Nearly two years. I was homesick.
A combination of work and pleasure got me across the Atlantic, at last, the timing arranged so I could attend a particular meeting in Cambridge. To get there on time, I had to arrive a day early, giving me from mid-morning til evening on Thursday all on my lonely own in London. That never happened when I actually lived in the U.K. I went sightseeing! First stop after landing was the Dulwich Picture Gallery to see an exhibit of David Hockney's amazing prints. Some of them I had viewed at Saltaire many years ago, but most were completely new to me, and the curation, which included stories surrounding the prints, could fairly be described as gripping. The gallery itself, which somehow I had not visited before, is a gem. I arrived with my little wheeled suitcase in tow, hoping it would be allowed in the cloakroom. Instead the cheerful fellow at the entrance said, 'Just leave it with us. We'll stick it behind the desk. No worries.' How is it possible that I had never been to this gallery? Dulwich itself was a posh surprise, a short ride from Victoria and so utterly different. A friend tells me that someone he knows asks people whether they prefer their coffee 'Brixton', 'Herne Hill', or 'Dulwich', the names of the three stops on Southeast Rail, to gauge the quantity of milk to add. The main colouring I noticed in Dulwich was green. It is the exemplar of 'leafy suburb'.
After Dulwich I made my way to the British Library, another institution I'd neglected to make time for when I lived in the country. What a shame. I'm now the proud possessor of a Reader's Pass, having acquitted myself well enough at the interview and having remembered to bring a proof of address. It is almost as good as the British passport I neglected to acquire during my 17 years in the country (to my husband's ire). The pass admitted me to the Reading Room, where I had reserved a book I wanted that is not held in Toronto's library, but even someone without a pass is welcome to visit the building, to sit in one of the cafes, or to gaze upon Jane Austen's tiny writing desk and her itsy-bitsy spectacles, or to look at one of the the original Magna Cartas.
An evening with the in-laws, followed by a day in Cambridge with colleagues, and then I took the train north. I had made use of my no-longer-resident status to purchase a BritRail pass, a most marvelous invention for those of us who are merely touring Britain. For a set amount of money, depending on length of stay and travel habits, one is allowed on any train, any time. Remembering the days of having to go to the station days in advance to purchase an affordable, unalterable ticket, in order not to pay unholy amounts of money, I felt like royalty simply stepping on to any old train, even during rush hour. True, I had to stand for the occasional stretch, but never more than one station stop. Joy.
The trip from Cambridge to York (via Peterborough, of course) was so hauntingly familiar that it made my throat ache. Not beautiful, not at all, but so particularly English: sheep grazing in grassy fields tucked up against a cement factory on one side and a housing estate on another, like a jigsaw puzzle perfectly cut and reassembled. During the decade I lived in Durham I found the journey frustrating, so near to to loveliness and yet escaping it by an ill-placed power station or a industrial park, but now I drink it in, the accommodation of the British sensibility to necessity. Why should people in houses want only to see other houses? Why not a factory, or cows chewing cud?
Maybe, like Dorothy in Oz, you have to leave a place in order fully to appreciate it. Or I do, anyway.
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