View From the Other Side... The Other Side of The Pond

by Nancy Halverson, Feature Writer

There are times when the pond actually shrinks—momentary pauses in my brain circuitry when I forget how far I am from home and how long it would take to get home. News of an untimely death from my husband's old department at the University of Waterloo travelled around the world in a matter of hours this week. Emails raced around the time zones faster than you can imagine. It's a true measure of a man and his family—how quickly any kind of bad news travels.

Thinking About Home

I was watching the Record online for the announcement and thinking of all the people who would be affected. I usually only log onto the Globe and Mail site for Canadian updates, but I sometimes need to get more local colour. I still enjoy reading about all the politics and business of Canada, but I must admit that I get drawn into the strange headlines quite often as well.

I keep a photo of my cottage lake on my computer as wallpaper, and, at times, I can feel myself just sitting on the dock, watching the world go by.

Getting There is Half the Fun

The pond shrinks for a while, but then it expands massively again when I try to get my head around the idea of actually presenting myself in person anywhere. Walking around here, sometimes I find myself thinking that I'd like to visit particular friends or come out to the STC meeting, then I smack myself in the forehead. A weekend away (in Canada) would cost me about £250 per person right now (which is actually tempting!). Summer fares are double that though, so I'm sure we'll be spending our vacations in Europe for now.

Enough about my nostalgia for my old home. You want to hear about my current home—Sheffield. As I've said before, most North Americans (me included) don't know much about England outside London. I'll share a few of my perceptions (and photos).

The Country Side

I heard an interesting statistic last week—90% of England is 'countryside' and only 10% is urban. This astounds me because the English don't build much above 10 storeys. So, the houses are tall and narrow, with small back yards (aka gardens) for the most part, and the apartment buildings (aka blocks of flats) are low-rise and packed in. Of course, all the roads are very narrow—there are many roads that reduce to barely two lanes (people still park their cars on both sides, so traffic's reduced to one lane). There are few boulevards around, and often sidewalks (aka pavements) are only on one side of the road.

Just to give you an idea of the squashed life, houses are rarely more than 20 feet wide; lots are often only 25 feet wide by 100 feet or so. Sheffield's very lucky to have many ravines and steep hills, which snake through the city dividing it up. Green swaths cut through the usual streetscape, giving the impression of lots of little districts rather than one unbroken city. It's also a very green city because of all the river valleys—and we live right on the edge of it, which gives us a lot of places where we can take Sunday walks.

The City Centre

I work in the city-centre, which has a mixture of old and new buildings. The centre of town has a public square, called the Peace Gardens—fountains and water features, and lots of places to sit and pass the time of day. Right across from the Peace Gardens are some of the old buildings, which are now shops and businesses. I think they look very European. I work about a 5 minute walk away, in a fairly new building—luckily, it's totally devoted to our company. ZOO Digital Group (I work for the software arm, ZOOtech) moved in here in June 2004, just before I joined. ZOO seems to be continually expanding, which is fun, but, we've already outgrown the building, and ZOOtech's expecting to increase it's share of both revenue and floor space in the next few months. No problem—they've knocked a door through from the third floor of our building into the next door building, and we're taking over their third floor as well. It seems that having crowded cities has some advantages.

The Lack of Forests

So, cities are squashed and crowded, and the 'countryside' is protected. Most of the English ideal of countryside is devoted to grazing sheep and grassy pastures for horses and cattle. Here in Yorkshire, the hilly geography means that farms are small and seemingly always devoted to either grain or sheep. The flatter areas of the country have more diverse farming of course, but what I miss the most is the forest. To me, country means forest—rocks and trees that hold wildlife and interesting sights. We're very lucky to live near a forested area, which covers some rather steep hills (cliffs really). My impression is that, historically, any land that wasn't practical for farming has remained in a fairly natural state.

The Industry

However, the city was founded by metal works; there were small mills dotting the rivers throughout Sheffield, which is where cutlery, iron, and steel were made. One of the local football (aka soccer) teams is known as the 'Blades' because, even today, surgical instruments and many of the blades for figure skates are made here. In some of the river valleys, there are very few signs of the ancient mills anymore; there are just a few bricks from damns or some culverts that move the water around. There are no buildings, just monuments marking the places where the mills may have stood.

The Moors

We like to wander around the moors as well as the forests, and this is truly an English taste. Moors are hills covered in low scrub—heather and ferns. At certain times of the year, it's just a mass of purple, when the heather's in flower. Most of the time, it's just various shades of green—brownish-green to full on English garden green.

This is a very, very green country. There's always something growing. It only takes 4 days without rain to qualify as a drought—trees start to wilt a little and flowers (plants) lose their vigour. But, being England, there's rarely any dry spells.

Vacation Time

We've got a vacation coming up—thankfully. We'll be doing the great English voyage—to Spain. Luckily, we have friends who live on the Costa Blanca, so we'll be well away from the usual vacationing hordes—bright pink people with too much liquor and sunshine. And, since it'll be November, there won't be that many people there anyway. Schools are out next week here—it's called the 'half-term break'. Prices are very high for vacations at that time, so we're waiting a week and going after half-term. The schools can fine parents for pulling their kids out of school for a holiday, but our principal (aka head teacher) doesn't mind us doing it, since the travel is one of the main ways we teach our kids about the world. I'm really looking forward to a week of sunshine and friends. I'll of course, I'll let you all know how it goes!

About Nancy Halverson

Nancy grew up in Toronto, but has lived in Ottawa, Melbourne, Waterloo, and now Sheffield. She has travelled through the South Pacific, Australia and Indonesia, which is where she met her husband, Ryan Wilson (another Canadian), along the way. A career switch introduced her to the STC in 1997. Her writing experience has included several contract positions and a position at Inscriber for several years. She has two daughters and has been living in England for two years.