Long Week, Long Post

On my research trip: I am taking these notes as they come to me. My hope is that together they will give a glimpse into the experience. I will structure it under short simple sentence headings. They may sound like random thoughts. Sentences may not have a verb.

Trains are Fun…
I arrived at Edinburgh Waverly Station at 6:00am which meant I was the only person there without a mop. My train did not leave until 7:00am so I had plenty of time to find my platform and wait for 59 minutes.

Once aboard, I sat down across from a business man from Scotland. It was one of those table seats that you see on trains, four seats around one table. His legs were long, my legs were long, it got awkward. Thankfully he decided to go to the restaurant car and I could stretch out.

As silly as it may sound, I was disappointed that the train did not sound like a “choo-choo.” It sounded more like the monorail at Disney, with a few more clankity-clanks. Also I got to see a confrontation between a cockney speaking Englishman and a Scottish speaking train attendant. The details are not important (it involved a narrow aisle and a beverage cart). It culminated in this exchange: Englishmen to Scot: “What’s that mate, I can’t understand foreigners!” Scottish train worker to Englishmen: “Sometimes it’s good to be considered foreign.”

I got to see some beautiful countryside. We went through Newcastle, Peterborough, York, Durham, and some other cities I cannot remember. It was amazing. Four and a half hours later, I was in London.

London Cabbies are Nice…
I waited in line for a taxi at London Kings Cross train station. However when I ask the cab driver if he knew where “The Apollo Hotel on Argyle Street” was, he laughed and pointed across the street. He was actually very nice. He could have just driven me across the street and then taken my money. He was cool. Old, too! I think he used to be a horse drawn cabbie.

Bed and Breakfasts are Strange…
Actually as I type this I am in my room at the Apollo Hotel. It is a bed and breakfast made out of an old English town house. I guess I am used to being in chain style hotels with the comfortable sense of separation one gets. Here, it was like I interrupted supper or something when I came in. They sheepishly took my credit card and fumbled through a drawer to find my key. But they were helpful in a charming way. They printed off directions from the hotel to the library I need to visit. The room is nice and clean and I have a view of: a blue tarp, a mop bucket, and 37 white-trimmed windows on the brick wall just outside my window. Ahhh, London.


Breakfast is Good…
I am about to begin day two of the trip. Yesterday was a marathon. Seriously, I think I walked 26 miles (is that right?). I had a reasonably comfortable nights sleep (my double bed is actually two single beds wedded together by a fitted sheet). I just came up from the breakfast portion of the B&B experience. I descended into the basement where the meal was served, a little apprehensive about what awaited me. Not that the place is bad. It is not. It is very clean and friendly. But still.

But when I rounded the final flight of curvy stairs, I was shocked to find a very nice dining area with formal place settings. “Should I have worn shoes?” Kidding. I was wearing shoes. They did ask me to go put on a shirt. That is not their policy, they just said, in my case, they would feel more comfortable. Kidding.

I was met by a very large man speaking with an accent I have determined is a Romanian-English hybrid. I sat down and was served a great breakfast: fried egg, sausage, baked beans, bacon, a tomato, mushrooms, toast, coffee and juice. It was awesome. It prepared me for a full day of study. I wonder if the library is as picky about “shirts.”

I am tired
Long day of reading old stuff. After I finished in the library today, the director of the library invited me to go to a lecture on “The Visitation Articles of 1662: An Examination of the Act of Uniformity.” The title by itself is enough to make most men cry, but I agreed and actually found it interesting. As a budding church historian I liked the subject matter. As someone who loves a good laugh, I enjoyed watching the people who were “listening” to the lecture. The lecture began at 5:00pm. At exactly 5:25p.m. I heard this coming from across the room: “ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ (breath) ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ (breath, snort, sigh) ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ. Since there were only about 15 people in the room, it was hard to hide everyone’s amusement. In fact, by the end of the lecture, the hosting professor (the one who introduces the speaker) was asleep. I began to wonder why they even have these kinds of lectures.

Discussion ended at 7:00pm and I stopped by a convenience store to buy a sandwich. But before I got there, I fell down. Yes, I was crossing a busy street in London and did that little hop/skip people do when they get to the curb. However, I should have hopped/skipped a little higher because my foot caught the edge and I fell down. My body, as buff as it is, was not prepared for the impact that my book-and-computer-laden backpack would create. I just kept falling. Until finally, after flinging my cell phone like a freshly un-pinned grenade, I was flat on my face in the beautiful city of London with undergraduates walking by. I am not a cool person.

But I got up, brushed myself off and got lost. Literally, I had to ask for directions twice. All of this only took about 25 minutes. But now that I am at the hotel, all cleaned up, and barefoot in front of the TV, I feel…tired. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.

Pepsi is nice…
A beautiful day in London today. It is 8:30am and I am about to begin my last day here. I leave from King’s Cross train station at 5:50 this evening bound for Ipswich. After I finished another fine English breakfast, I decided I wanted a Pepsi. So I asked my Anglo-Romanian ally where I could find a Coca-Cola or a Pepsi nearby. He seemed all too pleased to help me, almost excited in fact. The closest grocery store was just around the corner so I took a brisk walk at about 8:00 am under a crystal clear sky. Very nice.

I have not been able to see much of London. But at least I am very familiar with this area. If you take big cities a sector at a time, you find that every sector has its own grocery store, news stand, Starbucks, and McDonalds. I walked two blocks on Monday and saw 3 McDonalds and a Starbucks. Two of the McDonalds were across the street from one another, I guess to accommodate the people coming from the train station. If you head west, McDonalds. East, McDonalds.

If the family can come next time, I won’t be as apprehensive since I have mastered trains and one part of London. Speaking of family, I need to see them. I have only been away for two nights now, and it is getting uncomfortable. But as Krisy said when I talked to her, I need to enjoy this because it will not happen often.

I talked to Delaney on the phone. Here is how the conversation went. “Hey, girl! What are you doin’?” “I’m neck-ed” (her pronunciation; she had just been in the bath). “Oh, well what have you been doing today?” “We have been looking for you” (ouch!). “Well, I have to study for a few more days and then I’ll be home, OK?” “OK, Daddy. See Ya!” When did my three year old start saying “see ya”? It will be good to get home.

The library does not open until 10am, so for the next hour or so I am going to sit here and drink my Pepsi.

Rude is Rude
Traveling makes you learn some things about yourself, or it confirms things you already suspected. For example, rudeness has a bad effect on me – it entices me to be rude. Here is an example. I went to a place today in Ipswich to do part of my research. It involved me paying for a book that had been delivered to me already, by the book’s author. Anyway, I went into the office of this particular place (I’m not saying where as to not besmirch) and politely said, “Hello, I am here to pay for my copy of _______. I was told that the price is 12.50.” I had 12.50 in my hand. “Uhhhh, no, how about more like 17.50” was the reply in that kind of slow, I-think-I’m-a- cast-member-of-a-sardonic-sit-com kind of tone. I felt the tendency toward rudeness welling up inside me. “Well, the author told me in an e-mail, and just an hour ago when I saw him, that the price is 12.50” I managed to say in a pretty polite tone. Then she said this: “Well, I guess its 12.50 for you and 17.50 for everyone else then!” with a you-are-a-terrible-American-man manner. Trying to take the high road I said, “Fine, I’ll just pay the 17.50” with a Larry-David-let’s-take-a-walk-into-your-absurd-world lilt to my voice. That extra five pounds was for my supper, but who cares, right?!

After disappearing to some cave of mystery, she came back and said, “Well, I was thinking of the wrong book. You are right. That will be 12.50, please.” I handed her 13.00, and said “Keep the change,” trying to sound as much like Humphrey Bogart as I could. That may have been rude. But who knows. Maybe she can buy a coke and a smile with it. Actually, we were both smiling and being gracious when I was leaving. But still.

I think the reason that bothers me so badly is that by now in my walk with Christ I should be at the point where I turn the other cheek when someone acts like that. Who cares if she wins a war of words? What does that prove? Why do I have the need to bark back in a perpetual battle of one liners? Does that somehow advance me in my career, make me a better dad, make me a better husband, or enable me to witness to this person more effectively? No, on all four counts.

I think I have a strange voice in my head at times like that that says, “Come one, don’t be a door mat. Have a backbone!” According to that voice, having a backbone must mean allowing someone else’s standards to make me violate Christ’s. We should confront sin, but not with sin. Somehow Christ confronted Pharisees, cast out money changers, cared for prostitutes, and dined with the distasteful – “yet without sin”. I wonder what Christ would have done if someone had asked him for 17.50 when he only owed 12.50? My guess is that it would have glorified God more than my Humphrey Bogart. Kind of like when he became sin for us, though he knew no sin.

It has been a long day. It began this morning (as usual) when I sat down at the table of my new bed and breakfast and tried to steady myself for the day of study ahead of me. The very nice waitress came and asked, “Would you like a cooked breakfast, sir? Perhaps a full English breakfast with all the trimmings?” “That would be wonderful, thank you” I said, even tipping my head forward in appreciation. As she disappeared into the kitchen I heard her bark, “The American wants a Full!” The American? Did I do something wrong? I mean sure, my head tip may have seemed condescending toward her country which we roundly defeated in two wars only to rescue in a third. But it was just a little nod. Sure, if it had been a full bow, then yeah, I’m a jerk. But a little nod? I was not rude in the slightest after that remark (or before, actually), because I did not want her to bring back my breakfast with any secret ingredients. Turning the other cheek has some very practical advantages.

Anyway. The research has gone well and all is right with the world. I am in my room for the night. Maybe I will have a coke and a smile, too.

Puritans talk good, and stuff.
Home tomorrow. My last full day in Ipswich was spent at the Suffolk Record Office reading sermons that were preached and published in the 1640’s. Basically , these were sermons that were preached to the puritan-populated Parliament as the English Civil War (which ended when King Charles I was tried and beheaded by Parliament) was raging. They interest me because William Dowsing, the subject of my dissertation, was not a member of Parliament but bought these sermons, read them, took feverish notes in the margins, and then re-read the entire six volumes of sermons later. Now these sermons are not your “3 points and a poem” variety. They weave together classical history, biblical exposition, individual and corporate application, laws and ordinances. It is tough sledding.

I spent today making my way through these sermons trying to decipher the influences that were coming to bear on Dowsing as he embarked on his iconoclastic campaign in the 1640’s. The good news is, I got tired, but not bored. That is a good feeling when you know you have another 2 ½ years of doing this kind of thing.

You want to hear something kind of creepy? Dowsing took notes on the pages he was reading exactly how I do. Brackets, numbers that mark the flow of the argument, one word summaries, and citing other authors in the margin. It’s a bit like looking at a book I read. I wondered why I was drawn to this guy.

Ipswich is not the best town, but it is ok. Everyone is friendly, but the town makes you feel like people just kind of drift through it. Most of the restaurants are “take out” only. Nothing is open during the day. There seem to be more hotels than houses. At least that is my perspective as someone who really is just here for a little while. Granted, I have not seen the whole city, but that is the impression I get.

Tomorrow, I will wake up to another Full English Breakfast, walk to the train station, and go home. I can’t wait.


Home sweet home
Well I made it home. This week will be full with writing up all of the things I found. I will post pictures in the next post hopefully. Not really a lot of sights to share as I was not in a very spectacular part of London or Ipswich.

Tim