Brideshead Revisited

I had caffeine yesterday. Which meant I was awake a lot during the night when I should have been sleeping. Which meant my brain was on overdrive. Which meant I had lots of random thoughts that became BIG THOUGHTS. Which meant I reflected way too much on life and death and unfulfilled dreams.

Thus my discourse on the bucket list. I hate the name “bucket list”. Hey, let’s talk about me kicking the bucket! “Things to to before I die” doesn’t sound any better. “Life list” is better but maybe too…I don’t know…not meaningful somehow even though it sounds like it should be.

While looking for images of buckets lists that weren’t stupid and/or gruesome, I saw the motivational phrase “Collect experiences, not things”. Okay. I think most things on my list are experiences. Or I can rephrase them to become experiences. As you will see in a bit (really), one of my list entries includes a basket, so I decided that the idea of collecting and the notion of a basket work well together, so I shall call my list a basket, and as I collect experiences they go in my basket. It’s my basket case, so to speak. Just to be clear, I’m not calling myself a basket case, I’m saying I HAVE a basket case. A metaphorical receptacle, container, collection space for my memories of once-in-a lifetime dreams come true.

I collected many things for my basket this last summer on our trip to England:

-A visit to the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. Every bit as amazing as I expected, and so much to see that we had to pick and choose and miss some things. And of course we made it to the cafe. The coffee was pretty good!

-Finding and shopping at London’s oldest bookstore, Hatchards, booksellers since 1797. Wow. Yes, books were purchased. But the point was the experience of going to the bookstore and soaking in the atmosphere of literary history. And you’ve gotta love a bookstore with a whole wall of P.G. Wodehouse books. Can’t have too much Jeeves and Wooster, ever!

-Conveniently for my basket case, Hatchards and the venerable purveyor of gourmet provisions Fortnum & Mason are neighbors. Two list entries with one stone…

I have been wanting to go to Fortnum & Mason and put together a hamper of their delicacies ever since I first read James Herriot’s All Creatures Great and Small (first published in the United States in 1972). The television adaptation first aired in 1978.

As I remember it, which could be wrong (but since it’s how I remember it I’m going with it), James and his boss/mentor Siegfried compete with each other, vying to ingratiate themselves with the wealthy Mrs. Pumphrey and her spoiled, fat, flatulent Pekingese named Tricki-Woo.

When Mrs. Pumphrey is especially pleased, a food basket (see, basket, I told you it baskets would be relevant) from Fortnum & Mason arrives at Skeldale House for the vets. I always imagined such mouth-watering treats in that basket, or hamper as they refer to it. I longed to see the wonderland of Fortnum & Mason.

In other English novels along the way, I’ve read other references to the hampers from F & M. The store was more than I hoped for–4 floors of foods, drinks, housewares, and best of all, the hamper section.

You can get pre-packed hampers of various assortments or choose the bespoke option (British for “made to order”). Sadly, travel companion Bob wasn’t feeling great when we were at the shop, so we left hamperless. But I was there! And I eventually ordered a hamper to be delivered to the U.S. when we got home. Is this collecting a thing, not an experience? Far from it. Yes, there are delectables to eat and a hamper to keep, but it’s about the experience of going to the store, of ordering the hamper, waiting for it to arrive, unwrapping it…

-If heaven exists, I am sure it smells like chocolate. On our canal boat adventure, we found a whole Welsh town, Chirk, that smells like chocolate. I didn’t even know that was on my basket list until we went there. At first we couldn’t identify the warm, sweet, comforting scent in the air. Then we saw the sign–headquarters of Cadbury Chocolate.  I now want every town on the planet to smell like chocolate! (And I also think “The Town that Smelled Like Chocolate” would be a great title for a Hallmark Channel Christmas movie.)

-Visit a castle. Check. Also in the chocolatey town of Chirk. Chirk Castle.

-How to top all of this? Spend a few days in Oxford. Several items experiences for the basket. Just being in Oxford is hard to describe. It’s difficult as an American to imagine how old things are there. Wandering around the city and the various colleges of Oxford University, you just feel smarter. My first impressions of Oxford of course have literary roots–Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited (1945). The 11-part television series (1981) is still one of my favorites.

And there are others, such as the Inspector Morse books (and television show) and the Endeavor television show (prequel to Inspector Morse), both set in and filmed in Oxford. Another source of my Oxford fascination–Jerome K. Jerome’s quite funny Three Men in a Boat (1889),  made into a hilarious film by the BBC in 1975, with Tim Curry, Michael Palin, and Stephen Moore as the eponymous three men on a rowing holiday on the Thames.

There are other experiences, of course, that have been added to the basket. For example, my lifelong dream to see Paris, finally achieved in 2014. Everything I imagined and more. Thank you (merci beaucoup), Bob.

There are still experiences to add to the basket. Going up in a hot air balloon has been on the list for years. And that brings up another basket–the one attached to the balloon. I hope it’s well attached, just saying.

In my younger days, seeing U2 in concert was on the list, but I’ve outgrown that one. I can’t deal with arena concerts anymore. I’ve become old and grumpy about crowds and noise. I did finally get to see Peter Gabriel perform, and check that off my list, at the much easier to manage Greek Theater in Berkeley in 2011. And he was great. I sang along with every song, and Bob was a good sport about it.

At the top of the list–finish my PhD before I turn 60. I don’t want to be the oldest person in the world still in graduate school! I dream of retiring to a house in the country, adopting a rescue goat, designing and building a she-shed, finally learning to speak French well. And getting around to reading War and Peace, and Moby Dick. Yes, both. I can handle big fat books–reading one now.

We all have dreams. Some seem outrageous (my vegan food truck dream). Some are lofty (end animal homelessness). Some are silly (rewatch the television series Gilmore Girls from start to finish).

That’s the great thing about your bucket, your hamper, your basket, your life list, whatever you want to call it. The possibilities are endless–the basket can hold anything you dream. It’s up to you to find a way to make the dream come true.

Dream small, dream big. But do dream.