Kathleen, Queen of the Desert

The scone as oasis within the travel oasis, or tea and scones, innit?

Travel is a mental oasis for me. I love the limbo of airports, the relative freedom from e-mail, the otherworldiness of exiting a subway into the unknown, the break from constant availability. Within this cocoon of travel, however, I often need a deeper oasis from the travel itself. On my recent tour of the United Kingdom and Ireland, life added the deserts of living alone, an emptied nest, a devastating divorce, and traveling on a bus with students a third my age: arid landscapes to seek oases within. So, from Edinburgh to York to Bath to Dublin, I ate my emotional way through trip challenges by consuming daily cream teas, usually alone, scone by jammy scone.

Wouldn’t cream cheese on a bagel topped by Smucker’s jam do just as well? Did I really need to fly eight time zones east for a pastry and clotted cream (the “cream” of a cream tea)? Wouldn’t scones in Utah be enough? At a Sconecutter franchise in Sandy the day before I left, I ordered honey butter white and wheat scones, thinking I would get little cakes and a side of honey butter. But no. This is the The Sconecutter procedure as I imagine it.

One, take one loaf of Wonder Bread and mash it into a lumpen, rectangular patty. Two, fry the patty in hot, not especially fresh, oil. Talk loudly with your co-workers about how much you fucking hate your boss. Three, flop the drippy patty onto a paper plate. Slice the patty in half lengthways. Four, smear a generous glob of honey butter onto each half.  Five, serve this concoction to the disbelieving customer at your sticky counter. Oh, how the mighty scone had fallen. I didn’t even ask about the Scone Burger.

“Rejected suitors take to roaming as naturally as unhived bees.” It’s a phrase from English poet and novelist Thomas Hardy (1840–1938) and refers to Diggory Venn (in Arthur Hopkins’ illustration, below).

Venn is perhaps my favorite of the Hardy characters in the novel Return of the Native. If the hive is Wessex (Hardy’s partly real, partly fictionalized Dorset county in south central England) and Venn the bee, then he does indeed take to roaming to become a red-stained nomad.

Venn has been rejected by Thomasin Yeobright, a young woman whose family tells to pursue a more “professional” husband. Venn then quits dairy farming to become a wandering reddleman, servicing sheep in the area. Reddle is a powdery red dye (an impure, earthy variety of hematite) used by sheep farmers to identify their flocks, perhaps more specifically, rams. (Spray paints or paste and ear tags are now used by sheepmen.) Venn lives and travels about in a small, horse-drawn shepherd’s hut (such as in the illustration below).

Many of these movies feature a mix of nationalities, but British characters and cultural references are found throughout.

1917. 2019. Two British soldiers receive seemingly impossible orders to cross over into enemy territory to deliver a message that could save 1,600 of their comrades, including one of the soldier’s brothers.

Aces High. 1976. Maj. Gresham (Malcolm McDowell) is a flying ace who oversees a group of English pilots. His latest recruit is Lt. Croft (Peter Firth) who idolizes Gresham at first, but the image of his hero is tarnished when he learns of Gresham’s alcoholism. Only after Croft himself endures the crucible of war does he come to fully appreciate his commanding officer.

African Queen.1951. Canadian river boat captain Charlie Ohnart (Humphrey Bogart) and English missionary Rose Sayer (Katherine Hepburn) set out on the Ubanga/Bora River to blow up a German ship in German East Africa in 1914. Look for the poignant performance by Robert Morley as Rose’s brother, Reverend Samuel Sayer.

The pianos      My small hotel in London is close to St. Pancras Station, which, together with King’s Cross Station, is a hub for certain local trains, underground lines, and, most notably, the Eurostar high-speed rail service. The station itself was designed by William Henry Barlow and opened in 1868. Pancras himself was a Roman who converted to Christianity and was ordered beheaded by the Roman emperor Diocletian around 304 CE. Pancras is the patron saint of children. His Greek name means “the one who holds everything.” Some very special items that St. Pancras Station holds are pianos.

Two “street piano” uprights are positioned just outside the Eurostar arrivals door. When the train arrives in London (including one segment that streaks under the English Channel through the Chunnel), thousands of travelers pour out into the large hall lined with restaurants, coffee shops, Boots and The Body Shop, and other English franchises. You’ll see the usual shouts, hugs, tears, and flowers dropping to the ground as arms are thrown around beloveds.

Jane Austen’s family spent time and rented rooms and floors of rooms from time to time in Bath, Somerset, England. The refurbished Roman baths provided entertainment and promised healing any and all ills. The baths are fed by Britain’s only natural hot springs, but the Romans’ complex of springs, therapy rooms, and baths had been abandoned and buried once the empire fell in 480 AD. Just before the Austen family arrived in 1801, the King’s Bath had just been rediscovered, excavations having started in 1878. Perhaps this was why Jane’s father the Reverend George Austen had decided to retire and move his family there. The original Roman baths had been available to all Roman citizens, rich and poor. Not so during the Austens’ time.

The Royal Crescent and other stone “terraces” (apartment complexes such as in the photo below) provided high-status accommodations. Families could promenade in the nearby parks and along walks and pathways. But this quiet market and spa town was also known as dirty and unsanitary, suffering waves of bubonic and pneumonic plagues and cholera.

Down the hill in the Avon Valley, inhabitants suffered the acrid smells and pollution of the city’s numerous factories and woolen mills, where tradesmen and workers lived, and where no promenading was going on. The restorative Roman baths didn’t seem to help the poor. Food shortages and famine also affected rates of mortality.