A couple of weekends ago, I went to visit my aunt, uncle, and one of my cousins in York, England. While walking around the city wall, parts of which date back to 310 AD or earlier, all I could think to myself - and this kept repeating in my head - was, 'It's so beautiful. It's so beautiful. It's so... just, nice!!' I couldn't come up with anything more clever or original than that, because I couldn't seem to think of words to march how lovely it was. Yet, in the way that any of us who write tend to do, I'm going to try and describe it, or at least a piece thereof, anyways.
York calls to mind stone and mist and at least a good quarter of the stories I read as a child. There wasn't any mist, though there was a lot of stone, and I technically haven't read a story that was placed in York - none, at least, that jump to mind.
But it had those elements, the brick row houses that Polly and Digory would've crossed between by secret attic passageways, finding themselves in a secret laboratory and ultimately another world. It has the fortress wall, originally surrounded by a moat, still standing from the centuries and centuries ago, calling to the imagination every story I've loved from a history book or a fiction, that talked of valour and smiting and heros and damsels, of victory and betrayal.
The clematises and gardens everywhere, both wild and tame - they're the secret garden, they're faerie fields, the queen at tea, the author's inspiration, Beatrix Potter.
Pubs - more than one for each day of the year - they're the mead and songs and bards, the pipe weed and tales, location of lonely travellers' clues, meeting points, the fellowship's gathering before setting out into the great unknown.
Moors - that park was dark life and manors, sheep and hard work, characters dreaming of a better life or at least of love, and ravines, wuthering heights, rejected orphans turned governess, creeks and hollows for horses to stumble and it to rain and Mr Darcy to ride in and show you that he's noble and good underneath it all.
And finally - the simplicity, the mothers walking with their babies, the iron gate being re-painted fresh black, the buses and cars, "remember to recycle!", the neatly aligned chimneys and picture perfect windows - that's where the cupboards under the stairs are, the home of plum puddings and aunts and the cats and the "normalcy" of it all, where deluminators come in handy and where chimney sweeps come out to dance at night. That's the normal so begging to be interrupted by magic, whether it's come to save Mr. Banks, to fly you away to Neverland, if your mad uncle Andrew brought it, or it's because you're a wizard Harry.
It's like a pop up book of so much of childhood. Why on earth didn't I want to come to England before?!
