What Does Where You've Been Mean?

I think I've already said that being in a place I've never been before is exciting.  Maybe interesting is a better word.  There are always things to learn about the world even in you hometown.  I have noticed that I often don't notice what's going on around me.  For instance the Tesla station that you see at the top of the page here.  It was at the far end of the parking lot at the Campanile Hotel in 

Washington.  There were a lot of those stations.  If you own a Tesla electric car you can charge your car at one of those Tesla charging stations for life.  I think that's a very nice thing. After I saw that I just happened on a guy who had had a test drive in a Tesla.  He gave the car an excellent review.  The hotel is giving Tesla a place to put its' chargers, and Tesla is giving local Tesla owners a place to charge their cars for free.

We moved from that hotel to this B&B.  I've already mentioned that it is an Air B&B which troubles me somewhat.  The bets are still out on whether my misgivings are justified or not. At any rate it

looks like at this point in time it doesn't really matter what I think because Air B&B is here to stay.  It is Wednesday night, and we have been here since Saturday.  We have met both of the proprietors, a couple Sue and John.  They seem to be very nice people.  I will say for certain that I have enjoyed their company.  I only noticed today that they are building another unit in between their house and this house.  I'm sure the construction site has been there all along, and I have taken pictures of the buildings, seen John on his tractor in between the buildings and managed not to pay any attention to what was actually occurring there

Croft Nook Cottages

Kristi and I  visited a "singers night" at Skipton, Yorkshire.  The club name was "Skipton Unplugged".  We drove there.  Here's my scribbling about that experience:

Singers’ Night

We ran the car through the warm summer UK night.

The air was soaked from the rain that had been falling

All day.

We breathed it in, felt it in our clothes

Like Florida.

The sun was not yet set,

Though the moon was waiting hopefully

In the clear Yorkshire sky.

The engine whined, gears rolling fast in their box.

There was a sense of urgency as we rolled through the towns.

The narrow lanes left no room for error, or that’s what they thought.

The cars, parked along the road

Like UPS deliverymen

Filling half of our lane

Rolled by them having automobile

Intimate experiences,

Mirrors almost touching in the sun falling sky.

I was a man obsessed with gears,

Listening to the engine like it was a small

Bird singing in the Yorkshire evening.

Listening attentively,

Watching the stoplights, road markings,

And fellow travelers.

There is a thrill to not knowing

What awaits you

At your destination.

We wound through the suburbs into

The city

Around the roundabouts

Around and around

1, 2, 4, 5,

3, 2, 1 zero

Around and around

Finding the way out again

Like a garden maze each one,

Words on signs

Bradford, Skipton,

On, and on, Leeds and places

We had never heard of,

Small places with sheep grazing in their fields,

Old people walking in the

Wet evening air.

As the sun prepared to leave us

It left an evening glow on a

Horizon that brought magic to the coming

Night

As we crazily churned, buzzed, whined

Through the wet Yorkshire evening.

Folk clubs can be

Strange animals.

You never know what the herds have

 Been grazing on.

This one was “unplugged” unnerving the

ELECTRIC bass player.

They can be entire rooms filled with

Melodeons, concertinas, ukuleles,

Instruments from the long ago

And instruments of the right now

That we have never seen.

They can be rooms filled with guitars

From Ireland, Fylde, London,

Far away Martin guitars, Japanese

Fenders from the 70’s,

Or small Washburn guitars from the

Early

20^th century.

The fat man may be singing the blues while

The skinny guy plays the cajon

And the shy woman sings her classical

Piece slightly out of tune.

The young singer-songwriter somehow seems

A bit out of place

Next to the ancient woman singing a

Geordie song that she learned from her

Father on a trip to Southampton

In 1952.

They were going to the Isle of Sky

Then her father

Was lost in the hotel

Came back to their room with

Whisky on his breath

And taught her this song

About men made redundant

In the damp Northeast air.

The young man sings about

A lost love

As young men do

While the ancient Geordie woman

Smiles remembering a young man

In 1960

Who sang her father’s song at a folk club

In Conwy, Wales.

She remembers his blue eyes and soft

Hair as she listens to the young man

Sing about how she left him

In a warm wet UK night,

Never returned, was not forgotten

How his heart hurts.

These clubs can  be filled with

Rock n roll

Wannabees buzzing

With their acoustic guitars

Holding them down around their waist

Playing them like they are pretending

Fender Stratocasters, Telecasters

Feeling the cheap pine box against their

Hand

After all they are all made by the same Chinese

Peasant in a factory near Shienzu.

They growl and sing Robert Johnson,

Keith Richards,

The Beatles, Kinks,

A song about a pub in Barleyville that they

Played long ago.

Some clubs have only singers

And no instruments are allowed.

None of the shring, shring of guitar strings,

Or the honking of the melodeons, concertinas,

Only voices raised in song.

The preference is for ancient songs

Singing about an England long ago

Mythologized, sterilized.

Miners’ songs about a strike, or

A cave in, mine explosion,

Descriptions of the living conditions,

The loo in the middle of the courtyard

The young girl suffering through the indignity of it all.

The path starts to slow.

The car rrrrr,rrrr rrrring as I shift it into

4^th, 3^rd, 2^nd, 1^st, slow at the entry to

The roundabout

Nobody coming

And I run right in winding it up through

The gears again, running out the other side.

It starts to feel like an old English town

And we know we are there.

We wind through the narrow, narrow streets

Being careful not to go into a one way road,

Or a pedestrian zone.

We slow and stay in 2^nd gear

Looking,

Looking,

Looking for the place we

Will know when we see it.

The navigator has written down the name of

Our destination.

We park beside the canal

Which tempts us with a canal side pub

Still lit with sun that is running away to the

West as fast as it can gather momentum.

I want to take a picture of the canal boats

Sitting quietly in a slightly yellow, or green

Scene.

I put it in my head.

Better than a camera, I can see it

Anytime.

As we arrive

Panic slowly fades to confidence.

The first player plays rock n roll.

They allow electric bass players.

They all smile as the Americans

Take the stage,

Then they take it back from them

With their applause.

The black car whines

Through a night lit  by street lamps,

No dark rural driving, but no

Other cars

To watch the black car run through the humid,

Warm Yorkshire night.

We walk someplace every day.  Usually Kristi and I don't walk too far - no more than an hour or so.

We saw a man putting a shale tile roof on his house a couple of days ago.  It looked like his wife and son were helping him.  It looked like DIY.  I can only speculate.  The roofs are different here than in the USA.  Construction in general is quite a lot different.  I've got to say that I'd rather be in an American house if there were an earthquake though as these houses are mostly stone, and masonry construction with a hefty wood frame.  I'm sure that they are mostly quite well engineered, probably more so than in the states where we all take shortcuts.

The flora and fauna around here is very, very similar to the same at home.  There is a version of Himalayan Blackberries, ubiquitous Fireweed, nettle and more.  Of course there are plants that we don't see so much either.  Here's some from a recent walk:

These have smaller leaves and berries than our Himalayan Blackberries.

Kristi burst into a verse of "Wild Mountain Thyme" just seeing this.

Fireweed

I think I better put a picture of stinging nettles up.  Just in case.

Stinging Nettles

We went for a nice walk this morning.  It is a"day off".  Tomorrow we head out for Guisborough to play at the Guisborough FC in the evening.  Gen and Rebecca took us out to Holmfirth for dinner last night and we went to a beer festival.  The waiter at the restaurant said he just did the restaurant job for fun and was an IT guy by day.  He was pretty entertaining.  He suggested the beerfest and as we were doing nothing else pressing went.

They had a large selection of British microbrews and a Brit bluegrass band that were very good.

There's lots more to tell and hardly enough time to tell it in.  Until next time. . .