Notes from a Small Island: Chs. 1 to 5

Soon after attending a friend’s wedding in Yorkshire, I found and enjoyed Bill Bryson’s “Body, a User’s Guide” in a few days.

So when I saw this Bill Bryson classic on the bookshelf, I couldn’t resist taking it down.

I had first come across “Notes from a Small Island” some 20 years ago. I hadn’t visited the UK then; re-reading it now feels very different.

I enjoyed Bill Bryson’s sense of humour, which carried the narrative through an otherwise quite drab period of 20th century English history. I don’t know to what extent Bryson was exaggerating, but apparently unions were at one point so powerful that employers weren’t sure about how people they were actually employing!

Bill Bryson’s encounter with the UK also harks back to an earlier, quieter age. It is hard to imagine someone without any qualifications being drafted into becoming a male nurse for mental patients now: that was how Bryson’s career started.