England

I wrote these travel notes to record impressions of going back to Britain, the Netherlands and Hawai’i after spending the last three years living and working in Fiji. I wondered what those places would look like to someone travelling to them for the first time from Fiji, a country that is different in so many ways. My guess is that a Fijian would probably consider it impolite to give some impressions. However, I am neither Fijian nor polite, so these are my main impressions.

I arrived in Cambridge on Sunday 8th December on a cold, grey day and dropped off my cases in a guest room at my old college, Clare Hall. I needed to eat and buy a few things so I walked into the centre of town the way I had so many times as a research student, along Burrell’s Walk and Garret Hostel Lane. The contrast with Fiji could hardly be greater – feeling cold for the first time since leaving the UK, no flowers outside and trees with no leaves, old buildings made of stone and brick, roads with no potholes. The first surprise was how busy it was. It was a Sunday and yet almost all the shops were open and crowds were out shopping with the usual fierce intensity of Christmas shoppers.

I overheard someone mention a Carol service at noon and so, after picking up an electrical adaptor at Dixons in Lion Yard, I headed for Great St Mary’s. On the way I passed Holy Trinity Church and saw that a service was about to start there. I went in and was offered a mince pie and a cup of tea and chatted to the people serving. My next surprise was the service, which was different from anything I have experienced in an Anglican church before. The carols were familiar and enjoyable to sing, but the interview with a visitor from South Africa, talking about a Christian discussion group and the chatty, everyday style of the vicars was unfamiliar. It was an interesting experience to be in such an old church, with its stained-glass windows and ancient stone walls, yet part of a new style of service.

After the service I went back to the market square and sat outside one of the stalls, eating chips and beans, and drinking hot tomato and basil soup with a freezing wind blowing around, thinking how pleasant it all was, including the cold – very different from what I had expected.

I found myself impressed by the age of the buildings (there are no old buildings in Fiji), and the sense of stability and continuity they give, despite the many obvious changes that have taken place in the 11 years since I was last there. Cambridge is more prosperous – new homes and businesses have sprung up, more people have expensive cars, the shops are full of expensive goods with comfortable people buying them and the public places are well kept.

The ethnic make-up of the town has changed too. There are many more Asians, apparently Indians and Chinese, but others too. This is reflected in the make up of Clare Hall graduate students also.

However, my impression is also that the town is less pleasant in some ways. It is most obvious at night when crowds of drunken youths roam the streets and it is clear that it would take very little for fights to break out. There is nothing new about that – there just seem to be more of them. Indeed, one night while walking around town with my friend, Jacky Bock, we had to walk around a fight, which had spilled out of one of the city centre pubs.

When Marijke joined me for a few days before going to Holland, we compared notes. We agree that, overall, people here (Cambridge in England and Forres in Scotland where she was staying) are much less friendly and less helpful, more rude, impatient and aggressive than people in Suva – a town of roughly similar size to Cambridge. Cambridge is one of the best places in the world to be an academic, but otherwise we would not come here.