T H I S+W E E K Mondo Weirdo: The strangest food in the world By Don George, Editor Praise the Titanic! By Doug Cruickshank Eighty-five years later, they're still going down with the ship Above the volcano By Robert Riddell Blowing off steam at Mexico's newest volcano -Books on Mexico -Getting there D E P A R T M E N T S The Surreal Gourmet By Bob Blumer It's a cocktail! It's a fruit drink! It's -- Supermartini! > Postmark: Alvescot By Amanda Castleman Down and out at Watermill Cottage -Getting there Passages: "Into Thin Air" Inside the Everest disaster By Jon Krakauer Readers' Tips and Tales Drinking and travel - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Your virtual travel agency - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - LA S T+W E E K Tuesday, May 20 If it's Tuesday, I must be tipsy By Jan Morris Jan Morris drinks her way across Europe A full list of all Wanderlust articles

Ye Olde Englande still exists in all its imagined splendor -- that is, if you overlook the busted pipes and bigoted redneck neighbors. BY AMANDA CASTLEMAN | i live in a stone cottage nestled beside a slow stream. Flowers crowd the garden and lambs gambol in the neighboring field. Flagstones, blackened wood beams and white stucco fill the interior. Even the window fittings are brass. Everything is just so in the Watermill Cottage, 20 miles outside of Oxford. Except the shower, which broke two weeks ago. Pipes grope into air, divorced from any function other than decoration. The dirt lane is so full of potholes that the garbage trucks and taxi drivers boycott it. The dishwasher, hidden behind a tasteful wood panel, has never worked, and wind whistles through gaps in the sturdy door. No, life in rural England is not the bucolic paradise depicted on Christmas cards and needlework kits. Behind the quaint façades lurk damp walls, poor insulation and uninterested landlords. Bigoted rednecks hold forth in pubs and people hate the government. Microwave dinners fill shopping carts. When you're in a pessimistic mood, it could be anywhere. Then, church bells ripple across the meadow, a reminder of the Merrie Olde Englande that drew me here. It's a pastoral fantasy that makes all too brief intrusions into the greasy blur of daily life; yet somehow the countryside projects itself sharply onto my senses, erasing memories of urban America: convenient Thai food, all-night supermarkets, city sophistication. Flattened under the weight of history and romanticism, I have wound up in a cottage two-and-a-half miles beyond the end of the most backwater bus route. With no car. Every landscape has myths, but Britain has stamped its myths on the world's imagination. The countryside has been propagandized vividly through centuries of art, literature and colonization. I'm not the first to seek the archetype, and others will follow behind, swearing about the plumbing but too dazzled to leave ... or even harass the truant landlord. Perhaps it's the purity that leaves us breathless. True, the British chopped down their native forests and ran walls over the resulting pastures, but that man-made vista has changed little since. The farms, glades and rivers of Thomas Hardy and J.R.R. Tolkien are still here, even if tract housing hovers on the edge. Grass covers Saxon ruins, disturbed only by sheep and ramblers strolling the ancient right-of-way to the next town. Residents still loathe their village's last conquerors -- the French in 1066 -- and modern planners obey guidelines set by their medieval counterparts. The fight against suburbanization soldiers on. The industrial revolution taught this nation an ugly lesson about frittering away natural beauty, and the countryside has many rabid supporters. Stringent rules restrict alterations to old buildings, and communities protest bitterly against the inclusion of modern housing estates. While most hold firm the landscape, convictions shift and evolve slowly toward the 21st century. Women work, although the restaurant check still goes automatically to the man ("feminism" is largely a dirty word outside London intelligentsia, and "Ms." is almost unknown). Vegetarian food creeps into the markets. Tolerance even grows for the silent rural gays and lesbians, though it takes forms uncomfortable to PC-manic Americans. My neighbor, Mr. Gibson, subjected me to a lecture on this topic from the pulpit of his hedge, where he dispenses traditional weather chat, Thatcher-bashing and lessons on bird behavior. One day he launched into a recitation of the cottage's former tenants and their sexual habits, lingering over the gay advertising executive who died of AIDS. "Now some folks around here, they don't like that sort. They think Hitler had the right idea. "But not me," he continued, plowing through the specter of mass-murder he had just evoked. "I say what a man does in his own home is his business. I'm an open-minded fellow. I didn't mind a gay man living across the lane. Of course, at the time I had my three boys at home and I made it nice and clear that he should keep away. He was a discreet bloke, not like the ones that make dresses for the queen. "That reminds me, there's a whole nest of gays in a nearby village. Can you imagine that?" I refrained from a lecture on the merits of my native city, Seattle, and its liberal attitude toward gays in nests or otherwise. Progressive ideas are slow to congeal in rural England and the shock of a concept too radical might set the whole process back 10 years. Especially following the recent election upset, when the Brits kissed away more than two decades of Tory rule. It's a bad idea to rock the boat in such a giddy, unsure sea, so I left Mr. Gibson's ruminating, his tolerance and the aphids. My kindly neighbor hasn't perfected his embrace of diversity, but he's at least made a start. So too does much of rural Britain slide toward the global mean. Ironically, the appreciation of other cultures and expanded horizons drains energy from local communities. Children move away -- drawn by job opportunities, social freedoms, neon lights and flats with modern amenities instead of crumbling masonry. Some towns hang on by their teeth, resisting infiltration from yuppie weekenders and tourist boutiques. Other villages succumb to infestations of "ye olde shoppes." A pitiable third category fades quietly until the general store-cum-post office folds and only a pub remains. My village, Alvescot, is in such a state of decline. The tiny cluster of cottages flanks an air force base, but offers no services to the raucous ranks of servicemen. Aside from a freak sporting goods store and the pub, commerce has no grip here. Alvescot refuses to play ball with reality. It ducks lower into the airfield's shadow and praises church volunteers who polish the brass and mow around the rare cemetery wildflowers. Local characters are frozen in this tableau. Some choose to play weekend squire, donning rubber boots and birthing livestock in muddy fields. Others are more permanent fixtures, like the Gianni brothers, who peddle firewood. They appear without warning, as the mood strikes them, in a rattling white lorry. Delivery goes on with or without you. The round, bouncing brothers leave no calling card, only faith in villagers' ability to see the lumber, guess the source and pay the bill. It's a grievous error, as I learned a few months ago, to enlist a different wood merchant, despite the inevitable frigid time lapse between your order and the midwinter morning delivery from the Giannis. Villages fiercely close their thinning ranks and absolute loyalty is demanded. Such staunchness won't stop the influx of modern life, but hopefully it will negate its worst influences. Preservation of the landscape is a good starting point, as is the safety and community of tiny villages. But the rural British have a rough road ahead (especially if they live down my lane) integrating the 21st century into their bucolic pastures. Traditional attitudes will inevitably mutate, and in this case, I think, change will be for the better. A little social tolerance, ethnic diversity and feminism would go a long way toward making this countryside truly idyllic. Then, if the local pub manages some really first-rate Thai food, I just might be persuaded to stay -- even without a working shower. May 24, 1997 Amanda Castleman edits a news and entertainment magazine, the Oxfordshire Gist. She and her husband are plotting their next domestic adventure -- a houseboat, since living in a primitive stone cottage just isn't difficult enough. Travelers and expats are often drawn to cities. Have you visited or lived in a rural area abroad? Share you experiences in Table Talk.

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