Gland I. Ely

The first thing you notice is that, for all its reputation, there is still plenty of Little England left to enjoy. We (myself, the guide, two other journalists – sigh – and an soon-to-be-married couple who are travelling to ‘difficult’ places to check that they really do like each other as much as they think they do) are deposited on the cut-lawns outside Ely Cathedral. This is, purportedly, one of England’s foremost remaining communities. We arrive to a hero’s welcome: A Post-War Street Party that the residents of Ely put on for virtually any visitor, but, we later learn, particularly for journalists.

Long benches, covered in bowls of “period foods” snake through the terraced streets. I try a pig in a blanket and a spoonful of neon trifle. I’m not here for the cuisine so I won’t tell you what they tasted like.

Eastern England’s spectacularly wide, white-blue sky was segmented by colourful flags hanging from ropes as the guide took us to a tea room – depressing – then the cathedral – dull – then the pub. There is a sense that the residents – understandably – feel they have to play up their fervent nationalism as a kind of horror nostalgia for their forgotten empire.

In the Horse and Groom, the well-practiced local soak finds a way to shoe horn in some faux-hatred as he asks where we’re from. He clearly has a joke prepared for every answer. I tell him I am from Aio and he tells me I’ve come to the wrong place if I’m looking for hard drugs. Which is charmingly off-kilter given our Mayor’s recent amnesties. But behind his red nosed hostility, the desperation for visitors is all too obvious. He gruffly recommends we try the Indian Pale Ale. All the food and drink in Ely has been approved by the AUFF, by the way, before you think I’m more of a risk-taker than I am. It’s been over ten years since the last tourist felt a tingling in their lymph nodes.

England relies on its traditional prejudices – a classically unsophisticated xenophobia – as it’s main source of fascination to the rest of the universe. And yet, the poorer England gets, the harder it finds it to keep hold of this, its strongest asset. It’s an uneasy relationship. The truth is – I think – that the English are sad and dying and no longer even have the will to be insular.

All of this goes some of the way to explain why the countryside here remains so fantastically genuine. It’s like something they’ve been trying to copy in the dirt-parks of Aio City. But here, there are no men pretending to forage, to ‘discover’ types of oyster mushroom that, each morning, the parkie replaces under the same badge of rotting leaves. This is not countryside as therapy.

This landscape is almost deserted, except for fungi. They grow abundantly – tree trunks are consumed by gilled cornices. There are fields so sexualised by red-hatted fungus that I had to look away.

The result is a sense of dirtiness that is not about pollution or dust but about nature – the way it ruts itself, hollows itself out. This landscape is sagging, flaking, pastoral pornography. The gateposts are rotten, seething nests. Forlorn cottages have been blackened by mould. Fields of white cabbages – still England’s premiere export and one of the few surviving vegetables – look obscene in their rows, brainless and gaping, like this might be the most honest kind of red-light district.

It made me realise that so many of us strive to feel like this. I’m reminded of the new industry – think So Lobotomy – that is springing up in East Aio, where quack-scientists will take your money to make you feel that you are not in control of your life, your opinion, your universe. You can be bigoted for the afternoon. Nausea and paranoia are becoming commodities. But these industries are hollow because they are temporary – they are paid for – and, ultimately, they still work towards making people happy, if only by contrast.

If you really crave something dangerous, something ill, something that will not fade by the middle of the week then you need to smell and hear the English countryside by night. This place is melting. It could swallow you. Humanity and fear squelch on every footpath. A local guide – ours is called Hugo (!) and has glands the size of apples – is genuinely indispensable, and not just there to make you feel like you are doing something risky.

The empire has fallen, long live the mulch.

Pim Tandor will be reporting from England for the next five weeks. Next week: London.
Flights to Ely, England run once a week from Aoi and twice monthly from Lis. A guide for the week is essential and can be arranged in advance.