1999 Bill Bryson Notes from a Small Island HTV

[Music] lisa riley presents a special you've been framed in half an hour celebrating the joys of childhood first on htv for the last time bill bryson's notes [Music] [Applause] [Music] i don't understand most things i truly don't i don't understand how anyone ate the first oyster i don't understand why when the phone rings someone always says is that the phone i don't understand why the more hair i lose off the top of my head the more it grows in my nostrils i don't understand why the less leather there is in a woman's shoe the more it costs i don't know why when you go away on holiday there's always a heat wave at home i don't understand why planes trains and buses are always on time when you are late and always late when you are on time i don't even know how my own body works i've been carrying a spleen around for nearly half a century and i don't have the faintest idea where it is or what it does i wouldn't know my own endocrine glands if they reached out and goose me i do know that when i look at the british countryside it's very beautiful but i don't know how it got that way writer and adventurer redmond o'hanlon knows more about what makes the british landscape than anyone i know something i've always wondered is why are all the geological terms british oh well the whole of biology and geology and you could say science at a pitch began in england it began looking at a landscape just like this rolling gentle chalk land and it was a world that was started officially in 1802 by the archdeacon of carlisle william paley who who wrote a book called natural theology and it goes look god made everything so if you want to come close to god and understand his ways all you have to do is study his creation it meant that all the persons in the parish could happily get on collecting insects if god made everything then you made a series of collections of earwigs birdsex everything got classified and it was part of religion it was much more fun than going to visit your parishioners it's a theology born in a garden really and the the tragedy of it all was that when the origin came out in 1859 the only people who were really qualified to understand the argument were the very people that were psychologically destroyed by it in this gentle landscape we're looking at a tragedy in the 1860s suicide rate and much clergy so bill now you've left this place i mean exiled yourself abroad to america what what do you miss most i don't want to hear about television programs is there something is there a special landscape that you i miss all of it i mean i really i i miss the the way that the landscape is so intricately worked yeah that there's all the little details of it because i mean in the states it's all so much larger kansas it's not just the landscape i might add there are lots of things in britain that are special in much the same way take the famous and much-loved fastinia railway in north wales completed in 1836 it is one of the oldest narrow gauge railway lines in the world thousands of people come every year to watch its shunting engines and to gaze gravely but rapturously at breastplates firebeds hoppers and coupling devices but there are people in the world who can get genuinely excited about boiler pressures and camshaft ratios will forever be a source of wonder to me me i like the fastiniag railway not so much for how it works as for what it represents namely a certain knack by the british for being ingenious and sensible at the same time there aren't many people in the world who can do this the british when they do it well do it very well indeed as with the fastiniagline when it was built it was unquestionably a wonder of the age it was progressive and modern and scientific and it brought significant economic benefits to the region but it also represented a more general improvement it brought a touch of class and elegance to the mountainous terrain through which it passed it was a gleaming symbol of progress but it was also just nice the little bridges and viaducts and out-of-the-way stations didn't overwhelm their setting they snuggled into it in fact they completed the fistiniharg railway was nice to look at and ride on them it's nice to look at and ride on now it's safe to presume that the people who built the railway 163 years ago didn't have it in mind that one day it would make a jolly nice day out for trippers but it does so much so in fact that everyone on board except me stayed on for the return journey maybe they'd been to blind out before the fistinhark railway was built to serve the slate industry which is not it must be said the tidiest of enterprises the village of fly now stands in the steep defiles surrounded by massive unearthly heaps of rejected slate you get the impression that they were either not very good at it or very fussy when i first came here it was in a wintry downpour on a sunday afternoon and blind owl was about as unpromising a place as i had ever seen today under blue skies it's better but only just much more to my liking is landing where everything is on a modest scale including it seems the pets there isn't much to do here that's what's so nice about it one of the great charms of the british is that they get so much from small pleasures give them a cup of tea and a biscuit and they go lovely ask them if they fancy or run out to the garden center and they grab their cuts and hats no one on earth gets more from less and nowhere more so than at the seaside where it's possible to do nothing at all and still think you're having a wonderful time a lot of people would say there isn't much to do in landed now but that's not true you can sit on the shingle you can sit in a shelter you can sit in the sun and have a chat or in the shade and not what they are all waiting for of course is that galvanizing moment when someone finally says fancy a cup of tea if someone didn't say it they would have to stay there forever the ability to find genuine excitement in a modestly flavorable beverage is something which unites the english scots and welsh where i come from fun usually involves equipment and commotion and noise and money pushing the senses and your pocket to the limit here pleasure comes from much smaller pursuits you stretch your legs have a straw take in the air do you see what i mean you're the only people to elevate respiration to a pastime and i mean that as a compliment britain is the only place where hotels advertise hot and cold water as a feature the british are the only people in the world who think of jam and currants as thrilling constituents of a cake the only people in the world who believe that you can turn a sausage into a canape by putting a toothpick through it the only people who would think of bowls as a spectator sport [Music] it would be unkind of me to say that they are the only people in the world who could possibly be entertained by a man passing a candle through his forearm or nicking the lady's handbag and hiding it on the other side of the room [Music] but it is so [Music] and here's the really strange thing i love it [Music] uh [Music] britain is benign and beguiling so it comes as a shock when you stumble upon something dangerous and life-threatening like morkan bay it doesn't look particularly treacherous but it's not somewhere to stretch your legs alone he told me to meet him on the beach he being one cedric robinson an employee of the queen as royal keeper of the sands a man who can keep you alive seen horses go down he quick something the tide comes in covers the horse completely but the buoyancy of the horse and struggling brings them up to the surface then they swim out to the side wow it's wonderful really that they can do that but you can't do that with the tractor you see they just go farther down so have you seen tractors go under oh yes in my lifetime i've seen several one gorgeous moonlight night i was out in the bay and the fishermen was falling behind and he went in what we call the mel grave and uh well we've never seen that tractor again but out on the bed like this as we're looking dry sun like this could still be quick sums really and i just started walking here and discovered i was in quicksand could i scamper out again or would i get well i think if if you find yourself on quicksand and and you find yourself going in the the thing is to spread your weight lie flat and by doing that you'll escape going down but if you used to stand there and freeze that's when the trouble has you you would go straight down really quite a number of years ago i was planning the route to bring prince philip across the sun with horse and carriages and on the same day there was a a young girl came out on a thoroughbred horse and the mother was right she was running alongside and they come to the river and crossed because i'd marked it out and it was a shallow river and then there was a stretch of sun just like this and the day previously i'd been up that stretch of something all new sun it was treacherous one massive quicksand and this year land they saw this lovely dry sun they thought they would go for a gallop and she shouted and mother it's all right mama i shouted and screamed your head off i said stop stop if they'd gone on that would have been it would have gone right down i've been all day getting that horse out but you see it looked so safe with being dry and i knew you know by being in the area the day previously i knew that it wasn't i got the message and wandered back behind cedric leaving the sands of morgan bay to their own deceptively beautiful and dangerous secrets as long as you don't go potholing during a rainstorm or scale snowden and carpet slippers in february then there really are very few areas of natural danger in britain no everglades death valley downtown washington dc the landscape doesn't overwhelm you with its power or size like british pleasures its attractions are nicely small scale put the thames down in north america and it wouldn't even make it into the top 100. and ben nevis the highest mountain in britain would barely feature at all new hampshire alone has at least eight peaks that are as high or higher but that's not the point this isn't about size or records it's about being just right that isn't to say there isn't grandeur in britain there's grandeur plenty it's just that it's on a more manageable scale let me put this in perspective for you my new home in new england is closer to my old home in yorkshire than it is to the most westerly point of the american mainland from new hampshire to los angeles is about the same distances from london to lagos here people call their auto club for route maps and check their tire pressures before driving the sort of distances we would go to get a taco [Music] distances here are trifling especially if you were brought up in somewhere like iowa where you can drive for half a day without need of your indicator but of course travel is a different sort of commodity in britain only in the north of scotland does the openness allow distance to be seen and taken in at a glance like on a journey to thurso the mainland's most northern town getting to grips with journey times is one thing understanding the weather is another i have a small tattered clipping i sometimes carry with me and pull out for purposes of private amusement it's a weather forecast from the western mail and it says in toto outlook dry and warm but cooler with some rain there you have in a single pithy sentence the british weather captured to perfection the western male could run that forecast every day for all i know it may and scarcely ever be wrong the remarkable thing to me about the british weather is not how reliably inclement it is but that i'm the only person who seems to have noticed i can't count the number of times i've heard of britain look out the window and say with genuine surprise oh would you look at all that rain that's like an eskimo sticking his head out of his igloo and saying oh would you look at all that snow it's not something that really ought to surprise you the nice thing about bad weather in britain is that it doesn't last long this shower ended after three weeks i've said it many times before but one of the most impressive things about britain to me is how much incident and achievement is packed onto such a small canvas speaking as someone who comes from a state whose greatest contribution to the happiness and comfort of mankind was the invention of a machine for detacling corn i can't help but be impressed by the wealth of inventiveness in britain there is so much of this sort of thing in fact that much of it is completely forgotten and overlooked in the tiny hamlet of watan just outside thurso there once lived a man whose achievements had he been born in iowa would be celebrated yet you come along to sierra bay and clock yes wonderful now when did he invent this there's appeared to be at 1845 when one who's working in edinburgh and this was the first electric clock in the world to be kept going by the impulses of an electric magnet originally worked on an earth battery the clock is maintained by hector sinclair a sort of voluntary timekeeper so this is the oldest electric clock in the world yes it's the oldest electric clock in the world the first one we kept going with the electric impulses on a permanent pulled magnet on the head of night what kind of background did it come from you know alexander being was son of a crafter a big family of 10 up in the mirrors above what in here and it's probably more did bain make a lot of money out of this being died in poverty did he why why because so many people want to copy his patents and it cost him quite a lot of money legally to fight his side but he invented a number of other things as well didn't he he was the inventor of the electric teleprinter who is a forward which is the forerunner of the fax machine okay all right so he's responsible for the pax machine why do you think the scots are so inventive um because they're squats that's the best vision one of the cleverest bits of scottish ingenuity is the ability to attract people from all over the world to travel to and experience virtually nothing the almost most northerly point of mainland britain johna groudz the little port was named after a 16th century dutch ferryman who in turn derived his name from the grote charge to carry people the eight miles to orkney there's still a ferry but 95 of the people who traveled to the spot do so purely to fulfill some inner spiritual desire to touch the edge and remarkably they were not all british i heard canadian new zealand and korean accents there were cars from germany sweden france spain holland even monte carlo as well as from every corner of britain they'd driven for hours days to wander about for minutes to get a photograph to secure the moment and then get back in their cars and drive southward even the piper migrates the length of europe to perform and once his sporan is full fly south to winter in malta i'm tempted to think how canny these scots except that this piper is from somewhere closer to dunstable than dundee the truth is that the whole place has an identity crisis it doesn't know whether to be first or last whether it is coming or going despite that there's a continuous flow of people willing to head to this remote corner simply to visit the last house and afterwards perhaps by a last burger and fries [Music] what many of them failed to do is take the short walk up what might be marketed as the last set of steps where you spot a headland ahead of you further north the truth is that all jonograts is is the most northerly jhana grouds further north you have the castle of may the most northerly royal home and a mile further north from there is done at head the actual most northerly point on mainland great britain [Music] donna is uncelebrated and stunning a sheer 400 feet from top to bottom as the bird's egg falls it is the black basalt cousin of the grey slate of north wales and equal of the much adored white chalk cliffs i wandered along just 549 miles due south now that's what i call a big ending to a small island and no small part of that small island do i miss more than the yorkshire dales which were home for my last eight years in england the tales encapsulate all that held me in the country for a quarter of a century when i only came for a fortnight they are wild without terror beauty without vanity the settle to call out railway is a bit like that too it's the most celebrated obscure railway line in the world a supreme act of folly in 1870 james allport general manager of the midland railway took it into his head to build a main line north there already were west and east coast lines so he decided to drive one up the middle even though it went from nowhere much to nowhere much by way of nothing at all [Music] because the line went through an insanely bleak and forbidding stretch of the pennines allport's engineers had to come up with all kinds of contrivances to make it work including 20 viaducts and 12 tunnels it cost 3.5 million pounds which in victorian england was an awful lot of single tickets when we announced to friends and colleagues in london that we were moving to a village in yorkshire a surprising number made a face and said yorkshire what with yorkshire people how very interesting or words to that effect i like yorkshire folk i've always found them to be decent and open and if you want to know your shortcomings you won't find more helpful people anywhere it's true that they don't exactly smother you with affection which takes a little getting used to if you hail from a more gregarious part of the world like anywhere else but gradually little by little they find a corner for you in their hearts and begin to acknowledge you when they drive past with what i call the mallandale wave to make the malamdale wave pretend for a moment that you are grasping a steering wheel now very slowly extend the index finger of your right hand as if you were having a small involuntary spasm that's it it doesn't look like much but it speaks volumes believe me i miss it very much the truth is i miss so much of it marmite village fades country lanes people saying mustn't grumble and i'm terribly sorry but people apologizing to me when i conk them with a careless elbow milk bottles beans on toast hay making in june stinging nettles seaside piers ordnance survey maps crumpets hot water bottles as a necessity drizzly sundays every bit of it the fact is this is still the best place in the world for most things to post a letter go for a walk watch television buy a book stand on a hillside and take in a view i've said it before and i'll say it again i like it here i like it more than i can tell you [Music] [Applause] [Music] well if you would like more information from all of bill bryson's programs you can visit the website on www dot itv dot co dot uk

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Length: 24min 35sec (1475 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 16 2021