Canterbury Tales

Yesterday morning I hied myself off to the venerable heart of Anglicanism to take an American standardised test -- three hours of multiple choice questions on things that I learnt in my first year and have since completely forgotten, taken after having woken up at 4:55am in order to catch the 5:41 train from London Victoria. Oh and in way of sustenance one very bad coffee from Canterbury East railway station; my stomach kept growling embarrassingly through the test but then I wasn't the only one (quite a number of us had stumbled out of that 5:41 train!).

After the test I wandered into the town centre (it is a tiny little place, as far as I can figure out it consists of the historic town centre bordered by the old Roman city walls, with a garden, a modern shopping complex, and the cathedral), bought myself a hot-dog by way of further sustenance, and made my way to the Cathedral. It was great! I bought a little two pound official guide and walked all around it reading everything I was supposed to read and looking at interesting gargoyles and archbishop tombs. I even lit a candle in one of the chapels for 20p. Heh. Although I am not religious at all, I have to say that I can identify with the peace and spirituality of some places of worship -- they are calming places, and you can see that they were built to commune with God. I stood upon the site of Thomas Becket's martyrdom and gloried in the movie-like drama as the guide book told me that "at dusk on 29 December 1170, Henry II's knights burst in through the cloister door behind you... they violently attacked him with swords, eventually killing him on these stones". I didn't get to see a good section of the cathedral, particularly the corona chapel (build to house St Thomas' corona, or top of his head, which is somewhat gruesome surely), because there was a choir and musical accompaniment rehearsing Bach's Magnificat blocking the way, but on the other hand I got to hear Bach's Magnificat from the voices of men and babes (babes here referring to little boys and not curvy women, although they would serve similar singing purposes). I shall stop now before I make too many jokes about a sacred place and inadvertently offend some of you!

On the train ride back to London a young father and his little four-ish daughter were sitting near me. Overheard as I drifted in and out of sleep, tired by the 5am start, the test and the tourism:
"Daddy, when are we going in a tunnel?"
"Soon, darling."
"Daddy!"
"Yes, darling?"
"It's gone all dark!"
"It's a tunnel."
"Why has it gone all dark?"
"We're in a tunnel, angel."
"Oh! Now I can see again!"

At first I thought this was impossibly cute, but after several tunnels and several repeat performances in the same high-pitched shrieking little girl voice, I thought it was just impossible.

As we got off at London Victoria:
"Daddy, where is that girl going? That black girl." (referring to me! I always thought I was yellow. Or brown.)
"I don't know, dear. I don't know her."

You know, I always did want to have kids at some point, but sometimes I wonder.