Cotswolds

After sandbagging our front door late yesterday afternoon, husband and I set off for a walk. I am still seeing new things after almost nine months of being a weekend resident. For one, there are blackberries all over the country lanes. I ate a few and they tasted like blueberries to me. Maybe it’s one of those things where a wild blackberry really tastes like a blueberry but I’ve been conditioned to think it tastes different by supermarket mass-produced varieties. Or maybe the wild blackberries are just struggling to ripen in our sun deprived stretch of countryside. Either way, when we got back the road had totally drained and Mill House felt brave enough to close their front gate and dam the river previously running through it.

We’re not out of the woods yet though. It was dry today but more rain is on it’s way. Fingers crossed the brief reprieve has dried things out enough to make it through the week.

A river runs through our Cotswold town, but for the second time in just over a year that river has changed course and is running through the front yard of Mill House. Water is just under a foot deep in the road outside the house, about a block away from our cottage, and for now the drains are coping. The weather isn’t helping: skies are thick grey and the mist is persistent.

We’ll put sandbags out this afternoon and make sure the neighbors have our mobile numbers before we head back to London tomorrow. I know there is nothing else we can do to control mother nature. Still I am anxious, going through the motions of the day—cooking breakfast, the gym—with a length of hot worry between the base of my throat and my stomach.

The last time I was this close to natural disaster was in 2003 when fires ravaged Southern California from San Diego to LA. I was out in San Bernardino with my mother, visiting my grandparents. We watched all morning, somewhat detached, as a ridge of fire moved closer and closer across the foothills. This was a detachment borne from my grandparents having lived through this almost annual event for 60+ years. But unlike past years, this time the fire department knocked on the door in the early afternoon and ordered a mandatory evacuation. There was nothing else they could do to protect the street.

In classic fashion my 89-year old grandfather refused to go, wanting to stay behind to protect the house. We packed up my grandmother and her cat, told my grandfather to hurry up and left him behind with his taupe Buick as we headed for safety to some relatives across the valley in Redlands. It must have gotten bad because my stubborn grandfather showed up about an hour later. Thanks only to a more stubborn neighbor who stayed behind and drained his pool out onto my grandparents’ property did their house survive.

The aftermath of the fires in San Bernardino looked like a war zone, empty lots except for chimneys and swimming pools. The aftermath of last year’s historic Cotswolds floods was more hidden from view since damage was largely internal. But on Friday I noticed a large hose and a pump still in the sitting room of a neighbor as we chatted by her front door. I am saying my prayers she doesn’t need it again.

Sometime last year between our offer being accepted on Drovers Cottage and when it finally dried out from the floods, we had a wobble and looked around at long-term rentals as an alternative to buying. One of the rentals was in a picturesque hamlet not far from our weekend rental in the village of G.P. It was in a row of three stone cottages, all with front gardens overlooking a sheep strewn hillside. Husband went first for a visit on his own and was showed around by the next door neighbor, a resident of 27 years. When husband enquired about the neighbors on the other side he was told the cottage was occupied by a deaf woman with two kids. He was then informed the resulting noise was “the only nigger in the woodpile.”After picking his jaw up off the ground, husband returned with me for a second viewing. This time we were greeted by the local squire. Literally. He owns the cottages as well as most other houses in the hamlet. He was clearly there to give us the once over, which he did albeit in a charming way and without the use of any racial epithets.

A family that owns an entire hamlet is not unheard of in the Cotswolds. I can think of at least three such hamlets, all readily identifiable by the immaculate condition of the cottages and the matching paint jobs. For an American this is odd. We want to be unique, which is often apparent from the diverse architectural styles found on a single street (our L.A. cul-de-sac boasted bungalow, Spanish, mock Cape Cod, and modernist cube). In my parents’ south Florida gated community the demand from the developers for identical mailboxes caused an uprising amongst the residents.

I was somewhat primed for antiquated real estate concepts by my exposure to leaseholds and freeholds when buying a flat in London. For the uninitiated, a leasehold means you are buying the right to the property for a certain number of years. The number varies, but if it’s between 80 and 125 years you are paying more or less full market value as if you were buying outright. I find this all outrageous and in and of itself a good justification for the revolution, but it’s just the way things are done here. Freehold, on the other hand, means you actually own what you bought, i.e., the American way.

Back at our interview with the tweed-bedecked squire, husband started to have an out-of-body experience. He describes it like the birth scene in Alien only what was emerging from him was a corn cob-chewing, cider-swilling, thread-bare cap tipping peasant whose heart was aflutter by a visit from the local squire. The squire was busy talking about his residents like subjects, “a good bunch” who he has over to the estate at Christmas.

In the end it was all to weird for us. Twelve years in America had liberated husband from his downtrodden Liverpudlian roots, and he wasn’t going back. We found our nerve and stuck with buying. It sounds cheesy but husband and I both feel that as owners of our Cotswold cottage we are custodians of a modest piece of English heritage. And husband has found another way to satisfy his need to play the role of underling. Three weeks ago he went to work for a real lord in the west end of London.

I think husband has been invited to join a cult. It happened, as these things do, in the wine bar last night. It was empty and lacking promise when we arrived. G., de facto town elder and wine bar fixture, was sitting alone at the head of the big wooden table. He was dressed, as always, in a coat and tie and nursing his habitual glass of red wine. Husband sat down next to him.

This wouldn’t have been my first choice. Despite the fact that I’ve been introduced to G. about ten times, he never seems to recognize me when I greet him. Instead he always asks me the same question: “Canadian or American?” before proceeding to list off his favourite places in America (Burlington, Vermont and Seattle), then the other places he has visited in America (San Francisco and Minneapolis). He also hogs the potato chips.

I would have been happy with an interaction with G. that consisted of some eye contact and a smile on my way to a stool at the bar. But no, here I was, sitting at the big wooden table helping G. remember the name of Burlington. It’s all husband’s fault. He has a soft spot for old people, honed by a mother who was old before her time and, back in California, my matriarchal and stubborn grandmother.

G. was in a talking mood, and once we got past the litany of American cities, I learned more about him. He’s eighty. He was born in London, Holborn to be exact. He moved to our Cotswold town when he was an infant, and, although he has travelled the world, he has always called this place home. At least that’s what I think he said.

I have trouble understanding G. It’s not a volume thing. I just lose track of the words somewhere between his gruff tone and the British accent. He also punctuates every few sentences with a sharp “ha!”, which serves many different purposes including “harrumph,” “doh,” a check to see if you are paying attention, and an exclamation point as if to say “isn’t that the most marvellous thing ever.”

To get by in a situation like this, I play a game where I infer what he says based on the words I think I understand. There are enough cues to know when to nod or smile or look suitably outraged. It’s like when I learned Italian, nodding vigorously upon detecting the words “birra” or “gelato.” And, like learning Italian, it gets easier the more you drink.

I’m foggy on details but other ground covered in the evening with G. included his stint in the Palestinian police, which has previously been corroborated by other wine bar sources who added the further embellishment of “a personal friend of Arafat’s”; coming face to face with a herd of water buffalo in Canton; a Polish girlfriend killed in America in 1951; a Canadian girlfriend; a Romanian girlfriend; Stevie Winwood (a wine bar standard “name-drop” given Mr. Winwood’s nearby residence); a famous boxer turned Honolulu hotel bar piano player; and “the leep,” an exclusive, Cotswolds, black-tie annual event that involves lots of speeches and drinking.

It was the last one that got my attention, in part because G. had made a point to say no women were allowed. There was also a moment of awkwardness when G. asked another gentleman at the table, a long-time resident, if he had ever attended. He had not, so G. chose that moment to ask husband for his name and address which he said he would give to his secretary to get husband on the invite list. The elderly do passive aggressive very well.

Our goodbyes included an admonition to husband to reply swiftly when the invite arrived. My curiosity is piqued, and my money is on the freemasons.

I got an email this week from an acquaintance from my university days in North Carolina. He like me was an economics major and I remember him being a handsome, nice guy. This is despite the fact that he was a member of a notorious (or prominent, depending on your point of view) southern fraternity that will forever be characterized in my mind by their decision to hang Jesse Helms campaign posters in their fraternity house windows.

He had found me on a social networking site, and so I went and looked him up. His profile revealed that his barber uses a ruler to cut his bangs and he is the fourth generation head of a “retail strip center leasing and management” family business in North Carolina. Where he grew up. And went to university. And will grow old and die. He also declares his personal goal of having “the business in position to be ready for the next generation of family leadership: my two sons.”

I thought for a moment about whether or not to respond to him, but decided against it. I was afraid I’d lose control of my fingers and reel off an interrogation along the lines of: “What if your boys don’t want to work in the family business? What if they want to step foot outside of North Carolina? What if one of them is gay?” In ten seconds everything I hated about the south came rushing back.

The American south and Gloucestershire (the main Cotswold county) have a lot in common: family money, a sartorial sense that would be mocked in any other context but somehow compels you to participate when living in its midst (cue bad memories of Bass suede bucks and a J. Crew corduroy patchwork shirt from my university days, or picture husband now in flat cap and tweeds), manners, conservative political views, bumper stickers about guns (“Toot if you shoot” spotted recently in a country pub parking lot), racism, and undiscussed excessive drinking (replace bourbon with scotch). Thankfully Gloucestershire does not have evangelical Walmarts known as mega-churches, not that I want to give the C of E any ideas about boosting its flagging membership.

But why does a social network site profile of a seemingly successful Southern American family man whip me into a frenzy, while a solemn faced comment from our Gloucestershire barman R. about Obama’s absolute unelectability due to certainty of assassination (this was months before the convention “plot,” even before Hilary invoked RFK as an excuse to stay in the race) is met with little more than a shrug? I think R.’s logic is preposterous, but I’m not about to start interrogating him on how he’s going to react if his son comes out of the closet.

The best answer I can give right now is that I am more tolerant of an older generation, of which R. is a member, and old memories die hard. What still winds me up about a college fraternity parading Jesse Helms campaign posters – other than the obvious bit about Jesse Helms being the devil – is that these were the actions of 18-22 year olds. If there is one time in your life you are supposed to be liberal and open-minded, it’s at university! Even I, between beers, managed to march on Washington once during my four years at college.

Still, I suspect my differing relationship to the American South—from which I fled screaming all the way to Singapore after my four years of hard time at university—and the Cotswolds is more than a generational thing. After all, I am still in my freshman year in Gloucestershire. The romance is young, and my tolerance is high. The question remains: will I stay on after graduation?