As promised, a little bit of insight into my psyche and my
student exchange program in Liverpool, England…
My hero, Tom, who rode through the eye of a storm with me,
always encouraging me to be me, let me live in his beautiful house on Lake
Washington while I was finishing up my degree in Landscape Architecture. He
lived out of town quite a bit of the time, but was contemplating a return to
the Pacific Northwest, and being a lover of solitude, the least I could do to
repay his years of generosity was to find new digs. Fortunately, in poking
around to find a place to live I learned about an exchange program between the
UW and the University of Liverpool. It served not only to get me out of Tom’s
house, but it gave me the much needed physical distance from everything and
everybody, to shake up my world just a little bit more.
Things got off to a slightly shakey start before I ever left.
Sparing you the painful details of boxing up my stuff at Tom’s and then the
stuff that was still in my Ex’s house, I will share the sad and woeful tale of
the “Romulan Do.” Knowing that I would be needing a hair-cut while I was gone,
I decide to have my hair cut a little on the short side. No offense to anyone
intended, but I said to the stylist, “I need it to be short, but still
feminine. I don’t want it severe or butch.” Butch I got! I think he, a gorgeous
man whose name I banished from my memory as soon as I saw my hair, thought I
said just the opposite. I am not exaggerating when I say that it was six months
until I needed a trim. Not a cut. A trim! I inherited my father’s hairline and
all I can say is that I looked like Mark Lenard in the Balance of Terror episode from the original Star Trek Series.
My mother is from East Anglia, Suffolk, England. First stop
on my adventure was a visit to my very entertaining relatives. When asking
where I would be living I said something like, “I dunno, the University sets it
up.” My Uncle strongly discouraged me from living in Toxteth; going on to
describe the violence of the racially driven riots of the early 1980’s. Not
ignoring his advice, I just let it drift to a distant corner of my memory, because
this is bucolic England we are talking about. Not inner city Chicago or
Philadelphia. On one rainy Sunday morning a week later I took a bus from the
east coast of England to the west coast. It took around twelve hours. We passed
through countryside, under Tudor-esque city gates, down narrow lanes, stopped
at a military base, and then made our way to some of the UK’s largest industrial
centers, Sheffield (watch “The Full Monty”) and then Liverpool. Eventually the
bus driver had reached his final destination and parked us in a modern bus
station on the eastern edge of downtown, where I was to be met by my advisor and
tour guide.
Dragging luggage out from the belly of the beast, Steve, my
advisor, plonked what I’d brought with me into the boot of his car. Now would
be a great time to insert that I encouraged a very dear friend to come along, she,
also a Landscape Architecture student and lover of travel. So, her stuff was
plonked into the boot next to mine. His accent was fairly easy to follow,
unlike quite a few people we were soon to meet, and we were given the lightning
fast tour of town as we travelled down and around many a windy road. It was
late, we were tired and hungry, and when the word Toxteth briefly came up. I
thought, “Oh boy! Here we go.”
So, our dwellings… honestly, when people say, “You couldn’t
make this stuff up,” believe the phrase. Steve, our only connection to the
strange new world we found ourselves in, shared with us that we would be living
in rooms above a homeless shelter with other students from other parts of the
world. We were clearly in a different part of town. Burnt windowless brick buildings
that were historic locations were now filled with trees, shrubs, weeds and
other stray living matter. Trying to take this in as if it were absolutely no
big deal, I sought to identify the local night life. Seeing as it was around
9:00 pm, Sunday and raining, there was little to be seen. Screeching to a halt I
absorbed the front of a building recently built; brick, steel, glass, weeds, regularly
located street lights, musty smell. “Hmmm,” I thought.
After fumbling with the keys, we made our way through a side
door into a private elevator reserved for those dwelling above the homeless
shelter. More musty smell accompanied by yellow fluorescent light, faux wood
doors, off-white linoleum; the ambiance escorted us, our two backpacks and passel
of keys. Facing the back wall of the building, if you went left, you went down
the “Male” wing of the facility. If you went right, you met the ladies. So,
another key lets us enter our wing. (My haircut might have made my presence
questionable.) We reached my room first. It was about 10’X12’, and had a single
bed, desk, armoire, bookshelf, night stand, side chair, and sink. A window was
just above the headboard. All the furniture was faux brown wood.
Pamemelis’s room, right next door, was identical to mine. As
it turned out all of our wing-mates from Zimbabwe, Birmingham, and London had rooms that were
identical. They had just heavily personalized and rearranged furniture. There
were a total of six of us sharing the space. There were two water closets and
one room with a bath tub. The other space was a communal living area that had
two or three refrigerators, metal table and chairs, some old but functional
furniture, and “stuff” covering the counter tops.
Now, I am by no stretch of the imagination a Prima Donna, but
I had been living in a colorful, well furnished, architect designed, uber cool,
several thousand square foot house (mostly by myself) with an extended lake and
city view. So, I was a bit… giddy. Why giddy? No other word quite describes it;
I wasn’t upset, horrified, underwhelmed, impressed, depressed, or repressed. I
was thrilled to be there but it was a lot to take in. Moments after unloading
back packs and other stuff we’d been advised to bring, Steve gave us brief
directions to the University and then said he’d see us in the morning.
Fortunately, Annie Grace, from Zimbabwe, was a gregarious
person who quickly made herself known and helped direct us to somewhere to eat.
Pamemelis and I wandered the streets of Toxteth and looked for food. My memory
tells me it was Indian, but it could have been a sandwich. Odd, I cannot
remember. I just remember that everything was closed and we took what we could.
Eventually we did find our way to and sat inside one of the most
architecturally splendid pubs ever and sat about absorbing that we were there
and our adventure was about to begin.
As an aside, many who would immigrate to the US from the UK
in the 19th century would begin their journey West from Liverpool.
As a way to earn the money for passage, many would enter the building trade.
Some of the finest wood and marble craftsmanship can be found there.
Later we hoofed it back to the homeless shelter, cautiously
looked around, identifying useful landmarks, and eventually made it back to the
shelter, got ourselves inside after several failed attempts (the keys all
looked the same) and put ourselves to bed. The morning would come soon enough.
Now, if you’ve read my blog “Shh Woo” (dated January 6, 2012) you know that a
curtain free, open window (stuck that way), strange space, was an unlikely
location for me to be well rested in. The many nights to follow would prove the
exception to the rule. More on this later…
The next morning was bright and sunny, though chilly, and we
set off on the trek to the University, architecture department, location
unknown. We began what was to become a daily habit of inspecting the narrow
cobble road we walked along as part of our journey to school, as it was being
replaced. The fellows working on the road were gentlemanly, helpful, and for
the most part completely impossible to understand. Their Scouse accents so
thick! I have wondered if I could have understood them if I would have heard
them say, “Pity about that bloke and his voice. He sounds like a girl.”
Another regular habit began that morning; with literally no
food to eat, we decided to find something along the way. At the edge of the
campus we saw a long line of people, mostly construction workers, lined up outside
a window. The smell emanating was rapturous. People walked away with varying
breakfast sandwiches and cups of tea. If there were pastries and such, I don’t
know, because my favorite became fried egg (yolk runny) with bacon (back bacon,
not streaky bacon), brown sauce, tomato, on brown bread. OMG!! I could have
easily eaten two if my budget had allowed for it! In the time that followed, I
would start salivating the moment my foot hit the questionably stained concrete
sidewalk outside our shelter.
It is here that we will continue the “Amazing Adventures of Celia in
Liverpool!” We’ll cover a pub crawl, a leprechaun and the Sinn Féin
(nothing like going to another country and getting caught up in its politics).
At this point in the adventure I was already reveling in my
bravery and spunk. I was also keenly aware that I was already deciding whether
I would return to the US or not. In previous trips to England and the rest of
Europe I had wanted to stay and I knew that with the right set of circumstances
(ie. a job) I could be easily persuaded to stay. A professor at the UW always
said that you should work in a foreign country, it makes you more exotic. I
believe him. In Liverpool there was no clutter or baggage, it was a clean
slate, and only mine to fill.
Landscape Design Tip of the Week: Small textures make
the space bigger, big textures bring the object forward, much like warm and
cool colors on a painting. An issue I often get asked a great deal about is how
to make a garden more interesting, my answer generally is, change up the
textures. People seem to be afraid of plants and so they find one they like and
they plant a bunch of it, or they plant a bunch that is similar, therefore it
lacks something for the eye to grab onto. Like a painting you want your eye to
seek out what is interesting and the rest should be a place where the eye can
rest.
