What I Love About England #17

Enough self-indulgence!

I was walking along the Blenheim resevoir smiling at all the people and their dogs (but mostly at their dogs) when I stopped at the bridge and saw:


Three Men in a Boat!

!!!

Bladon

I've finally worked out that the shooting season is an excuse to enforce Darwin's survival of the fittest on the pheasant population so that only the cleverest, most cunning pheasants will be left.


The best thing for a dreary December afternoon lunch break (other than huddling by a heater) is a short trip to Bladon.


Sights not to be missed in Bladon include the local cholera pump.


The Misanthropist's Lawn.


Drainage Compass where you can choose your own North.


Bladon cemetery is the final resting place of Consuelo Vanderbilt, the ultimate dollar princess, one-time 9th Duchess of Marlborough, object of James M. Barrie's affection, and daughter of the ultimate Psycho Mother.


Alva Vanderbilt used to whip her daughter with a riding crop when she disobeyed, instruct that a steel rod against Consuelo's spine to improve her posture, threatened to murder Consuelo's lover and pretended to be dying in order to force her daughter to marry the Duke.

Her parenting philosophy ultimately boiled down to what she said to Consuelo when she objected to her clothing choice. "I do the thinking, you do as you're told."


Bladon is also the burial place of Winston Churchill: Leader of the free world, Stalin's sassy antagonist, and crap painter.




We've also had our staff Christmas party this week. Alas! There was no flaming Christmas pudding thanks to Health and Safety regulations (Honestly, most of England's holiday celebrations seem to revolve around lighting things and people on fire). But there were exploding crackers full of dorktastic Christmas hats which I am going to treasure forever and ever.

A Walk Around the 'Stock

I decided to take a quick afternoon jaunt, camera in hand, to illustrate why Woodstock is the Most Wonderful & Picturesque Village in Oxfordshire and Would be Perfect if Only it Had a Bookstore and a Wool Shop. And a Japanese Restaurant. And a Library with Better Hours (Honestly, open from 9-1 on a Saturday?) and a DVD Rental Shop.


One of many Woodstock churches. This church is especially notable for the long and involved bell ringing practice they host every Tuesday night where, for the next eighteen hours, the discordant sound of bells can be heard throughout the land by anyone who is trying to get some sleep.


In Old Woodstock, all the houses are charming and covered in ivy.


The ugliest tree in England. Second runner up for the ugliest tree in Oxfordshire county. It was beat out by an upstart, carbuncle-covered spruce in Blackbird Leys.


Alas, this is as far as I got because it started to pour rain and I had to duck inside the nearest tea shop and eat cake.


One of the reasons I love England.

I found these at the Oxford Market for ₤20. A complete 1897 set of Addison and Steele's Spectator nicely bound with little blue ribbon bookmarks. Worth every pence. Also worth the mental anguish of running through Oxford Conrmarket Street, dodging shopping mums with mega-strollers and uniformed youths while stopping to glare at the man butchering "Summertime" on his saxophone all at the same time trying to catch the bus back to Woodstock and shield the books with my jacket from the sopping rain.

Equally as fun as owning them was snatching them from under the nose of the robe-wearing, bespeckled Oxford don who was too weighed down by his own brilliance to chase me once he'd noticed that I'd already gathered them up and paid for them by the time he ended his lecture.

Oh the upstart classes!

The Agony and the Ectasy

That there above is an authentic English morning frost.

With frost! Genuine frosty frost!


Okay, it all melted before 9:30 and melted all over the bench I was sitting on and all over my jacket but this is England, so I keep my expectations low. It was so sad watching the little English people dance about when they thought it was snowing. I didn't have the heart to break it to them that it was only slush falling from the sky and Did Not Count.


I ambled down to the Victoria and Albert Museum (or the V&A for those in the know) to see the Golden Age of Couture, Paris & London 1947-1957 which was horrific thanks to a 1950's educational video showing women how to achieve the "New Look" by crushing all their insides.


Where does your kidney go? Wherefore the spleen? Do all your intestines just rearrange themselves on your head in a stunning up-do?

I also stopped into the see the EXTREME CRAFT EXHIBIT which mostly involved bits of string and ripped nylons nailed to a table...


... Burnt out light bulbs nailed to the wall...


... And paint stained tables and sheets.

I have most of these same exhibits laying around somewhere at home, waiting to be cleaned up. This begs the question: If I throw my garbage in the V&A, does that make it art?


I also made a pilgrimage to Witney to buy some sock wool and check out the first church where my favourite Methodist founder preached his very first sermon.


You guessed it! John Wesley who narrowly beat out Charles Wesley (who caused a street brawl between two worldly women in Georgia) by ducking out of a duel and having to sneak out of South Carolina in disgrace after promising himself to the governor's niece, Sophia Hopkey, who he then ditched after forcing her to promise never to love another (she quickly went on to marry someone with a manlier haircut), he then refused to give her or her new husband holy communion. Cold.


Witney is also home to many comically understated house signs and the only women's lingerie/wool store in creation.


Witney also boasts the law-upholding duo with the most unfortunate surnames in the history of bad lawyer surnames: Stammers and welch.*

*For those who are a bit rusty in their 19th century Wild West gambling terminology, "to welch" is to cheat or rip someone off.


And finally, to wrap up this parade of horrors, the Chapel Barbers.

Unless the tonsure is making an unforseen come back, I think the Bronte Hair Salon is a safer bet.

The Moooooooors!

Some kids dream of going to Disneyland and getting their picture taken with an underpaid employee on the verge of heat stroke, dressed as Mickey Mouse.
I have always dreamed of wandering the moors, pulling out my hair screaming: "CAAAAAATHY! CAAAATHY! THE MOOOORS! THE MOOOORS!" at the top of my lungs.


MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.


Welcome to Haworth! (HAH-WUTH) - whose entire point of existence is to be the tragic, isolated, windswept home of Charlotte, Emily, Anne Bronte and their degenerate brother (who, on top of being a drunk and an opium addict, was also a crappy painter).


The Bronte Parsonage Museum - where you too can thrill at the sight of Charlotte Bronte's reading glasses, the fireplace grate where Anne used to rest her tiny feet, and Emily Bronte's death couch. Emily Bronte romantically died of consumption after refusing to stop baking bread and/or see a doctor.


The church where Patrick Bronte preached during his breaks from cutting his wife's nice dresses into shreds because they would encourage vanity, denying permission for Charlotte to get married, being a Tory, and throwing the shoes of his small, cold and wet children into the fire because comfort was a sin.


The parsonage is located on the top of a very steep hill that is covered in dead people and the famous flat stone covered coffins which were banned in the late 19th century because the airless conditions in these coffins prohibited decomposition of the corpses leading to lots of people being weirded out and disease.


Haworth is home to many, many discos. You cannot pass a window or a street here without being informed of a hot, hot disco being held in the legion on Sunday night. Why, oh why did I leave my purple spandex bodysuit in Canada?


Then there are the MOOOOORS.



I want to live my life on the moors in a little stone cottage writing crazy novels that involve a lot on anti-heroes with bad hair and a penchant for decorating with dead dogs. I want to be buried on the moors (hopefully after dying of natural causes. There's no point in being murdered in the North since the Smiths broke up).

I love the moors.


I decided to do the 10 km hike to Wuthering Heights because if I came all the way to Bronte country without seeing the heights that are wuthering, I would never forgive myself. And it was worth the sheep dodging and the fence climbing and the rock slipping.


The moors are incredible. All you can see is wild moorland valleys and peaks and a lone tree braving the elements and all you hear is the wind through the heath and the bubbling of water in the distance.


That and the two old guys wearing red who I was tailing to make sure I had someone in screaming distance in case I was attacked by the Heathcliff.


The turret in the distance is the prettiest water treatment plant in creation.


The Bronte Waterfall (Okay, not really. But the actual Bronte Waterfall was about three hours out of my way and I had a seven hour train journey back home, so I decided that this was good enough).


The Bronte Bridge.


Mysterious rock formations.


I bewitched a horse!

More desolation.


The winner of "The Stream that Looks the Least Drinkable in the Entire North of England."


And finally I arrived at Wuthering Heights!

According to the angry plaque erected by the Bronte Foundation, this isn't actually the house that inspired Emily to write Wuthering Heights. A fact which they don't tell you until you've climbed the 10 km.

The Bronte Foundation is made up of angry old spoil sports in tatty jumpers who can take their plaque and bury it somewhere ecologically undamaging.


The road home (or at least to the bus station).


My best Jane Eyre impression.