All over the four days including last Friday, I went for a programme known as HOST. To be truth, I was supposed to attend this voluntary programme last year but due to unavoidable circumstances, my HOST and I had agreed to make it last Friday. It was indeed a very edifying and eye-opening programme.
My own version of English breakfast and I was looking forward for this but was heart-broken when I only had normal cereal, porridge, toast, pastries and TEA for breakfast (I am so used to these).
This is how the plates and the cutleries are supposed to be arranged. I noticed that the spoons and the forks could come in many sizes.
Savoury vegetarian crumble. Quite astonishing!
Smoked salmon with button mushrooms.
I was rather reluctant at the beginning when I discovered that my HOST would be a lady who is around the 50s and there is no cat although it was rather amusing to know that she’s from Cheshire that is definitely famous for Alice in Wonderland and of course the grinning Cheshire cat. I reckoned negatively that she would be the sort who would scheme nefarious and dead-frightening cold-blooded murders like the one in the thick novels written by Stephen King or John Grisham or maybe like the movies – demented smiling woman who is so nice in the day but turns out to be a psychotic murderer. It is possible you see. We’re talking about the UK and you know how it is famous for the unsolved cases of serial murderers like Jack the Ripper? Cold wind always crawled against my skin when I was contemplating whether to accept the invitation or not. It really gave me quite an impact though. The chilling wind of winter really provided the unwelcome chilling impact.
Yup, that's a guitar. I wished that she had played a song for me.
Stack of classical and folk music CDs. Speaking of which, their life really revolves around music. I saw some people playing banjos and organs during the programme. And owh, don't forget the choirs.
My mum would loove this. At least Kath and mum share something in common.
Tapestries.
Tadaa!!! The LCD telly! But how I hate "the Tudors". Why? It's historically incorrect.
My bedroom. Woot!!
So I boarded a train to Frodsham at 3.00 pm. It was a 2 hour drowsy journey. I was really bored because I was not accompanied by anyone. It’s a solo journey and the weather was really convenient for a nap or sipping refreshing tea with scones. No one wanted to talk to me or even bothered what I was doing on the train. My iPod kept playing suffocating piano concertos by Yiruma and at some intervals it played the bouncy “Hush Sounds”. This was the real look of being independent. I was really sick of it. But to my wonder then, I looked through the thick panes (I don’t know what they’re called). Subhanallah! The view was breath-taking, so jaw-dropping beautiful! You can see vast green glades that stretched across the hilly environment with fluffy lamb and sheep grazing the grass, horses galloping under the sun and I was truly captivated. The striking blue colour of the sky and the wonders in front of me really provided me with a peace of mind. I just wished that the train journey would be longer.
Kath, my HOST works as a private tutor and she looks young for a woman in 50s. Crappy, I was assuming that she would hug me like some of my local friends would when they first meeting long lost acquaintances but it ended up as an awkward greeting when she was actually trying to shake my hands while I picked it up as a hug. That’s the first difference in gestures that I had noticed. Her house was really near to Frodsham’s railway station. It’s just walking distance. Frodsham was so good to be true. I mean, you can still see rustic and antique building still stood tall on the granite pavements with the Victorian-styled building outnumbered the transports in Frodsham. More or less, the place reminded me of Cameron Highlands in Malaysia.
From Kath's garden.
Camelias.
A flower bed in front of a mansion.
The "crop circle" in front of the mansion.
"The one" on top of the hill. You know, if Malaysia has hibiscus, England has roses, Wales has daffodils, Scotland has thistles and Ireland has shamrock.
One thing about the English is that they love tea. They have tea-time in their everyday schedule and they really fancy dried fruits namely currants and plums. It was funny though because I think I never had tea as frequent as when I was with Kath. I had tea as my after breakfast treat, tea after my lunch, tea for tea-time, tea after my dinner and tea before going to bed. Whether that’s normal for the English, I don’t know but tea is impassive to me. You can forget all the troubles that you had before when you are enjoying your tea. The warmness of the liquid is refreshing as it goes down your throat into your belly. I am really grateful to those who found and invented the swirling taste of tea. It’s magical just like how the Turkish found the intoxicating black gold, coffee.
Well-preserved cottages that are still functioning in Frodsham.
Expected. A tea shop.
On top of the hill. Where on my right was Manchester and on my left was Liverpool.
Some of the shops by the road in Chester.
This one is a really old building.
An auditorium. A ruin. A scar from Roman invasion. The gladiators who were slaves fought within this ring to obtain freedom.
A rhinoceros in a cage. Need to ask more?
Scooters! I miss KL for its hustle and bustle and contaminated air.
I learnt a lot from Kath, a part from the tasty variety of pastries – the Eccles cake with dried currants inside, berries strudle, soft and flaky croissants, hot cross buns, a potential lemon meringue that she called “The Lemon Thing” and the wonderful world of English pies (I had cheese and onion pies). She taught me the proper way of holding the fork and the spoon and salad. That’s a really new thing for me. I couldn’t forget the latter. We had salad every day! The first day, we had a vegetarian savoury crumble. The second day, we had smoked salmon with button mushroom (thank god!) and the last night, we had the vegetarian lasagne and it was the best dish from Kath so far (the melting cheese really made a different). I couldn’t help but to surrender to all the vegetarian dishes. I couldn’t ask for chicken dishes simply because there was no way that Kath could find butcher shop that sells halal chicken and it was ridiculous too because how could she understand what halal means? In order to ease everything and to be safe, I made a request that we would have fish and vegetarian dishes for dinner. And I didn’t think that what I did was really safe because I almost consumed an ice-cream that contained pork. Kath wasn’t looked so pleased when I refused the ice-cream because it contained pork. Deeply, I was also feeling displeased because she wasn’t attentive of my e-mails that I cannot consume ANYTHING that contains pork. So, am I to blame or it was she who was to blamed for being indifferent? You see, I let her drink wine for two days in a row because I had been listening to my conscience that that was the right thing to do and I even had put myself in her condition but why couldn't she just have that little sensitivity or what people may call as common sense when I told her about my diet?
“Why don’t you Muslims consume pork? Does the Koran tell you why the pork is not consumable?”
“I am not telling that I am religious but when someone says that they choose a religion for example Islam, we just have to be dedicated and accept all the rules in Islam. I mean…if we start to wonder and questions all the rules in the religion that we had choose, then it is also possible that we might even wonder all the trifle things. Who knows? You might even be lead to heresy.”
Believe me; I would love to tell her the other concrete reasons why we Muslims cannot consume pork:
1. It is written in the Koran and Muslim life is guided by the Koran and the hadith.
2. Pigs live in sties and they even eat their own faeces.
3. Pigs have diseases and unhealthy. This is scientifically proven.
4. It is written in the bible too that Christians should neither consume swine nor get drunk.
5. Pig is one of the creatures on Earth that shares its mate with its neighbours.
I was scared if I told her all these reason; she might feel offended, well of course she was just testing me. I believed Kath knew about these and pretended to ask me, hopefully.
Personally I was really battling with faith. Most of the time, although there were sometimes we discussed about life but I could remember well that we mostly talked about religions and she even brought me to several churches and a massive Cathedral at the centre of the city in Chester. I didn’t know why she did that. Her real intention was vague but I to some parts, appreciated the lifetime experience to be able to enter a church (though I’d been into one in Spain) and to see how a service was conducted, I thought it was pretty much okay. However, I was rather offended because I was brought into four Christian monasteries! I am a Muslim, for god’s sake! And to bring me into those places without considering my feelings, I was really disappointed. I respected her virtue as a Christian, I respected her practices as Christian, but to some extents, and it was utterly frustrating to be dragged into a condition where I had to observe their monasteries like they were mine. What was the point actually?
Birdies! Coo! Coo!
Which one was more interesting? The swan or the boat with Lady Diana and Mark Twain as the main attractions?
Okay, let's just move on from the blue part of the programme. Now, what was great about meeting and knowing Kath was that we shared a lot in common. I like novels and she loves it too. She likes being at home and I like it too. She taught me how to play and score in a game called “Scrabble”. I know it sounds odd but I am not good in Scrabble. So she taught me few tactics and strategies and I even almost an inch away from beating her. I had been leading throughout the game up until my “trump card”, as if came out and had left me scratching my head the last few minutes before the game ended. Here is a good advice. If you get a “Q”, you should be panicked because it’s almost completely impossible to start a word with a “Q” if there’s no “U”. Trust me! Alright, just look into your dictionary. You’ll be shocked.
This is no ordinary letter box. You can even make a call from it and it used to have a machine that would sell stamps. There are not many like this in the UK. Kath told me that every letter box will have the royal name's engraved on it. For example, this one has a GR. This means, the letter box comes from King George's era. Cool, right?
Spring in Frodsham was splendid. You can see lots of daffodils from different assortment of yellow spreading in the town but I still can’t see any cat, only big bushy dogs from strange hybrids (mutants, NOT). When Kath brought me to the large city of Chester on my last day, I didn’t even spend any money in Chester (minus the park and ride bus ticket). The shops were all for filthy rich people and you know how critical my money level is. I don’t even spend a buck for anything. Not even at the charity shop. So far, here’re my expenditure for my journey:
Snickers bar = £0.79
The Cat Book = £1.50
Tickets to Chester = £1.60
Tickets to Frodsham and Coventry = £26.50 (with railcard)
Public bus tickets = £3.20
Overall = £33.59 and that’s approximately equal to RM167.95 ∑(O_O；)
Something for a changer. A souvenir from Cheshire. It's cheap and has pictures of all sorts of cats! Even the tailless Manx cat.
Kath was really patient with my behaviour and especially in terms of our communication. I am not yet a fluent English speaker but she made a lot of effort to reduce her accent and even tried to enunciate in such a manner that I felt rather bad that she had to do everything just for me. Kath was a great HOST, a great and strong woman and she handled everything impressively maybe with the help from her past experiences with international students and a Muslim Malaysian previously (who wore the hijab 24/7 and I had to make an explanation to Kath why I chose not to wear the hijab with her and she had mistaken me for a modernised Muslim. Sigh). When she even searched for menus that were suitable for vegetarians, I was indeed touched. But rather, when I discovered that she was a little bit pedantic and fussy in her works and even loudly announced her next move or her surprising “monologue”, that’s the ugly part of her. Sort of but who am I to judge anyone when I, myself is irritably flawed?
HOST, is recommended if you’re up to challenges and is prepared for the worst.
＼（＾∀＾）メ（＾∀＾）ノ
No comments:
Post a Comment