(from 2017)
Well, the Occasionals have been away on vacation
again. For the last ten years we’ve only been able to go away by arrangement,
organising care for my mother while absent. Since she passed away in October,
we took off this month for a whole two weeks to North Wales.
Most of our first week was spent at a caravan site
called Sea Breezes. I should have taken warning from that. The wind raged
across the site, barely protected by an ugly sea wall. Fifteen years ago the
area had its own version of the New Orleans disaster, when the existing sea
walls were breached and the whole area went underwater. Of course we only found
this out when we arrived. Still it was nice to crash out in a caravan – even if
buffeted by the wind – and not be on the end of a telephone.
Our second week was a lot better
with a flat in the center of Chester.
We’d passed through Chester on vacation a year or
two back and wanted to return. It’s a very attractive city with a speciality of
old shops on two levels in the main streets, all dating from the Victorian era
or earlier. The place goes back to Roman times and the museum has a fine
collection of engraved Roman gravestones, which each tell a personal history.
Apparently as the city walls fell into disrepair the locals used to steal these
stones from the abandoned Roman cemeteries. Then in the 19th century
when the walls were properly restored, many of these stones from the past were
retrieved, cleaned up, put on show and told their stories.
The city is very close to the Welsh border and Welsh
could be heard in the streets on occasion. Apparently the bad feeling between
the Welsh and English meant that several clock towers in Chester have clocks on
three faces but the side facing Wales is blank. To coin a phrase, they weren’t
going to give them the time of day.
The first thing we did was to behave like the total
tourists we were, and took the tour bus. It was actually a much restored London
bus from the time of the first World War – open topped and taller than modern
vehicles meaning you had to duck to avoid being decapitated under modern
Chester Bridges.
The commentary was slick and professional with
well-rehearsed jokes and we learned a bit about Roman Chester and its
subsequent history. However, there was a lesson for modern writers and
commentators. Trundling past an ancient cemetery we were told that here was the
grave of the writer of Tom Brown’s Schooldays. That’s Thomas Hughes, and no he wasn’t
– he was buried in Brighton. And also the father of postage stamps, Roland Hill,
and no, he wasn’t buried there either but in Westminster Abbey. Also in the same cemetery was supposed to be
someone who, with multiple births, gave birth to 33 children. Ouch. I didn’t
get a name so didn’t check that one out. But once you find a glaring error of
fact in an account, it calls into question everything else you’re told. As someone
who writes on history, where the line between facts and opinions is easily
blurred, there’s a lesson there.
Twice during our stay we travelled to a Welsh
language religious meeting. Originally we planned to go to one in Bangor but
that one is always filmed and shared on the internet. The thought of my
strangulated Welsh being watched by mystified people in Patagonia did not
appeal, so we went to a nearer location. While waiting for their own Hall this
group hires a room in a Welsh castle.
It was actually a place Mrs O and I visited more
than 20 years ago. I used to organise podiatry seminars and our committee
suddenly found we had too much money. We had to spend some before the end of
the year, so arranged a weekend committee meeting at this castle, and had a medieval
banquet thrown in. That was an experience. We were all given huge bibs to
protect our clothes and then set to work with fingers on medieval food using medieval
wet-wipes. We were served copious quantities of mead by buxom wenches, and then
a Welsh choir came and sang at us. The visit wasn’t QUITE as exciting this
time.
We walked around Chester on top of the city walls,
which is a two mile circuit and generally quite high. And we went to Chester
Zoo. As Tom Paxton sang: “We’re going to
the zoo zoo zoo, how about you you you, you can come too too too” etc. My daughter was a little girl the last time we
visited a conventional zoo. I think we once did a safari park in the interim,
where you drive through enclosures and small monkeys leap on your car and
scream obscenities, while trying to wrench off your windscreen wipers; but we
have been zoo-less for many years.
I have to say it was very impressive, with a huge
fanfare given to its programs to breed endangered species. We saw all the usual
animals you would expect to see. But there was a lot of walking. And I
surprised myself, I got tired. VERY TIRED. As soon as we got back to base we
cracked another bottle of Cava and then I was done for. Flat out on the bed,
Law and Order on the TV - out like a light… But I don’t remember feeling so
tired since the day A LONG TIME AGO when I was single and pedal cycled from Cardiff
to Manchester for a special meeting with a typewriter tied to the back of my
bike (don’t ask) and then from Manchester to London, 180 miles with a headwind.
The latter stage took 18 hours and I collapsed into a hot bath at the end. It
was half an hour of sheer bliss. And then I found I was totally seized up and unable
to get out… (Compartmented into my personal collection of one hundred worst
moments of my life…)
I did a bit of writing and a bit of reading. I was
supposed to be preparing some lessons for a seminar I’m helping to take when I
get home, but that sort of fell by the wayside. I will just have to be busy
with that next week. My main non-fiction reading was a recent biography of
Josephine Tey. I did write a number of critical paragraphs on this, but Tey
really could do with an essay on her own. But then, since American readers have
probably never heard of her, I junked most of it.
To-morrow we leave and I am left with the usual feeling.
I think I need a vacation.
To get over
this one.
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