Let's Go Somewhere - 5/13/2014 England

Ally says:

No One I Think Is In My Tree

The tour guide keeps us in the backyard. We’re not going to go into the house yet, and we’re certainly not going in by the front door. The front door leads to the Best Room and we were not Best Room people.

            “We’re going to experience this today,” the tour guide tells us, “the same way Paul did the first time he met Mimi.”

            I smile, gaze around the backyard.

            This is it. This is John Lennon’s home. We crossed an ocean, boarded a train and we were finally here.

            The only way you can see Mendips is through the National Trust tour. Tours aren’t my kind of thing. Packing a map and list of addresses and decent shoes tied to my feet and then venturing out into the unknown is my kind of thing. Getting on a packed bus with a bunch of old English bitties, twittering about how fast the driver’s going is not. But I pass the time with my map out, catching street names, seeing if I can follow the route we’re taking to John Lennon’s house.

            I roll the words around. John Lennon’s house.

            This is a big one. I’ve been pretty lucky in this life. Seen some good stuff – some good writer homes (Virginia Woolf, Charles Dickens) some good musicians graves (Mozart, Beethoven, Jim Morrison) but for some reason this feels bigger than all of that.

            When we pull up to the gate, I feel the catch in my throat. I laugh at myself. God Ally, you’re so emotional. I wonder if it’s PMS. I laugh it off, but it’s there. Something reverent. I’m going to stand in John Lennon’s bedroom. This feels, as I step off the bus, earth shattering.

In my head is Aunt Mimi, the aunt who raised him when his mother couldn’t, yelling “Glasses, John,” to the boy who’s trademark sneer was due to intense near-sightedness.

Before we get started the tour guide lets us take pictures. I drag my husband to the front of the house, stand at the door having passed my camera to one of the biddies. My husband groans. Tells me this is embarrassing. I shush him. It’s Mendips. We might never be back.

Once we’re ready the guide tells us that we’re going through the back gate, just as Paul did that first time he came to Mendips at the still amorphous age of fifteen, ready to meet the disapproving Mimi. Paul lived in a council house. He was not the sort of riff-raff that John should be around. And the band! The band was a problem.

In a few minutes we’ll go inside, pass through the house. I will stand in John Lennon’s childhood bedroom. It will be small. Unimaginably small. Only three of us will be able to fit at once practically tripping over each other. The roof slanted, the tiny bed, green quilt, a poster of Bardot tacked on the wall. The tour guide will mention that when John came back to Liverpool he took Yoko down Menlove Avenue.

“Look Yoko,” he said pointing at the house. “There it is. That’s where I did all my dreaming.”

I will feel strange in that room. Like a trespasser but also heartbroken thinking of seventeen year old John missing his mother, writing his songs. Doing the dreaming that will change everything.

But right now we are still outside.

“Right over that treeline,” the guide tells us pointing, is “Strawberry Fields.”

The bitties twitter with excitement. I gaze up at the tree.

He tells us about Mimi. After John was gone, she stood in this backyard and said, “I can still seem the all back here. John and Pete Shotton and the boys – Nigel and Ivan. Pete was always tied up to a tree, covered in war paint. Ever the prisoner. John running circles, ever the leader of the gang.”

The leader, indeed. Even of that first rag-tag band of Warrior Boys.

On the train back to London, I slip my book into the pocket of the seat car in front of me. I don't feel much like reading. I put in my headphones. Cue up the Anthology. I listen to the Strawberry Fields outtakes. I hear John laugh.

No one I think is in my tree. I mean it must be high or low.

I picture that boy, his Indian head dress sewn by his Auntie. All that fierce howling creative life inside him. Always the leader. Always John.

Aleathia says:

In keeping with this fabulous England vibe, I'm going to share a bit of my own journey to good old Bristol. I have been an Anglophile since I was little.  I remember at an early age watching The Benny Hill Show and Monty Python with my grandmother.  I didn't quite get it at age 4, but it touched a certain sensibility in me.  I loved the dry humor, the proper sounding speech, and the comedic timing.

Through the years of my life, the desire to get to England only grew.  When I was in high school we were supposed to go to Europe with French Club which meant a few days stay in London.  I was finally going to get there, but there were plane hijackings that year so we joined up with Spanish Club and went safely on to Mexico.  I was devastated.

After I left my now ex-husband, I decided to treat myself with the trip of a lifetime to stamp the new beginnings.  To signify that I was finally my own person.  I had a friend who lived in Bristol, England and decided to go there for a visit and have an experience instead of just a tour.  We went to local haunts, grocery shopped at Sainsbury and lived in a rented flat.  It was an amazing time.

The most impressive feature in the city was the Bristol Cathedral.  It was built in the 1400's and though I have been a Buddhist for over 17 years, I have always appreciated the grand scale of old churches.  I appreciate the architecture, the design, and the sheer force of physical energy it requires to build such a structure knowing there were no modern conveniences and machines to assist.

If you are in Liverpool visiting John Lennon's house, take the drive over to Bristol to see the church and a host of other beautiful things in that city.