After three weeks away, home, where everything is tailored to one’s personal preferences, feels like a welcoming environment, familiar, soothing and reassuring – one in which, for instance, you can get a cup of tea, made by pouring boiling water over loose leaves in a pot with a straining basket and a properly functioning spout.
In Athens,
we rented an apartment at the foot of the Acropolis and sat on the roof with
our drinks to admire the floodlit ruins and contemplate their history. If we
shifted our seats to the corner, we had an oblique view across the street of
the boutique-open-air cinema that showed The Devil Wears Prada each
evening at eight forty. The contrast between ancient and modern had the
potential to grate on one’s sensitivities but, given the novelty and exoticism
of our situation, excitement and enchantment were our dominant reactions. The ‘theme-park’
appeal might have worn thin after a while, but we certainly did not pine for
home during our few days there.
En route for home, we spent a couple of days
mooching around the swanky centre of Milan, where men in tailored suits take
breaks from their offices to stand at bars to drink espresso (al banco),
while we tourists sit at tables and try not to get in everyone’s way. At one
such bar, we asked for “two Americanos” and were given espressos in large cups
and a jug of hot water so that we could dilute the blessed beverage ourselves,
so scornful were they of the concept.
We tired quickly
of the Duomo’s depressingly Christian interior, with its gloomy images of
suffering saints and relentlessly over-decorated surfaces. The streets held
more appeal, though excess of a different kind prevails there, especially in the
shops, where retailers exploit the power of brands to elevate prices to
extraordinary levels. As a rule of thumb, which I learned from one of my travelling
companions, the fewer items there are displayed in a shop window, the less
likely you are to be able to afford to buy anything within. It’s a sort of
early warning system for the curious but impecunious. Incidentally, I have read
that Milan has lately become a fashionable refuge for the very rich who want to
reside in cities where taxes are not too taxing for them.
In Paris, we
experienced a less affluent cross section of European society. In transit, we
had time to spend in and around the rail stations, Gare du Nord and Gare de
Lyon, where travellers of all sorts encounter everyday locals, a large
percentage of whom are immigrants, either established or still finding their
feet in society. The shop windows thereabouts are stuffed with goods, every
square centimetre occupied and every single item priced. We had lunches and
breakfasts in cafés done up in traditional style (and were served by waiters
with traditional off-handedness). We stayed in small hotels, located
conveniently by the stations and in which we relished the stereotypically old-fashioned
Parisienne interiors.
Finally, Eurostar
delivered us to London and GWR took us onward to Plymouth. It’s good to be
home, though our to-do list is full of work in progress. Britain still needs
our help: the fight to stem the advance of illiberal legislation that is turning
the right to protest into illegal acts labelled as terrorism (next step,
treason); the fight to change our electoral system from first-past-the post to
more nuanced proportional representation; the fight to stem the loss of public
goods to the private sphere which is controlled by ever fewer people or
entities; the fight to turn the tide of the commodification of education, which
is snuffing out the principle of critical thinking; the fight to modify
capitalism to an economy that isn’t bent on chasing the unfulfillable goal of never
ending growth.
The list
goes on. But first, a decent pot of tea.
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