Bill Bryson: The Road to Little Dribbling

Ich stelle dies Buch und seinen Vorgänger für den Augenblick nur durch Zitate und den Wanderbericht eines Bekannten vor, der eine charakteristisch unspektakuläre, liebenswerte Landschaft beschreibt. Es ist schon wahr, was der Amerikaner Bryson nicht müde wird, zu betonen: Es gibt auf der Welt vielleicht keine Gegend, wo auf engem Raum eine so vielseitig reizvolle Landschaft und so beeindruckende kulturelle Zeugnisse versammelt sind wie auf der größten der Britischen Inseln, das liegt nicht nur am British Museum. Spektakulärer, erhabener, aufregender ist manches andere, was man auf der Welt findet. (Relativ viel davon habe ich in diesem Blog beschrieben gesehen.) Aber ...

"The High Street at first seemed pretty much unchanged. The buildings offered a pleasantly higgledy-piggeldy mix of styles, sizes and materials, yet formed a comfortable and coherent whole in that way that British towns seemed to do effortlessly for centuries and now often can hardly do at all. Though the buildings were the same, the buisinesses within them were completely changed. It is remarkable, when you think about it, how many types of shops have vanished from British high streete in only a few years: most butchers, greengrocers, fishmongers, ironmongers, repair shops, gas showrooms, electricity board showrooms, most building societies, travel agents and independent bookshops, and loads of once famous names - Freeman, Hardy & Willis, Woolworth's, Dillons and Ottokar's bookshops, Lunn Poly, Dolcis, Radio Rentals. Richard Shops, Beatties toy shops, Netto, John Menzies, Army and Navy Stores, and Rumbelows, to name just some." (S.148/49)

Massey's Folly (S.171) in Farringdon

Silbury Hill (S.182)

West Kennet Long Barrow (S.182/83)

"In other coutries they fight over politics and religion. In Britain it is over who gets to walk on a windswept moor. I think that's rather splendid." (Bill Bryson: The Road to Little Dribbling, S.344)
"Brochs are prehistoric stone towers, [...] what I particularly like about them is that they are completely mysterous. No one has any idea what they were for." (The Road to Little Dribbling, S.467)

Was ich an dem Buch so liebe, ist die unverbrüchliche Liebe zu seinem Gegenstand, einem Land, das nicht seine Heimat ist.
Ich kann nicht sagen, dass ich diese Art von Liebe teile, aber ich kann sie ihm intensiv nachfühlen.

“Suddenly, in the space of a moment, I realized what it was that I loved about Britain - which is to say, all of it. Every last bit of it, good and bad - Marmite, village fetes, country lanes, people saying 'mustn't grumble' and 'I'm terribly sorry but', people apologizing to me when I conk them with a nameless elbow, milk in bottles, beans on toast, haymaking in June, stinging nettles, seaside piers, Ordnance Survey maps, crumpets, hot-water bottles as a necessity, drizzly Sundays - every bit of it. [...]
 What other nation in the world could possibly have given us William Shakespeare, pork pies, Christopher Wren, Windsor Great Park, the Open University, Gardners' Question Time and the chocolate digestive biscuit? None, of course." (Bill Bryson: Notes from a Small Island)

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