Before all hell broke loose with my cousin’s life, I had booked my car trip from her Dad’s after the funeral down to her house in Kent for Christmas. As it would be on the shortest day of the year, and I DO NOT drive in the dark in the UK if at all possible, I decided to break my journey about halfway. After much planning, phoning, and mapping, I booked us (Scout & me) in at the White Lion pub & inn in Hampton In Arden, a wee village near Birmingham.
Well, it seemed I had landed us in my first truly posh, absolutely rah-rah, tree-lined, mansion-filled, quintessential English Village. There is a large church and the church grounds are full of graves (not quite the same as a cemetery – a cemetery seems to me to be something cordoned off to one side of the church, and there was one of those too, but there were others up against the paths, or under trees in the front ‘garden’ of the church). These graves were all around the grounds and I saw one from 2021, right next to one dated 16-something – wow. Every other car parked along the street was a mud-splashed Land Rover, and all the houses were red-bricked and lit up with tasteful Christmas decorations.
The pub wasn’t quite as old as the village – the village was named in the Domesday Book in 1086, whereas the pub/inn is a mere youngster, barely 400 years old.
The stairs to the rooms had tiny little treads but risers at least 6″ high, the floors were uneven, the window panes were bubbled, and every ceiling was slanted. It was perfect! Granted, the management doesn’t stay on the premises after the pub closes, and the doors are all alarmed after midnight, which had me lying awake at 2 a.m. thinking, “I know ghosts aren’t real, but if they were, would they come in this room?” Really.
The pub itself was also very ‘country-English’. Delicious pub food, lots of beers on tap, and a clientele that seemed to dress entirely in Barbour jackets, wellies, tweed caps, and cordorouy trousers. Everyone knew everyone else, and dogs roamed about, off-leash.
I was at a tiny table with a small bench and a couple of stools. I had a book, and my wine and was just enjoying a quiet evening observing the locals. But the pub was busy, and my table’s stools were empty, so over the course of the evening two different couples sat down and joined me for a drink. One was working class and one was middle class. I am not saying that out of any sense of judgement: each couple told me where they stood on the social ladder. (!) The working class couple regaled me with stories of the past year: the deaths in the family, the nutty relatives, and it’s safe to say the husband hadn’t met a sentence he couldn’t interrupt. They were so nice and so friendly.
The middle class couple were also very pleasant to visit with – they loved Scout and we talked dogs, and travel, and COVID – it was a great half hour’s chat, before they headed off to walk home. I continue to be amazed at how friendly Brits are – I’m not sure where their reputation for coldness came from. Certainly not Hampton In Arden.