Larry
"Uncle Larry"
Warning, this could be long. So many things affected me while I was there, it was overwhelming, in the best possible way. I'm sharing all of it.
So it was a dark and stormy night...
...and the drum show is over, it's Sunday night. After the Drummer night benefit thing, this is where we all split up and go our various ways. Ben Turk, David Floegal, Liam (Madges drum teacher and David's friend) Andy and I all said our goodbyes and Ben, Andy and I break down the Guru booths, and load up. Andy drove himself and I home in the rental truck, but not before we stopped for some much needed dinner. Andy's place was about 3 hours from the venue. It was dark and wet so I couldn't see how beautiful the English countryside is.
Got back to Andy's and met Yvonne for the first time. What a great couple they make. She's awesome, a lot of fun. I got on great with her, straight away. We all talked awhile then it was time to hit the hay.
The next morning I got up and I felt like Dorothy opening the door for the first time in Oz. OMG the sheer beauty of where we were...I wasn't expecting it to be that gorgeous. Unbelievably pastoral. Beautiful rolling countryside as far as the eye could see. When I flew in, I noticed England has the most gorgeous looking landscape from the air. Everything is so well defined, and it seemed all the fields were beautifully manicured. It looked like a patchwork quilt, with all the pieces differently shaped, like an interlocking puzzle. Absolutely beautiful.
Andy explained to me that the hedgerows....which were everywhere...are responsible for that clearly defined look. The hedgerows aren't like the kind we have here in PA. PA hedges are soft by comparison. UK hedgerows are full of thorns, hawthorne for example. Brutal, effective natural fencing. It's a mixed bunch of different species of hedges with long ass thorns.. They have to trim the every year, a Herculean annual task. They really define the countryside.
The patchwork quilt look Andy explained is because nothing was planned. Farms grew organically over time and borders are everything but square. It's part of the charm.
The surrounding houses are so old. Stone structures, steeped in tradition, built to last forever, no 2 alike. I saw a house with a thatched roof, just like you would see in the fairy tale books. It was like 4 feet thick. I only saw one. I was absolutely overwhelmed by the beauty and old school ways. No frame houses anywhere in that country. It's all masonry, after the fire of 1666. No asphalt shingles. Flat stone or curved tile roofing. So fn cool, words fail. I'll put pics up soon.
The roads! A 2 lane road is literally the size of a single lane here in the States. This is rural mind you. People have to back up so oncoming traffic could pass. Insane! There's hardly any traffic there but it happens enough. We had to jam brakes on one time. Which is commonplace, I got the feeling. No big deal. That would never fly in America lol.
OK so we get up in the morning and come down for tea and I had breakfast. (Andy is a lunch guy) Andy has one of those side doors in his house where the top and bottom open independently...I opened the top part and what do I see? Ripe grapes. All around the house, about the height of the lower roofline. Kilos of grapes. So I reached out and ate outside grapes...from inside the house. Too cool. I walked around his property, drinking in the beauty, and wouldn't you know it, I looked down...Every clover was a 4 leaf clover! I figured out that Andy is actually a leprechaun. He'll be 341 in 8 months
After breakfast and tea, Andy and I unloaded the rental truck, then we drove in town to drop it off. His car was there. Andy drove me around Hereford (Home of Hereford beef) and showed me some fairly amazing cathedrals and we walked around the market part of town. The architecture completely knocks me out there. Charm. Scads of it. So old. So so much history. Steeped in tradition. Old school craftsmanship literally everywhere you look. Absolutely magical for me, the detail. After he showed me around, we went to the supermarket to get food for Andy's culinary masterpiece he had planned for that evening.
Yea, the supermarket experience is much better there. The food is about the same price as here, but it's like 4 cuts above in quality. The eggs aren't refrigerated. So fresh. Yellower yolks than the organic refrigerated eggs here. They have much more refrigerated sections in their supermarkets. Real food needs refrigeration, so there's more real food. Everything is better compared to the Philly area. The supermarket food is of a much higher quality, no GMO crap, the people are much friendlier from a baseline POV, and it's utterly beautiful. Cops don't carry guns. People come first more than here, in a big way. Everyone rolls their own tobacco cigarettes. Yea, give me more o' that.
Oh did I mention the gypsys? We saw friggin modern day gypsys, complete with the funky, highly ornamated, curvy wood, horse drawn painted gypsy wagons. They were light blue. Wow! I had no idea this still went on. So apparently, on public roads, in the UK, you can just pull over....and stay a few days! What? That would never fly here! That's what the gypsys do. They sell crafts, and squeak by, avoiding taxes. And the government is OK with that. See what I mean? People come first. Wild. Unexpected. The way it should be here.
Andy went on to explain that there are 2 classes of traveling people. He called them the Travel-ese and the Roman-ese (sp?) The latter group (IIRC) is the undesirable group as they trespass on peoples property, and leave a mess. They are non traditional, travelling in gas powered Motorhomes if I understood correctly. The former group are traditional. Well taken care of horses pull their wagons. According to Andy, they are respectful and easily tolerated by the locals.
Andy's farmer stories...you gotta love these traditional farmers. If the unwanted traveling class trespasses on someone's land, they all rally together and bring out their heavy equipment and threaten to roll over their caravan lol. They stick together. Right on.
Also, there's way more sheep than people. There's sheep everywhere. Just roaming the countryside unattended. They spray paint the wool, just a little, to identify which farmer they belong to. So in a beautiful rolling green utterly pastoral hillside, there's sheep, with day glo spray paint on them lol. Eating grass, all day.
After driving in and around Hereford, we went back to Andy's place. There, he cooked us a meal I won't soon forget. I ate good while I was there, but Andy's masterpiece was easily my favorite meal of the week. Somehow he paired tenderloin and pasta and other stuff that was incredibly delicious. He paired it with this great red wine, and the combination of the food and wine really worked together to put it over the top. Absolutely fantastic.
Andy has a little Stirling engine fan thingy that circulates air from his wood stove in his fireplace. The Stirling engine needs it's base heated to work. Andy said he hasn't tried it yet. So I suggested we put it on a frying pan to test it. It works
After we had that great meal, Yvonne walked the dogs and broke out her night vision, trying to spot birds of prey. Yea, that's what we do here too lol. Yvonne is a scream. She splits wood with a hydraulic splitter, she's so good at it she makes kindling with it. What a salt of the earth woman, you gotta love her. Not that she has to, but she works part time too. You gotta respect that.
Another thing that struck me hard was how dead quiet is was there at night. No crickets! No anything! Silence. And dark. I could not see my hand in front of my face 20 feet from the house. The only thing I didn't get to see was the stars. Clouds all week. Andy said it's spectacular, you can see the gas and dust clouds...
So that was my first day there. Wow. Blown away with everything. Andy is an exceptional human being, and Madge agrees with that. I asked her if there are a lot of people like him, and she said no. He really is something else, one of my heros for sure. A more generous man you will not find, but he's also tough as nails.
I'll add day 2 at Andy's in a couple days, as well as some pics.
Part 3 is all about my magical stay with Madge and Glyn in Wales. I felt so honored when she invited me to stay at her place, wow. Far and away, it was the best trip of my lifetime, by a large margin.
Thank you Madge and Andy for... nothing less than the very top experience of my life, to date. It sounds so feeble but thank you.
So it was a dark and stormy night...
...and the drum show is over, it's Sunday night. After the Drummer night benefit thing, this is where we all split up and go our various ways. Ben Turk, David Floegal, Liam (Madges drum teacher and David's friend) Andy and I all said our goodbyes and Ben, Andy and I break down the Guru booths, and load up. Andy drove himself and I home in the rental truck, but not before we stopped for some much needed dinner. Andy's place was about 3 hours from the venue. It was dark and wet so I couldn't see how beautiful the English countryside is.
Got back to Andy's and met Yvonne for the first time. What a great couple they make. She's awesome, a lot of fun. I got on great with her, straight away. We all talked awhile then it was time to hit the hay.
The next morning I got up and I felt like Dorothy opening the door for the first time in Oz. OMG the sheer beauty of where we were...I wasn't expecting it to be that gorgeous. Unbelievably pastoral. Beautiful rolling countryside as far as the eye could see. When I flew in, I noticed England has the most gorgeous looking landscape from the air. Everything is so well defined, and it seemed all the fields were beautifully manicured. It looked like a patchwork quilt, with all the pieces differently shaped, like an interlocking puzzle. Absolutely beautiful.
Andy explained to me that the hedgerows....which were everywhere...are responsible for that clearly defined look. The hedgerows aren't like the kind we have here in PA. PA hedges are soft by comparison. UK hedgerows are full of thorns, hawthorne for example. Brutal, effective natural fencing. It's a mixed bunch of different species of hedges with long ass thorns.. They have to trim the every year, a Herculean annual task. They really define the countryside.
The patchwork quilt look Andy explained is because nothing was planned. Farms grew organically over time and borders are everything but square. It's part of the charm.
The surrounding houses are so old. Stone structures, steeped in tradition, built to last forever, no 2 alike. I saw a house with a thatched roof, just like you would see in the fairy tale books. It was like 4 feet thick. I only saw one. I was absolutely overwhelmed by the beauty and old school ways. No frame houses anywhere in that country. It's all masonry, after the fire of 1666. No asphalt shingles. Flat stone or curved tile roofing. So fn cool, words fail. I'll put pics up soon.
The roads! A 2 lane road is literally the size of a single lane here in the States. This is rural mind you. People have to back up so oncoming traffic could pass. Insane! There's hardly any traffic there but it happens enough. We had to jam brakes on one time. Which is commonplace, I got the feeling. No big deal. That would never fly in America lol.
OK so we get up in the morning and come down for tea and I had breakfast. (Andy is a lunch guy) Andy has one of those side doors in his house where the top and bottom open independently...I opened the top part and what do I see? Ripe grapes. All around the house, about the height of the lower roofline. Kilos of grapes. So I reached out and ate outside grapes...from inside the house. Too cool. I walked around his property, drinking in the beauty, and wouldn't you know it, I looked down...Every clover was a 4 leaf clover! I figured out that Andy is actually a leprechaun. He'll be 341 in 8 months
After breakfast and tea, Andy and I unloaded the rental truck, then we drove in town to drop it off. His car was there. Andy drove me around Hereford (Home of Hereford beef) and showed me some fairly amazing cathedrals and we walked around the market part of town. The architecture completely knocks me out there. Charm. Scads of it. So old. So so much history. Steeped in tradition. Old school craftsmanship literally everywhere you look. Absolutely magical for me, the detail. After he showed me around, we went to the supermarket to get food for Andy's culinary masterpiece he had planned for that evening.
Yea, the supermarket experience is much better there. The food is about the same price as here, but it's like 4 cuts above in quality. The eggs aren't refrigerated. So fresh. Yellower yolks than the organic refrigerated eggs here. They have much more refrigerated sections in their supermarkets. Real food needs refrigeration, so there's more real food. Everything is better compared to the Philly area. The supermarket food is of a much higher quality, no GMO crap, the people are much friendlier from a baseline POV, and it's utterly beautiful. Cops don't carry guns. People come first more than here, in a big way. Everyone rolls their own tobacco cigarettes. Yea, give me more o' that.
Oh did I mention the gypsys? We saw friggin modern day gypsys, complete with the funky, highly ornamated, curvy wood, horse drawn painted gypsy wagons. They were light blue. Wow! I had no idea this still went on. So apparently, on public roads, in the UK, you can just pull over....and stay a few days! What? That would never fly here! That's what the gypsys do. They sell crafts, and squeak by, avoiding taxes. And the government is OK with that. See what I mean? People come first. Wild. Unexpected. The way it should be here.
Andy went on to explain that there are 2 classes of traveling people. He called them the Travel-ese and the Roman-ese (sp?) The latter group (IIRC) is the undesirable group as they trespass on peoples property, and leave a mess. They are non traditional, travelling in gas powered Motorhomes if I understood correctly. The former group are traditional. Well taken care of horses pull their wagons. According to Andy, they are respectful and easily tolerated by the locals.
Andy's farmer stories...you gotta love these traditional farmers. If the unwanted traveling class trespasses on someone's land, they all rally together and bring out their heavy equipment and threaten to roll over their caravan lol. They stick together. Right on.
Also, there's way more sheep than people. There's sheep everywhere. Just roaming the countryside unattended. They spray paint the wool, just a little, to identify which farmer they belong to. So in a beautiful rolling green utterly pastoral hillside, there's sheep, with day glo spray paint on them lol. Eating grass, all day.
After driving in and around Hereford, we went back to Andy's place. There, he cooked us a meal I won't soon forget. I ate good while I was there, but Andy's masterpiece was easily my favorite meal of the week. Somehow he paired tenderloin and pasta and other stuff that was incredibly delicious. He paired it with this great red wine, and the combination of the food and wine really worked together to put it over the top. Absolutely fantastic.
Andy has a little Stirling engine fan thingy that circulates air from his wood stove in his fireplace. The Stirling engine needs it's base heated to work. Andy said he hasn't tried it yet. So I suggested we put it on a frying pan to test it. It works
After we had that great meal, Yvonne walked the dogs and broke out her night vision, trying to spot birds of prey. Yea, that's what we do here too lol. Yvonne is a scream. She splits wood with a hydraulic splitter, she's so good at it she makes kindling with it. What a salt of the earth woman, you gotta love her. Not that she has to, but she works part time too. You gotta respect that.
Another thing that struck me hard was how dead quiet is was there at night. No crickets! No anything! Silence. And dark. I could not see my hand in front of my face 20 feet from the house. The only thing I didn't get to see was the stars. Clouds all week. Andy said it's spectacular, you can see the gas and dust clouds...
So that was my first day there. Wow. Blown away with everything. Andy is an exceptional human being, and Madge agrees with that. I asked her if there are a lot of people like him, and she said no. He really is something else, one of my heros for sure. A more generous man you will not find, but he's also tough as nails.
I'll add day 2 at Andy's in a couple days, as well as some pics.
Part 3 is all about my magical stay with Madge and Glyn in Wales. I felt so honored when she invited me to stay at her place, wow. Far and away, it was the best trip of my lifetime, by a large margin.
Thank you Madge and Andy for... nothing less than the very top experience of my life, to date. It sounds so feeble but thank you.
Last edited:
