I always thought it odd when we sung Blake’s hymn at school: ‘green and pleasant’ was not my impression of England. Ensconced in New Zealand in the 1980s (and heavily influenced by the large chip of working-class self-righteousness, that sat firmly across my father’s northern shoulders), England seemed rather a frightening place, made mostly of Thatcherism, football hooligans and the omnipresent threat of a nuclear cloud mushrooming over the Thames.
It wasn’t until I cast my literary net a little wider that I discovered the rich mythical history of Chaucer, Spenser’s Faerie Queene, Milton’s epic Paradise Lost; A Midsummer Night’s Dream remains my favourite of the dozen or so Shakespearean plays I have read to any depth. Blake was writing at the same time as Burns and Goethe: it became known as the rise of romanticism, tied up in idealism about place – passions count for more than intellect, the individual against the consensus. Thinking back, it was a rebellious act to encourage 750 young women to sing about such things.
Yesterday I was whisked off by Mr P, to the Langham – London’s oldest – Hotel to engage in a little idealism of our own. A lazy afternoon was followed by an early supper in the glass-roofed Clos Maggiore, where a 2008 bottle of Mt Difficulty pinot noir was happily downed while fairy-lights twinkled above. And then on to the Apollo by rickshaw, for three-and-a-bit-hours of astonishing theatre.
Jerusalem is about England today, through the eyes of Rooster: a Gypsy living in the woods next to a new housing estate in Wiltshire. He is a drug-dealer, story-teller, shagger; hilarious, swaggering, broken, full of pathos. The themes are immense: what does it mean to be free in England now? With officious Council officers and traffic wardens and petitions? Is the beauty of the countryside under more threat from property developers, or the raging parties at Rooster’s caravan? I was churned up listening to Lee try and justify why he was going to Australia, the adventure, perspective, difference: to escape the life of his mate Danny who works at the abattoir and who’s existence would likely amount to having electrocuted 2 million cows and never travelled further than Berkshire.
It was familiar too: the talk of giants and the Romany gypsy heritage had echo’s of taniwha’s and whakapapa. And growing up in small New Zealand towns, we both went to school with kids who never wanted anything more than the easy life of smoking pot, taking whizz and surfing. Who are still there now, having married other kids from the same school… the way it has always been.
As Lee closed his eyes in the middle of the English wood and breathed in the scent of ‘wild garlic and May blossom’, I thought of the smell of the Pacific, seaweed and fresh-cut grass.
And the pull of the land that never seems to completely let us go.
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