Human Law, Left Driving, and Churches, Castles and Homes

Thursday, June 14, 2017

After packing suitcases, tidying their London flat and finding and boarding the correct train at Marylebone Station, the family  sat down in their assigned seats and let out a collective sigh. Soon they started to move, the carriage rocking gently as the train crawled out of the station. 

Marylebone Station

When AJ settled into her seat  on the 8:30 am train to Glasgow, Scotland, she opened her journal and tried to write, but  realized that sometime during the night and busy morning preparations, she had lost track of the days. 

“What day is it?” she asked. 

“Thursday,” B said, “after this, no more ‘mind the gap’ for us.” 

“Never happier to leave a city,” AJ thought, then checked herself. It wasn’t all bad. The history was mesmerizing, the people, not so much. 

In London, there was always a rush of people, everywhere. There was always someone behind you wanting you to get out of their way. There was always someone in front of you, blocking your way. You were always one of these two people, sometimes both at once. And in this rush, the finer points of etiquette were dropped for the sake of survival and basic movement from one point to another. 

Every morning in London,  business people rushed (always, always rushing) through underground stations with looks of perpetual annoyance and depression on their faces (apparently train stations had the same disease as airports). Most men wore white shirts and dark jackets, reminding AJ of herds of penguins–crabby, stern, depressed, rushed penguins, who moved more like buffaloes. 

Since arriving in London, AJ tried to observe people for the answer to one question: UK people drive on the left, do they walk on the left?” It was a silly question, in retrospect, but it reminded her of C S Lewis’s discussion in Mere Christianity about the inconsistency of human law in morality. 

“Anyone studying Man from the outside as we study electricity or cabbages, not knowing our language and consequently not able to get any inside knowledge from us, but merely observing what we did, would never get the slightest evidence that we had this moral law. How could he? For him observations would only show what we did, and the moral law is about what we ought to do. In the same way, if there were anything above or behind the observed facts in the case of stones or the weather, we, by studying them from outside could never hope to discover it.”  CS Lewis, Mere Christianity 

For four days she watched people around London to see what side of the stairs, escalators, sidewalks they walked on. She could detect no discernible pattern. They were all over the place. In a few places, she went down escalators on the right side of a pair (probably because of construction). 

The mystery continued until that morning, their last day in London. After getting the balance on their Oyster cards (Underground tickets) refunded, B started up a pair of stairs on the right side (not unheard of in the London), AJ and TwoSon lagging behind. A grumpy penguin came down the left side of the stairs, had to navigate around B and his luggage, and mumbled, “wrong way up the steps, wrong way up the steps …” 

AJ and TwoSon had yet to pick a side, so they went up the left side (the correct side) of the steps to absolutely no one’s pleasure. “So, now we know. They do walk on the left … in general … sometimes … but rarely in the London Underground … and really, rarely in London,” AJ mumbled. * 

In the train, AJ stared out the windows as England passed by:  canals with long boats moseying along them, the backsides of industries and businesses no one wanted to see, weedy hedgerows filled with wild foxglove and more elderberry. Hedges and fences partitioned green hills dotted with sheep and cows.  Highways raced parallel to the train. The hills grew so steep and high, one might want to start calling them mountains, with stone fences ascending them. 

When they reached Glasgow, they picked up lunch at another Pret A Manger and ate on the train station benches because there was no room in the restaurant for them and their luggage. 

The Glasgow train station was no different than any other travel hub, it had the airport/train station disease of rushing, stern, unfriendly faces wherever one looked. AJ’s impression of Glasgow was of an angry depressed, downright unfriendly city, but again, she had to admit the unfairness of the impression, only experiencing the train station. 

Their Uber driver also had the airport/train station disease, which lead to a  quiet, quick Uber ride to the Arnold car-letting place (car-rental). Here, the heart-racing adventure really began. They were given a Hyundai Tucson, which, in UK terms, was a wide, road-hogging beast of a car. But it had lane-assist (when engaged, it alerted the driver if the car went outside the lane of traffic), which was helpful, especially when AJ and B figured out what it was and how to turn it on. 

Kilchurn Castle

B programmed their route into Google maps GPS and because of some technical difficulty, Miss GPS decided to give them the silent treatment, so AJ had to translate and verbalize the directions on the phone. This is harder to do than one might think, especially when a native, right-side-of-the-road, left-side-of-the-car driver is driving in a strange land on the left side of the road in a right-side-steering-wheel car, on treacherously narrow and harrowing roads.

As B drove, AJ kept reminding him, “Stay left, stay left …” and generally interpreted the foreign traffic patterns and signs without much confidence, despite having studied Scotland driving rules and signs before the trip. They made it through the myriad, dreaded roundabouts with getting honked at only once. As they drove farther away from the city, the roads became increasingly narrow and were usually lined on one side by sheer rock walls of mountains. On the other was usually a steady stream of fast moving cars, lorries and big trucks.

Their first stop was St. Conan’s Kirk. A heavy mist fell from the grey skies, but it only added to the mystery and allure of the place. After pulling off the busy road and parking, they walked a little way to find the hidden church of massive stone and ancient-looking structures. AJ walked in, pausing at the decorative elements that inundated every feature, even the roofing. After contemplating two graves in small closed-off side rooms, she walked outside where buttresses* leaned to hold up the walls, out to where the waters of Lock Awe shimmered, slowly passing by under the grey sky. 

Outside, back of St. Conan's Kirk

AJ went back inside and sat down in a pew, zipping up her black raincoat and buttoning it to the top. It was damp and cool inside (the doors were open and there were leaks in the roof). She picked up a worn, tape-bound Bible from the pew-back in front of her, leafing through the damp pages to Psalm 32. Sitting on the bench in the dampness, for a moment, her soul opened and the church, its leaky roof and all the beauty crafted for God seeped in, mixing with her rushed and overwhelming experiences from the previous days. She read the Psalm again, this time verse 6-7 flowed into her mind: “… surely in the rush of great waters, they shall not reach him. You are a hiding place for me; you preserve me from trouble...”

St Conan's Kirk

It was as if she suddenly realized where she was and the significance lifted a genuine smile to her lips. The church, hidden slightly, off the very busy (and narrow) road was a temporary, but exquisite resting place, a hiding place of sorts from the rush and hectic pace of the big cities. 

After surveying most of the church and its beautiful craftsmanship, she dropped a few pounds in the church coffer for the roofing fund, then continued walking around in awe, stopping briefly at the Robert the Bruce Chapel, containing a fragment of bone of the ancient king of Scotland. 

The kirk, or church was built in 1886 (not old in UK terms) in a mix of stoney styles, Roman to Norman. 

The next stop involved a little hike to Kilchurn Castle, on the edge of Loch Awe, once and long ago the abode of the Campbells of Glenorchy. The ruins were now a shell of strong stone walls, but to read of the violent and war-fueled history off the placards filled AJ's and TwoSon's mind with wonder and awe. AJ wasn’t very far into Rob Roy by Walter Scott, but had listened to enough of the story to catch the adventurous spirit of the area and to understand the descriptive portions, especially in the misty rain and drear that lay over the area. The Scottish Robin Hood’s mother was a Campbell, his father, a MacGregor. 

The last stop that day was to their B&B, Glenmore Country House, in Kilmelford by Oban. By the time they pulled up to the house, it was well past 8 pm, though it didn’t really feel late, the daylight was nowhere near being dim. After checking in with the hostess, and giving some pats to the family’s cat dozing in a nearby chair, they politely turned down walking to the village (they were hungry and disoriented, and although the hostess’s directions were clear, the path simple and short, AJ was sure they would get lost) and drove a few minutes to Cuilefaile Hotel for a hot plentiful dinner in the pub, complete with a friendly dog. 

The B&B room was inside an old family home, part of which was shut off for family, part reserved for paying guests. AJ had dreamt of this place–well, not exactly this place, but one very much like it–so many times, even wrote stories about it. And now she was there, but in Scotland, for one night as a guest. The minute she saw it her heart broke, already mourning the short time she had to spend there. 

The lane up to the house was flanked by tall old pines and passed by a windowless, expansive, grey stone barn. The house, of the same grey stone and thick walls, looked out over a loch. Inside, wood floors creaked under colorful rugs, thick wooden doors opened with elaborate glass doorknobs, every room was adorned with a tiled fireplace, and the aroma of exquisite old-wood smell haunted every corner and crevice. The bathroom was covered with white tile, contained a porcelain bathtub and was accented with old fashioned fixtures. Their's was a large main bedroom and a little bedroom next door, next to their very own sitting room. The view outside the main bedroom window was the tail end of Lock Melfort.

That night she sat down to write, trying to recollect everything that had made a mark on her that day. She needed more time to appreciate the beauty, history and existence of the little village and the beautiful house, but The Agenda wouldn't allow it. There was so much she wanted to write, but fatigue and a little sadness veiled her clarity of thought, so she snuggled down in the soft giant bed and fell immediately asleep.  

*A note about angry penguins: Now, this is admittedly a superficial, first visual impression. These men and women, in a highly civilized, modern way, make the world go around. AJ admired and respected them for that. B was an angry penguin (except he usually wore patterned shirts, no overcoat, and she hoped he was a little more tolerant of the tourists that dawdled along the lakeside roads in their hometown).These businesspeople walk London streets, commute on the Underground day in and day out, working their brains dry, and tourists were always in the way and they’d rather quite do without them going the wrong way up stairs with their cow-ish luggage and getting in the way of their morning rush, thank you very much. 

She understood and couldn't blame them too much. It’s the same reason AJ’s patience was put to the test when she drove behind crawling, rubber-neckers on the road that leads along Lake MI near her home. It takes tourists time to get in rhythm of a different place. Tourists are the slow-learners, the bumps in the road.