Notes from a Small Island 1 of 7

my first side of England was on a chilly night in March 25 years ago when I arrived in Dover fresh from Iowa by way of the midnight ferry from Kauai I was tired and hungry and it was late my intention was to spend a few weeks hitchhiking around Britain naturally it did not remotely end in my mind that I was about to fall in love and twice over first with this serene and drizzly and seemingly fast asleep little island and second with one of its inhabitants and that my life in consequence was about to change forever it would be 20 years before I went a home again to stay I didn't know any of this then of course or much of anything else to tell you the truth I didn't even know how to find a room in an English seaside town after midnight all the guest houses in Dover had shuddhi through their doors or it seemed their hearts it was still the age of the ferocious landlady and bitten but I didn't know that either my once were simple I wanted only a clean bed and a cheery welcome perhaps a roast beef sandwich with a little potato salad than the bottle of beer but these seemed curiously unavailable in Dover and so a young man with more on his mind then in it I happened upon a shelter on the seafront I'd never been this cold without snow not realizing I was about to spend two decades here I hadn't packed quite adequately I extracted every potentially warming item of clothing from my pack then sank heavily onto the bench and waited patiently for death sweet kiss instead I fell asleep but that was 1973 I was 21 years old and away from home for the first time before me lay a country that was new and deciding and mysterious in a way you just can't imagine England was full of words I'd never heard before streaky bacon Alysha beacon serviettes high tea half-day closing the light program I didn't know more command wise from Marks and Spencer I'd never heard of L plates or Scotch eggs Christmas crackers or gardeners question time for all I knew Sheffield Wednesday was a rendezvous I was positively radiant with ignorance in a newsagent I heard a man asked for twenty number six and received cigarettes and for a long time after that I thought that's how you ordered everything in the newsagent by number like in a Chinese takeaway I had a long way to go but the thing is from the very first moment I knew I wanted to go there and after a quarter of a century more than half my life I'm happy to say I'm still getting there this island may be small but nowhere on earth has more history Enterprise Engineering humor quirkiness and delightful eccentricity I expect you ahead of me I like the place if I had to list the things I like best about Britain I'd start with London it's the greatest city in the world I love the sprawl of it it's unknowable vastness I love the way that every time I look at an 8 is add I find whole districts that I had never noticed were there before lest as Heath snares Brooke Placid full world cross I'm not sure of the exact moment I realized that I was going to like London very much and forever it may have been when I saw a sign by the sink in the men's room at the British Museum that said for casual ablutions only please then again it may have been when I discovered that in a single small area of the city there were churches with the resplendent names of st. Giles crippled gate All Hallows barking st. Sepulchre without Newgate and yes I think this may have been the moment st. Andrew by the Wardrobe on the other hand it may simply have been the first time I got into a black cab London cab drivers are without question the finest in the world they're friendly cheerful exquisitely polite they keep their cabs spotless inside and out and they go to the most extraordinary lengths to deliver you at the front door of your destination to my mind there isn't a more gracious experience in the world than this some people like Black Caps so much that they buy them for their own use like the Duke of Edinburgh or the odd actor like Stephen Fry so this has turned out noise yes we trust it there are you frankly supposedly study peeing down about well now find me I'm sorry I say anything he said I said won't be surprised it doesn't start peeing down at about now summer pack joke why are black ham well I think there Therese is what is anonymity but also um I have to confess it also is a lot quicker a cab is like piece of clothing and he put it on that it's all of you you don't develop stringent views on immigration and actually turn into a Catholic that said but but you do you kind of as I say because you feel so much an institutional part of London's traffic that you don't do all this leaning on the horn and sweating and shouting if there's a queue you just take it as you know because you know the cabbies would die of a heart attack within six months if they reaction hysterically to the white traffic rules because yes a waffle not yours mate yeah any chance of a cup of tea before we get there do you know I think that's a damn good chance I know somewhere not far from here yeah that'd be similarly 25 pounds please the two most distinguishing features about cab drivers in my experience are that they cannot drive more than about 200 feet in a straight line no matter what the road conditions at least once every quarter of a mile they must have roughly dodged down an alley and a certain preoccupation with money to get a cab driver to talk just ask him who are the best tippers you never know you know people get the bracket you're careful a chatty oh they're really friendly it comes to poor pound ie they give you a five on you you give the 20 be change leg all the way you get someone else in it hasn't said a word for half an hour run again they give you a ball quick tip I just there like you never know who's gonna chip your what they gonna tell ya you can't tell at all huh Australia I mean the richest man in the world first thing he says to you is how much will it cost me to get the water load not take me to Waterloo and you say uh seven right now 35 love a gale hello personally they're staying in the top hotels and once almost ready to go to Heathrow New Zealanders do but the deals he started as I send another Americans work it out they go wait I want to give you a gratuity no they could look at 10% or something on it yeah for some Americans that would be difficult you're on yes I think he's taking the Nicky I've been kept driving very long and I came past the criterion theatre and I was doing a reassuring of Oklahoma and how a kid was sorry of it so he said doorman came out so I've got a Fiat via cabbie you know so Norma's guy coming out how would kill with a bottle of scotch in his pocket we pulled down both windows in the cab lot they said I've got no money is if I sure can sing a song we're driving down the Strand singing sorry with a fringe on a megaphone coming out the back we gots this award he said Haley driver he said give him a pound on top if you had to choose an area that captures the spirit and drive and infinite variety of London you couldn't do better than so how to most people outside London it's a place of clip joints and girly clubs in fact Soho is full of history as well as clip joints and girly clubs I think it's the history most of all that impresses me about London I love the way that nearly every street has been touched by importance at some time in its past what did I forget thank you very much Stephen always a pleasure thanks look off yourself now of the Americans the most visible reminder of this historical dimension to the city are of course the blue plaques you find everywhere I have the greatest admiration for the fact that often times they commemorate people whose achievements were what might be termed cherish ibly obscure handles friend and secretary still they do give you a vivid sense of the rich and delightful tumult of British history there's no better example of this than in Perth Street in Soho where in the space of 25 yards you can go from to the man who gave us this John Logie Baird London has always been a magnet for outsiders one Street over above what is now a posh restaurant a young German exile named Karl Marx lived for five years with his wife and eight children and they're made into small and it must be imagined very noisy rooms somehow amid all that chaos he managed to develop the theories that became his master word Das Kapital and also somehow to conduct an affair with the maid I don't know which was the more stressful or personally satisfying but I do know which one changed the world revolution has never been high on the British political agenda sure you've had a tussle or two to see who would wear the crown and then there was a civil war which ended with the crown and the head it was on being separated permanently from the royal personage that apart there was only that Guy Fawkes fellow and one other little incident it was here in this house than a stable that 16 men hatched a plot to murder the entire cabinet and take over the country had they succeeded Britain today would be a very different place and this house would be a shrine instead of a forgotten footnote to history they were led by one Arthur thistlewood a former estate agent whose intention it was to shoot the entire cabinet as they sat down to dine then proceeded with his group of men to storm and capture a number of desirable properties the Bank of England Mansion House the Tower of London and Koontz Bank what I find amazing in all this is that there was an estate agent with him 15 friends in the event the plan came hopelessly a cropper the conspirators were betrayed by one of their own number and routed by a detachment of soldiers and police officers while a mile away in Mayfair the members of the cabinet were just tucking into their steak and kidney pudding number 44 Grosvenor Square perhaps the classic example of an estate agent failing to complete a deal thistlewood was taken away and hanged and the world became a slightly better place it was time for me to go somewhere with a rather less happy ending the first question that strikes me every time I go to Liverpool is where is everybody the answer is mostly elsewhere once Liverpool was an industrial powerhouse today its main export is people the decline of its population base is staggering in 1930 there were 900,000 Liverpudlians today it's barely half that while other old industrial cities have boomed in the 1990s Liverpool seems stuck in a spiral of decline in Manchester and Glasgow and Newcastle and Leeds you get a sense of dynamism and possibility in Liverpool you get a plastic palm tree any number of reasons have been given for the decline the loss of jobs in the docks the widespread demise of traditional industries the absence of an international airport whatever the reason there's no denying that it's a long way from paradise don't get me wrong I like Liverpool liked it very much it's probably my favorite city in England it has great wit a pleasing air of monumentality in its buildings and statues a wonderful accent and rich turn of phrase and an unshakable sense of itself if there's any place in Britain that has the Bulldog spirit this is it what made Liverpool work and what worked for Liverpool was the Mersey a trip on the Mersey ferry is still an agreeable way to pass a warning it's a bit like the Sydney Harbour cruise but without Sydney throughout an onboard commentary crackles on about Liverpool's glory days the gist of it is that this was once a great city and today it's Liverpool the decline happened in a single generation in 1966 Liverpool was still the second busiest port in Britain after London by 1985 things had fallen so far that it was less important than even tease and Hartlepool Grimsby and Eminem but in its heyday it was really something special maritime commerce brought the city not just wealth and employment but a cosmopolitanism that few cities in the world could rival but now if your leaving is here at Liverpool we hope you've enjoyed your cruise and look forward to well again the one drawback of a Mersey ferry cruise is that they want that you get off without listening to ferry cross the Mersey which will ring in your ears then for the next 11 days a sort of Liverpool tinnitus the words today have a poignancy they couldn't have had in gerry Morrison's day merci Cosby play shine to try to get people to stay the government spent 400 million pounds over two decades on projects to revitalize the local economy never let it be said that any of this money was wasted you know if you were to take this down and redirect it in some place like Las Vegas it'd be worth a fortune could make it into a Disney Store or something the boundary lines between dereliction and hope are often obviously drawn an empty Factory on one side of the street on the other a new sushi bar somehow it seems to sum up the place nothing is very very focused here I mean you were saying about how soon as you leave redy limits yeah here in Lancashire yeah yeah I mean what you know with most British cities that they like in Newcastle the Newcastle accent shades into an account northumbrian rural accent we're in Liverpool it stops like in the street and st. Helens or somewhere that on one side the road ago I well I'm clean up because they talk slow it kind of thinks slow and actually go I think I'll pickle this whatever you call yeah but and on the other side of the CM ago yeah well I got this a like chop the cannolis like enormous to go you know it's like if you get at last you know like I don't mind like I'm going to be self a brain tumor but it is near before the you know you know but it's like it there is no relationship between Scouts accents and the accents of the hinterland you know so tell me is is everybody in Liverpool a comic cuz it sure seems that way to me no only about 97% cuz they get a would say oh well you know yeah Trevor says a human to live here but you know I mean life's pretty rotten in Romania no not famous with it they're comedians are there he's he's honest I mean it seems an almost instinctive I mean even people are funny if only don't realize it every friend who's who's came to the difficult to anyone in a jewellers shop and anyone he wanted to get to watch trap or something but there's somebody else ahead of him in the customer head of him asked for a crucifix and the girl who was serving him said do you want a plane or do you want it with a little man on I can only have been living for sure I think him in Liverpool Giotto would have been working for workers war in today oh yeah I sensed that Alexi was getting tired of pushing the raw fish around the plate I know I was and anyway he was keen to show me one of Liverpool's true glories apartment and with the reluctance of Bill Clinton invited to an Ann Sommers party I agreed to go yourself like this I see what you mean so the reason they had to build in this big was because of the top hats yeah it was a fad in the Georgian era for gigantic top hats average Liverpool Boozer is extraordinary to think that the city had once just build this for a popular one of the growth industries in Liverpool seems to be car parks every time I come to the city there are more of them than the were the last time but this is no ordinary car park this was originally a cemetery when they decided to build the car park they moved all the graves out except for two those are mr. and mrs. Joseph Williamson I have no idea why mr. mrs. Williamson stayed behind or what mrs. Williamson might think about it but Mr Williamson we can presume doesn't mind at all because by all accounts he seemed to like it underground I'm gonna take you somewhere where nobody has gone before in the last hundred eighty years so when did you get into Williamson fell I was nineteen eighty-six did you know about these tunnels when you were growing up in little bear yeah well as a kid these tunnels where I make sores and we're going in here this is the entrance to the underworld Kingdom and Gabriel has the key over the past ten years gabriel newest has made himself the foremost authority on the amazing subterranean world of joseph Williamson Williamson was a tobacco magnate and in no small measure personified all the qualities of boldness and enterprise that characterized Britain in the 19th century but with more than a dash of eccentricity thrown in he spent 25 million pounds by today's standards on one of the most extensive systems of tunnels ever built anywhere and for no discernible reason no one knows how extensive williamson's network of pointless tunnels is but it certainly runs two miles his explanation was that it provided work for the unemployed a more plausible explanation is that he just like making tunnels was this guy just out of his mind well it remains to be seen really but I mean it is the same effective prayer and Shep taxi no that took these outs that's the day so kick your that down and we're going thread as you can see here bell the several other entrances tunnels here one above bomb below here which run for miles and miles on the Liverpool but this particular one here runs the full length of Mason Street and it runs hundred alternate dimensions that were on Mason sees at the time and he could get into every mansion through the cellars really before well who knows or maintain in them days there was a bit of thankee thankee or so he was must have been a busy man oh yeah tell me they are not accessible to the mage then Denis how many how many houses are we talking about but what's often about 50 hours of 60 arthouse yeah I know the owners know that he was come out not after sandy didn't it was after his death that they found out study you know he could get into all the houses maybe he was just grading having a midnight snack oh yeah well maybe he enjoyed himself anyway you want to come in and have a look at some of them I go to you see we can see one of the mates yeah okay your leader on I'll keep close to me because I don't wanna lose you Williamson was curiously secretive about the tunnels and would never let any visitors see them it's not even known that mrs. Williamson knew of their existence but if Gabriel's hanky-panky theory is correct it's easy to see why Gabriel

Channel: Rob Thomas

Views: 103,226

Rating: 4.826087 out of 5

Keywords: Bill Bryson, Notes From A Small Island (Book)

Id: H_7dkutxGCA

Length: 22min 41sec (1361 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 24 2015

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[u/TwoForTheMorgue]

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[u/yourborneo]

Thanks for this! I find his writing hilarious, so I’m looking forward to watching these.