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Well Pleased The sun shone upon our tent. It looked like a great riding day so we pulled up stakes and retraced our route through the trees back to the dead-end road. Shortly we passed a farmhouse with fresh raspberry jam sitting outside on a table for £1 per jar. We picked one out and went to the farmhouse to pay. Mrs. Fairhead invited us in for coffee. "I speak Norfolk," she said, "and some folks around here don't understand me. Some think I sound posh and others think I sound quite common." We didn't have much trouble understanding what she was saying. I didn't know what category that put us in. She gave us Suffolk rusks -- kind of like a round scone. The rusks were dry and crumbly with not a lot of taste. I hoped she would offer me some raspberry jam, but she never did. Mr. Fairhead, or Billy, as he insisted we call him, had recently had a six by-pass heart operation. Wow! A double triple play. I didn't even know they could do that. All those bacon and egg breakfasts and fish and chip lunches no doubt. Mr. and Mrs. Fairhead had taken a bus tour to Ireland the week before. The seas were rough the night they returned. Mrs. Fairhead said she was sick twice on the ferry. "I don't care how far I go out to sea, as long as I still have one foot on shore." Her son lived next door in an attached house. He had two kids: a six year old girl, and a four year old boy. The little tyke wanted to go on the tractor. He had a toy gun and was forever shooting crocodiles in Granny's pond. He must have been a pretty good shot too, because I didn't see a one left. For someone who had such an imagination he couldn't figure out how the bus driver had driven that big bus across the water to Ireland. He didn't like to go to school. He liked to be out on the tractor with Dad. Whenever a tractor went by the school window the other kids said: "There goes your Dad," which always set him howling. What are friends for? One lane we rode along was lined with thousands of purple rhododendrons. Another lane led past a field with bright red poppies. We saw old red English phone booths alongside the road and kept wondering where the pubs were. A restaurant had a sign: BBQ Sunday 12 -- 3 p.m. It had been ever so long since our last barbecue. I enquired and the chap said: "Sorry, Sir. The barbecue's been cancelled on account of the weather lookin' inclement." I had barbecued in the winter before. Don't let a little inclement weather stop you. We came across an old stone church with a round stone tower. The round towers were rare in England except in Suffolk and Norfolk counties we later found out. Headstones that I could still make out the writing on were dated from the 1700's. East Anglia had been settled as far back as the 5th century. We sat eating by a side door. Ferocious large raindrops began to hammer down. We tried covering ourselves with the rain poncho, unfortunately it was meant for one. I was getting wet from rain bouncing up. We ran to a porch but it was locked. We pressed our backs against the screened doorway under the arched overhang; the rain blew into us from our exposed direction. The weather was a tad inclement. We were getting soaked. The door into the porch didn't seem that secure. I pushed on it, trying to open it. At the exact instant I jiggled the frame a huge crack of thunder boomed so close it made me jump. "Sorry!" I exclaimed out loud. As we huddled in the doorway Sharon leaned back on the door and the latch sprung open. It turned out it wasn't locked after all -- we just had to turn the handle. We went inside the cubicle and a note explained why the door was there. It was to keep bats out. The rain continued throughout the afternoon. I remembered a postcard I had seen. On one side a sheep was standing in the rain. "Winter" was written beneath it. On the other side of the card a sheep was standing in the rain and "summer" was written beneath it. It was very green... and June was reputed to be one of the drier months. They said English humour was dry; I dare say that was the only bloody dry thing in England. We spent the rest of the afternoon listening to the radio. British humour: "A person knocked on my door and said they were a Jehovah's Witness. I said I hadn't even heard there was an accident." "They asked me what I thought of euthanasia. I said I thought they were about the same as youth in Ireland." "Your brother is unhappy in his marriage. He keeps playing the video of his wedding backwards and ends up a single man." It continued to rain. We unrolled our camprests. Throwing our sleeping bags down we snuggled in with a perfect view of lichen-covered headstones leaning like old men's crooked teeth. Our heads were towards the black studded church door. A poster was tacked on it reading in part, "... with whom God is well pleased." I hoped it referred to us. |
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