Incompetent Abroad: Bread Pudding and Stonehenge

What’s a trip to England without a stop in London?  Well, it’s what I’m left with if you really want to know.  After sampling Oxford’s cultural treasures, i. e., an underground parking garage and an Italian coffee bar, Roger and I agreed that we’d catch a train to London the following day so I could lay a wreath at Karl Marx’s grave and do a bit of shopping at Harrods.  (I’m conflicted that way.) However, it was raining fiercely when we creaked out of bed the next morning. Roger and I shuffled around our room, circling each other like scorpions, neither wanting to be the first to cancel an excursion we both realized wasn’t really worth the great effort. David, the closest thing our family has to a voice of reason, reminded us that the Starbucks next door was open for breakfast and offering free broadband.  That settled it. We spent the rest of the day surfing the internet and drowning our kidneys in coffee at two-pounds a cup. Forgive me, Karl, I meant well.

While I could dispense with London, albeit reluctantly, I just had to see Stonehenge.  And we did. The sun was still casting long shadows and the dew still glistening when our car rolled up over a low green hill—and there without warning rose the mystic circle of stones, so gray and pristine in its roadside meadow that it resembled a stage set.  The stones are not as tall as you might expect. They’re very much to human scale. But even now, the imagination strains to fathom how Stone Age tribes, with only the most basic tools, could have shaped, transported and erected the massive monuments here. And monuments to what?  You learn from an “audio tour” provided each visitor that the area Stonehenge sits in was once thickly forested. Today, sheep and cattle graze in the adjoining fields, and you can almost count on your fingers the number of trees still standing. The audio also tells you that many of the original stones were broken up ages ago and dragged away for other uses.  It was once common—and legal—for visitor to bring hammers to chip off pieces of the stones for souvenirs. Despite these outrages, the stones remain—almost five thousand years later—a vivid testimony to human ingenuity and fortitude. The most daring structure I ever attempted was a three-shelf bookcase that collapsed like a teenager’s excuse the moment I stepped away from it. 

A tunnel under the road connects the site to a parking lot and gift shop.  It was here on my way out that I chanced to purchase a slice of bread pudding so savory and delicious that it aroused my taste buds to a state of near sexual excitation.  The thick, moist concoction was rich in cinnamon, raisins and molasses, and I allowed myself only a nibble at a time as we drove away, hoping to stretch the sensation into infinity.  But it lasted less than a mile, then dissolved into memory. The next day, I sulked until Roger took me back to the gift shop. I was prepared to buy every slice in sight and to take one of them back to the States for analysis and duplication.  But there were none to be had. I looked high and low. Nothing. Not even a sign indicating where the delicacy had been. Would there be any bread pudding for sale later in the day? I asked the hatchet-faced harridan who was doing her damnedest to ignore my childishly importuning face. No, she snapped, without apology or explanation.  I raised my eyes to the eternal stones, determined to shift my focus from momentary pleasures to things that endure. Then, extending my tongue toward the clerk full length and flicking it up and down, I walked away with all the dignity a crushed heart could muster.