Walking the footsteps of Jane Austen after visiting the shop, we encountered an unusual character dressed in an old gray coat, frilled shirt, boots, cane, and a top hat. With his long, haggard looking white side-burns and a wild eye, I was momentarily convinced that Charles Dickens had returned to say something to me. Abruptly asking him such, he quickly said he was not Charles Dickens yet he could be Martin Chuzzlewit from the book of the same name. After a strange almost incoherent conversation due to his heavy cockney accent, I revealed my Texas home. Jumping forward, he changed accents and became a Tennessee Southern fighter in the Civil War. Looking carefully at his jacket, I saw the CSA button (Confederate States of America) and we dived into a Civil War song together filled with "hurrahs" and marching footsteps. It was all very fun and terribly strange to find a man in Bath, UK who could be British and American at the drop of a note!
We were in Bath and had just completed a tour of the beautiful Abbey where over 4,000 people were buried. The organ was huge and the architecture magnificent with its multiple archways, chapels, and stunning nave built initially in 1499 by Oliver King who dreamed of angels descending on ladders to the Abbey.
Quite a structure and still used for services, the Cathedral stands as a center point in this charming city.
Walking about the town and seeing the apartment complex owned by John Cleese and then seeing a beautiful circus (circular townhomes around a park) where Nicholas Cage once lived, we made our way toward the famous Roman Baths built between 60-70 AD and continued development for 300 years. With great amazement at the history of the area and smiling over the artifacts that revealed a problem with theft of various items as revealed by a series of harsh curses to the thieves (not sure why anyone would ever want to steal after reading these curses), I began to imagine life as a Roman leader and, sadly, a Roman slave. An aggressive but yet ironically thoughtful society, the baths served as a natural utopia for Roman leaders and cultural development. The art is beautiful, the style impressive, the rooms organized, and the system advanced for the time period. The hot water served as a respite from the cold and as a gift from the gods to encourage cleanliness and as a fountain of youth for the Romans.
But it was not to serve as anything for us except as a reminder of our own plight, a result of not having any hot water in our place of residence. No showers for any of us in the morning and all of us now staring at water which was not to be used. Hot water for bathing, but completely unavailable to us. So we stared and we considered our situation, desperate to dive in, wanting to give in to the base need for cleanliness; but wisely using restraint against our inclinations, we resisted the urge and left the Roman Baths full of thoughts of warm water, of history, and our needs for a shower. The water was close and tempting but remained out of reach.
Home to the cold, to the lack of hot water. Yet we know it will be fixed and we will soon have hot water again and maybe, just maybe, we will be a little more appreciative of our modern world, of the conveniences we often take for granted. But mostly we will likely look better (although I must admit that my hair really does look the same with or without a shower!) and certainly our odors will be more acceptable.
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