The Dog Days of Fall

Our weekend in Gloucester started out nice enough. Upon arrival in the Tesco parking lot, we piled out of the bus into the hands of a group of old ladies. It turned out the information we had been given about who we were to stay with was all wrong. My roommate Will and I had the same host, and she had a third from our program as well, one Asad. Our host was Pam, mother of several married children and adopted mother (after the others left, presumably) of one, and professional student host. In fact, there was another student in the house, a German guy, who is staying there for ten months and studying in Gloucester. The upstairs rooms in which we stayed had proscriptions posted specifically for students, and had four beds in two very small rooms. Pam had us write our names and contact info in a binder about three-quarters full of other people’s names and contact info. She said it was her second such binder.

The ground floor of the house (remember, it’s England, so we slept on the ‘first’ floor) was a different story. It was just like a single family house...full of images of German Shepherds. Pam and her husband have two real (big) dogs of this variety, and shelf upon shelf of ceramic, bronze, china, and wood statues of them. And also decorative ceramic plates featuring German Shepherds. And also photographs of their current and past pet German Shepherds. I don’t think our hosts are crazy sick lunatics, I’m just saying there was a theme. A strong theme.

The real dogs were great though. And they live like kings. Maybe you could have guessed that.

Before I came to England, a bunch of people warned me about British food: I’d gain so much weight, they said, It’s heavy stuff, they said. Well, at Hall in college, it’s a pretty international menu, so I sort of brushed off those warnings. But this weekend was truly a chance to see an English house, beginning with a discovery of the veracity of those warnings. Our first meal (dinner, since we arrived around 7:45) was a fried egg, chips (fries), and a breakfast link. That was rumbling around in me for the next few hours, while we watched American crime drama on TV.

One observation about TV: The series of shows we watched that night was sponsored by Kia. I know this because there were ten-second commercial spots before and after show segments, presumably advertising a Kia SUV, in which a real version of this car was placed in a sparely animated world and made a participant in crimes committed by outlines of people. Some had brief gun battles using the car as their barrier, one was holding on to the top of the car as it careened down the street, one was lying flat on the ground in front of it as others got out to check on him—I hesitate to remember that one tried to steal it, but that would make about as much sense as the rest. These very short spots did not make Kias seem very safe, in other words.

It was early-to-rise the next morning, in order that we might meet the rest of the hosted students back in the Tesco car park to begin a long day of ped-powered sight-seeing. We started with the Gloucester Cathedral, a very old and truly impressive piece of Norman, then Gothic architecture. [They said come back later; we hit this other, forgettable ‘folk’ museum quickly; we went back to the cathedral.] We toured it for a good hour with a guide who showed us the architectural pointers we wouldn’t have otherwise seen (it’s one of those buildings that was built once, then another part was built, then part of it fell down so another part was built, so it represents four successive stages of building technology, all impressive, all in one place), told us how part of Harry Potter was filmed there (but they used mostly constructed stages within it), told us about dead kings (one’s maybe buried there, one was crowned there), and showed us the crypt. That was all pretty cool, I took some pictures.

Then we went to...I’m not sure what it was called. It was kind of like a Renaissance fair for pirate-lovers, located at the historic Gloucester (don’t forget: “Gloster”) docks. I had been promised some Pirates of the Caribbean stuff, like Johnny Depp look-a-likes and a copy of a ship used in the movie. There for sure wasn’t any of that stuff, only a pretty weak ‘pirate ship’ that you could stand on if you waited in a long line in the wind. I didn’t wait.

At this point, our sixteen year-old tour guide deserted us. So we had four hours to spend in Gloucester before we were picked up again in the Tesco car park. A few of us went a-walking, first through a nearby mall where we bought some candy, then (after a hungrily-terse debate about where) to eat real food, then around the waters of Gloucester (mostly the canal), then back to the cathedral. We walked around the great big building then, and it’s amazing from every angle, but especially the back. Some people (maybe cathedral employees?) were drinking a forty near where we sat.

Then it was back to the doghouse for another heavy meal* (but I forget what—not another fried egg) and a night of studying. Sunday, a crumpet for breakfast (!), more studying, and another heavy meal, and then back here to report. I’ve got pictures, but they’re a hassle to upload from my computer. This also explains the backlog of other pictures I have. This week I’ll put ‘em all up, I promise.

*A heavy meal with tea is heavy metal.