Wordsley, Stourbridge, England: 3 degrees, very cold, but with a clear blue sky.
So, how do you spend a cold, wet Sunday in January in the West Midlands?
With a load of old pensioners at a community centre for lunch, and very pleasant it was too!
There appear to be numerous private community centres scattered throughout the region where my mother resides. I have now been to two with her since arriving in England, and I am not a pensioner. This community centre is just off Stourbridge’s city centre, not far from the High Street.
This has been the third time I’ve been with my mother, who organises a three-course Sunday lunch every fortnight for about 40 or 50 people. It is organised by volunteers who give up their Sunday to give a traditional English lunch to them. For a three-course traditional English meal, I think £10 is very reasonable, and the food is fresh and of high quality.
They have an industrial kitchen, and in the main hall, there are usually three long tables with 10 to 15 people seated at each table. The starter was a mixed vegetable soup, which, for me, was not as nice as it was the last time, but it was still good. The main course was roast beef with mashed potatoes, peas, carrots, a Yorkshire pudding, and gravy; very English, very tasty, and very good.
The desert was a hot bread and butter pudding with raisins and hot custard, again delicious and very English. We also had a complimentary glass of wine, as it was an old lady’s birthday, and she and her family had brought some bottles of wine for everybody to share and commemorate together with wine and cake.
It was a nice gesture, and again, everybody enjoyed everything. How good is that???
I have traditionally had a lot of contact with older people due to my classes. More than 50% of my pupils at the school in the past were retired. Even today, I have various pupils who are above 70 or 80 years of age. I think I know how to talk to old people, and I have learned that many times, old people have something to share and teach us.
If we are intelligent and patient enough to listen, we can learn something from them.
The conversation at the table was enjoyable, talking about anything from how things were in the past to how the level of mismanagement of public money is destroying England. It’s funny how I thought before going to England that it would be so different from Brazil, but in many ways, besides the weather, England and Brazil are very similar, particularly in their political and economic circumstances.
There was a draw after lunch, but neither my mother nor I won anything. The last lunch I had won a shower gel, soap, and lotion, and it is still sitting on the side of the bathtub waiting to be opened and used.
It is not a question of winning but rather enjoying being with some charming people in such a happy atmosphere, and sometimes, if possible, taking the piss. The lunch was served around 1:00 p.m., and we left a little after three. Two hours of fun and good food for only £20 for two people, not bad at all.
Instead of returning with my mother in the car, I decided to let her go alone. I wanted to walk down Stourbridge High Street and return on foot along the canal, which is about two or three miles long.
After leaving my mother and braving the cold, I entered a Wetherspoons pub called the Chequers. It is an enormous and beautiful traditional Tudor building with a classic library-style interior, featuring dark wood and stunning floor-to-ceiling windows facing the street.
I ordered a glass of wine from the island bar located in the centre of the pub and sat down near one of the windows, looking out at the High Street. While sipping my wine, I made some phone calls to Brazil.
I notice that although the pub is quite beautiful, it was also a little tatty and worn down. For me, it was a little disappointing, as it was a sign that the management company was not reinvesting money in the business. After my calls and the glass of wine,
I faced the cold again outside and left to walk down the main High Street, which, for me, was again very disappointing in comparison to my childhood memories of the past.
All the traditional businesses have disappeared, replaced by Turkish barbershops, vape stores, charity shops, and a few rundown coffee shops or cafes that are struggling to survive. For every ten unappealing shops, there is perhaps one that stands out: a rose among a sea of thorns.
I walked down the main high street and continued until I reached the canal, and then returned to Wordsley. Before arriving at my mother’s, I stopped off at a local pub and had two glasses of wine to finish off my Sunday.
When I got back, I worked on the computer for a little while, watched an episode of a detective series with my mother, and then went to bed.
Even though it was cold, it was a pleasant day, but could I do it for the rest of my life?
I don’t know!!!
In bed by midnight.
Thank you.
Thanks for reading this blog post. Please explore my other posts and share your thoughts in the comments section.
Richard
