Pool and a Few Last Things

I'm nearing the end of a semester in York and also of a long and stressful three weeks of final papers and exams. Well, one exam, to be honest, but more final papers than I've ever had to write in so short a time. English universities, this one at least, have next to no assignments throughout the year. "Homework" is a foreign word – although they do have something called "supportive open learning," which are basically optional assignments intended to guide you through the new concepts. As far as I can tell, no one does these optional assignments, and at least for me, I haven't learned any new concepts. Sorry, York St. John. That's the way it is.

But life in York is pleasant as usual. Spring has finally arrived, bringing a canopy of vibrantly green leaves over the older section of campus and an array of flowers. It's finally gotten to a comfortable temperature – coats are merely a good idea now instead of necessary.

On our excursion to Edinburgh two weeks ago, I and my friend Kyle decided to play a game of pool in the basement of our hostel. It was the beginning of a new era. As of last night, we've probably played about twenty games. It's an exercise in humility. Either I'm not used to the lighter weight of the cue balls over here or I'm beginning to realize how much of a loose cannon I am, but whichever it is, I've lost about fifteen of those games. On a cultural note, the layout of the billiard table and balls is a little different than in the U.S. There are no markers on the shoulder of the table, so when the other player scratches, the cue can be placed anywhere on the table (like in 9-ball, Hope and Luke) and you are awarded two shots. The pool balls are all solids, seven yellow and seven red and one black 8-ball. This limits the types of games that can be played, but that's probably for the best considering all of the tables I've come across have been in pubs and drinking and complex analytical don't mix very well.

So, York is beautiful, I'm on the last leg of my assignments, I'm not very good at pool, and there are eight days until we all fly back to Grand Rapids.

Thanks for reading!

The Highlands and the Netherlands

This year's spring break has been one of the most varied in my life. So many things happened over York St. John's long three weeks of break that I won't describe them all in excruciating detail, only the events that stand out as I remember them.

Elizabeth and I parted ways from our Calvin friends in London and took the ferry over to the Netherlands. My dad's old college friend Dirk Dijk met us at the train station in Amsterdam and we spent the following week with his family. Most of our days began with a walk through the Vondelpark on the way into the city. Most of them ended with rain, and three different times, hail. After a few days of being in the city, we both agreed that Amsterdam is much friendlier, prettier, cleaner, and more accessible than London (although that's a classic city with its own personality and merits). The canals, the trees, and the flowers are beautiful this time of year. The city has a unique charm, a combination of modern and quaint, the high old houses with their high facades and the pulsing dance beats pouring out of the doors of American clothing stores.

One day, Dirk drove us through Vriesland, the home of Elizabeth's forebears. Among other things, I was forced to try raw herring, which is apparently a very Dutch delicacy. I was much less thrilled about it than Elizabeth, who finished off the last two thirds of mine.

A constant source of entertainment was the Dijks' parakeet Yoshi, named after Mario's reptilian steed, who had a morning ritual of ringing two sets of bells, banging his beak against a little mirror and then staring down his reflection for a few seconds. He could also mimic a few words, which he tended to do a random times during dinner, to our amusement.

After Amsterdam, Elizabeth and I took the ferry back to England and waited in London for two days until her mom and brother arrived. We had some fun the first night, from about midnight until two, trying to find the hostel, which we eventually realized was located above a pub we'd passed several times. The next day we took the train to Oxford. It was a beautifully warm and sunny day, perfect for strolling the medieval streets and neo-classical gardens, perusing labyrinthine bookstores, and eating lunch and dinner in the Eagle and Child, the pub where Tolkien, Lewis, and the other Inklings had their weekly pints and debates.

On the second half of break, after Elizabeth met up with her family to go to Italy, I took a train deep into the Western Highlands of Scotland, real primordial countryside whose mountains can be both extremely beautiful and terrifying. There was one point where I looked up from the rocky path I was hiking and saw this huge black mountain looming over me and felt like it was about to crush me. It was a very Shadow-of-the-Colossus-esque moment (that one's for you, Dan).

The first day, I was walking along the railroad track to the only hostel for twenty miles (I booked my train before I knew the area, being the thorough planner that I am) when I heard a sound like thunder and I saw a herd of highland deer running across the moor about a hundred and fifty yards from where I was standing. I carried a sharp rock around the rest of that day in case I met a buck. It was around that time that I wondered whether there were any wolves or bears in the Highlands, something I'm still unsure about, although I didn't see any.

The second day of hiking was the most wearying and rewarding of the trip. I hiked for about nine hours across marshy moorland, over a corbett, through a river valley, across another moor, along a reservoir, across the reservoir dam, back across the reservoir dam (a navigational error), and down into another river valley before finally arriving at Kinlochleven. With mistakes, the journey couldn't have been less than 15 miles through rough country. But it was worth it when I flopped down in the first inn I came across in town and ate the first hot meal I'd had in 48 hours. That meal was perfection: a bowl of nachos, lasagna, chips, salad, a glass of Bellhaven, and a Gaelic coffee.

I watched Britain's first ever debate between the candidates for Prime Minister with an old Scotsman who kept making sarcastic remarks about all three. I guess a healthy dose of ire is the birthright of a people "colonized by wankers" in the words of Ewan McGregor in Trainspotting.

Glen Coe, ancestral home of Clan MacDonald was quiet and lovely. Walking along the road to my hostel both nights, I glimpsed a shining white horse grazing in the trees.

Along my hikes, I generally ran out of water about halfway. But one of the perks of being in the highlands is that (nearly) all the streams coming out of the hills are pristine. At least that was the reasoning I used. I figured that giardia was better than a lonely death of dehydration. I'll let you know if anything develops.

All in all a successful trip. A few moments of terror, as when I got out of my league trying to hike a munro and had to drop my backpack about twenty feet down a waterfall in order to scramble down myself (I retrieved it none the worse for wear), but thankfully I was kept free from any serious bodily harm. The worst of it is a persistent blister on my left heel, but that's my fault for not keeping up my exercise beforehand.

Thanks for reading.

A couple photos of the area taken from the internet. My own photos are on a pair of undeveloped disposable cameras. In order: a portion of Glen Coe, Rannoch Moor, Buchaille Etive Mor, and the famous Clachaig Inn.

London, Amsterdam, and the Highlands

Here's a brief version of my spring break itinerary, written hastily in the lobby of our London hostel:

Earlier today, our group of Calvin students arrived via train in London. We'll be hear until Monday morning when Elizabeth and I have to catch the 5:59am train out of King's Cross Station to Harwich on the East coast of England. At nine, we board our ferry to the Hook of Holland where we'll catch another train to Amsterdam to meet the Dirk, a friend of my dad's from college. For the next week, we'll be staying with Dirk and his family. Potential sights to be seen: Artis Zoo, the Rijk's Museum, and the Botanical Gardens (which has a 2000 year old cactus, allegedly).

On the sixth of April, we take the ferry back to Harwich and another train to Paddington Station where we await the arrival of Elizabeth's mom and brother. On the 8th, I head back to York, stock up on provisions and rest, and then head up to Scotland. For the next week, I'll be backpacking around the Western Highlands. The first night, I'm boarding at a hostel on the coast of Loch Ossian. In the morning, I'm getting an early start on a hike westward to Kinlochleven. After three days of hiking in the Mamores and around Loch Leven, I hike along southwest along the coast of the Loch to Glencoe, the ancestral home of the MacDonald clan (yes, that MacDonald once again). There are some beautiful mountains and glens to be seen in those parts of the highlands. I've got a guidebook, a couple maps, a compass, and hopefully the love of the Lord. I return to Kinlochleven on the 15th, hike back to Loch Ossian for the night of the sixteenth, and then catch a train from Corrour Station back to York. Classes begin on the 19th, so that Sunday will be spent getting some much-needed rest.

Cheers!

Weekly Sustenance

Over the past few weekends, I've learned to appreciate the virtues of bread, cheese, and apples. Simple, cheap, delicious, and more or less healthy. Elizabeth and I usually go to Sainsbury's, the English equivalent of the Midwest's Meijer's, on Thursday afternoons and stock up on victuals for the weekend. Together we've sampled a good portion of the cheeses on display, and have discovered that England is the unsung motherland of good cheese. This weekend, I've been enjoying a brick of applewood-smoked cheese, a loaf of heavily-seeded organic bread, and Pink Lady apples.

This morning was the first time in a month that I worked up the verve to go running. I went down Gillygate to the river. It was early enough that none of the shops were open yet and there were very few people in the city center. The Ouse was full of rowers, some of whom were probably on St. John's team, and the park was teeming with walkers and their dogs. In the course of the run I realized two things: one, that I've gotten sadly out of practice since my jogging class last semester, and two, that the English, at least in North Yorkshire, don't usually greet strangers they pass. I'm a practitioner of the head nod, and even when running, I like to acknowledge my fellow runners and walkers, but here it goes mostly unreturned. This must be one manifestation of that renowned and sometimes elusive "English Reserve." Just a piece of armchair anthropology to mull over.

Also, John Morton was good enough to snap a picture of me at the Lincoln Library a few weeks ago. This is me holding up George MacDonald's letters to Tennyson like a shameless fanboy.

MacDonald and Tennyson

There's a good chance that no one but Brent will find the following post very interesting.

A few years ago, my Dad and I had coffee with a man who had met J.R.R. Tolkien. He had a signed copy of The Hobbit (in Dutch for some reason) that he brought along because he knew how enthusiastic I was about Middle Earth. I had a similar experience at the Tennyson Library in Lincoln on Saturday.

As the curator was giving us a history Alfred Lord Tennyson's life in letters, I got the idea to ask if he had ever had a correspondence with George MacDonald, the "father of modern fantasy" and one of my favorite authors and thinkers. As it turns out, MacDonald had sent four letters to Tennyson from 1865 to 1872, and I got to hold them in my hand and try to decipher the hundred and fifty year old cursive. His script was a lot bigger than the majority of old handwriting I've seen, and because of that, it was more or less legible. The letters themselves were along the lines of most of the literary fan-mail lesser writers sent to England's greatest at the time, most of them accompanying copies of MacDonald's own novels, but they still displayed his personality and humor. One of them expressed the hope that Tennyson would not find "the Scotch in [the novel] more of an obstruction than is pleasurable." Being Scottish was still considered more or less an obstacle that writers had to overcome before they could be considered great in the wider literary scene of Britain.

The curator showed us a copy of Through the Looking Glass that Lewis Carroll, a good friend of MacDonald, had sent to Tennyson with a similar letter expressing admiration and the hope that the great poet would enjoy his work, but as she then pointed out, the spine of the book showed no evidence of having been opened. Apparently it took a lot to pass Tennyson's muster as far as literary merit went.

Lincoln itself was an eccentric city. The main street of the old town would probably rate about a challenging blue in Aspen, which made it interesting to walk up and down trying to find bathrooms and ATMs and bookstores. Elizabeth and I spent some time in two wonderful used book stores, the classic kind with more books than floor space. In the first, which had shelves to the ceiling and piles of books everywhere, I unearthed a copy of The Claw of the Conciliator, the second volume in Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun from the bottom of a dusty shelf beside the door bell, which rang like a fire siren every time someone opened and closed the door, which was often. In the next store, I found the first and third volumes, which made me very happy. I haven't started them yet – in the throes of writing a few midterm essays – but I've read they're some of the best in literary science fiction.

Thanks for wading through the wanton display of nerditry.

file:///Users/Andrew/Desktop/macdonald.jpg

Take care!

The Elephant Man

York St. John, in contrast with its larger and more distinguished neighbor, York University, is known as a party school. It's nominally Anglican, but that legacy is relegated to the theology department and the squat, grey, painfully modernist chapel which includes services for a variety of faiths. As far as I can tell, the classes are about as challenging as those I took in junior year of high school.

The students are friendly and loud in roughly equal proportions. The same could be said about Calvin students, but their loudness is separated from their lectures. There have been a few lectures now that I've almost walked out of because I couldn't hear every other word the tutor was saying over the lively debate about shoe shopping and weekend plans.

My Theology and Film lecture this morning was a perfect example. My tutor, a deaf man in his sixties, was talking about society's response to the disabled. This week's film was David Lynch's The Elephant Man. The students around me talked straight through a personal story about the isolating effects of his disability, which he didn't quite hear, because, obviously, he's deaf. Three weeks ago, this would have made me want to throw heavy objects around the room, but I've gotten used to these kind of (at the risk of being precious) Kafkaesque displays of ignorance.

Right or wrong, I decided not to go to the screening of The Elephant Man this afternoon. I have better things to do – like finish two novels for Monday and research and write an essay for Tuesday – than struggle to hear the dialogue over the sound of potato chips being eaten.

Along the Pennine Way

Yet another update about a weekend excursion. But does anyone really want to read, "... and then I read one hundred and ninety pages of Dickens..."?

Yesterday, we drove to Haworth, a former industrial town in which the Brontë sisters lived. After attending a service at the church where their father was minister and where most of their family is interred, we toured their house, which is now a museum. Like other author's homes/museums, there was a lot of old furniture, a few items of clothing on display, and a few samples of their manuscripts, which were by far the most interesting part of the exhibit. When we finished, I ate a sandwich on the museum veranda in the savage wind – you can guess that I wasn't thrilled about being put outside to eat my lunch.

When we got started on our hike through the moors, I managed to put away the sour grapes and enjoy the scenery. It was classic English sheep country, complete with rocky crags and heather. We hiked high into the hills, past a waterfall and walled-off pastures, up to a crumbling stone farmhouse built who-knows-when by who-knows-who. On the return hike, our group got separated. I ended up near the back of the line, with John Morton. After following the ancient signposts too literally, we ended up, with the other six who had followed us, somewhere along the backside of Mount Ararat, for all we knew. While John and the others made some phone calls, I had a very pastoral moment. I was leaning against a stone wall, staring into space when I heard some rustling behind me. I turned around and looked straight into the eyes of a pair of old cows chewing hay and staring at me through the broken window of an old farmhouse.

Eventually, we were directed toward the right path and found the bus only twenty minutes later than the rest of the group. Elizabeth was the first to see us, and started singing the theme from Chariots of Fire while we ran to meet each other.

All in all, a refreshing day.

Again, photo credit goes to William Overbeeke.