Dickinson College Humanities Program in Norwich

CT logo from “cinnamon.org.uk”

Though I haven’t gotten to see the results of my volunteering manifest in the community the way some others have, I feel like I’ve learned something about Norwich, but particularly Britain, from it. Looking for volunteering opportunities, a process which was late to begin with because I had held out hope of reconciling my paper with my experiential, was itself a tedious game of email tag and involved being crushed to see I inexplicably needed a background check for certain great jobs. However, I think I did notice some unusual trends in what volunteering was out there.

Firstly, although Claire came up with the idea for the first Holiday from Home from her own experience being unable to travel due to severe ME, and it is her own ingenuity and passion for travel which prompted her to develop the project into a larger organization, there is something else in the mission of HFH which speaks to something larger. This is the idea that travel is almost a right or at least something that ought to be available to everyone as a matter of fairness  seems to me a quite British idea (despite Britain not having a stunning national record on accessibility for the disabled).

After all, this is a nation where small bookstores will devote a whole wall to travel books and a Google search for British Travel yields more mentions of deals for Brits to go to Mallorca, Egypt and India than for foreigners to go to Scotland or Cornwall, which led a friend of mine to conclude that “the English seem to spend all of their time plotting how to get out of their country.” The first item on the HFH mission statement is “the advancement of health,” which I find to be an innovative way to think about the concept of travel.

Age Concern Norfolk Logo- “www.acnorfolk.org.uk”

This leads me to a wider point about volunteering opportunities in the Norfolk area and nationally: I was impressed with the amount of organizations which catered to the needs of the elderly, and did so in nontraditional ways. I would count Holidays from Home among these, but other larger and more national organizations do this as well. One example is the Cinnamon Trust, which helps to “relieve the anxieties, problems and sometimes injustices, faced by elderly and terminally ill people and their pets, thereby saving a great deal of human sadness and animal suffering.” Another is Age Concern Norfolk, which Anya explored as part of her experiential. It is an organization that offers volunteering roles from keeping older people active to helping with personal finances, all with a eye on companionship.

Doing what you can to help create a holiday or spending some time with an elderly or ill person while looking after their pets address important but often overlooked emotional needs of older people and are something that anyone can do, even for a few hours a week without having to have a background check. I saw a remarkable number of these organizations, both national and local, which is good, especially because I don’t see British culture in general as being notably reverent towards older people. I have no basis for comparison in terms of whether Norwich or Norfolk is exceptional in this regard, but it would be interesting to see whether a younger, larger urban area has as many opportunities in this vein.

I’m still hoping to learn more from my Holidays from Home experience, and because I can volunteer remotely, I intend to do what I can over the summer. Perhaps I’ll be able to see the fruits of my labor in the new holidays. Even if I do not, I feel I’ve gained something from the experience.

“The great surprise of the Moon Under Water is its garden. You go through a narrow passage leading out of the saloon, and find yourself in a fairly large garden with plane trees, under which there are little green tables with iron chairs round them. Up at one end of the garden there are swings and a chute for the children.”- Orwell

Green Space and Pub Culture? How my brain thought I could make this comparison is beyond my knowledge but, just for a moment,  think about it…..

London is a city of continual urbanization. Despite its growing population and continual reconstruction, London has been able to preserve almost 5,000 acres of Royal Park. These parks are a significant characteristic of London, and quite an amazing gift from the Royal family. They are routinely kept, and always monitored; taken care of as if they were children.

Now, I’m from Arizona. I am from the desert. The desert; the hot, sweaty, dry, brown, sandy desert. Green space is something you don’t often come across, and when you do, you must know, that it takes approximately 1,000 gallons of water to make it look like that.

Wandering through the parks of London has shown me a completely new world. I love the way you can immediately escape the rush of a city, to find complete serenity. However, regardless of their beauty, why do they take such great care of these areas?

Why spend the money, time, attention to maintain the area?

When thinking about the social scene in London, I am automatically reminded of pubs. It seems as though pub culture has become a staple activity for those who visit London as well as those living here now. Since going on the Pub Tour, I have come to understand that Pubs are multi-purpose structures first known as town Inn’s and now used for happy hour and parties.

I have never had a fake ID and I don’t drink. That said, till now I had never even entered a bar.

I have seen a wide variety of pubs since I have been in London. Some cater to business clientele, others to locals, and finally those that focus on college and teenage groups. Now that I know the history of pubs, its interesting to notice those with traditional structure and others that are completely modern. Each pub is different, but does this mean they remain a symbol of British culture?

Why renovate, preserve, and promote buildings that have transformed into an incorrect representation of London pub life?

These two pieces of London are comparable because they are both obvious traits of London. Not only are they well known to the tourist population, but they are continually appreciated by those that live in the community. The people of London are preserving both their parks and pubs simply because they are beautiful pieces of culture. Both pubs and parks act as a form of relaxation. Like in George Orwell’s Moon Under Water, the perfect pub would be alongside a garden; a place of peace.

London will always watch over pubs and parks, not only for a form of relaxation, but to hold on to an always deteriorating sense of nationalism. Britain will continue to evolve, but by saving certain parts of the city, it will remain unique and deeply historical.

Shame on you, Mr. Orwell, for stealing my pub blog post opening gambit: talk about all of the little aspects of my idea of a perfect London pub only to reveal that regrettably (spoiler alert) no such pub exists. That was totally my plan halfway through your essay! Sure, you wrote yours 63 years earlier but, come on, mine is actually for a grade.

With only three and a half weeks of London under my belt I wouldn’t profess to know as much as George Orwell about London pubs, but I had intuitively been coming to the same conclusion before I read The Moon Under Water. No pub (speaking for myself) comes even close to appealing all the time. If I want to have a quick pint or two and a plate of chips with a few friends on a weeknight, I’ll go to the Marlborough Arms. If it’s a weekend night and there’s nine of us and I want to be packed like a sardine and converse in my loudest American voice to cacophonous strains of either Aha’s Take On Me or Franz Ferdinand’s This Fire, I’ll head up to The Court. If I’m feeling adventurous and looking for something new, I’ll head farther afield. I’m surprised Orwell found a single pub that even satisfied eight of his ten criteria, actually, although it was a different era and he’d been to a lot more pubs than I have.

I don’t think I’m really getting that much of a sense of British culture through going to pubs yet, but it certainly does seem to be one of the only public spaces we’ve seen that does seem to have any degree of sociability. The English don’t seem to usually be gregarious with people they don’t know ever ( be it on the tube, in the park or at a pub), but it is the only place we’ve seen the English really commune with friends and share stories, celebrations, anxieties etc. This obviously is the same with American bars, but the ubiquity of pubs (although they’re getting less ubiquitous) and the fact that it’s socially acceptable for everyone to go seems to make them more of a fixture in British life. I’ve sensed some disappointment that so many pubs actually seem to have a mostly age 30-50 clientele, but I think that’s proof that pubs are a centre of everyone’s social life , much in the way that bars were in the US until about the 1970s.

I have a feeling going to pubs in Norwich will give me a lot more insight into pub culture in England than being in London has. I would imagine pubs will be even more central to social life in a city without the myriad other diversions London has, and the lack of tourists and recent city transplants will perhaps make for a more typical English pub scene with more regulars and lower prices. I know I’ll be comparing and contrasting the experience of going to pubs with other students and the experience of venturing into pubs in the city (and comparing and contrasting the places we go as well) once we’re there.

Oh, and Mr. Orwell, let me tell you about my favorite London pub. It’s a little off the beaten path but still close by. It’s called the Moons Over My Hammy, after the borderline inedible Denny’s breakfast entrée and thus is full of ironic Americana décor. However, everyone there (but me) is English, and unusually gregarious. There is plenty of seating indoors but a good atmosphere out on the pavement, too. There’s a different football match on every TV screen, and you don’t need to buy a drink to watch. The music is always great and (this is most important) every hour starting at 10 (on the hour) Darude’s techno-pop hit “Sandstorm” is played, and everyone dances intensely for its duration. Oh yeah, “Sandstorm.” I understand this is fanciful and unrealistic, but so is the idea that there ought to be a pub somewhere just for you.

What I have gathered from visiting both the Hindu temple and the Sikh gudwara is that Sikhism is all about the equality of people from all classes, races, genders, and backgrounds, while Hinduism is founded on the idea of the jati, or caste system. Also, in the practice of the Sikh faith there are very little rituals and very few gaudy symbols, while Hindus use numerous rituals and symbols in their worshiping practices.

In most ways it is more difficult for Sikhs to adjust into British culture than it is for Hindus. With their five Ks, or the five physical symbols that Sikhs have to symbolize their faith, the Sikhs stand out a lot more than the Hindus. Since 9/11 and 7/7 there has been a lot of hostility toward South Asian individuals who wear turbans and have long beards, since then ignorant individuals have tormented Sikhs because they associate them with terrorist activities. Also, some work places do not permit their employees to have unshaven faces and uncut hair. Living in England also forces the Sikhs into a unequal class society that is not compatible with the Sikh’s belief in equality.

Hindus have an easier time adjusting to the British culture because they do not have any spacific visual keys to thier religion that could create a social backlash or hostility. They also have a strong understanding of the British class devisions because of their understanding of their own caste system. However, the fact that Hinduism is a polythisit religion might create some agressive actions from the primarily Christian British society.

Something that’s unexpectedly been a big part of my experience so far has been the chance to look at museums from a broader perspective. Recently, I’ve been averaging about one museum a day, and while I’ve enjoyed all of them at least to some degree on a “these are interesting things to look at” level, what I’ve really had a chance to do for the first time is think about museums from a comparative perspective and critically think about narratives and curation. For example:

What purpose does the Victoria and Albert Museum serve? Does it have an overall theme? Should it have one?

For More on the V&A, read Grace/Kelley’s post from yesterday. I too got a disjointed vibe from the place, but also felt it was quite pleasant. The Museum bills itself as “the world’s greatest museum of art and design”, and while all of the museum’s contents vaguely fit in those two categories, that doesn’t really do the institution justice.

A basic exhibit on fashion led to giant Raphael cartoons, which we followed with Iranian and East Asian cultural artifacts and a room so full of medieval sculpture, I thought they might all topple over like dominoes if I were to trip over one. Upstairs we found metallurgy, miniature paintings, and a vague exhibit about modern design. At face value, the V&A looks like leftovers from the rest of London’s great museums thrown together, and yet we all learned things and generally had a good time. In this case, the V&A didn’t need an overarching theme or narrative for its contents to interest us, but I’m not sure I’d recommend it to someone who’d seen a lot of the other great London museums and was looking for something new.

Here's a cool theme idea. The V&A: Heads Will Roll

Secondly, does the British Museum need to make itself less stuffy?

I took another shot at finishing the BM today (maybe next time). One thing I noticed the second time around was that a conscious effort is being made by the Museum to reorganize some of itself along thematic rather than geographic lines. One smaller exhibit Henry, Brandon and I all liked dealt with living with death from a broad and cross-cultural perspective. A sign we caught before we left implied more of these types of exhibits were soon to come. So, what does it mean that after depending on a geographic display of its vast collection with a few special exhibits for its entire history (which the National Gallery and the V&A to some extent do as well), the British Museum has decided to start to make changes. I don’t really know why they are now (anyone have a guess?), but I think I approve.

Finally, I thought I should add some thoughts about the Notting Hill Carnival today. Rather than picking up a two pint bottle of Strongbow and joining in on the fun I thought I’d use the opportunity to take some mental field notes on Londoners and public events in Britain. Here are a few of the many reasons the Carnival could not have taken place in the States:

– No American event would allow outside alcohol and alcohol vendors when it’s just as easy to close the place off and jack up the price
– Americans hate thinking about trash, and certainly don’t want to see it or think about how much they create. Rubbish bins are few and far between, so this is not possible at the Carnival
– I find it hard to picture one of the wealthiest parts of an American city allowing itself to be opened up to the masses for two days of drinking and very loud music. I got the sense that some locals were elsewhere or were fortified in their flats, but most had joined in at their windows or in the streets.

People who also went: if you disagree or can think of another reason, put it in the comments.

   Traveling through the Thames River to Greenwich was a magnificent experience which allowed me to view a city that is not always known to visitors or even individuals living in London. Upon walking to the boarding point I realized that Big Ben was visible from where we were standing and has made me realize that I am actually exploring London. Yesterday’s travels were exciting and new; but I was left feeling that I was just in another big city like New York or Los Angeles. Seeing the landmark of London brought upon me this new recognition. The actual boat ride allowed us to view many parts of the city and get me excited for the rest of the trips that we will make throughout London; however, I have also recognized a new interest for architecture.  I have noticed the mixture of structures the first day in London when I traveled to Liverpool Street but it seems that such juxtaposition is all throughout the city and while traveling on the water one can distinguish the historical places that were build centuries ago from modern buildings used by corporations and residential buildings which exuded creativity. Walking in Greenwich has allowed me to set my foot back in time. The structures whether it be the Queen’s House or the metal planks left from the industrial period once again shows a diversity that exists in London where the history  has integrated with Victorian and Industrial periods.

   Upon leaving the Market that was taking place next to the pub, Anthony, Flow and I decided to take the 188 bus through Elephant and Castle and other neighborhoods back home. I was interested in viewing the class and race differences that exist in Gower Street area and those which exist in Elephant and Castle. The difference was definitely present, not only in skin color but also the stores that occupied the streets and the types of housing that we have discussed previously. Upon getting back to Gower Street, we made a visit to a local technology store where an unexpected conversation took place with local salesmen in which the topic of President Obama and how we feel about him rose up as well as our traveling plans and our feelings about London. Overall, I found them friendly and I loved the British humor that they possessed. I am looking forward to interacting more with the British in London and once we get to Norwich. Later that evening, we once again decided to randomly take a bus and head wherever it would take us. We ended up in Camden Town which is probably my favorite part of the city. Filled with rockers of our age and a mix of Columbian music and small boutiques, Camden Town is a place for leisure.