Coming Home

Several years ago I attended a party on Bainbridge and got chatting to an elderly gentleman who was well-travelled and had lived for many years in the middle east.  He was a fascinating character and I was fixated by his tales (to the point of letting my wine glass run dry!) until he asked me a question that gave me pause for thought and engendered some consternation.  It was an obvious question, but one to which I’d never given any thought: ‘If I’d lived half my life in England and half in the USA and was planning a decade of world travel, where was ‘home’?’  When I spluttered into my wine glass (thankfully re-filled) and said I had no idea, he expressed genuine concern and commented that it was tragic and a real loss to me that I had nowhere I could call home.  I found myself thinking of Dorothy clicking her little red slippers together, but for the life of me I couldn’t understand the gentleman’s concern nor the need to have a place to call home.

I’m still not convinced that one needs to be anchored to a homeland but, since I’ve returned to the country of my birth and childhood, I have a greater appreciation of what makes a place ‘home’.  I’ve come to the conclusion that home is not necessarily where your family resides, nor is it the place where life-changing events took place (which is not to say that memories of ‘home’ are not important); instead, the experience of ‘coming home’ for me is a feeling, I think it’s a whole body version of umami.  Wikipedia describes the sixth taste as having the property of ‘a mild but lasting aftertaste difficult to describe’.   Others state that a food has umami when it has become all that it can be, when it is at its peak of quality and fulfillment.  Can life, like food, achieve the transcendent state of umami?  And is it this feeling that Samwise Gamgee is describing when he talks thus about home to Frodo:

“Do you remember the Shire, Mr. Frodo? It'll be spring soon. And the orchards will be in blossom. And the birds will be nesting in the hazel thicket. And they'll be sowing the summer barley in the lower fields... and eating the first of the strawberries with cream. Do you remember the taste of strawberries?”

Returning to England in May I can certainly attest to the umami feeling Sam describes when I could once again feast my eyes on flowering horse chestnuts, hawthorns and limes and observe, still, Clydesdales grazing in a field.  But even routine things can stimulate that feeling of familiarity and comfort.  It’s reassuring to bicycle past Martin’s newsagent every morning and see an old man in a flat cap with Yorkie in tow, and stick in hand, tapping his way along to collect the daily paper.  As a school girl I delivered newspapers for Martin’s for many years and in all weather!   And my grandfather would walk to the village store every morning for the paper - it was his big outing for the day when his health deteriorated.  Remarkably, there are still newspaper boys (and girls, although I’ve mainly seen boys) in England.  The job appears not to have changed, but now I occasionally see a lad shunning the bike for the more trendy scooter and sporting ear buds, the music no doubt helping him get through the chore.   I wish podcasts had been available when I was a papergirl and later when I delivered the Christmas post in Oxford.   Postmen (and women) haven’t changed much either, but they now sport a trendy red uniform and seem to take the job pretty seriously.  I remember sorting the Christmas post with some pretty randomly dressed, jovial fellows and I got the impression that it was all a bit of a lark, but maybe that was just because I was working with the Christmas temps! 

I don’t know if it’s a sense of fulfilment, or a giddy adrenaline-induced high I feel when I bicycle at breakneck speed down Headington Hill into the city of dreaming spires, but being on a bike again in England probably gives me the strongest feeling of ‘coming home’.  So much of my youth was spent on a bicycle!  If I wasn’t bicycling to school or doing my paper round, I was slogging uphill in the rain on my bike on a youth hostelling holiday in Wales, or zipping along the A31 to visit my boyfriend in Richmond, or doing the Oxford thing of pedalling like a mad thing down Cowley road trying to make a 9 o’clock lecture.  Reassuringly, a LOT of people still bike in Oxford and the infrastructure for cyclists has improved immensely.  Raleigh is still in operation and I was able to get a fabulous green 8-speed bike off Gumtree, a step up from my old blue 3-speed.  I sincerely hope that in my lifetime personal flying machines don’t supplant terrestrial forms of transport because I’ll feel about the disappearing bicycle the same way my predecessors felt about the loss of the horse drawn cart.

Ah, but it’s reassuring to see that England still values its waterways as a means of transport and, on a fine weekend, the canals are alive with activity.  The river Thames has not changed and, walking beside it with my rambling group, I am transported back to another river and another time.  While studying at Oxford I took many a weekend break to visit my grandmother in the little village of Eckington in Worcestershire and, while there, frequently went on therapeutic walks by the river Avon.  Rivers flood (especially this year!), they can transport a damp Queen on her triumphal Jubilee barge, or Ratty and Mole on a summer jaunt in a boat, but they remain essentially unchanged by these activities.  There is something stoic about English rivers and I think that is why a walk by the river was, and still is, a very grounding activity for me and an activity, like bicycling, that can induce the transcendent umami state and a sensation of ‘coming home’.

I don’t know how long I will stay in England or where fortune will take me next on our round the world adventure.  I don’t know if I will ever reach a place and say ‘Ah, now this feels like home and I will stay here forever’.  Maybe this makes me a tragic case, or maybe I am just responding to the very same genetic urge that gave our predecessors the initiative to leave Africa and colonize the world.  There are travellers and those that stay home;  in Oxford one’s thoughts turn often to Tolkien and I think he sums it all up in his astute observation that ‘Not all those who wander are lost’.

Those Slippery Days of Spring...

In most countries the first balmy days of the year are greeted, if not with rapture, with a satisfied sigh as one anticipates summer and all the good things that season brings.  This is not the case in China.  When the warm spring winds arrive, our normally fresh-air loving neighbours batten down the hatches, seal all leaky windows and doors as best they can, and withdraw glumly into their secured cocoons.  At first this behaviour seems very odd to the foreigner who watched entire families dine on their balcony clad in parkas and red long johns (I KNOW the underwear is red!) during some very chilly days in January. As I said, the Chinese love nothing if not fresh air.  Why the sudden change in attitude toward the elements?

Steve and I discerned the answer on our first balmy spring day a couple of weeks ago.  When descending from the 7^th floor of our apartment building down the polished granite stairs that are standard in all buildings in China, we noticed that our feet were getting steadily wetter and by the 1^st floor we were splashing through veritable puddles.  Had the building cleaner become negligent and failed to mop thoroughly after washing the stairs?  Or were we observing a natural phenomenon that makes the onset of spring in this part of the tropics a nightmare for Chinese and foreigners alike?  Unfortunately, the latter was the case.  Imagine an environment where all buildings are constructed of granite and tile with no insulation in the walls and leaky single pane windows.  Now take these granite and tile structures and cool them for a couple of months to a chilly 9^oC (cool enough to warrant dressing for bed in thermal underwear and a wool hat – remember, there’s no heat in this cold box, and no insulation); then overnight douse these buildings in moisture-laden air of a sultry  21^oC, and you can create a swimming pool of condensation!  You can’t defy the laws of physics!

Fortunately, Steve and I are still spry enough that we are able to remain upright (at least while sober!) as we daily negotiate the plethora of slippery surfaces we encounter nowadays – our apartment floor, the stairs, all the corridors at school (which are exposed to the elements and cleverly constructed of tile) and our very own classrooms.  Gone are the days when we could incorporate ‘run to the board’ activities in the daily teaching agenda.  Indeed, everyone moves in slow motion at this time of year but there are falls and broken limbs in spite of this.  Broken bones are associated with spring in China in the way we associate them with the ski season in the Pacific Northwest.  Indeed, on day one of the ‘slippery season’ we learnt that one teacher and one student in a neighbouring school had succumbed and were both now sporting plaster casts on their arms - and that was just the beginning!

Several weeks into the season, Steve and I have adapted in the manner of seasoned travellers.  We now keep our air conditioner set on ‘dehumidify’ at a comfortable 30^oC and this has reduced the layer of moisture on the apartment floor, although it hasn’t done much to dry the perennially damp bathroom towels and bedding.  Drying laundry has moved from an outdoor occupation to an indoor obsession.  My days are spent rotating washed items onto and off our 2ftX2ft electric radiator and fearing for the elastic in my underwear – surely direct heat can’t be increasing its lifespan?  And, like our Chinese neighbours, we’ve learnt to seal every crevice in our cold box to keep that nasty warm air out!

However, there are some that love this season and the humid climate it brings.  Our feathered friends are not disturbed by slippery surfaces and are in raptures over the newly hatched insect population.  Their joyful song is a balm for the ears.  And the newly planted trees on campus are wriggling their roots into moist soil and preparing to wow us with spring blossoms.  The Chinese are amazing gardeners and really know their soil and local growing conditions.  In early January holes were dug all over campus and allowed to soak up the winter rains prior to being filled just this past week with mature root ball trees trucked in from a local nursery.  These are big trees – probably 10-20 years old and they look extremely healthy.  March 12^th was China’s annual National Tree Planting Day and an entire afternoon was spent by workers and students alike ensuring that the 50-odd holes around campus were suitably filled with vegetation, from mature trees to good-sized bushes – what a fantastic tradition.

I will close with my conclusions on the weather of Guangdong province since weather seems to be an international obsession and my observations may be useful to any blog readers who are considering a trip down here. 

Seasons in Guangdong Province:

July to late October – the sweaty season

November – the perfect month

December – February – the ‘red long john’ season

March – the slippery season

April – June – yet to be experienced, but my guess is warm and damp and filled with tropical colour and butterflies. 

Steve will inform me, no doubt, if my weather guess for late spring is correct.  As many of you know, come May I will be flying north to inspect bluebells and hawthorn hedges in England and will possibly never return for any season in China, especially the ‘slippery season’!