You have had your few days of rest and so did I, but here is my Trip Report No. 24 to continue from what I wrote while waiting for my connection in Helsinki.

 

The flight to London was uneventful and on arriving at Immigration I changed into becoming an Englishman, as my second passport entitles me to. A shock awaited me when the guy looked at me and my passport, decided that I was me, handed back the passport and said: “Thank you, Sir.” It was the first time in 30 days that an official addressed me thus and I was suitably impressed.  It reminded me of my first arrival in England in August 1946 when I would not allow a porter to carry my luggage, since he was an Englishman and I was just a miserable Displaced Person, who did not even have a passport just a Letter of Identity, in which His Britannic Majesty’s Home Secretary allowed temporary residence of said refugee in the United Kingdom.

 

I was not impressed when I went to the ticket office to buy my bus ticket to another airport, (Stanstead) and I had to pay £19, about AUD       for my trip to this other airport. The driver stowed my luggage in the bus, I rang my brother from the bus and we set off on our trip in the comfortable bus which soon rocked me to sleep Two hours or so later we were in Sudbury in my brother and sister in law’s home,

 

Saturday happened to be my sister-in-law’s birthday. Discretion forbids me mentioning the number of years she bore in remarkable good humour. She is a very easy lady to deal with and she is used to being constantly teased and heckled by me. She just laughs and takes no notice. She has always been a good friend and we understand each other’s sense of humour, however diabolical mine might be. I seem to be constantly their guest, this being the third sojourn of mine with them, since February last year.

 

When I made my offer to take the family out for a birthday dinner, I was not counting on being relieved of my money, credit cards or even my camera. Just the same we assembled at their house and in three cars proceeded to Long Melford to an Italian restaurant. My  nine guests were warned not to order anything expensive and as expected, they took no notice. In the end it did not matter, since my brother picked up the bill, but I will repay him as soon as I find a customer for one pair of my shoes and some underwear which I can live without.

 

All my relations living in England were at the party plus one elderly widower I am very fond of and we had a good time. I had the opportunity to have a long chat with my niece who is expecting her first baby in about 6 weeks time and also enjoyed the antics of the first of the next generation of Pommy relations in the form of my brother’s first grandson, 2 years old Toby, who was the life and soul of the rather full restaurant. It seems that he never relaxes and prefers to entertain the company he is with.  I hope to see them all again before I depart for the New World on the American continent.

 

Some neighbours came over for a drink today and we sat outside in glorious sunshine, discussing their life in Ghana and this neighbour’s Russian colleagues who worked with him on various mining ventures throughout the World. It is interesting how international the mining fraternity is.

 

Come to think of we are an international bunch also. My parents were Hungarian, my late wife a New Zealander, my sister-in-law is Irish, while her daughter-in-law is English/Chinese. One of my brother-in-laws was English, as is my son-in-law and my two Australian children are both English born. A crazy mixed up bunch we are. 

 

If the number of my reports are being drastically reduced, please do not think that I am neglecting you, but from now on I should be having a more relaxed time and less opportunities to send reports by email. Nevertheless, as one of the Australian boxing champions declared some years ago: “I loves youse all.”

 

 

The time is approaching when I am to leave England and cross the Atlantic and at this point of time I ought to give my beloved readers a report of my impressions about England. I would not suggest that you hold your breath, since I have not gained anything earth shattering which either you or I do not know about.

 

I have seen nothing of London, although we did go to one of it’s suburbs one day to visit a friend, we also called in on a very large shopping centre owned by the same Westfield company whose shopping centre I frequent in Chatswood. There is nothing extraordinary in either although the founders of the company were Hungarian migrants to Australia, there does not seem to be a great difference between shops in either.

 

The same is not the case in the small Suffolk township of Sudbury where my brother lives with his darling. It is a typical English market town, about 80 miles from London and 40 or so miles from Cambridge with lots of churches and a notable person who lived and worked here: Gainsborough the painter. My brother was chairman of Gainsborough House, where Gainsborough was born and when I visited Die Neue Pinakotech in Munich, I advised him that the good news was that they had some Gainsboroughs in the gallery and the bad news was that they owned more than Sudbury had in their Gainsborough House.

 

My brother, John used to like politics and became a councillor and later the Mayor of this town, but these days he is satisfied with being on the board of some societies and the thought that as long as the flag on the Town Hall is not at half mast, he is alive and OK. Mind you, the other day he had a fright when the flag was at half mast, but it was just one of the council members, who passed away.

 

What impresses me every time I came back to England, how this country can function in an efficient and effective way in spite of its narrow roads most of them as windy as they were when laid down by the Romans. Admittedly since I left the country (but not because of it) they built a lot of excellent motorways, some 4, some 6 and even 8 lanes wide, but as I was told some of these are large car park most of the day when the traffic on them is simply stationary.

 

On the narrow roads in the townships you need to wind your ways around the parked cars and many are the times when out of two approaching cars, one needs to stop to allow the other to pass.  Footpaths are also narrow and quite close to the cars passing by, some times two pedestrians approaching need to exercise care in passing each other in case a car swipes one of them as it goes by. Maybe it is only because I am not used to these conditions what makes me nervous to be in this situation.

 

Yet in spite of these and even worse aspects of living in a thoroughly old and picturesque country, you may post a letter at 4 pm and it will be delivered in Scotland at 8 am next day. The mail is still delivered to businesses twice a day and the phone service is also efficient and cheap. Shops are open 7 days a week, maybe not all, but certainly food, chemists, etc. Cars are clean and if not all of them just out of the showroom, they look as if they would be not more than 2 or 3 years old.

 

Yesterday evening we were invited to a neighbour together with another neighbour who with his wife visited us for drinks a few days ago. We were told not to eat anything because some food will be offered and indeed, after drinks and what I call nish-nash we were asked to line up and help ourselves to a number of dishes which was prepared by Peter, at about 52 the younger of the two men living in a 600 year old house, which was previously a school. The other chap was 77 year old Robert, who was born in Tasmania, which he left in 1951 for England. I believe that he is or was an Archdeacon, but in any case he is still preaches as a guest preacher. This I can well imagine as he had a controversial view on anything and while I very surprisingly for me, tried to avoid an argument, he had so many contrary opinions as to make me wonder if he was trying to pick a fight.

 

I did not bite when he pronounced that Communism was all evil (it was not, see their educational and cultural policies), the New Zealand Church is wrong in approving of women priests (I did not take up the cudgel on behalf of Joy’s cousin, the Primate of NZ, who is probably not as much of a feminist as I am) nor did I argue about Tony Blair (who is terrible) or George W Bush (who is wonderful), Nicholas II, (he was marvellous, the best tsar the Russians ever had or so I was told) Rasputin, (misunderstood man) but when he declared that Pope Pius XII was the best Pope the Catholic Church ever had, I had to sail into him with as much gentility as my upbringing dictated, whereas I would have liked to kick his teeth in by than, even ‘though I realised that he was baiting me.

 

I invited him and his partner to come over and see my photographs of St Petersburg, which are on my notebook computer. I will steel myself not to have a fight with him, although I expect to be told his opinion on the Hermitage, Renoir, the Communist Picasso, and again on every conceivable subject, etc. etc. All I hope that he will not renew his efforts to convert me to religion (he tried) or his life style (he did not try).

 

Tonight (Saturday) we are going to a typical county charity evening. Clare spent the best part of this morning preparing her contribution to the buffet, took it down to the venue and tonight we all go to listen to Lord Phillips of Sudbury, who is not really an old established aristocrat but a solicitor and life peer and made his name on radio and TV programs giving advice on matters of law to all who bothered to ask him on the air waves. (Mike Colman, please note the way to the House of Lords!)

 

(Sunday) Last night’s outing was very pleasant and interesting. I thought that it will be a concert, but it was not. A lawyer, who became a life peer and took up the rank of Lord Phillips of Sudbury, spoke very well and amusingly about children (this was a dinner in aid of a charity concerned with children). Brother John had the job of introducing his Lordship before he spoke and I also sat at the head table.  Sitting beside me was the wife of the Chairman of the Association, who visited Sydney as a member of the Duke of Gloucester’s party to Sydney in 1961 and we had an interesting conversation about Princess Margaret and her manners of demanding her gin and dropping the ash off her cigarette any where. You probably do not know that the Duke was the brother of King George VI and surprisingly he died, although he drunk enough to be pickled in alcohol. His wife is still alive at 102! Obviously in her case the gin helped her, as of course it seemed to help the longetivity of the Queen Mother.

 

Today we went to a widower friend of 89 who owns a river in Scotland and while he always served some of his fish, he did not to-day. Nevertheless it was an excellent lunch, as usual, with salads, baked potatoes and cold meats and pate. He is a real expert in entertaining his visitors and I complimented him how quickly he learned to cook after loosing his wife only 4 years ago. He told me that, since it was him who taught his wife to cook in the first place, he did not find it difficult to get into the groove when he was left to live on his own. He keeps his house and garden in perfect order, although he probably has some outside help. He is a splendid gentleman, English to his bootstraps, thoughtful, kind and amusing.

 

This brings me to the end of my English chapters. Although I only leave England for New York on Tuesday, i.e. in two days time, we have a busy day ahead and I will not have any time to bore you with. In fact this might be my last communication for quite a while as after being on my cousins farm I am visiting another relation in Los Angeles and from there I am going for a week to New Zealand and I might not have the opportunity to give you my interesting and exciting observations.

 

Phew, I guess that was the best news you,ve heard this week!

 

 

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