Notes From A Small Island: Journey Through Britain

by Bill Bryson

Only the previous day, I had handed over an exceptionally plump wad of colourful francs to a beady-eyed Picardy hotelier in payment for one night in a lumpy bed and a plate of mysterious chasseur containing the bones of assorted small animals, much of which had to be secreted away in a large napkin in order not to appear impolite, and had determined thenceforth to be more cautious with expenditures.

The world was bathed in that milky pre-dawn light that seems to come from nowhere.

‘Might turn out nice,’ he announced, gazing hopefully at a sky that looked like a pile of wet towels.

I liked its small scale and cosy air, and the way everyone said ‘Good-morning,’ and ‘Hello,’ and ‘Dreadful weather – but it might brighten up,’ to everyone else, and the sense that this was just one more in a very long series of fundamentally cheerful, well-ordered, pleasantly uneventful days.

then embarked reluctantly and falteringly on a brief résumé of my life to that point, but after a moment I realized that the programme had restarted and he wasn’t even pretending to listen, so I tailed off,

To this day, I remain impressed by the ability of Britons of all ages and social backgrounds to get genuinely excited by the prospect of a hot beverage.

take a sharp right at the Buggered Ploughman –’ ‘Nice little pub,’ somebody will interject – usually, for some reason, a guy in a bulky cardigan. ‘They do a decent pint of Old Toejam.’

I confess that my mental note card for the old boy is a trifle sketchy. It reads: Hazlitt (sp?), William (?), English (poss. Scottish?) essayist. Lived: before 1900. Most famous work: don’t know. Quips, epigrams, bons mots: don’t know. Other useful information: his house is now a hotel.

There is a story, which I suspect may actually be true, that one of these functionaries wandered into a room on the fourth floor full of people who hadn’t done anything in years and, when they proved unable to account convincingly for themselves, sacked them at a stroke, except for one fortunate fellow who had popped out to the betting shop. When he returned, it was to an empty room and he spent the next two years sitting alone wondering vaguely what had become of his colleagues.

He would easily have been the world’s most terrifying human had he but been human.

It is always a small shock to go back to a place where you worked years before and see the same faces toiling at the same desks – a combination of sudden familiarity, as if you’ve never been away at all, and profound, heartfelt gratitude because you have.

Motorized vehicles are ugly and dirty and they bring out the worst in people. They clutter every kerbside, turn ancient market squares into disorderly jumbles of metal, spawn petrol stations, second-hand car lots, Kwik-Fit centres and other dispiriting blights.

a modest few rolls of carpet with the sort of patterns you get when you rub your eyes too hard,

It has long seemed to me unfortunate – and I’m taking the global view here – that such an important experiment in social organization was left to the Russians when the British would have managed it so much better. All those things that are necessary to the successful implementation of a rigorous socialist system are, after all, second nature to the British. For a start, they like going without. They are great at pulling together, particularly in the face of adversity, for a perceived common good. They will queue patiently for indefinite periods and accept with rare fortitude the imposition of rationing, bland diets and sudden inconvenient shortages of staple goods, as anyone who has ever looked for bread at a supermarket on a Saturday afternoon will know. They are comfortable with faceless bureaucracies and, as Mrs Thatcher proved, tolerant of dictatorships. They will wait uncomplainingly for years for an operation or the delivery of a household appliance. They have a natural gift for making excellent jokes about authority without seriously challenging it, and they derive universal satisfaction from the sight of the rich and powerful brought low.

You will laugh to hear me say it, but they are the happiest people on earth. Honestly. Watch any two Britons in conversation and see how long it is before they smile or laugh over some joke or pleasantry. It won’t be more than a few seconds. I once shared a railway compartment between Dunkirk and Brussels with two French-speaking businessmen who were obviously old friends or colleagues. They talked genially the whole journey, but not once in two hours did I see either of them raise a flicker of a smile. You could imagine the same thing with Germans or Swiss or Spaniards or even Italians, but with Britons – never. And the British are so easy to please. It is the most extraordinary thing. They actually like their pleasures small. That is why, I suppose, so many of their treats – teacakes, scones, crumpets, rock cakes, rich tea biscuits, fruit Shrewsburys – are so cautiously flavourful.

an American the whole purpose of living, the one constant confirmation of continued existence, is to cram as much sensual pleasure as possible into one’s mouth more or less continuously. Gratification, instant and lavish, is a birthright.

Before me the lights of Bournemouth and Poole twinkled invitingly in the gathering dusk. Far below, the town’s two piers looked cheerful and dashing, and far out at sea the lights of passing ships bobbed and blinked in the dusky light. The world, or at least this little corner of it, seemed a good and peaceful place, and I was immensely glad to be there. Throughout this trip, I would have moments of quiet panic at the thought of ever leaving this snug and homey little isle. It was a melancholy business really, this trip of mine – a bit like wandering through a much-loved home for a last time.

For miles around, the Dorset hills rolled and billowed, like a shaken-out blanket settling on to a bed. Country lanes wandered among plump hedgerows and the hillsides were prettily dotted with woodlands, farmsteads, and creamy flecks of sheep. In the distance the sea, bright and vast and silvery blue, stretched away to a mountain of tumbling cumulus. At my feet far below, Swanage huddled against a rocky headland on the edge of a horseshoe bay, and behind me lay Studland, the marshy flats of Poole Harbour and Brownsea Island, and beyond that a hazy infinity of meticulously worked farmland. It was beautiful beyond words, one of those rare moments when life seems perfect.

The trick of successful walking, I always say, is knowing when to stop.

I won’t say that I nearly died, but I was ill enough to watch This Morning with Richard and Judy,

at a place called Goldsmith’s Wood the river bent sharply away from the road and I was suddenly in another, infinitely more tranquil world. Birds fussed and twittered in the trees above and small, unseen creatures plinked into the water at my approach. The river, sparkling and languid and framed by hills of autumn-coloured trees, was very beautiful and I had it all to myself.

but I neglected to note that I was at the uppermost of a very tight band of contour lines. In consequence, I found myself a moment later descending a more or less perpendicular hill in an entirely involuntary fashion, bounding through the woods with great leaps and outflung arms in a manner oddly reminiscent of George Chakiris

a kind of dogged commitment to ugliness around its fringes.

There is something about that golden Cotswold stone, the way it absorbs sunlight and then feeds it back so that even on the dullest days villages like Broadway seem to be basking in a perennial glow.

This day, in fact, was sunny and gorgeous, with just a tang of autumn crispness in the air which gave the world a marvellous clean, fresh-laundered feel.

It was a wonderful day to be abroad – the kind of day that has you puffing your chest and singing ‘Zippity Doo Dah’ in the voice of Paul Robeson.

This may sound awfully stupid, but for the first time it dawned on me in a kind of profound way that all those Roman antiquities I had gazed at over the years weren’t created with a view to ending up one day in museums. Because the mosaic was still in its original setting, because it hadn’t been roped off and placed inside a modern building, it was still clearly and radiantly a floor and not merely some diverting artefact.

One of the great surprises to me upon moving north was discovering the extent to which it felt like another country. Partly it was from the look and feel of the north – the high, open moors and big skies, the wandering drystone walls, the grimy mill towns, the snug stone villages of the Dales and Lakes – and partly, of course, it was to do with the accents, the different words, the refreshing if sometimes startling frankness of speech. Partly it was also to do with the way southerners and northerners were so extraordinarily, sometimes defiantly, ignorant of the geography of the other end of the country.

Even after twenty years here, I remain constantly amazed and impressed by the quality of humour you find in the most unlikely places – places where it would simply not exist in other countries. You find it in the patter of stallholders in places like Petticoat Lane and in the routines of street performers – the sort of people who juggle flaming clubs or do tricks on unicycles and keep up a steady stream of jokes about themselves and selected members of the audience – and in Christmas pantomimes and pub conversations and encounters with strangers in lonely places.

Wit, and particularly the dry, ironic, taking-the-piss sort of wit, was completely beyond them. (Do you know that there isn’t even an equivalent in American speech for ‘taking the piss’

In 1966, Liverpool was still the second busiest port in Britain, after London. By 1985, it had fallen so low that it was smaller and quieter than even Tees and Hartlepool, Grimsby and Immingham. But in its heyday it was something special. Maritime commerce brought Liverpool not just wealth and employment, but an air of cosmopolitanism that few cities in the world could rival, and it still has that sense about it. In Liverpool, you still feel like you are some place.

‘You want a boose!’ ‘A bus?’ I said in surprise. ‘How far am I then?’ ‘I say you want a boose!’ he repeated, but more vehemently. ‘I understand that. But which way is it exactly?’ He jabbed me with a bony finger in a tender spot just below the shoulder. It hurt. ‘It’s a boose you’re wanting!’ ‘I understand that.’ You tedious deaf old fart. I raised my voice to match his and bellowed near his ear: ‘I need to know which way to go!’ He looked at me as if I were unsustainably stupid. ‘A bloody boose! You want a bloody boose!’ And then he shuffled off, working his jaw wordlessly. ‘Thank you. Die soon,’ I called after him, rubbing my shoulder.

Hooton offered the world not only a mildly ridiculous name, but the dumpiest British Rail station I ever hope to sneeze in.

I don’t know how you strike up conversations with strangers in Britain. In America, of course, it’s easy. You just offer a hand and say, ‘My name’s Bryson. How much money did you make last year?’ and the conversation never looks back from there.

He laughed heartily at this and enjoyed it so much that he said it again and then sat with his hands on his knees and smiling as if trying to remember the last time he and I had had this much fun together. I gave an economical nod of acknowledgement for his quip and returned my attention to my book in a gesture that I hoped he would correctly interpret as an invitation to fuck off.

If you travel much by public transport in Britain these days you soon come to feel like a member of some unwanted sub-class, like the handicapped or unemployed, and that everyone essentially wishes you would just go away.

I watched the rain beat down on the road outside and told myself that one day this would be twenty years ago.

it became obvious that I was either going to have to leave or pay rent,

but then gradually I learned that there are, in fact, two kinds of walking in Britain, namely the everyday kind that gets you to the pub and, all being well, back home again, and the more earnest type that involves stout boots, Ordnance Survey maps in plastic pouches, rucksacks with sandwiches and flasks of tea, and, in its terminal phase, the wearing of khaki shorts in inappropriate weather.

Thus it was that I found myself an hour or so and an overpriced tuna sandwich later, back in the Old England, staring out at the wet lake through a large window and feeling bored and listless in that special way peculiar to wet afternoons spent in plush surroundings.

looked as if they had just come from a coffin fitting.

As ever, I was quietly astounded to find that so many people had been seized with the notion that struggling up a mountainside on a damp Saturday on the winter end of October was fun. We climbed through the grassy lower slopes into ever-bleaker terrain, picking our way over rocks and scree, until we were up among the ragged shreds of cloud that hung above the valley floor perhaps a thousand feet below. The views were sensational – the jagged peaks of the Langdale Pikes rising opposite and crowding against the narrow and gratifyingly remote valley, laced with tiny, stonewalled fields, and off to the west a swelling sea of hefty brown hills disappearing in mist and low cloud.

Out of the murk ahead of us emerged what looked disconcertingly like an orange snowman. It proved on closer inspection to be a high-tech hiker’s outfit. Somewhere inside it was a man. ‘Bit fresh,’ the bundle offered understatedly. John and David asked him if he’d come far. ‘Just from Blea Tarn.’ Blea Tarn was 10 miles away over taxing terrain. ‘Bad over there?’ John asked in what I had come to recognize was the abbreviated speech of fell walkers. ‘Hands-and-knees job,’ said the man. They nodded knowingly. ‘Be like that here soon.’ They nodded again. ‘Well, best be off,’ announced the man as if he couldn’t spend the whole day jabbering, and trundled off into the white soup.

We made it to the top without incident. I counted thirty-three people there ahead of us, huddled among the fog-whitened boulders with sandwiches, flasks and madly fluttering maps, and tried to imagine how I would explain this to a foreign onlooker – the idea of three dozen English people having a picnic on a mountain top in an ice storm – and realized there was no way you could explain it. We trudged over to a rock, where a couple kindly moved their rucksacks and shrank their picnic space to make room for us. We sat and delved among our brown bags in the piercing wind, cracking open hard-boiled eggs with numbed fingers, sipping warm pop, eating floppy cheese-and-pickle sandwiches, and staring into an impenetrable murk that we had spent three hours climbing through to get here, and I thought, I seriously thought: God, I love this country.

In any case, something about it must have appealed to me because I drank a foolish amount of beer and emerged to find that nearly all the restaurants roundabout were closed, so I toddled back to my hotel, where I winked at the night staff and put myself to bed.

I have often been struck in Britain by this sort of thing – by how mysteriously well educated people from unprivileged backgrounds so often are, how the most unlikely people will tell you plant names in Latin or turn out to be experts on the politics of ancient Thrace or irrigation techniques at Glanum. This is a country, after all, where the grand final of a programme like Mastermind is frequently won by cab drivers and footplatemen. I have never been able to decide whether that is deeply impressive or just appalling – whether this is a country where engine drivers know about Tintoretto and Leibniz or a country where people who know about Tintoretto and Leibniz end up driving engines. All I know is that it exists more here than anywhere else.

One day in 1987 Fallows was standing at a window in a London bank waiting to be served when a would-be robber named Douglas Bath stepped in front of him, brandished a handgun and demanded money from the cashier. Outraged, Fallows told Bath to ‘bugger off’ to the back of the line and wait his turn, to the presumed approving nods of others in the queue. Unprepared for this turn of events, Bath meekly departed from the bank empty-handed and was arrested a short distance away.

Prolonged solitary travel, you see, affects people in different ways. It is an unnatural business to find yourself in a strange place with an underutilized brain and no particular reason for being there, and eventually it makes you go a little crazy. I’ve seen it in others often. Some solitary travellers start talking to themselves: little silently murmured conversations that they think no-one else notices. Some desperately seek the company of strangers, striking up small talk at shop counters and hotel reception desks and then lingering for an uncomfortably long period before finally departing. Some become ravenous, obsessive sightseers, tramping from sight to sight with a guidebook in a lonely quest to see everything. Me, I get a sort of interrogative diarrhoea. I ask private, internal questions – scores and scores of them – for which I cannot supply answers. And so as I stood by a greengrocer’s in Thurso, looking at its darkened interior with pursed lips and a more or less empty head, from out of nowhere I thought, Why do they call it a grapefruit? and I knew that the process had started.

then stood by with a kind of nervous frozen smile while I activated controls that made the seatback jettison away from my back, the boot pop open and the windscreen wipers go into monsoon mode. And then, with a worrisome grinding of gears and several jerky movements, I blazed a trail from the car park by a novel and lavishly bumpy route and took to the road.

I stood on the gusty eminence gazing at the view for a long time, waiting for some profundity to steal over me,