Oh, to be in England,
Now that April’s there,
And whoever wakes in England
Sees, some morning, unaware,
That the lowest boughs and the brushwood sheaf
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf,
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard bough
In England – now!!
In general, and despite my childhood infatuation with the phenomenon, these days I don’t much like flying commercial.
A few years ago, I was worried about the lockdowns, and the thought that–if I made the trip–I might not be able to get back home. These days, I’m more worried about the dysfunction in the country of my birth, that which results in regular strikes by mass-transit personnel (what if I can’t get back home?) and the seemingly regular service interruptions and occasional disasters that are due to the scheduled or the unscheduled inability to meet the electrical grid or the safety needs of the passengers (what if I can’t get back home?).
If you’re sensing a pattern here, you’ve cracked the difficulty.
Then there is Britain’s appalling free-speech record, which seems to be getting worse by the moment. I’m fond of telling my relations in the country of my birth that I can’t move back because–if I did–I’d be the lead story, every night, on the national news. (What if I can’t get back home?) Pace Lord Young (who’s doing his best to mitigate the issue), not much convinces me that things are improving. To be clear, I come from a long line of British eccentrics and persons whose everyday utterances would, these days, be found challenging to societal order. I consider this a feature, not a bug.
Here is Sir Mark Rowley, head of Britain’s (deeply compromised in so many ways) Metropolitan Police, in August of 2024 (emphasis mine):
[We will] throw the full force of the law at people. And whether you’re in this country committing crimes on the streets or committing crimes from further afield online, we will come after you.
Good luck with that, Sir Mark. You might be able to go after and lock up–for years–gentle mothers from Northamptonshire who posted an emotional and ill-advised Tweet in the aftermath of the horrific deaths of three lovely children, but I doubt you’ll have much luck with me. (At least as long as I stick to this side of the Atlantic.)
It’s my dearest hope that Lucy Connelly will have the last laugh, one she totally deserves.
Meanwhile, Sir Mark, this: You may have been born and schooled in the same suburb of Birmingham as my mother, but apparently you didn’t learn the same life lessons she did. I dunno if you think you’re the tip of the umbrella when it comes to international retribution, but you’re flailing. I mean, “failing.”
Meanwhile, it’s pretty sad when the words on a UK passport which state that “His Britannic Majesty’s Secretary of State requests and requires in the name of His Majesty all those whom it may concern to allow the bearer to pass freely without let or hindrance and to afford the bearer such assistance and protection as may be necessary,” are manifestly undercut by “His Majesty’s” own unelected blobsters, and are obviously–in the public sphere–superseded by the undocumented clause that reads something to the effect that “in the case of an offensive Tweet or reTweet, all the preceding assurances may be null and void, and imply no legal protections whatsoever, even to actual UK citizens in the country of their birth.”
Good God. Perhaps I–at this late stage in my life–and after finally getting my original blue passport back (thanks, Boris Johnson) should begin to consider the benefits of the “other” blue passport that is still my option.
At the same time as I steer away from the thought of visiting–suddenly–returning to my native country has become one of my greatest yearnings. What is it about the human condition that makes us so extremely contrary, I wonder. “That which we are, we are,” as another Victorian poet observed. Sometimes, for the sake of my own peace of mind, I wish I weren’t, at least not quite so much.
And after April, when May follows,
And the whitethroat builds, and all the swallows!
Hark, where my blossomed pear-tree in the hedge
Leans to the field and scatters on the clover
Blossoms and dewdrops – at the bent spray’s edge –
That’s the wise thrush; he sings each song twice over,
Lest you should think he never could recapture
The first fine careless rapture!
And though the fields look rough with hoary dew,
All will be gay when noontide wakes anew
The buttercups, the little children’s dower
– Far brighter than this gaudy melon-flower!–Robert Browning, “Home Thoughts From Abroad”)
There’s something so very beautiful (and, yes, chilly, damp and even foggy!) about an English Spring. I think Browning has it exactly right: The beauty of it, as with God, is in the details–the tiny flowers, the sweet songs of the little birds, the budding leaves, the clover, the dewdrops, all ringing through the changes of the seasons. The “gaudy melon-flowers” and the often overwhelming heat and colors and scents and sights and sounds of the warmer climes and tropics notwithstanding (Browning spent years of his life in Italy), most of the men and women of the British Empire (and what’s left of it), never really get over their longing for the gentle countryside Aprils of their childhood–I know that was true of my own mother and father, and it’s still true for me.
Yet, unless we want to drive ourselves to distraction, we must learn to “bloom where we’re planted.” And right now, I find myself planted firmly at home in another place I also love, with no need to fix or change it. So I’m blooming here, quite contentedly and successfully. Walking, knitting, writing, cooking, chatting, watching, and gardening. Hoping that all those I love are as well and safe as I am.
Yet, even while my feet are planted firmly on the ground here, and as I’m busy doing other things, sometimes I just let my mind wish, and long, and wander. “Lonely as a cloud” you might say. Until “my heart with pleasure fills/And dances with the daffodils.”
I don’t think there’s a thing wrong with that. After all, I’m only human.
Stay home. Stay safe. Stay well. God Bless.
