can anyone that good be an "assistant"?) He played works by Bach, Ross and Escaich. Ross, a contemporary British composer, is a mere 23 years old. What talent! Having thus gorged myself, I left feeling strangely elated. On the way out, I thanked the Canon for including Jacob Zuma, Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu in the prayers of intercession during evensong. Seems like the Brits spend more time praying for our president than we do!