BLAME ENGLAND FOR THAT?

Blame England? For what?

For being so green, so lush, so historical with its leftover Roman roots?

For having current people renting and living in four or five hundred year old houses?

Go ahead and blame England for anything you want and you’ll be able to find evidence backing it up. Just make it good.

What do I blame England for?

When you’re married to someone with roots in England, guess what happens?

You’re going to England.

Your kids are going to England, and her family will welcome you with open arms every time and remind you to come around more than once a decade.

I can’t blame England for that. Her family has a tradition of showing up for each other.

I thought of them in Bath.

Did all of the English rugby party people there have such families? I hope so.

They seemed a familiar group of sports fans, just the way you’d hope they’d be: big, jostling, loud and about fifteen deep and forty wide on this side of the River Avon.

Is all of England there for each other?

 

I Blame England For Brainwashing My Wife Without My Consent

The wife and I were in Barcelona a few years back taking an educational vacation of churches and castles, maybe a palace, maybe an abby, then more churches and more castles.

So we walked through the front doors of the Barcelona cathedral near the gothic district, also called the Jewish Quarter, which tickled me.

I’m giggling at my inside joke while walking in from bright daylight to church interior gloom with my wife.

But it wasn’t my wife. I found myself in a slow moving crowd of women with dark scarves over their heads and shoulders about three deep in front and back, but I didn’t find her.

One of us was lost.

 

The first rule of getting lost is to stop moving, so I stepped out of the pilgrim’s path and waited.

In a short time my wife walked up with a dark scar over her head and shoulders asking what I’m doing.

I didn’t know she had a dark scarf or that she’d use it for cover in a church. I asked her what she was doing?

She explained quickly and walked away.

 

This is the same thing that happens when she’s in England; she turns English.

Don’t ask me how or why, but she turns English. And not just tourist England.

She had a plan for what she’d do if we didn’t get married.

Since she’s eligible for dual citizenship she said she would move to England and start her life over, meet a nice Englishman, get married, have kids, and live her life out.

All the while pining for me like the old lady in Titanic pined for Jack in the end.

Except we snapped out of it, got married, have kids, now grandkids, and living our lives out together . . .  and?

At the moment we are spending the night on a pullout sofa bed in our travel buddies’ room because our reservation for a room as nice as theirs didn’t go through when it was made months ago.

Tomorrow we move into a studio, not a one-bedroom like this one I’m temporarily in so it ought to work out.

Otherwise I’v got my eye on a cow shed out in a nearby field, which would be perfectly fine, thank you very much.

As long as it’s still England.

Each day my wife gets more Englishy with her need for clotted cream and scones with her tea, and did you know the English tea is darker than Liptons? Yes, it is.

Each day I get more defensive, reminding her she’s not a Rick Steves acolyte proselytizing for the political and educational benefits of travel.

She reminds me that we all are just that when we get out and about in the world.

She met a nice Romanian couple, had ladies offer to give directions, and more.

After a band finished their set, she walked up on stage for a chat.

It seems the more ground we cover the more she blossoms with her people.

She’s more polite, more gracious, and more understanding.

Not necessarily to me, but I can tell she is with others.

Does that mean I’m getting Englishy, or need to?

That’s what I’m asking here.