Hugh Thomson

In England’s green and pleasant land

The idea came to me after I had just got back from South America after a long trip to Peru.  Perhaps because I was badly jetlagged, everything about England looked strange, different — and certainly worthy of as much exploration as I would give to a foreign country.

The few other times I’ve ever had really bad jet lag — the sort where you walk in a trance, as if under water and sedation — have been when I’ve travelled abroad, not travelled home.  The only cure then has been total immersion in the new culture.

So I felt like plunging into England — and to do so by the darker, underground ways, like a mole, tracking the older paths.

It was easy to live in the countryside, as I did in Oxfordshire, and not know what was stirring beneath its surface.

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