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English Logic We arrived at seven a.m. in England. English! I could almost understand every word! A customs officer checked our passports. "What are you doing in the u.k.?" he wanted to know Straddling my loaded touring bike I answered "Cycling." I thought it was a tad obvious. "How long?" "Six weeks." "How are you going to support yourself?" "Savings," I answered. "We sold our house." Sharon told him. I was thinking of telling him I had won the lotto. "I'm retired you silly bugger!" He stamped our passport (our first stamp) and said: "You can't work while you are here." "I wouldn't want to," I said and pedalled off. In Felixstowe we found a park with a sign pointing to toilets. Civilization at last! Several people strolled by walking dogs. All said "Good morning!" I had become so used to being ignored I almost didn't know how to reply. We didn't have to wait long before kids started a game of cricket. Then, John, out walking his dog introduced himself. He assured us the dog, Whiskey, was strictly for medicinal purposes. He had seen us studying our map and came over to help. We only had a car map and its scale was about five billion to one. "Yes," John said, peering at our map. "That is England. And, right-o, Scotland is up there." Those free maps left a lot to be desired. John told us how to get out of town towards Lowestoft. Not one road he mentioned was on our map. The replacement filling that Sharon got before we left home so she wouldn't have to worry about her teeth had fallen out. She asked John if there was a dentist in Felixstowe. John invited us to come back to his electronic fix-it shop just around the corner. He phoned and made an emergency appointment for that afternoon. John told us the bobbies were great in England. "No corruption. No bribing. If you ever need help for anything just stop a bobby. They're even nice to me," he assured us. "And I'm a disagreeable sort." "For instance," John continued, noticing my upturned brow, "last week one of our bobbies brought in a tv set to be repaired. His son was using it for video games. 'Don't repair this old set,' I told him. 'These old sets jump around so much that they're very hard on the eyes. Especially when one is trying to concentrate on watching a little figure in a video game. Guaranteed, if your kid continues to watch this tv, by the time he's twelve his eyes will be like this.'" (John pulled the corners of his eyes.) "It's too late," the Japanese bobby had replied. John asked if we'd like tea. We went upstairs to his kitchen. It appeared John was a confirmed bachelor. He was the sloppiest housekeeper I had ever seen. Things were everywhere. Dirty dishes were scattered the length of the counter. A bag of bread laid open on the table. Weights were thrown in a corner. Appliances, in various states of repair, were strewn about. "Would you like Chinese tea, Indian tea or English tea?" bachelor John enquired. "What's the difference?" I asked. "Barbarian!" he exploded. "Well," he said, calming down somewhat, "Chinese tea comes from China, Indian tea comes from India, and English tea comes from Tesco's." (The largest grocery chain in England.) "We never drink water here by itself," John said. "It tastes awful and has so much chalk and calcium deposits in it that most people have gall stones by the time they're fifty." Over tea we solved all of England's problems. According to John, England had become one of the poorest nations in Europe, and was in serious economic decline. The government policy for foreign competition had done it all. There was no minimum wage. Some workers were being paid as little as £2 ($4.60) an hour. If one worked twenty-four hours a week the government considered them fully employed. That worked out to $110 a week. "Minimum housing costs are higher than that," John said. "I figure £75 ($175) as a low housing price plus £50 ($115) utilities, so it cost £125 ($290) a week, just to get up in the morning." That was before buying food and there were no food banks. The Japanese had started factories in England to build tvs, vcrs and cars. They employed locally but all the profits left the country. The government was afraid to enact minimum wage fearing the companies would leave and seek cheap labour elsewhere. I thought it was ironic how unions had been so powerful at one time. Workers had been quite well off. How had they gone back to the dark ages? The u.s. military bases had packed up and gone home. John figured the British government should build a giant five square mile factory using the leftover u.s. warehouses and produce a cheap, reliable car for all of Europe so low priced no one else could compete. Even the housing was there. After drinking too much tea I excused myself to use the washroom. It was vile. John would never find himself a woman if he continued living like that. Sharon went next and returned to whisper that she needed to go to the park. There was no way she was using that putrid toilet. Sharon and I went to the bank. I tried my Mastercard in the auto teller and it said my pin number was incorrect. I used my Visa and withdrew £250 ($575.) While Sharon visited the dentist I went to Tesco's. The people in the stores were very friendly. I looked for a Michelin map but couldn't find one. Being made in France, I guess that shouldn't have come as a big shock. The map for just East Anglia cost $8 and we would be off it in a few days, so I didn't bother to buy one. I ate a snack on the beach (Sharon's mouth was still frozen) and then we walked back to John's to retrieve our bicycles. While unlocking our bicycles a woman came out of John's shop. She turned out to be John's wife. What a surprise! Guess John's bachelor days were over. Sharon didn't know how a woman could live in that pig sty. She could imagine a guy, she said, but not a woman. When an Italian's house was in upheaval they said: "She did it the French way." I wondered if the French said: "She did it the English way."? Part of the surprise was that John's wife worked across the street in the beauty salon. Sharon and I went back to the park to use the toilet before we left town. It was much cleaner than John's. It was late in the afternoon when we left town following John's route instructions. It began raining. We ducked into a bus shelter. I kept an eye peeled for passing cars coming too close to the curb. In a few minutes the rain passed and we carried on. We followed road signs and ended up in Ipswich. (According to John's directions we were supposed to bypass Ipswich.) We curved around. A bike path ended in an overgrown impenetrable thicket and we were unceremoniously dumped onto busy A12. Going around a couple of scary roundabouts we saw a bike path below A12. A fence was between us and the bike path. Sharon leaned her bike against the fence, hopped over, and ran back to read the sign to see where the bike path was going. I saw a couple walking along the path and asked them how to get to Woodbridge. It was much easier asking directions when I understood the reply. Sharon came back and I told her: "We're supposed to go around the roundabout and take the right exit. That will put us on a quiet road to Woodbridge." We went around the roundabout, our fourth in a row. A sign denoting Woodbridge pointed straight. Sharon wanted to follow the sign. I yelled at her, "Go right!" "But the sign shows straight!" she called back. "I can see that. But that guy told me to go right." "This is England," she informed me. "He must have meant for us to go straight when he said go right because they drive on the left." And she said I had no logic. I turned right. Sharon went straight. I stopped and waited for her to come back. While I was waiting in the near darkness I noticed there were woods off to the side. Sharon arrived, none too happy with our situation. "We need a map!" she said. We decided to call it a night and headed into the woods. Sharon walked in front along the woodland path looking for a good spot. Walking into a clearing she quickly turned around -- her hand covering her mouth and her eyes wide. I caught a glimpse of bodies through the bushes. Had she stumbled upon some gruesome murder scene and was in need of emptying her stomach contents? No. She was trying to stifle a laugh. She had stumbled upon two very live bodies vigorously humping. He was thrusting his butt into the air hammering home that it was spring. Sharon wouldn't let me see. She always got to have all the fun. There was a large Tesco's across the field. I walked over to see if I could find a map. I had realized it just wasn't going to work without one. I found an aa map book for all of Great Britain at a scale of 1:250000. Perfect. And it only cost $4.60. On my way back I crossed paths with the humper and the humpee. "Good evening," he smiled. "I bet it was," I replied. I had bought two sandwiches at Tesco's . Sharon opened one. "What kind is it?" I asked. Sharon peered at the sandwich. "It looks like beef or something," she allowed. "Why don't you read the label?" "Oh. I'm so used to guessing what everything is I don't even think about reading labels anymore." People strolled by as we ate in the near darkness. All of them said "Good evening." Those woods were busy. |
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