About Me And Languages (7)

Britain 1974

In June 1974, just after my graduation from 'senior high school', I went on my last family trip abroad with my parents and brother. Again, we went back to Britain. (As life turned out, I've never been back to Britain since. Always meant to, but never happened.)

Much of this trip - as so many of our family holidays! - was planned around my Dad's fascination with railways. I'm not sure if I've mentioned that before. But the fact is, before I moved away from home, I had been riding on a lot more old steam-trains than on modern trains. And when I say a lot, then I mean A LOT more than I ever cared to count, in Sweden as well as in Britain.

Still, I have to say I preferred the railway museums and actual steam engines and trains to hunting down possible remains of no-longer-there railway tracks and station houses buried deep in some forest, which is how many of our holiday trips in Sweden were spent! Which basically meant Dad running around a lot with his camera with the rest of the family spending hours just waiting in the car, since we hadn't the faintest idea how to go about looking for something that was not actually there.

But I digress. Back to Britain 1974. The list below is just a small selection of a much greater number of railways we visited on this trip. These are all just narrow gauge railways in Wales. There are many more such railways in other parts of Britain. There are also tramways, and train museums, and...

 

Don't worry. I'm not going to include all of them here.

The Great Orme Railway, Llandudno, is not really a railway but a tramway, first climbing up a very steep road, and then continuing far up above the town.

Up on the summit: If you look closesly at the background here, it is vaguely distinguishable that in this place it had become a tradition for people to place white stones in patterns and words that could be seen from above and afar. (I tried looking for pictures on the internet to see if this is still so, but could not find any. The tramway seems still to be going strong, though.)

These old photos of mine in the old albums are all so washed out by now... It's fascinating to see that my new scanner (bought last summer) and other photo editing software still manages to bring some life and colour back to some of them. I should probably scan all my old albums before the pictures fade out altogheter, but that's a big job!

Me at Conwy Castle on the North Wales coast.

I think my Mum probably did have some say in making up the tour too, because besides railways, we also did visit quite a few castles and abbey ruins and other historical places.

Here however we're queueing for another railway, up Mt Snowdon.

Here's the proof that we did go up, and did not just buy the postcard!

Probably the most famous railway station in Wales, because of the name. (I checked, but they did not bother to include it in my edition of  Everyman's English Pronouncing Dictionary...)

Another Welsh narrow gauge railway.

A Celtic Cross bought in a souvenir shop at Devil's Bridge and to this day one of my favourite pieces of jewellry. It can be worn either as a brooch or on a chain around the neck.

A scene repeated many times on our journeys.

Badbury Rings, an Iron Age hill fort in east Dorset.

I'm not sure how important this trip was to me from pure language point of view. However, I think it did lay a further foundation for my interest in the Celtic culture and especially the King Arthur stories.

 

In Cornwall, among the places we visited were Tintagel (castle connected to the Arthurian legends) and Land's End, but for some reason I don't have any photos of my own from either of those places, just postcards.

From Cornwall, we continued our journey along the south coast:

Brighton: Beach life (above) and Palace Pier (below)

Dover Castle

After our tour of the south, we went back up to Yorkshire. Above and below: Fountains Abbey in North Yorkshire, founded by Cistercian monks in 1132, and the largest monastic ruin in Britain.
My Mum posing in the picture below. 

The very last day of the trip I revisited the family I had been staying with for a whole month two years before, in a small village near Doncaster in Yorkshire. 

About Me and Languages (5)

After my first year in 'senior high school', 16 going on 17, my parents apparently thought me mature enough to go off out into the world alone. They sent me on a sort of educational holiday to England, to stay for four weeks with a family in a small village near Doncaster in Yorkshire.



This was not a family we knew beforehand. It was organized rather like an exchange student program, except that there was no exchange. The family I went to stay with had a girl about my age – she was in the 5th form in a Comprehensive School. I visited her school with her, but she did not go back to Sweden with me.

The flight to England and an initial short stay in London (two nights) was made in a group, with adult supervision. After that, we were sent off in different directions by train, to whereever each of us was going to stay for the next four weeks.






In this village, I stayed with the family A., in a rather typical English house.



Mr A., if I my memory serves me right, worked in the coal mines, or at least in some way for the coal mining company. Mrs A. worked part time at the local pub. Besides their teenage daughter, Lynne, they had a boy of about 5, Lyndon. In the house, on the ground floor there was a living room, a dining room and a small kitchen. Upstairs, three small bedrooms. During my stay, Lyndon had to move in with his mum and dad, and I got to have his room. This he did not seem to mind; on the contrary he quite fell in love with the exciting foreign visitor, followed me around everywhere, called himself my boyfriend, getting jealous of anyone who possibly threatened that position. Cute; but I soon also learned to say one phrase in proper Yorkshire dialect:"Gi' o'er Lyndon!"

Besides the family, I was soon introduced to aunts, cousins, grandparents, great-aunts and uncles, and more or less the whole village. I remember one visit to an old man in the countryside who spoke in heavy Yorkshire dialect very unlike any English I had ever heard before, and not easy for me to understand. He said to me: "You speak like you come from the BBC!" I'm not sure it was meant as a compliment…


Me (between the boys) and some English friends at school

Most days, I went to school with Lynne (the school was in another village, so we went by bus). From strictly educational point of view, there wasn't really much going on at school for her and her friends except exams (O-levels). I did attend a few classes, but there were also a lot of free periods which we spent just hanging around… the school, the village, the cricket field, or other students' houses… especially one boy's house whose parents were away… At that age, however, and in the month of June - one is rather good at just hanging…


Lynne and the boys

One thing that fascinated me about English village life was the habit everyone seemed to have of just walking right into other people's houses without waiting for them to open the door. We never did that where I came from.


The cricket field



I had also been told beforehand, that schools in England were much more strict than in Sweden, including the relationship between students and teachers. My impression was exactly the opposite. The only thing more formal in England was that you addressed teachers (and parents) by Mr or Mrs, which was already getting rare in Sweden in the early 70s. Apart from that, I found the student-teacher relationships quite friendly.


Mr and Mrs A, Lyndon and a great-uncle, in Bridlington

With the whole family + grandmother + great uncle and aunt, we went on some outings to places like York, Cleethorpes (seaside) and Bridlington (seaside).




There were also some organized school activities, like a couple of trips to Leeds Rolarena. In Sweden, I had never heard of such a thing as a Rolarena (like a disco, but on rollerskates), and I had never been on a pair of rollerskates in my life. In fact, in spite of living in this Northern climate, I had never even learned the art of ice-skating. I think there were some kind people who held on tight to me and dragged me round the floor a few times on these Rolarena nights... But two visits to the place was not enough to make me glide around with the ease of those people depicted on the ticket, I assure you! However, I survived, and nothing got broken…



Chaperoned by a cousin of Lynne's (older than us, but not much ) we also on a couple of occasions went to a disco in Doncaster. This was nothing I was used to either, but at least there I did not have to balance on wheels!

All-in-all, besides picking up a lot of colloquial words and phrases and becoming more fluent in the spoken language, and learning more about everyday life in England, I consider the whole experience quite an important step on my way from childhood to adulthood - being away from my own family for a whole month, in a foreign country, and with no other Swedes around.



If you missed the previous episodes in this series, you will find all four of them in the Blog Archive for September 2009.

About Me and Languages (3)

In the summer after 9th grade, before I started 'senior high school', we went to Britain again. This time for three weeks, by car, and spending the nights at various small country inns and hotels ("Fawlty Towers" kind of places…). We arrived in Harwich, went across the country to North Wales, then down to the south coast, up again via Staffordshire to Scotland, as far north as Inverness, and finally back home from Newcastle.

Some of the many sights we visited were Cambridge, Caernavon Castle in Wales, the Roman baths in Bath, the Wookey Hole caves in Somerset, seaside town Lyme Regis in Dorset, Southampton and Isle of Wight, New Forest National Park with famous wild horses (really wild - one of them kicked my little brother!), Beaulieu with Motor Museum - and of course Stonehenge.

Postcard from Beaulieu. (click on picture to enlarge)
(I put this one in as a special treat for blogfriend Dan. Little did he know when he asked about me and languages what extensive reading it would lead to.)


Me at Stonehenge.
Fashion note: This was the year when skirts suddenly went below the knee after having been way up above during the 60's!

On our way north, I got to spend a day with a penfriend and her family in Stoke-on-Trent in Staffordshire, known as the home of English pottery industry. They took me to see an old manor house from the 15th century called Little Moreton Hall. I don't believe there was a single straight angle in that building! My parents and my brother spent the day elsewhere, and picked me up again towards the end of the day.


Little Moreton Hall, penfriend and her family.




On our way to Scotland, we passed Hadrian's Wall, which once marked the northern border of the Roman Empire.


Scotland...

At Loch Ness, looking for the Monster.


We did also visit some places in Scotland where there were less sheep and more people. Like Edinburgh, Balmoral Castle (the Queen's summer palace), and St Andrews to play a little golf (very little – more like mini).

Before we went back home again, we had another whiff of English seaside life, at Whitley Bay on the North Sea Coast:



This is the British idea of beach life. At least back in those days. At most, you lifted your skirt above your knees and waded a few steps out into the water. Preferably, you stayed fully dressed in a deck chair.


Nuns at the pleasure pier in Whitley Bay. My British readers will have to tell me whether that is/was a common sight or not!

Note on the photographs:
The photos including the two postcards have been scanned from my photo album. The sepia coloured ones are originally black-and-white. (Sepia effect applied in Picasa 3.) The colours in some of the coloured photos from this journey have kept exceptionally well. I have colour photos in later albums that have totally faded away and are all dim shades of purple by now...

The story will go on. I promise though - when I get past the teen years, I'll speed it up a bit!

About Me And Languages (1)

One or two Followers have wondered about me and languages. So I thought maybe I should fill in a few more details about that. I will do this by installments, so as not to tire either myself or my readers out…

Born to be a student!
(Me 9 months old, wearing student's cap.
It's my grandmother who's holding me.)

I am Swedish, at least four generations back on each side of the family, which is as far as I have any facts. Three out of my four grandparents had their roots in South West Sweden. The fourth moved down here from far up in the North.

My first contact with the English/American language was when I was six. (We also didn't have television until about then.) Then we had relatives from Illinois USA coming to visit - a cousin of my grandmother, and her husband and daughter. The daughter, second cousin of my mother, was only a few years older than I. There are pictures of us together drawing pictures and hugging teddy bears, and I remember her giving me American chewing gum. How else we communicated, I cannot really recall.

(Me on the left, my American relative on the right.)

I started school at the age of 7 but could read (Swedish) before that. English lessons began in 4th grade. My mother was good at English, she used to read novels in English herself and started early to encourage me to do the same. I was probably around 13 when I started reading Agatha Christie mysteries in English; we had a few of those at home. I also had penfriends in other countries. (In those days, contacts were made through ads in magazines and comic papers.)

When I was 14 (and my brother 7), our family went to London for a week in July, and saw all the sights: The Thames, Buckingham Palace, The Tower with the crown jewels, The Houses of Parliament, Big Ben, 10 Downing Street, Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum, The Planetarium, The Zoo,The British Museum, Trafalgar Square, Piccadilly Circus, Westminster Abbey, St Paul's Cathedral, Royal Albert Hall, Regent Park, Hyde Park… Also the Sherlock Holmes museum, the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, Hampton Court with its maze, Windsor Castle, Stratford-upon-Avon with Anne Hathaway's (Shakespeare's wife) cottage, and Agatha Christie's play The Mousetrap (which had been running for 17 years by then – and is still running, I think!)

In the Hampton Court Maze

Wow. Did we really do all that (and some shopping) in a week? According to my photo album, we did. I don't suppose I personally had a lot of conversation opportunies during that week; but it did lay a firm foundation for my continued fascination with all things British…