England: Day Four





Our London hosts, Tom and Rachael, generously send us on our way to Oxford with bellies full from a(nother) hearty English breakfast. The Brits are either unafraid of consuming sausage, and lots of it, or they are just showing off. The reasons for me to like these folks continues to mount. Though blander than I am accustomed, I find that English food is nowhere near as poor as some Americans report. This fallacy is likely a myth first concocted and perpetuated by a Cajun cayenne-junkie.

I’m starting to get the hang of ordering my coffee properly: “Americano white, please. Cheers.” In my fumbling attempts to quietly assimilate and count out correct change, at no point do I get the sense I am putting any employee out in my struggle to articulate my food, drink, or book order. The English further cement in my mind their reserved, level-headed, and patient nature. I suppose a thousand-year-old culture has a way of tempering the soul.

A word on the English coin system: though pockets-full could readily drag a man’s beltless pants down to his ankles, the English pound is an absolute delight, what with its significant weight in the palm of the hand, the carved Latin phrasing on its scored sides, the Queen’s profile (God save her), and gold color. The £1 coin is a thing of substance; it says “I matter.”

At no point on this tour do Andrew and I have a drive longer than three hours, but the peculiar English (or European?) employ of roundabouts makes for seemingly longer periods in the car. It puzzles me that the Brits have not yet given these circular marvels a proper nickname as they have with their “Tube,” or “Chunnel”; I hereby propose “Roundie.” Over the course of our ten days here, our longest roundie-free, uninterrupted stretch of motorway driving is a scant 27 miles. Every other stretch of road, even in remote townships, involves hurtling through roundabouts spaced every foot or so, give or take. That’s to say nothing of the incredibly confusing signage thereof. I’m glad Andrew is not only doing all the driving, but has been here before to make sense of the road signage that is no less alien to me than an assortment of crop circle patterns. To further confuse the average hyper-ventilating Yankee driving in this country, each roundabout is utterly unique, and at no point does any sign resemble another. It all looks like cuneiform. The Brits did, after all, crack the code of the Zimmerman Telegram (thus dragging the United States into WWI), so I have to trust them, though I don’t always understand.

IMG_4991We at last reach Oxford, the city of incomparable medieval spires, stone buildings, and 800-year-old college quadrangles where, oddly enough, no one is playing hacky-sack. We park across the boulevard from The Eagle and Child, a pub made famous (to us Americans, at least) by the Inklings. Entering the establishment, I am, for pressing reasons, more interested in its loo than its lore, while Andrew beelines for the Rabbit Room, less a “room,” more a hallway. He is intent on locating a small white publication hiding a letter he wrote two years earlier. Having since been signed by numerous fellow wanderers aware of the letter’s cached existence, Andrew is eager to find it tucked away on the upper shelves among the other smattering of books. Dining patrons curiously keep an eye on this tall, stubbled, Swedish-looking man hovering over their fish and chips, oddly but earnestly scouring the bookshelves above their heads and their half-pints of ale. Perplexed, Andrew can’t find the book, at last conceding defeat, but it disturbs him greatly, as it should. Why would anyone take an innocuous small book containing a handwritten letter?

England, on this day, lives up to its reputation of cold, wind, and rain. We meet the host and promoter of our two Oxford shows, Micah Coston—an American Oxford man donning scarf and umbrella—near the spot where Thomas Cranmer and pals were burned at the stake as heretics in 1556. The history lover in me shows outward solemnity as Micah tour-guides us, but inside I am giddy, not at the thought of that horrible event, but at the existence and passing of real time, of standing in the presence of the past. That one of the world’s significant moments occurred on this exact plot of earth some 500 years earlier—the very spot where I now stand in my new, not-at-all-broken-in sneakers, waterproof coat, hot coffee in hand, with friends—is hard to fathom. Time moves on, it always moves on, is never static, and we live our lives, making decisions with no real concept of the repercussions half a millennium from now. I find this to be a remarkable truth. But it is cold and miserable outside, and I—remember, Andrew was the first to dub me “Pappy”—am more than willing to escape the elements.

Walking on, cowering beneath the rain along Broad Street, we enter Blackwell’s, a multi-level bookstore where I finally—miracle of miracles, I made it four days without a single book purchase!—buy my first book, Taste and Technique in Book Collecting (John Carter, 1948). This is the first of what will, in the end, be an unholy amount of books I will acquire in England. I did, after all, tell the customs agent I was here as a book buyer.

Our show that night is at Illyria Pottery, a fully-functioning artisan pottery shop owned and operated by husband-wife duo Micah and Katie Coston. We arrive and help clear the open showroom floor of every table, display, and handmade piece. I brag to Katie that I own “#4” of the original small batch of mugs she made for the Rabbit Room, circa 2009. Before the show, the Costons take us around the corner to a pub called The Rickety Press for dinner. IMG_4996I gasp, as there are shelves of books everywhere. In a restaurant! This scenario—needing to be polite and friendly—is cruel to bibliomaniacs like me; I can barely order my food or avoid being an absolute oaf by getting up and scouring the shelves over other patrons’ fish and chips. Andrew and I play the first of two shows on separate nights on Illyria’s hardwood floors. It is a treat to sing in a room like this, what with the sound, and notes, and songs having nothing to dull them, so they just bounce around, off every hard surface in the room, taking their sweet time disintegrating.

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Agreeing to get an early start the following morning, AP and I barely sleep, knowing that a Welsh book town, Hay-on-Wye, is our destination for Day Five. I am a 42-year-old man, and I have butterflies in my widdew tummy.


[Day One]
[Day Two]
[Day Three]



  1. Hunter

    Eric and Andrew: the book in the Rabbit Room was there as recently as October. It was on the upper bookshelf on the right-hand side of the room you face as you walk in from the entrance.

  2. Emily

    Oxford. One day, I hope to touch it and feel it like Sheldon Vanauken described it in A Severe Mercy. Thanks for the glimpse.

  3. Pete Peterson


    Thanks, Hunter. When Drew Holcomb and Nate Dugger were there just two weeks before us, they stopped in and signed the letter. It kills me that after almost two years, someone stole it in that two-week span of time. If you’re out there, please send it (anonymously, if you must) to the Rabbit Room. Please?

  4. Amanda

    May I suggest that there are so many ‘interruptions’ on the motorway because there are places to go in other directions every few miles, as opposed to driving for countless hours on highways where, even if there was a turn off, there would be nothing to see. (sorry Kansas). Four-way stops are equally non-sensical to me! You are going to l.o.v.e. Hay-on-Wye. Oh my, I hope you’ve got a big suitcase!

  5. Loren Warnemuende

    It’s so funny to me how a number of your confused/amazed impressions of England are similar to mine here in Guadalajara, Mexico: the weight of coins–so many coins!, roundabouts (we have them with stoplights, go figure), and confusing signage.

    Love these pictures of your trip!

  6. Ryan Thomason

    Andrew and Eric,

    My wife, Madison, and I were just in Oxford at the end of March. It brings tears to my eyes to read your blog as I fell in love with the city. I can feel my blood rush as I am remembering walking into Blackwell’s, seeing the cross in the middle of the street next to Baliol college where the three were martyred. We, too, ate at the Eagle and Child and I, too, could not find the book. People were staring at me as I was standing on the booths looking through every white book I could find. I was so disappointed.

    I talked with you (Andrew) a bit when you were in Chattanooga playing at Northshore Fellowship. Wish I could sit and discuss this wondrous place. Cheers!


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