On the South Downs with the Long Man

Yesterday in the cool, sunny morning I sat in the back garden among a crowd of potted plants and ate a bowl of cereal. Laundry flapped on the line, and neighbors on the right and at the back were out in their tiny backyards (separated by stone walls) hanging out their own wash. As in Spain, in England few people have clothes dryers. My cereal brand name, according the the box, was "Just Right," but I would´ve substituted "It Will Do" or maybe "Sort of OK."

Rachael and I drove to the center of town to the Brighton Market, a Sunday swap meet in a big parking lot. Used clothes, a few antiques, kitsch, books and music and movies, boxes of old photographs, framed prints and paintings, lots of junk. Surprisingly cheap, considering everything else in England seems wildly expensive.

We met Rachael´s friend Angie at the market and sat together at a plastic table beside a tea and cakes van. Angie teaches university classes on the social aspects of healthcare, in particular the role of community work. Her original field was anthropolgy, and she´s a trained psychotherapist; not too long ago she published a book on adoption. For her doctoral dissertation, also published, she wrote about the culture of prostitution in Alicante, a coastal Spanish town, where she lived while doing the research.

A dozen or so years ago Angie and her partner adopted three kids, siblings. As a psychotherapist she is working on developing something she calls resilience therapy, but I didn´t get a chance to ask for an explanation, or to hear more from this obviously fascinating person. Her three kids--Michael (17), Ed (14), and Becky (12) showed up together at the market and came to our table, much to Angie´s obvious pleasure. Rachael quizzed them each about their current doings while they stood smiling and squinting in the sun.

In the early afternoon Rachael and I drove east out of town to East Sussex in her pink car. In the village of Alciston (which is quite near Bloomsbury), we ate a long lunch at the Rose Cottage Inn, an old and ivy-ed and cliche but real English countryside inn. Inside an old woman and an ancient woman sat together at a small table. The old woman said, "at least I´m not the fattest one here," and when Rachael turned to her and laughed, the woman said, "oh, I´m not referring to you, dear." I wanted to sit down with them, but they were just finishing and figuring out their bill.

Near the inn we went walking on the South Downs, first up around a steep green hillside where lay the Long Man of Wilmington, a figure outlined in the underlying white chalk rock, and maybe one hundred yards tall. The ancient figure was re-discovered in 1874, and no one really knows its significance, but the outline is regularly freshened up. At the top of the slope a pair of barrows rise up in the green grass, and I thought of Frodo and his nearly fatal night in a barrow probably not dissimilar. Beyond the ridge we walked through high rolling fields dotted with sheep. The afternoon was windy and bright, and a little cool when clouds would momentarily block the sun. The sea rose up on the horizon a few miles to the south.

Later we drove down to near the sea, to a place called Cuckmere Haven, and walked along a small stream across an open green to the shore. Small waves rolled in, rattling the round stones of which the beach was composed. To the east rose a high white chalk headland, the first of the Seven Sisters, which march off to the town of Eastbourne ten miles distant. One can walk along the coast up and over the high headlands, but we´d come too late in the day for that adventure.

Instead we drove back to Brighton, where Rachael made a small, lovely dinner of potatoes, mushrooms, spinach, and veggie sausages. On the Camino she (rightly) ridiculed my claim of vegetarianism, after watching me finish off one too many chuletas. But in Brighton it´s been a pleasure to return to the gentle vegetable fold (well, mostly; I suppose there was the hogroast, a bit of delicious apostasy). After eating Rachael had me read aloud from a volume in the Mommentrolls series, a set of Finnish children´s stories. When my narcolepsy kicked in, I handed the book to her.

Each day in Brighton was full and a pleasure right through. Already Spain seems part of the past, but I still have an evening in Madrid. Then I´m for home.