And tomorrow at this time, I’ll be well and truly there. The land of high tea and Amy Winehouse. I am excited. Very excited. Of course, right now I’m dealing with all the pre-departure stresses: printing out directions to the dorm, assembling the immigration materials, squishing all of my clothing into a single duffel bag. I always say, I’m going to pack light. Never happens. The problem is that, as soon as you think you’ve got everything you’re ever going to wear on the trip, you riffle through the drawer one more time and see another halter top. It’s blue, and you’ve already packed three blue halter tops, but none are this color blue. And it’s so cute, and so little, and how could it add much more weight or take up any considerable space? And then, digging through your hamper, you find your second United Nations T-shirt, which is nicer and more understated than the United Nations T-shirt you already packed. So you slip that in there as well. Then your mother walks by, looks in the bag, and accuses you of “stuffing”. This means, as is easily surmised, clandestinely augmenting the contents of your bag after she has told you, five T-shirts, you don’t need any more. So you take it out and then you have to wait until she goes out of the room to put it back in again. Time-consuming, and of course ultimately you’re the one sweating in the airport with the duffel strap sawing the Panama Canal into your shoulder.
Yes, that’s what I’ve been up to. Also looking at maps. The lucky thing is that two other Yale-in-London kids are going to be on my flight, so hopefully we can figure out the directions and share transportation costs. Such costs are, it appears, bound to be high regardless – sixty-five pounds (that’s to say, a hundred and thirty dollars) for a taxi directly from Heathrow to the lodgings. Needless to say, I won’t be doing that – apparently there’re some busing options, and also a train to Paddington Station (Paddington! Like the bear!), from which one can take a less expensive taxi to our destination. I’m hoping to conserve money as much as possible – well, I always hope for that, but I’m focusing HARD on it right now – so I can take advantage of these great trips that a student organization – to which YiL belongs – offers. There are surprisingly low-priced trips to Wales (a three-night stay that includes horseback riding and hiking), Cornwall, Canterbury, and Rochester. I’m also mulling – it’s all up in the air, of course – staying after the program is over and exploring the Scottish highlands. There are all kinds of fairly reasonable and aesthetically decent youth hostels. So many things to do!
We were talking about this, my family and I, the other night, and I mentioned that I’d read, on the YiL website, that England is the size of the state of Wyoming. This struck me as pretty large. This conversation followed:
ME: Apparently it’s the size of Wyoming.
DAD: Is that including Scotland?
ME: Um, I think so. So it’s Britain that’s the size of Wyoming, I guess, not England. The UK.
MOM: That seems way too big. Maybe they mean it’s the size of Wyoming including Ireland.
ME: No, I don’t think they would include Ireland.
MOM: Why not?
DAD: Well, it’s a different island. It’s also a different country.
ME: Unless by “size of Wyoming” they mean “size of Wyoming including Nevada”.
Anyway, good times. My mom, without whom I probably would not be able to get to the supermarket let alone across the Atlantic Ocean, is shouldering a lot of the stress of this takeoff. She is also synthesizing some of her own. Earlier today she told me that maybe I shouldn’t drink the water over there. I said I thought it would be okay. She said to ask. I said I didn’t want to insult anybody. She said that the problem is I might not be used to The Microbes. I capitalize this because the way she said it, it just sounded capitalized. My mom stresses a lot about invisible dangerous things. Ticks, pathogens, UV rays. (After the holiday party at our local library, to my brother and me: “Wash your hands, guys. Because, you know, The Germs.”) All of them worth worrying about, certainly. But I survived two months in China doing just about everything wrong in terms of microbe avoidance: I ate tons of fresh fruit, I didn’t wash it. I ate raw bean sprouts and mushrooms. Constitution like iron. Never sick once. I maintain that what really makes people sick is the meat, and they blame it on the produce because they want an excuse not to eat vegetables.
Anyway, as we close in on the hour of adieus, I’m racing to finish the required reading. About a third of the way through Pride and Prejudice. I spent much of my young life avoiding Austen, against the advice of all the people who gushed about her and insisted that I would love her work. I read my first Austen book, Sense and Sensibility, in a great course on eighteenth-century literature (S&S was published in 1801 but they grandfather it in. The long eighteenth century, you know.) And I sailed through it, I was totally taken by surprise, it was great. Maybe part of that was the result of first having to struggle through Robinson Crusoe for the second time in as many years and then moving on to Richardson’s sometimes compelling but often sanctimonious and histrionic mess (about 20% of my margin notes read simply, Shut up, Pamela.) But anyway, I liked it. Apparently some critics regard Sense and Sensibility as one of Austen’s lesser works, and I know everyone loves Pride and Prejudice (by everyone I mean the Jane Austen Girls, as I used to think of them); on my edition protagonist Elizabeth Bennett is described as “the most beloved heroine in English literature”. But frankly – smite me, Regency gods – I don’t see it. It’s entertaining enough, but it’s going more slowly than its alliterative sibling did for me, and so far I think Sense’s Elinor Dashwood is far superior as a heroine to Elizabeth. Elinor almost functions as a proxy for Austen herself (or Austen’s narrative voice) at some points – same great dry, sarcastic sense of humor. As my English professor contended, she is essentially removed from the “courtship plot” when putative fiance Edward appears to have lost interest in her, so she can stand outside it and evaluate. Even before her seeming rejection, she provides wonderful counterpoint to her sister Marianne’s flights of sentimentality. So far, as far as I can see, Pride and Prejudice (I keep typing Pridge and Pridejudice and I think I like that better, that’s what I’m calling it in my head from now on.) doesn’t have that. No, we’ve got Elizabeth going gooey like this:
My dear, dear aunt, [she rapturously cried] what delight, what felicity! You give me fresh life and vigour. Adieu to disappointment and spleen. What are men to rocks and mountains? Oh, what hours of transport we shall spend!
Marianne Dashwood, in her worst excesses, never prattled like this. So as to where I stand on Pridge: I’m whatev-ish.
And it’s 3:16 A.M. I hope that was entertaining. I have fewer guidelines with this blog because I’m not writing it for anyone in particular like I was with the last one, which was a required journal. So, readers – all right, to modify that realistically – So, Mom and Dad, tell me if you have preferences. Will you be bored if I spend more posts rambling about literature? Do you want diary entries? Personal reflection? Classic Livejournal whining about how the drama teacher picks favorites? I’ll stick to England itself more if that’s what’s interesting. I subtitled this blog with an achingly clever pun and I’m going to do it justice*. I’ll write whatever. Can also spew everything that’s in my head at a given moment. It’s like a party in here. Plus a secret society – that’s what I told myself this spring after none of them tapped me. Screw them, I have a secret society in my head. Lots of advantages. I’m never left out. And also I can definitely have my own Independence Day fete, regardless of program schedule. Like J.C. Penney. It’s all inside.
Anyway, wooooooo! England! I hope we fly over Reykjavik. That’s my favorite city that I’ve never been to.
*After writing this it occurred to me that I don’t think the little blog format I picked displays my blog’s subtitle, and I can’t leave you in the dark on such a charming linguistic turn; it’s “Stories from the Anglofiles”. Precious, right? Personally I don’t actually identify as an Anglophile. It sounds scary, and like an accusation. Anglophile! I’m a Hibernophile, that sounds like something nice, muscular but also furry.
