The Drive to Bath- Day Five

I’m writing this sitting in P’s car. We’re driving from home to Bath, home of the famous Roman Baths. I had to immediately whip out the laptop and start describing what I see. You can groan at my clichés but what I see from outside the window is indeed wandering paths, spreading meadows and sunshine playing peekaboo  with the clouds. No really, the road we’re driving down is elevated and from here we can see vast fields of green streaked with lines of white – the remnants of last week’s snow. On the snaking road, at one elevated curve, there was a large happy spot of sunshine illuminating the car like it were a large spotlight from the sky. It shone on us for the briefest moment. I don’t want to spoil that thought by forcing more artless analogies. But at this moment, there are happy songs playing on the radio, I just finished stuffing my face with food, read a nice book and spoke with amma on the phone. Heaven’s spotlight is directed here this moment. Everything is perfect. However brief or impermanent they may be, I want these good times to last—in whatever form. That is mostly why all this is being written down.

We’re almost at Bath right now. On either side of the road, I see a hilly town on the entire surface of which are nestled pretty little buildings with sloping tiled roofs and chimneys. The sun is bursting out. There is green everywhere. For someone who has always been terrible at descriptions, the clouds are clearing on how this place was home to so many English language writers who made careers and literary history solely by the joy they derived from the nature surrounding them.

The buildings around us are a shade of brown—with dull pinks, reds and yellows-- that evinces feelings of warmth and cosiness. The gates and grills are all austere black. And the green is wet and dewy. The roads climb and dive without warning—I’m being treated to a constant joyride. From on top you see the town built at various levels. And from below, you drive past humble shops and cafes. Every level is a terrace of many little buildings. To my right a diverging street called Thomas Street is stubbornly lodged at a strange angle. It leads to a cul-de-sac which stands at 45 degrees to the road we drive on. Cars are perched sleepily on either side. They may be holding on for dear life, but make the job look incredibly easy. A long stretch of buildings, accessed only by stairs, by the side of the road we’re driving on stares down at us proudly. The streets are below most of these buildings. The houses are all built in distinctively Roman styles with pillars and geometrical, sloping roofs.

The road is rearing out into a formidable climb. A double-decker bus comes hurtling down cheerfully from the other direction. The town is a picture of large tiled buildings and peeling walls with splashes of white—the doors and windows are all white. We just drove down a sloping road down which I can see pyramidal church tops reach for the skies.

We passed half a dozen pubs. One is called The Trinity. Another one is called The Hobgoblin. A pub called The Bath Tap has a cartoon of a man in a bath tub reaching for the faucet. The GPS is taking us around in circles as we look to find a Chinese restaurant called The Peking.“Blue skies” my sister is chanting repeatedly, with a hint of incredulity in her voice. “…hold me like you’ll never let me go…Baby I’d hate to go”. They’re playing Leaving On A Jet Plane on the radio, idiots.

Man I suck at descriptions.