Around England

Author: Emma Hecht

Location: Cambridge, England

Pronouns: She/Her/Hers

I don’t know anything about sports. So, when my friend and her family took me to the Chelsea vs. Crystal Palace soccer (“football”) game two Sundays ago at Stamford Bridge, I learned a lot: 1. They water the field right before the game. To someone mildly accident-prone, this seemed particularly hazardous. But, I guess it’s just to get the field to the right texture… I don’t know, it still seems dangerous to me.
2. Sometimes you just need a five minute nap to get through the first quarter.
3. British/European fans are very reserved. They sit quietly in their seats observing the game, occasionally chanting uniformly. They only stand and cheer when their team makes a goal. (Which is what? Like, max four times a game?) I don’t know any American who has sat through even a little league game that mildly.
4. The players use their heads and chests almost as much as their feet to get the ball around. I’m
not sure how that doesn’t hurt.

Another big thing here in England  is the holiday Bonfire Night (also called Guy Fawkes Night) on November 5th . It started years after Guy Fawkes, a Catholic activist, and a dozen other men planted gunpowder under the House of Parliament to blow it up. This would have killed the political members inside that were religiously persecuting the Catholics, if Guy Fawkes hadn’t gotten caught just hours before he was going to light the match and complete the plot. Great Britain began to remember this day to celebrate that their King and Parliament members weren’t killed, which was definitely very anti-Catholic. However, today that anti-Catholic message is gone and it’s simply an act of community where people get together and set off fireworks and light a huge bonfire. The event I attended was organized by the city of Cambridge. There were twenty minutes of fireworks, which might’ve been the best fireworks I’ve ever seen, and, of course, an enormous bonfire. The fact that the Brits will light this bonfire astounds me. They are crazy about their fire safety. Pretty much all of the doors in the house I live in are “fire doors” and they have to be closed at all times. Any building you go into has marked fire exits (not emergency exits—fire exits). In one church service, I was in, there was even a designated seat for a fire marshal.

Three other Valpo girls and I took a little field trip with our director, Dr. Brugh, and her husband this past weekend to Anglesey Abbey. We walked around the grounds, which were kept up beautifully, and contained all kinds of trees and plants. Right near the main house, there is also a working flour mill, one of the last of its kind in England, where the flour is hand-ground. The house itself is built on the foundation of an old abbey where monks used to live and work. However, it was rebuilt around the 17 th century. Now, however, all of its decorations come from the 1920’s, since its buyer in that era wanted to modernize it.