Mustn't Grumble [Paperback]

Joe Bennett has taught school in New Zealand for three decades and decides to return to the country of his birth, England, to see how it's doing. Big mistake Joe.
He follows the journey made by one H.V. Morton who travelled through England in 1926 in a Morris bullnose Cowley. Morton was "In Search of England" and that was the title of the book he wrote about his trip.
Joe Bennett starts out with the idea of hitchiking and discovers nobody does that in England anymore. Borrowing a car from a friend he follows Morton's footsteps and finds a much changed country. The "nation of shopkeepers" that Napoleon thought unworthy of fighting is no more. Tesco superstores have sprouted everywhere and destroyed the High Streets of every town. Lager-fuelled louts make life a misery for everyone. And, the monstrous spin of the New Labour regime of Tony Blair has infected the entire country with a belief that bad policy can be made good if you just talk it up enough.
But this is a wonderful piece of writing. More wonderful and unique metaphors per page than you have a right to expect - "a grim-faced mother jogging, her infant strapped into a streamlined buggy like an astronaut at take-off." The whole book is filled with wry humour and a wistful longing for the England he knew as a young man and that has gone forever. Joe Bennett is disappointed in what he finds; H.V. Morton would probably keel over with a cardiac arrest.
For me it was a real tonic; lovely book.

"Slough seems to have no definable edge ... Slough just sort of happens." - from MUSTN'T GRUMBLE

In 2005, expatriate author Joe Bennet returned to England, his birthplace, from his residence in New Zealand to literally and figuratively follow in the footsteps of H.V. Morton (In Search of England, 1926) and endeavor to discover the essence of contemporary England.

As a disclaimer here, I must tell you that England (and the rest of the United Kingdom) is my pet country of those that I've visited in my lifetime, and London is my favorite city in the world. Indeed, I read most of this book on my recent vacation there, and finished it on the plane home. So, I'm biased.

One who's read Morton's travel essay (as I have) and feels as affectionate about England (as I do) will soon realize Bennet's book won't be quite so warm and fuzzy when the author states early on that while Morton was a child of the Empire with a veneration for it, he himself, of a later generation born when the Empire had mostly crumbled away, has no such reverence. Despite his book's title, then, the author does grumble. For example, in describing the cluster of historically-themed, tacky tourist entrapments that Land's End has become, he grouses:

"None of these things pretend to be anything but froth. But this stuff purports to have some bearing on reality. It is a travesty of the past and of the present. It represents the divorce of language from meaning and the divorce of cosseted urban contemporary man from any sense of the actual world he lives in ... The place deserves bombing."

Then, there are his comments regarding a Boy Scout parade in Tavistock, less acerbic but no less perceptive:

"There was something brave about the parade, but also something half-hearted. It felt like the tail-end of a long tradition, born of the deeply strange Baden-Powell, and the relief of Mafeking, and stout Victoria, and an unswerving belief in Empire. Morton was part of all that. It's what gives him his buoyancy. But it has dwindled now to almost nothing, the moral mainstream reduced to a quiet backwater."

I'll jump ahead to admit now that I'm awarding MUSTN'T GRUMBLE five stars. Why? Because, for all his disenchantment, Bennet is right on - and with engaging wit. Indeed, what is perhaps the author's finest moment is given account on page 157 (of the paperback), whereon is described his encounter, or, more accurately, non-encounter, with a woman walking her dog across the meadows near Bradford-on-Avon. It's one of the finest pieces of self-deprecatory humor I've ever read.

England has changed noticeably even in the last thirty-five years since I first visited. Whereas in 1975 the souvenir display at Salisbury Cathedral was nothing more than a rickety table of postcards set-up in the shadows of the north aisle manned by a volunteer, now it's a huge emporium tacked-on to the side of the church that sells religious and cathedral-themed junk of all sorts. As the author observes:

"Cathedrals strive so hard to deny that they've become theme parks. Salisbury Cathedral is typical, in refusing to charge an entry fee. Instead you pay a four-quid 'donation'. The dean and chapter appease their God and assuage their guilt by waiving the donation on Sundays. But it isn't a donation, of course. If it were, I wouldn't have paid it."

I can personally attest that as of October 11, 2010 the "donation" had reached five pounds ten. I paid it.

However, amidst all that Bennet finds discouraging in present-day England, his spirits were sporadically restored, and therefore mine also:

"I sometimes wonder whether I am alone in liking the English climate. It provides the occasional exciting extreme, the phew-what-a-scorcher heat wave, the nation-stopping dump of snow, but generally it provides a temperature you can do things in, a soft light and the ceaseless swing of the seasons. Put me in the endless sun of California or Brisbane and I'd soon be screaming for drizzle." (From here in Southern California, I hear ya!)

And, near Trebetherick, he becomes almost poetic:

"I climb Bray Hill beside the golf course to find a view as sweet as strawberries. The sea comes in from the north between dark heads, and past an off-centre island. On the far shore, waves feather a sandy beach, and Cornwall stretches away behind in greenly gentle slopes before dissolving into greyish watercolor distance. A clump of indefinite buildings to the south must be Padstow. The sands of Trebetherick bay reflect a shimmering hazy sky. A skylark does its invisible tuneful stuff and beside me where I sit, a clump of cowslips droops, the flowers the color of cheap margarine, the leaves a grayish crinkled wad. And I feel strongly that this is good. Part nostalgia, part literature, part clean air and sky and sea and grass and solitude, entirely good."

I love the author for this paragraph. I've felt the same so many times at various locales around the island.

I don't know if I shall ever get back to England (and Wales and Scotland). I hope to; the desire is there. But, as I age, health and energy will wane. However, like Morton, I remain the incurable romantic when it comes to this green and pleasant land; I fancy it so. As Morton wrote within IN SEARCH OF ENGLAND:

"... there rose up in my mind the picture of a village street at dusk with a smell of wood smoke lying in the still air and, here and there, little red blinds shining in the dusk under the thatch. I remembered how the church bells ring at home, and how, at that time of year, the sun leaves a dull red bar low down in the west, and against it the elms grow blacker minute by minute. Then the bats start to flicker like little bits of burnt paper and you hear the slow jingle of a team coming home from the fields ... When you think like this, sitting alone in a foreign country, you know all there is to learn about heartache."

I love travel books, but this (and Joe's other books) is a lot more than just a travel book. Insightful, personal, often surprising... excellent. The best travel books take you somewhere, and in this case, you feel like you go there alongside the author. Great read.

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