Changes

[poliphilo]

This was my first trip out of England for ten years. A number of things surprised me.

When I was a kid you took it for granted that mainland Europe was dirty. You braced yourself for public toilets that were nothing but holes in the ground. You expected bidets. Now the standards on the Continent are as high if not higher than at home. The showers in all the hotels where we stayed were much more efficient than the showers in London. In Spain the public toilets are immaculate and smell like churches (really they do- I'm not making this up- I guess it's the disinfectant they use.) And the bidets have vanished.

The last hotel we stayed- in Lille- you could see a ghostly mark on the bathroom floor where the bidet had once stood. What's this about? Why have the French stopped making a big deal out of washing their genitals? Is it all down to globalization?

Talking about globalization, everyone everywhere pretty much speaks English. In the past they used to expect you to struggle with their language; now they take the initiative and struggle with yours.

And the supermarkets look just like our supermarkets and sell much the same products. And the golden arches have sprung up everywhere......

And here's something else. Bugs. An astonishing thing about Spain is that there aren't any. We went armed with all sorts of insect-repelling products- including a device that emits a high-pitched squeal which supposedly freaks mosquitos- and we just didn't need them. I got a couple of bites from walking in the woods after sunset (as all the trendy people do in Catalonia) but that was it. The hotel and town were insect-free zones. Then we come home and there are mosquitos and bluebottles all over.

Abroad is less foreign than it was. You can get CNN and the BBC on the hotel TV. You can buy the Daily Mail at the newsagents (and it's today's edition not yesterday's.) National borders have all but disappeared. You slow the vehicle down and most of the time they just wave you through. There's more fuss involved in going through the barriers at the start and finish of the (very excellent) toll roads.

It's no longer the world I was born into 54 years ago. I like it.

Comments

[cybersofa.livejournal.com]

I can't say I'm keen on the globalisation. Foreign-ness is one of the pleasures of going abroad for me. On a hot day you can smell you're in France as soon as you roll off the ferry, and were the town of Cherbourg to upgrade its drains to UK standards then it would make my holiday slightly less value for money.

Showers have been more common in Europe for longer than here, and they've long since got the point about thermostatic valves, which we can't seem to for some reason. The bidet is a mystery though. I wonder if it's the hygienic or the contraceptive application that's in decline. Hole-in-the-ground toilets can still be found in France if one looks hard enough. Conversely, street urinals are now up-and-coming in the UK.

[cataptromancer.livejournal.com]

Are bidets signs of "dirty"? Not having encountered them all that much, I'm not sure what their symbolic value is.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

Reading this has been very helpful. I've been envying people who see the world as a small place with many associations, but it sounds like there are anchors everywhere, even if only McDonalds and CNN.

I'm so glad you and Ailz had a good trip. It was fun reading about your travels.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

I'm reading a book I think you would like.

It's Father Joe by Tony Hendra, who also went to your school (Cambridge) and is the author of Going Too Far, a clasic history of modern American satire, and was editor in chief of Spy and an original editor of National Lampoon...

This is a witty, fascinating, and true book--a memoir about his relationship with a Benedictine monk.

Here's a snippet--he is a wonderful writer. In this scene, he's been caught with a married woman--and at fourteen!--so the woman's husband brings him to meet with a Benedictine during a retreat. The boy is naturally scared to death. He's a Catholic during the 50s:

[Waiting for his interview in the refectory]:
Time for dinner. We trooped downstairs, my knees knocking as I prepared to confront Father Josef Varilau, Butcher of Quarr [monastery on the Isle of Wight]. But it was only the old monk again. The Benedictine Gruppenfuhrer had been further delayed--perhaps to give a recalcitrant postulant a lie detector test...

[samhain-punk.livejournal.com]

Globalization makes me sad. I guess it's all down to that romantic ideal I've always had of going someplace that wasn't like anywhere else. I'm sure those places still exist, but they seem damnably hard to find nowadays. I wonder what the world will look like when I am 54.*



*Sorry, it's my birthday today and I am rather introspective and melancholy.