Part 10, in which I get lost again. I know, I know. I was in charge of making sure the students never got lost, and here I was getting lost again. But luckily none of the kids ever got lost, so I accomplished my purpose. And hey, we were finally in England, so there was the excuse of “I’m allowed to get lost once in each major country.” But before all of that happened there was a larger problem I had. My camera’s memory card was getting low as I had taken tons of photos in Ireland and Wales and I didn’t want to delete any of them. The countdown had begun, and my camera’s screen told me I was down to 20 photos left to take, and I was starting to hyperventilate because the best parts of England were still to come, including our first stop in Stratford, Shakespeare’s Birthplace.
Now, I taught Shakespeare for eight years and several of the students on the trip had taken my ninth grade English class at some point, so they knew how I felt about the Bard, that this was the absolute highlight of our trip. Before Stratford, though, we made a quick stop at Anne Hathaway’s house. No, not the actress who so pleasantly portrayed the new girl in “The Devil Wears Prada,” although that would have been interesting, but instead the erstwhile wife of William Shakespeare himself. Of course the students asked why they lived separately, but the ones who had me knew that Shakespeare had a few possible reasonings for that, not the least of which was his life in London while his wife remained in the countryside. As we entered her bedroom it was interesting to note the bench that looked as ancient as the house itself, and our tour guide explained that it might be the same bench that Shakespeare himself sat on when he came a’ courting.
Of course I had to sit on it.
I also learned about the word “threshold” and from whence it derived, which was very interesting. In fact, I told my students in summer school about it just this past summer, so chuffed I was from the experience. The threshold literally was there to hold in the threshes that were placed on the floor to stop the mud from taking over everything. It was difficult for me to navigate the rooms of the house, though, because I’m 6’5″ and the people in that time period must have been 4’11” or smaller. I have absolutely no idea how they did it, but after being stooped over for some time I had to get out of there and enjoy the sunshine. Um, I mean enjoy the rain, because it had started to shower while we were inside. Luckily I had my hat and I placed it on my head so at least it didn’t get in my eyes while I waited. It was beautiful there, but the next stop was the one I had been waiting for.
My Shakespeare unit always started with, “William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-Upon-Avon, a tiny hamlet (ha ha) right next to the Avon river in England, and he lived his formative years there,” but I had no clue when I first started teaching his seminal play, Romeo and Juliet, that I would be arriving in the place itself at some point in my life. And it was so different from what I thought. As we pulled in it became apparent that Stratford was no longer a tiny hamlet. Instead it had been transformed into a tourist trap almost but not quite equal to Delphi, Apollo’s birthplace in ancient Greece. The first clue I had were the massive buses that were parked in the gigantic parking lots (yes, plural) just outside of the city, and the hordes of tourists who were spreading out from those buses like ants all looking for the same few crumbs. And we joined those hordes.
This is where our group split up. As we all already had tickets for Shakespeare’s actual birthplace there was no need to stand in those lines, so we could go inside whenever we wished. Several members of our larger group were hungry so they headed off down the main street to find food while I led the rest of the group into the Birthplace itself, which was more than just the small house itself. If it were only the house we might have missed it because the house itself was a tiny hovel, much smaller than Anne Hathaway’s that we had just come from. However, a museum had been built up around it, making it a larger building housing a smaller one. The house was anticlimactic, actually, in my opinion, because while he was born in it, he didn’t have much actual history there. What I really wanted to see was his gravestone, which was inside of a church on the complete opposite side of Stratford.
Of course I also took so many pictures by that point that I was down to five photos left to take that would fit on my memory card, and I was really starting to stress. Luckily there was an HMV music store in Stratford, and I took my leave of the group to explore the rest of the village that had grown up around the Bard’s birthplace, leaving them in good hands (and eating) for the two hours I had left to explore the village. And wouldn’t you know that was when I got lost again, even though I had a map in hand, and I thought I knew exactly where I was and where I was going. Needless to say, I never made it to the church or Shakespeare’s gravestone, but I did find HMV and went inside to find a new memory card.
Now, if you’ve been following this series you’ll know that my favorite souvenirs from wherever I go are examples of the music to be found in those places, and what better than to find a couple of CDs in Stratford to represent England and our tour of it? After going into HMV and figuring out that my camera was so old that they didn’t even make memory cards for it anymore, then realizing that it would take way too many Euros to buy a new camera with memory card, I finally asked the clerks for some popular British music that they would recommend. They took me to the Coldplay section, and I laughed. I honestly laughed.
“I can get this at home,” I said.
“Well, you asked for popular,” he replied, with his cheeky British accent.
“Um, I didn’t mean popular universally,” I explained. “I meant popular here, but I wouldn’t have heard of it.”
His eyes lit up because apparently tourists didn’t usually ask for something like that, and he immediately took me to an entirely different section that I would have never found on my own. He showed me two CDs that have become staples of my collection since then, even though I’m sure tons of Americans have still never heard of the two bands, The Cribs and the Pigeon Detectives. The names made me laugh, but I bought the albums without even listening to them. I wanted them to be surprises for when I got to the hotel outside of Oxford, which was our next stop. Then I headed out of the shop, intent on finding the famous gravestone, which is of course when I got turned around.
By the time I realized I was lost there were only about 20 minutes left for me to get to the bus so we could head off to Oxford. My map was all turned around and I had no clue if I was walking toward or away from the bus. Luckily for me, with there being so many tourists on the streets, I only needed to ask a few people for directions to the Birthplace and they helped me find my way through side streets to get back there with mere moments to spare. That’s how no one in my group even realized I got lost the second time, which was fortunate because I had just lived down getting lost the first time. Oxford was on the horizon, so I settled in and checked out the gorgeous scenery as our bus motored along to our next stop. And I still needed a memory card. Oy vey.
Sam
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