I set Tuesday as the day to go to Durham because rain was predicted and I thought a cathedral would be a better place to spend a rainy morning than tromping around Berwick on the city walls.  My interest in Durham cathedral began with Bill Bryson and was encouraged by Sue. I had read and heard that it was magnificent. But then I find that all the cathedrals are.

When I got off the train in Durham, it was indeed raining and I wasn’t feeling well. I didn’t fancy the walk from the station to the cathedral and evidently, I wasn’t the only one because there was a shuttle available. The bus driver—Geoffrey—proved to be a helpful acquaintance. He took me to the cathedral and showed me how to walk back into town and where to catch the bus back to the train.

My first impression was that Durham was heavy and dark. It’s Romanesque and has the earliest surviving rib vault ceilings, which always fascinate me.  They are Bach in architecture. Barchitecture.

Barchitexture

The Venerable Bede is (finally) resting there. The Venerable Bede was a monk and scholar who influenced both Chaucer and Shakespeare. English majors can’t get through their degree without reading his name in footnotes and wondering who the heck he was.

To St Cuthbert the “finally resting” is perhaps most apt. He did some traveling after his death. A monk and scholar, Cuthbert was buried at Lindisfarne (Holy Island) where he had been Prior. The head of St Oswald, king of Northumbria, was tucked into the coffin for safekeeping. Seven years later when St Cuthbert’s body was exhumed for travel to Durham, he was found to not have decayed at all and was still clutching the head of St Oswald. I have no reliable intel as to the condition of St Oswald’s head, leading me to assume it looked like Norman Bates’ mother. Both were moved to Durham cathedral.

St Cuthbert with St. Oswald’s head (presumably) It’s not clear to me what happened to St Cuthbert’s head

I don’t know what he thinks he is doing amongst the saints and kings in Durham Cathedral but the enormous reclining figure of a 19^th century headmaster of Durham School sprawls in the nave. I wondered if his ego was as big as the statue but perhaps he had nothing to do with its creation and placement.

Robert Britton

Robert Britton’s little friend

When I emerged from the cathedral, it was bucketing down. I hurried to the bus waiting on the other side of the square. Who should be in the driver’s seat but my man, Geoffrey? He left me in town with instructions of where to get the bus for the train station. He pointed out the Sainsbury local and advised me where I could get the best fish and chips—Bells —and set me down in the rain.

I didn’t want fish and chips, I wanted hot soup. I found it at Vennels, a crowded café hidden down a narrow alley. I was advised to bag a table before I ordered at the counter. A woman who was leaving a small table in the corner, waved me over to her.

“Would a jacket over a chair be enough to save this table?” I asked her.

“Oh, you go order,” she said. “I’ll wait until you come back.”

I ordered a vegetable-barley soup and sat down at the table. “Thank you so much,” I said. “This was so kind of you.”

“Women traveling alone,” she said. “We look out for each other.”

Elizabeth sat with me and we chatted while I ate the very tasty soup. This was the second time in two days I had experienced the kindness of strangers; in both cases, women looking after women. It gave me a warm feeling for Northumberland.

I never made it to the Sainsbury local because I found a farmer’s stand in the Market Square. I bought carrots, peas, apples and bananas to take with me to Holy Island the next day. I’d been advised there was no place to buy fresh produce on the island and I need my fresh produce.

Finally, I was on the train on my way back to Berwick, feeling worse by the minute.  A half hour past Newcastle, the train stopped. We waited. And waited. A voice came on the address system to say there was water on the line and we were awaiting the technicians to see what could be done, if anything. If anything. What did that mean? The staff came down the aisle passing out forms for us to fill out regarding our destinations and situations. I asked what was going on.

“They’re trying to decide if they can clear the water or if we have to go back to Newcastle and put you on buses. If we have to go back, they will refund your train ticket.”

I leaned my head against the window and closed my eyes. The tea cart came along and I had a cup of restorative tea. I got out the stash of postcards I’d been carrying around and set out to feverishly write six of them. Postage on international postcards had gone up twice since I had last been in the U.K. a year and half ago. The few stamps I had from then needed so many additional stamps, there would have been no room for a post card message. Then again, that would have been an improvement on the whines that went out that day from my first-class seat on the train.

Finally, the train began to move and was only two hours late getting into Berwick. I had that peculiarly English experience of gathering up my things, dis-embarking the train and walking home, which, in my case, was down some stairs and around the corner.

More images from Durham Cathedral

Royal Border Railway viaduct, Berwick-Upon-Tweed AND the view from my bedroom window

It must be said at once that the Tweed is a tidal river, not a fabric or some reason to make a joke about rightly silly British place names of which there are hundreds; this just isn’t one of them. Berwick-Upon-Tweed is in Northumberland, in northeast England and two miles from the Scottish border. The general area is referred to as The Borders because through the ages the border has moved between the Scots and the English too many times to get into here and because I don’t actually know how many times. Berwick itself changed hands 13 times from the 13^th to the 15^th centuries– reading from my Berwick Chamber of Trade Town Map and Mini-Guide.

The original medieval walls were fortified by the Tudors and they remain today, making it possible to walk all the way around the old town on its walls. That’s always fun. One other unforgettable feature is the wind. The wind blew so fiercely one of the days I was there, I staggered down off the walls because I was afraid that I was going to lose my balance.

My first morning in Berwick, I went to the train station, which was just up a flight of stairs and around the corner from Castle Vale House, to inquire about trains to Durham and to ask about the Holy Island bus schedule, the next two places on my itinerary. Here I made friends with the railway staff and met Graham who drives a bus on Sunday. Graham walked me to a spot where I could get onto the old town walls to begin my walkaround.

Mozart on the ramparts, Berwick-Upon-Tweed

It was gorgeous: grass, garden, trees, trails and parks everywhere. I stayed on the walls until I got to the ramparts.

Holy Trinity Churchyard from the Ramparts, Berwick

Distracted by a churchyard, I found the next egress from the wall and walked back. When I got inside the Holy Trinity Parish churchyard, bells began tolling. Not the usual resonance, these were electric bells. I was to learn later that the church was Cromwellian, which means there is no steeple, tower or church bells; i.e. the bells you pull with ropes. Inside there is no huge cross. Cromwell was such a killjoy.

The tolling of the bells came simultaneously with my needing a toilet so I went into the church where I ran into the vicar. He directed me to the “Ladies.”

“What are the bells for?” I asked

“There’s a service at ten.”

Inside the toilet there was no toilet paper. (I’m always so glad when I remember to check.) I went back to the vicar.

“There’s no toilet roll,” I said.

“Oh, that won’t do.” He took me to another building.

As I was washing my hands, I thought, “Oh, crap, I expect I should go to his stupid service.”

Gentle readers, I went to Morning mass—it’s an Anglican church but I guess they still say “mass,” not “eucharist” or “communion”. There were five of us: three elderly men, me and the vicar. To say that I started out with an irreverent attitude is putting it mildly. (What on earth is he kissing when he kneels down there behind his thing? What the hell, we have to stand up? Oh yes, when the gospel is read; that’s so silly etc.) But as the short service went on, I became mildly ashamed of my attitude. Here was a vicar doing what vicars do (my hostess at the Castle Vale House told me he would be reading the mass to an empty church if no one had been there) and here were some elderly men to whom morning mass had purpose and meaning. I can’t imagine what they thought I was doing there; I knew some of the responses and ritual but I was clearly not well-oiled. We were all just people. We passed the peace and then it was over. The vicar came and sat with us and began talking about football (soccer).

It’s a funny old world.

I walked into the old town to the high street, called Marygate (scene of a recent Vera episode for you Vera fans) and hit the jackpot: Sugar Mountain, a confectionery. Was this a reward for my going to church?

In a café I had some rather tasteless lentil soup and horrid watery greyish tea served to me by an adolescent boy with no people skills who I nevertheless felt sure would develop into a fine man, I don’t know why. Maybe my recent conversion at Trinity Parish church made me less critical of the human race.

Also, I had had a conversation in Sugar Mountain with the teenager behind the counter who looked at me wide-eyed and admiringly.

“You’re from America? Oh, I want to go there!”

“Well,” I said. “I wouldn’t mind living the rest of my life in Berwick.”

“Oh god, ick. Why?”

“Did you grow up here?”

“Yeah, I’ve been here my whole life. I can’t wait to get out. I want to go to America!

“I’m sure you will get there,” I said.

I have grand hopes for both of the young people I met in Berwick.

If you re-call, I had gotten sick while on Mull and by the time I had finished my tour of Berwick, I felt awful so I went back to Castle Vale House and slept for three hours.

In the evening, I decided I would walk to the closest place I could find that looked like they had decent meals. I found “Coulls,” advertising the finest fish and chips in town. I had Minestrone and chips. (Chips are fried potatoes.) When I went to the till to pay, the girls there said, “Your bill has been taken care of.”

“What do you mean?”

“That woman who was sitting over by the window—she paid for it.”

“Why?”

They shrugged. “Kindness?”

I remembered the woman who had been sitting over by the window with a wheely suitcase so I recognized her at the bus stop near the steps to Castle Vale House.

“Excuse me, you’re the woman who just paid for my meal! Thank you! But why did you do that?”

“You were a woman alone like me,” she said. “We are fellow travelers.”

“Thank you,” I said again.

“My pleasure.”

It isn’t just a funny old world. It’s also full of lovely surprises.

Here is Duart Castle. Sue had to get a private escort (practically) to get a view of the castle that wasn’t propped up with scaffolding. The castle is situated on a little promontory of land south of Craignure and overlooking the Firth of Lorne.

Duart Castle, Mull. Photograph: Sue Cooke

I was excited about this castle because it figures in a 1938 Powell-Pressburger movie I have seen half a dozen times called “I Know Where I’m Going.” It stars a young Wendy Hiller and Roger Livesay and was filmed on Mull and Colonsay, another Hebrides island. In the film, the main character takes the train from Glasgow to Oban only she has her own compartment on the train and isn’t squished into a short train full of Easter holiday-makers.

Inside it was cold. All castles are cold and damp but I was especially cold because unbeknownst to me, I was getting sick. But I’ll get to that.

The first stop with Wendy and Sue is always the café, either for lunch or for tea and cake. We pushed our trays along, cafeteria style.

“Do you have anything gluten free?”

“No-I’m-terribly-sorry-we-don’t.” He looked straight ahead of himself.

“Do you have soup?” Every Scottish café has soup. It was definitely a hot soup day.

“No-I’m-terribly-sorry-we-don’t.”

He didn’t look terribly sorry to me. He looked bored.

We got sandwiches and I just ate the middle part with some weak tea. Egg mayonnaise. Yum. Doesn’t that sound good? Egg mayonnaise, tuna mayonnaise, shrimp mayonnaise, chicken mayonnaise. The reason they call them that is because there is more mayonnaise than egg, tuna, shrimp or chicken. And then there is butter on the bread as if you need any more fat.

I’m a little whiny just thinking about there not being any hot soup because it was so cold.

But with the exception of the bored café server, everyone was good to us. The ticket taker offered to let warm our hands from his heater before we entered the castle. More surprising than that, the chief of clan Maclean who was wandering around his ancestral home in his pajamas, offered the same thing.

Laclan Maclean was not really wandering around in his pajamas. But he was dressed in baggy pants, a couple of sweatshirts and slippers, loitering in an upstairs gallery, talking to tourists. In a society where everything is “lovely,” he really was lovely. We chatted with him and he asked about us. He apologized for the temperature of the castle and offered to let me warm up by his electric heater.

Laclan Maclean, chief of Clan Maclean

The young man in the gift shop was a student, home for the Easter hols and the complete opposite from the bored young man in the cafe. He lived just down the road and had grown up on Mull.

“You don’t sound Scottish,” I said.

“I guess not,” he said. “I hear that a lot. My mother is English and my  father is Portuguese and I went back and forth between both countries when I was growing up.”

I fingered the men’s ties. The young man explained to me the difference between ancient and modern ties and the two slightly different designs for whether you were hunting or having dinner. The “ancient ties” were thus called because the traditional dyes produced less vibrant colors than the modern ones.  I wanted to get one for Andrew.

“I don’t know how to buy a tie,” I said to Wendy.

“I think you just take it up to the till and pay for it,” Wendy said.

You may have to know Wendy to appreciate how very funny that remark sounded.

When we left Duart Castle, I was feeling what Wendy and Sue would call “poorly.” I was grumpy when Sue insisted on going to Moy castle, which on the map, looked like it was just down the road. It was hardly a road. More like 20 miles of bike trail. It was raining and have I mentioned it was cold? When we finally got as close as we could in the car, I stayed put while Wendy and Sue tromped the half mile through god-knows-what to see Moy castle. It’s my big regret of the trip that I did not drag my phlegmy nose, sore throat and shuddering lungs and achy body down that soggy path and see Moy castle if only because it figures more prominently in “I Know Where I’m Going” than even Duart.

Moy Castle

I spent the next two days in bed, feeling sorry for myself and Face-timing with Andrew. Sue and Wendy had wild adventures without me but they brought me lemons and a remedy called Night Nurse from the chemist. In the evening, we played Happy Families and Snakes and Ladders, often mentioned in books and shows, and I wanted the experience. The closest thing we in America have to Happy Families is probably the card game, Authors. Snakes and Ladders is what we call Chutes and Ladders, only in England, you slide down a snake instead of a slide. The snake has something to do with the Victorians wanting to teach morality in their peculiarly surreptitious way.

Saturday morning was our departure day. On the kitchen table lay an envelope addressed to Craignure Police, evidence that Sue had not let go of our early introduction to Mull and was following through on Tick Billy.  We packed up, cleaned up and left for Craignure where we were to leave the car with a full tank of gas. The gas pump had a bag over it. We had ¾ of a tank of gas and the memory of Tick Billy’s threatening behavior.

Wendy pulled into the police station and Sue got out. She was inside for a long time.

“What do you think she’s doing? Telling him the whole story?” I asked.

“I think she probably is,” said Wendy.

When Sue got back in the car, she said there was nothing official the police could do but they were going to make a report.

We left the car and started pulling our cases toward the ferry where we learned that all ferries were cancelled due to a storm. Once again we were with our cases beside the road in Craignure in the cold and damp. We went in the tourist office to see about accommodations for the night. We told the story of Tick Billy to a new set of staff and were gratified by their outrage that such a thing should happen on Mull.

Back outside, a police car pulled up to the ferry dock and Sue went out to speak to her new best friend, a young policeman named Kevin.

“I think Sue has made a friend,” I observed to Wendy.

“Can be a useful thing to have,” Wendy said.

It was. We got a ride in the police car to the posh Isle of Mull Inn and Spa a mile down the road. Once there, Kevin had to open the doors for us to get out because of course, once you’re inside a police car, you have no control over your life.

As we were waving goodbye, Sue said that Kevin was going to “have a word” with Tick Billy to make sure there was no difficulty with the ¾ full tank of gas; also to let him know that a complaint had been had been made about his unprofessional, not to say unkind behavior. Kevin told Sue he’d have been livid if anyone had left his grandmother standing by the side of the road with her case like we had been. We grinned at each other. None of us were grandmothers but age does have its uses.

At the Isle of Mull Inn and Spa, we got a sympathetic and outraged reception, not because the ferry was cancelled—they were used to that—but because Sue blurted out the Tick Billy story again. The hostess sat us down in the lounge overlooking the Sound of Mull and brought us complimentary tea and biscuits while our posh rooms were being prepared.

As we sat fussing over our bookings for that night in Glasgow, Wendy announced that Auntie Christine was paying for all this, the posh rooms, the meals, the works. Auntie Christine who died recently, had left Wendy a nice little pile of money. Wendy generously decided ours was a worthy reason to share the wealth.

My room was lovely and comfortable. I talked to Andrew and told him I had been listening over and over to Willie Nelson sing a song called “You Were Always on My Mind,” a song that in no way fit our relationship except for the recurring phrase that you were always on my mind.

“You’re listening to Willie Nelson?” Andrew asked incredulously. “You? Miss Opera? Miss Classical Vocal?”

“He was the most expressive,” I said defensively. “He makes me cry and right now I want to cry.”

I can’t hear that song now without thinking of the Isle of Mull Inn and Spa and three grandmothers drooped over their cases by the side of the road. And Andrew, of course.

We got the first and only ferry off the island the next morning. The storm made the crossing, well, perilous is too strong a word but it was a wee bit scary. It wasn’t too bad sitting in the middle and not looking to the side. When I looked out a side window, first the sky disappeared, and then the sea as the boat rocked up and down.

last ferry to Oban

All at once the boat lurched and white water fully eclipsed the view ahead, splashing all over the deck. I took a deep breath, grinned at Wendy and said, “It seems to be calming down.”

Sue, not amused, was white from motion sickness when we finally dragged our cases ashore at Oban. We found some tea (always, always) and while I’m on The Always, when you order tea, it comes in a crockery pot with cups and saucers and a wee pitcher of milk. Always. None of this paper-cups-to-go, although I guess if you’re a Philistine, you can have a paper cup to go. That’s not how Wendy and Sue roll.

We pulled into Glasgow after four hours on the uncomfortable train, enlivened by one delightful, enduring image: a lamb running down the edge of a field, his tiny legs pumping away like he had only just discovered them, running for the pure joy of movement. One little being with its own little mind and its own little experience of the world. So small and so precious.

At Queen Street station, the cousins saw me off on the train to Berwick-Upon-Tweed while they went on to their hotel. I decided that since I would have to lose one booking due to the ferries being cancelled, I’d lose the Glasgow hotel rather than the Airbnb in Berwick. It’s always hard to say goodbye to Sue and Wendy partly because I don’t see them very often and partly because when they aren’t around, I have to start thinking for myself.

I changed trains at Waverly and settled into a window seat. The drinks cart arrived immediately.

“A Scotch, please.”

“Scotch? What is this Scotch? I don’t know this Scotch.” It sounded like a Ghanian accent.

“Oh, a whisky,” I said. “If someone says Scotch, they mean whisky.” I made a note to not say Scotch while in Scotland. It seems to go without saying that you want Scotch, not Kentucky Bourbon.

Choosing the Berwick Airbnb over the Glasgow hotel was serendipitous. The Castle Vale Hotel is in a lovely old house, full of Catholic art and statuary, stuffed with DVDs and books—wonderful books, old, new, literary, Penguins, history, fiction, classics. My hosts, Margaret and Justin were the parents of ten children and thirty-nine grandchildren. My room was spacious and comfortable. Breakfast (all on bone china) included homemade bread and three kinds of homemade preserves: raspberry jam, marmalade and winter apple butter.

But the first order of business was to make a hot toddy with the last of my lemons and the High Commissioner whisky from the train and to crawl into bed at 8:00 and talk to Andrew and his daughter Lorna with whom he was having lunch, it being noon in Seattle.

Between the hot toddy and the Night Nurse, which I was still taking, I slept like someone with too many chemicals inside her.

in dungeon of Duart Castle

Duart Castle from the Isle of Mull Inn and Spa

Oban

shop window in Oban

Iona. Wendy figured we needed to leave by 9:00; it might take as much as an hour and half to get to Fionnphort for the 11:00 boat. We missed the 11:00 boat, we missed the 12:00 boat.  There’s only one decent road on the island and it’s not always even that. It runs along the Sound of Mull from Tobermory to Craignuir, then cuts across the inland hills and what they call mountains to follow Loch Scridain to Fionnphort. The well maintained back-road that the tourist office had told me about allowed us to skirt Tobermory and lulled us into thinking we had more time than we had.

At Fionnphort we were greeted by sheep in the car park.

A short walk got us to the ferry dock. The handsome ferries made me a wee bit homesick for Puget Sound. The gray, windy and cold day contributed to the visit to a moody, mystical place. Founded by St Columba who came over from Ireland in 563 C.E., the nunnery is in ruins and the Abbey is supported by scaffolding. Sue complained that every time she visits a place like Iona, she can’t get a decent picture without scaffolding.

Sound of Iona

A Christian ecumenical community, founded in 1838 by George MacLeod, is thriving today and, of course, a tourist business but neither blocks out the bleakness. If I thought Mull was remote, this little island is other-worldly in its loneliness. Or so it seemed to me. The short boat ride over on a ferry is quite a contrast to a small medieval boat in the wind and rain and cold, the nuns holding onto their wimples, their habits billowing about them.

George MacLeod said Iona was “a thin place where only tissue paper separates the material from the spiritual.”

Felix Mendelssohn, a visitor in 1829, said, “When in some future time I shall sit in a madly crowded assembly with music and dancing round me, and the wish arises to retire into the loneliest loneliness, I shall think of Iona.”

Those two quotations –displayed in the entrance to the abbey, gave me a frisson. I have read that many people get a sense of something otherworldly on Iona. That was my moment.

My other frisson was Shakespearean. Apparently, Macbeth and Duncan are buried in the abbey churchyard. As are about 60 other kings of Scotland. I go back to that small medieval boat with nuns’ habits billowing and add a royal corpse. And a cold, gray sky.

burial place of Macbeth

Iona Abbey minus scaffolding

Iona

Getting myself to a nunnery

My one-armed Mozart in the abbey, asking one of the disciples to cut his meat for him.

Easter morning on Calgary Bay. In my jet-lagged stupefaction, I kept trying to say something clever about this and had to patiently remind myself over and over that it was Calvary that had Easter associations, not Calgary.

Our holiday cottage was on Calgary Bay on the isle of Mull in the Inner Hebrides. Ours was one of handful of houses that appeared mostly empty. A few people camped on the beach in tents or camper vans and we watched them huddle around their fires while we enjoyed an enormous house with three bedrooms, three bathrooms and two living areas, all splendidly appointed and scrupulously labelled, right down to rubber bands and Covid tests. After the adventure of getting here, it was a relief to find it so welcoming.

Calgary Bay

The British Daylight Saving is called “Summertime” and we entered it on Easter morning. I had brought chocolate from America –Sue likes the Russell Stover strawberry creme eggs. Wendy had brought garlands and more chocolate and both of them gave me cards. I rummaged around in the well-appointed house and found among the children’s craft supplies some green paper out of which I cut Easter grass, something they don’t have in England.

We lounged around, talking, drinking tea, making plans and discussing Tick Billy up one side the house and down the other. Sue had been awake a good part of the night feeling anxious about our experience with him. He wove in and out of my sleep, such as it was, what with being wide awake at 3:00. We agreed that we had all felt threatened, then tried to analyze whether what had happened had been menacing in the legal sense. Sue declared that she was going to report the incident.

Sue and I perused the extensive collection of books and DVDs available but Sue said they were mostly “bloke books.” I left copies of my two books, 99 Girdles on the Wall and Advancing the Retreat next to the bloke books, happy to get them out of my suitcase as well as all the Easter chocolate and the ice-wine maple sugar candy and salt water taffy the cousins had asked for.

Kilmore Church of Scotland (The Rocket Church)

Wendy had declared Sunday to be a no-car day but by the evening she decided we’d drive as far as Dervaig, which was about halfway to Tobermory, to see the Rocket Church or as it’s officially known, the Kilmore Church of Scotland. Sue, a brilliant photographer, wanted some photographs.

Now here I must digress a bit and tell you about paraplegic Mozart. Andrew and I had been playing a back-and-forth game where we planted a little plastic figure in 18^th century clothes in each other’s house. (Wendy suggested it might be Lord Nelson but I told her I didn’t think many Americans knew who Lord Nelson was.) I decided it was Mozart and he ended up in my luggage. I had him in my pocket or my purse during my trip and he somehow lost a leg and an arm but still managed to enjoy his trip to the U. K. Here he is in the Rocket Church.

Mozart in the Rocket Church

That night I slept a full 8 hours without waking. Up early, I went for the walk Sue and Wendy had taken without me on Easter because I had fallen asleep for the second time that day at only 12:30 in the afternoon. The walk goes either straight across the beach or across an enclosed field above the beach, whichever one prefers. The tide was out so I walked along the beach and annoyed the geese. On the other side, I found a walking path to take me to an old granite pier that was chained off and inaccessible. But there was a stile involved — I always love those– and a stinking sheep’s carcass on the beach so it was worth it.

We went into Tobermory and did the Monday farmer’s market and all the wee shops, got more groceries and had fish ‘n’ chips for lunch. All along the harbor front, in every shop, I asked “is the cat about?”  An enormous orange male cat makes a life for himself in Tobermory. He sleeps in the hardware store, dines at the chippy and entertains the tourists by wandering amongst them and sleeping in rope coils on the wharf. He had apparently already done his morning rounds so no one had any recent intelligence on him.

It was Sue who spotted him lounging outside a private home, the door of which was cracked open so he could come and go as he pleased. As we approached slowly, taking baby talk, cameras ready, he deigned to look at us at first. But we coaxed a little action out of him. He came over to me when I rattled my paper sack but lost interest when nothing to eat came out of it. The woman who lived in the house came out. She told us his name was Ledaig, pronounced “letch-ick.” It means “safe harbor.” “He’s the Tobermory cat, you know,” she said brightly.  Ledaig has certainly found a safe harbor for himself in Tobermory.

I popped into the tourist office. I knew we were going to Fionnphort the next day to board a boat for Iona. (Fionnphort. Iona. Remember those words.) I wished I could have been some help to Wendy, maneuvering the large Vauxhall on narrow, winding roads. The map gave no indication as to which roads were paved and which were no more than rocky paths. I thought I would do my part to help

“What’s the best way to get to Fiona?” I asked.

The fellow at the counter looked at me with amusement and asked kindly, “Did ye mean Fionnphort?”

“To go to Fiona, yes.”

“Iona.”

“Oh yes, Fionnphort. Iona,”

a Mull road Wendy said she would never drive again

The Aloof One

Kilmore Church of Scotland

Rushes at Dervaig

I was glad I asked because he showed me the road that the locals take because it’s paved. So the next day, Tuesday, we were off to Fiona. Iona.

By the time Wendy, Sue and I arrived on Mull in the Scottish Inner Hebrides, I had spent nine hours on a plane, ten hours on trains and an hour on a boat. The three of us were still an hour by car from our holiday cottage not counting stopping for groceries in the island’s only town, Tobermory. Our immediate problem was that there was no car.

The origin story of this expected car is quite involved. Sue had started negotiations for it a year ago at which time the hire car guy, Billy, had required Wendy’s (the driver) license and driver history, her car inspection history, everything it seems except the bra sizes of those of us who would actually be in the car. He also demanded to know exactly when we required the car, down to the quarter hour, something Sue patiently explained she could only give him once the boat schedules were published for 2024, with the ominous rider that if we were late, he would not be waiting around with the car. Sue had exchanged several emails the week prior to our arrival to confirm and re-confirm.

So it was a bit rich when the car was nowhere to be seen. The air was damp, the hour growing late and we were cold and tired. Craignure is little more than a boat dock, a tourist office and a few cafes. Sue texted, emailed and called Billy while we stood by the side of the road with our suitcases. The boat left. A bus to town came and went; I watched it longingly.

Finally, I went into the warm tourist office to see if they could help. The woman behind the desk told me that Billy was often late and that he was a “very busy fellow.” She looked sympathetically at me and stopped just shy of rolling her eyes. She pointed to a collection of buildings a half mile down the road, saying that was Billy’s Caravan Park and where he kept most of his hire cars. She thought it was worth a walk to see if he was there.

“Your friends can wait in here where it’s warm,” she added.

I looked at Wendy and Sue grumped over our cases. I have seen them that way when the tea was late. “I think they’d rather freeze to death than chance missing the car,” I said.

I walked the half mile down the road on a gravel path lined with daffodils which I might be rhapsodizing about now if the memory didn’t retrieve how tired and cold I was. I was also blinking back tears. The turn off to Billy’s Caravan Park took me past the police station, a fact I filed away. And there at the end of the road was Billy tinkering with a car.

“We hired one of your cars for today and we’ve been waiting an hour.”

“Oh, was that for today?”

He disappeared inside his shack and came back out saying he didn’t see anything in his diary. “But, just a minute.” Another dive inside brought up this information: “I saw all the emails. You are 100% correct. It’s my fault.”

I stood looking at him, thinking, “And .  .  .?”

“A car has just come in. I need to get it cleaned up.” He looked at me. “You don’t need an automatic, do you?”

Huh? What was he asking? Was the car that just came in an automatic? What difference did that make? I knew that Wendy always drove a manual but I didn’t know what Sue had specified other than a small car. Wendy wasn’t comfortable with a large one.

“Is an American driving?”

OK, this guy’s communication skills were not great.

“No.”

“A manual will be fine then.”

What was that supposed to mean? People skills not all that great either.

“How long will it take?”

“You can wait or I’ll have it there by the time you walk back.”

I hesitated. I didn’t want to let this guy out of my sight.

“Look,” he snapped. “I have to clean the car. You waitin’ or walkin’?”

I walked back to the tourist office. I preferred the company of Wendy and Sue. At least we were all complaining about the same thing. We waited another 45 minutes.

“How long did he think it would take me to walk back? “I demanded. “And what was that crack about Americans and automatic transmissions? I feel doubly insulted. I can drive a stick.”

Billy finally showed up with a large Vauxhall. He popped the boot and put one large case in and reached for another.

“We ordered a small car,” Sue said.

At this Billy became Someone Else. He yanked the case out of the boot and slammed the door. “I can cancel this contract any time I want,” He snapped. “I already apologized.”

We stepped back in surprise. Good grief, what a situation. Sue appeared poised to insist on the small car. I sensed that if Billy drove off, we’d never see him in either a large or small car again. It was late, it was cold. Mull is a remote island with bad roads and few people. The only town was an hour away and the bus to it had just left. Billy’s was one of two car hire companies on the island.

“No, don’t do that!” Somebody said this. It might have been me. It might have been Wendy. I don’t think it was Sue.

“I can go get a small car, which will take at least an hour or you can take this one or I can just leave you here.”  His preference was clearly the last option apparently on the grounds that he had already apologized.

Three women in their 60s in the cold and damp on a remote island in the Hebrides? He’d leave us there? It was 5:00 and another hour, my Aunt Fanny. It’d be 9:00 before he get a small car to us if at all. We still needed to get groceries and find our way home in the dark (the Brits weren’t yet on Summertime) on winding one lane roads, not necessarily paved, taking an hour even in the daylight.

“Look,” he turned to me. “Didn’t I apologize? Did you tell them I apologized?”

I walked up to him and put both hands three inches from his chest. “Yes, I did,” I soothed. “I also said you were very good-looking.”

He gave me a wry grin as if to acknowledge that he knew what I was doing and to a small extent, it was working.

More huffing and threatening, he was dismissive of Sue because he assumed Wendy, as the driver, had done the booking. Of the three of us, Sue is the most dangerous to insult (with me running a close second and Wendy almost not at all.) One look at Sue’s face and I knew Billy had made a tactical error that he would pay for later. (Stay tuned.)

We managed to talk him down off his ledge and he showed Wendy how to drive the car. He seemed different at that point. Patient, calm, maybe even kind. Maybe it was just that he had no people skills. I’m really dredging the bottom to find anything to round out his character.

I went into the tourist office to make my report and see them properly horrified. It makes all of Mull look bad when something like this happens.

Finally, we were on our way to Tobermory. I wrote to Andrew that night and he responded: “Does he have ticks holding on under his kilt or something? ” And thus the car hire guy became Tick Billy. He seemed to accompany us wherever we went and by the time we left, a week later, we had thoroughly dissected him, as is only right and proper.

Tobermory

Western Isles Hotel (See the movie “I Know Where I’m Going”)

Here I come with another U.K. travelogue. This one has two overriding features that make it different from some of my past ones. Firstly, on this trip, I left behind a sweetheart. A prevailing image that puts a lump in my throat even now when I think of this trip is that of watching Andrew’s retreating figure when he left me at TSA, his tall, gangly (I love gangly) body ambling down the concourse, around a corner and out of sight. Even though he was at home in Seattle, Andrew was part of my travels.

The other feature was that I got sick in the second week of my travels. Not Covid sick but a bad cold with body aches, sore throat and difficulty breathing. I have often wondered how I would manage being sick while I was on my own and traveling; the idea scared me. But I was with my English cousins through the worst of this cold and that helped—more on that later.

I arrived in London after the usual horrible nine-hour plane ride, took the Elizabeth line to Paddington and checked into the Paddington station hotel, a hotel I know well, where I lay in bed for 10 hours –don’t know if I slept—before getting on a train from King’s Cross to Glasgow. Last time I went to Glasgow on the train, I rushed from the airport after the usual horrible nine-hour plane ride and went directly to a four-and-a-half hour train trip. I decided I was too old to do that again.

But before this train, I got my Prets Posh Porridge from Pret a Manger in Paddington station. I love that stuff and it sets me up for the day like nothing else except maybe tea. At the hotel reception, an Easter display of chicks, bunnies and chocolate eggs reminded me that it was Good Friday. I checked out and got a taxi for King’s Cross where I did a thorough sweep of the First-Class lounge and sampled tea, coffee, fruit juice (watery) and got a banana and packets of biscuits for cousins Wendy and Sue who were stuck in the country having had their train to London cancelled. They were frantically trying to find another, enlisting a neighbor to drive them halfway to hell and gone to catch it.

The trains in England are a mess right now. Recurring train strikes mean that when you book a seat, you have to make sure that particular train line isn’t going to be on strike on that particular day. They publish a schedule of the strikes so at least it’s not an unexpected surprise. This has been going on for years. I got caught in a strike when I was there a year ago for Christmas and had to book two unplanned days in London before I could get down to my cousins in the country.

Last time I went to Glasgow on the train, it went straight up the west side of the country and I arrived in less four hours, no transfers. This train went all the way across the country, up the east coast and took over 5 hours and I had to change in Edinburgh. It’s the same train I took in 2005 when I went from Rye (on the English Channel) to Richmond (North Yorkshire). Back in those days I didn’t bother making reservations. I didn’t even know what train station I needed. I asked at Charing Cross information.

“Right. You need King’s Cross to Darlington.”

Darlington. I had never heard of Darlington. It’s not like it was Edinburgh or Newcastle or Oxford. I stopped myself just in time from saying, “Are you sure?”

So here I was on the train to Edinburgh, calling at Darlington, York, Newcastle and a much more seasoned traveller in the U.K. than I had been in 2005. When we were coming into Newcastle, I recognized all the bridges from movies, and of, course, the Vera television series.

“Wow, there they are!” I thought. This happens to me a lot, recognizing places from my reading or television or films.

Was it my imagination or were the people boarding at Newcastle more rugged and noisier? A new staff came on and they were no-nonsense. Here came a man, shaking a bin bag “Roobish? Roobish?”

I slept a little on the train. Every time I opened my eyes, I saw sheep and lambs like cotton balls in the green grass, the tiny lambs curled up together like kittens. White and Hallmark-ready from a distance, up close they are filthy.

The parade of snack and drinks carts began half an hour out of London and continued at intervals. “Can I get anyone anything at all? Any snacks or drinks at all? Does anyone need anything at all?”

I got some High Commissioner whisky, blended in Glasgow. And a cup of tea. I always get a cup of tea, even if I don’t want one. Because underneath it all, one always wants another cup of tea. Off the brunch menu, I got “Frittata with Posh Baked Beans.”

In Glasgow, I fell asleep in my hotel room after texting Wendy and Sue that I’d see them in the morning. In the morning, there they were, their familiar faces so comforting and welcoming. I immediately relinquished all sense of responsibility for anything. They always have everything in hand. (They hate having their pictures taken, let alone being published on the Internet; otherwise you’d see them here.)

In the hotel reception was a “Taxi Call” button. I pressed it. Another button came up saying “Ready to call.” Sue and I stood looking at it. Was it meant to be a confirmation that we weren’t children playing in the hotel whilst our harried parents tried to check in? What did it mean? Sue pressed it.

A taxi zoomed up to the front door. By the time we rolled our luggage out, a second taxi had pulled up and the two drivers got into a pissing contest over whose fare we were.

“We accidentally pushed the call button twice,” I explained.

“Whyja do that?” Taxi Number Two demanded.

Um. Accident?

As Taxi Number One pulled away with us inside, the driver said, “Sure it was a small accident. No need for ‘im to have attitude.”

At Queen Street station we sat in a waiting room with sandwiches we had found at the station’s Marks and Spencer. A giant, long-coated Alsatian named Thor and a crabby but talented pianist outside the waiting room entertained us. (The train stations all have pianos with wonderful amateur pianists. I noticed that a new reality TV show called “The Piano” is about to drop and will ruin this wonderful feature of the train stations. Soon regular people will feel intimidated and incompetent.)

We boarded a four-car, crowded commuter train for the four-hour ride to Oban, a favorite resort town since Victorian times on the edge of mainland Scotland. It’s a launch point to several of the islands of the inner Hebrides, one of which, Mull, was our destination. We had half an hour to get from the Oban train station to the boat that would take us to Mull, a window that shrunk to five minutes because the train ran late. It reminded me of the nail-biter when I took the bus from Glasgow to Kennacraig with minutes to get on the boat to Islay. At least Oban was a town with hotels. Kennacraig is just a boat dock in the middle of nowhere.

Our train steward called ahead to see if they could hold the boat. (I bet he said “at all.” As in “Can you hold the boat any extra time at all?”) The Caledonian MacBrayne “Coir’ Uisg” (pronounce: “coroosk”) was revving its engine when we came panting aboard. The boat was moving before we had stowed our luggage on the car deck.

After a quiet, beautiful ride, we alighted on Mull with the expectation that a rental car would be waiting for us in the tiny coastal town of Craignuir. It was late afternoon and cold. There was no rental car to be seen. Now what?

Leaving Oban

en route to Mull

arrival Craignuir

Two weeks into the sunroom remodel—a mere spruce-up, actually—I began musing on what could have made the experience worse. It could have been the middle of summer when the sun room feels 150 degrees in the afternoon. Or it could .  .  . no, that’s about all that could have made it worse.

I wasn’t even the one doing it. I was mostly in the house eating bon-bons and drinking single malt or so I told Erina when she worried that she had disrupted my life. Erina was, in fact, one of the few good things about the entire debacle.

I’ve known Erina for about eight years. She lived around the corner from me until she graduated high school and found a job and her own place. When she was 13 years old, she posted signs in the neighborhood announcing: I Will Do Your Dirty Work. I hired her to do some work in my yard, nothing especially dirty at first. She cleaned gutters and sawed down tree limbs. She loved anything that involved power tools.

She worked with her Bluetooth ear buds in, listening to old TV shows –Grays Anatomy was one—or music. I always knew when she had music on because she sang along in her lovely voice. Once I couldn’t find her.

I called her mother, Liz:

Is Erina there?

I thought she was with you.

I can’t find her. I know she was up on the was up on the roof.  Let me check.

Outside, I climbed the ladder that just barely gets you onto the roof. Erina was down at the far end, dancing to something she was hearing through her ear buds.

I texted Liz: She’s fine. She had her ear buds in.

Liz: I hate those things.

Erina has painted a lot of my house, inside and out. I have an indelible image of her painting the bathroom ceiling that reached up to a high skylight. She was barefoot and on tiptoe on the top of one of those stepstools that warn you not to stand on the top of the stepstool, keeping a calm and perfect balance while she wielded the roller. When I came around the corner and saw her, I dropped the laundry.

“I’m getting the tall ladder.”

“No, I’m fine.”

She’s delightful, artistic, musical, funny, bright, a girl after my own heart. Except she has mounds more energy than I do. Of course, she’s fifty years younger. I just figured that out. That makes me want to take a nap.

Anyway, to get to the Disaster Story, it all started when Erina painted my living room in lemon meringue yellow and I had three gallons of leftover paint because I don’t understand how to figure square feet.

“I guess I could use it for touch-ups until I die and I’ll will it to you.”

“I could paint your sunroom,” Erina said.

She painted the sunroom. In between coats, she painted my front door and the baseboards in the living room. She secured a shelf, which I put up years ago that has never been stable. She mounted my TV with an adjustable mount so secure, a child could swing on it.

“What do you want to do with the trim?” she asked. “You know what, you should paint it blue.”

I bought a gallon of peacock blue. Erina painted the trim.

“I could pull up this flooring,” she said.

The flooring in the sun room was an ugly brown that broke off in both large and small pieces as it pleased, revealing a cement floor with gunks of hardened black stuff—tar, as we found out—stuck to a jute fabric. All of it probably 70 years old.

The linoleum while Erina is still cheerful

The floor before the grease

Erina started scooping and scraping and peeling with shovels –including my snow shovel–with hand scrapers and putty knives and my neighbor Bill’s spud. Finally she rented an electric tile stripper. When she had gotten the ugly brown linoleum up, we were looking at lumps and patches of black mastic, a substance that appeared to have petrified there on the floor.

Then began the first of many trips Erina made to Home-Depot, Lowes, Aurora Rentals, Tweedy and Popp, a place called Dependable Construction and an Ace Hardware up in Everett, 30 miles away. I marveled at how many trips she could make in the same day in between toiling over the black crud while maintaining her optimism and cheer. She talked to the folk at the stores, she did research on her phone, she watched You Tube videos.  My contribution was to make popcorn for her every day.

Her mother, Liz, got in on it later when it seemed like the ship was going down. Both Erina and Liz are forces of nature. The two of them together are an explosion of ideas, research and arguments.

I hate research. I just make decisions and live with them. For example, here’s me picking out a Christmas tree:

“I need one between five and six feet.”

“Here’s one.”

“I’ll take it.”

One Monday, Erina poured five gallons of Blue Bear mastic and adhesive remover on the floor. She was still humming and dancing, listening to Grays Anatomy and scraping. She was leaving swathes of bare cement.

“I’m going to need the floor tiles tomorrow or the next day.”

I picked out some slate blue peel-and-stick tile that looked lovely with the peacock blue of the trim, bought enough for 300 square feet (accurate calculation) and was home within the hour.

By “tomorrow or the next day” lumps of sticky black tar remained all over the floor,  Erina glopped what she could into old containers I had lying around.  We looked at each other.

“I think we need a degreaser,” she said.

“How are you going to clean it up? How are you going to clean any of this up?” (Notice the use of the “you” pronoun.)

“We need a lot of rags. And I’ll wear my rubber overalls.”

the mastic remover

gunk

more gunk

Two gallons of degreaser went down. Now the gunk wasn’t just sticky, it was oily.

“I think I can hose this down with my power hose and slurp it up with a wet vac.”

The next day Erina showed up in a giant pair of rubber overalls that I called her haz-mat suit to start hosing and slurping. The main thing this accomplished was to spray tar all over the freshly painted yellow walls and ruin my neighbor’s shop vac. I had to buy more yellow paint, which, you may remember, the surplus of which was what started this whole thing.

tar and grease coated red rubber overalls

Liz found a scrapy tool that was a giant razor blade on a handle. Erina commenced to scraping. We had to trade up to a machine that would do the scraping for her. After an hour, this gave us about a foot of bare cement.

I said, “Did you tell me that we could put tiles down without getting up all the mastic and it would last for maybe a year?”

“Yeah.”

“Why don’t we do that because this floor is going to be the death of me.”

“You’re kidding?”

“Only partly.”

Yet truly my main inconvenience was that if I wanted to get to my cabin in back, I had to walk around the house and unlock the back door to get in. That and the fact there was sticky black stuff everywhere. It was worse than when I used to run the chocolate fountain for my student recitals. I would find chocolate all over the house, even in places I knew no one had been. At least the chocolate would come up with soap and water.

Erina washed the floor as best she could and mopped up everything with rags and towels. While the floor dried she cleaned tools and floors and the shop vac; she spent hours getting the viscous ooze in and out of the sunroom.

Ruining the Shop-Vac

Enough.

She had been at this project for two weeks before she lost all her glorious energy and optimism. She sat down and cried. Earlier she had burst into tears at Dependable Construction. It was over.

Then a friend made a stray comment to me that cork underlayment might work on as much of the floor as we had gotten clean and dried. I did the research this time and made the phone calls. Erina rallied.

Before she set out for the store in Everett, I said, “Don’t let them tell you this won’t work. Everything they have said would work hasn’t”

“This is our ‘Hail Mary’.” she said

I got a text from Erina an hour later. “I’ve found a dead pigeon on 8^th and I’ve made a coffin for it. Can I bury it in your garden?”

I had seen that dead pigeon earlier and had told myself it was just a rag. “She is such a nicer person than I am,” I thought.

Erina and Liz were there til 10:00 that night putting down the cork underlayment. Erina buried her pigeon in my pet cemetery, already the final resting place of five cats and one dog.

Erina re-painted the walls and put down the tiles.

They looked lovely. I was thrilled. But by the time Erina arrived the next day to help move the furniture back into the sunroom, the cork underlayment was buckling and the tiles were expanding and peeling up off the floor.

“Oh NO!”

“It’s okay,” I said. I’m going to live with this. I’ll cover the high traffic areas with a big rug.”

I am living with it although Bill said it was a problem still waiting to be solved.  I bought him a new shop vac, by the way. There is still a pile of glutinous refuse– a lump of foul deformity, Shakespeare might have said, a big boil, a plague-sore–I’ll stop now– in my side yard because no one will pick it up until I have it tested for asbestos.

“I’ll help you sort it out and we’ll take it to the dump ourselves,” said Erina.

You know what? I absolutely love this young woman.

If you are only here because of the provocative title, the relevant information is about halfway through the post.

New Years Eve day I again walked the Compton Road loop and got drenched and did a trial pack of my suitcase. The outlook was not good.

Sue and Wendy were still “poorly.” Sue was so poorly, she had called the surgery (that’s what they call a doctor’s office) and bullied her way into an appointment with a doctor. Now she was taking anti-biotics, and inhaling something that she claimed didn’t work.

We watched Call the Midwife Christmas special and Midsomer Murder Haunted Christmas and went to bed early.

New Years Day was a melancholy one because it was my last day. I walked halfway to Baltonsborough to take pictures of mistletoe, which I had never seen in its native habitat. I only know the little treated horrors tied with a red ribbon and selling for $5 at Christmas time.

Mistletoe

Mistletoe

Then Wendy and I drove down into Devon to visit a part of the family I had been hearing about for 40 years but had never met. Hazel is the namesake of my Hazel, the first family member I had met in 1980. I stayed several times with Hazel in her cottage in Harrowbarrow, Cornwall and she showed me the cottage in the Combe where my great grandfather was born.

The Hazel I met on New Year’s Day is now in her 80s and she was a breath of Cornish air. She spoke with the Cornish accent that was reminiscent of so many memorable times in Harrowbarrow. We all chatted—she and her husband, Brian and their children Gaynor and Alan—and Gaynor had arranged a whole plate of gluten free fairy cakes. We had all spontaneously hugged each other and I was made to feel like family, which of course, in a byzantine way, I am.

On Jan 2, I took the train—soon to be on strike again– into London. I had gotten everything into my suitcase by dint of leaving behind my nasty old house slippers and my boots since one of the soles had split open and was letting water in. I immediately missed Somerset and the village. Most of all I missed Wendy and Sue. But I always feel that way when I’ve left them behind.

The next morning, I took Christmas candy, by way of thanks, to James, the concierge who had loaned me his phone charger and to Ziyad at the Royal Cambridge Hotel who had evidently made a trip to the Paddington Hilton on his own time to return to phone charger I had left there on my first day in London. See Part One: Preliminary Drama

Then I set out for two days of museums. I walked in the rain across Kensington Gardens to the Victoria and Albert museum where I immediately asked if there was a cafe. Behind me, I heard a couple ask the same thing and then felt them at my back.

I turned. “You know, it’s not safe to follow me anywhere, ” I said. The woman laughed and the man assured me in a shocked voice that they weren’t following me.

I fortified myself with a pot of tea and squash soup before starting around the exhibits. I particularly enjoyed the Beatrix Potter. Then because it was still raining, I took a taxi to Tate Britain and recalled that I had been there before so I found my old favorites. From Tate Britain I maneuvered back to my hotel on the buses.  I am proud that I can do London buses even though they take longer than the Tube. Between the buses and walking, I learn the city.

The next day, however the buses defeated me. It was too complicated to get where I wanted to go: all the way to Bethnal Green in northeast London. Earlier I had been looking for the Sir John Soane Museum when I had seen on the map the unlikely attraction, The Vagina Museum. I looked up the web site and booked an appointment. Sir John Soane was going to have to wait. The Vagina Museum had a gift shop and for no other reason, I had to see what that was all about.

When I emerged from the Tube onto Cambridge Heath Road, I saw that I was in a neglected part of the city. Within five minutes I had been approached by three people asking for money. I gave some to a woman who I knew would use it for nothing good and who then asked for more.

I escaped into the Sainsbury Local to get my bearings, then found my way across the main intersection and down Victoria Park Square. I turned onto a path called Sugar Loaf Walk, which in my overactive imagination, resembled a kind of canal, like a vaginal canal. We’ll pass over the connotations of sugar loaf at this point.

The museum was run by young women, not surprisingly. One exhibit displayed how women have managed their menstrual periods over the centuries. Sphagnum moss was an early Kotex. Another exhibit followed some of the horrific shaming and shunning of women’s bodies and monthly bleeding. Pregnancy, labor and birth was presented.

Photographs of 56 different vaginas filled a wall. I had no idea there was such a variety of configurations. I’ve known a lot of women who thought there was something “wrong” with theirs. I wish this sort of information was as Out There as this museum, especially to young women.

“I can’t describe how it feels to see products I used in the 60s in a museum display case, “ I told the young curators. I swept my arm around the room. “But I think this is wonderful. I am thrilled to see it. Do many older women come in?”

“Yes, we get a lot of older women and they all say exactly what you just said!”

Foundling Museum

The Foundling Museum was my second museum of the day. It is dedicated to the history of foundlings in London. Orphans. Babies and children who for whatever reason were abandoned by their parents. The first floor was a melancholic place. The stories were upsetting and the little tokens that identified the children were heartbreaking. These were small lockets or chains or thimbles mothers left in order to identify their children should they ever come back for them.

Handel Scores

The top floors were the P.R. floors. George Frideric Handel and Charles Dickens had both been benefactors of the museum, raising funds and advertising its existence with concerts and readings. The upstairs opulence and elegance were a sad irony to the starkness of the first floors. They also gave me a little relief. Handel donated all his original scores to the museum. Not sure how that would have helped a destitute child but it was interesting to me. There’s a Handel Museum over by Claridges and I bet they’d love to get their hands on those scores. Handel and Dickens are two of my favorite historical figures.

Back at the hotel, I got packed and left early the next day without any interesting incidents that I can remember. Thank you for reading my chronicles. It was fun to relive them.  I’ll leave you with links to Catseye Images where you can purchase Sue’s lovely photographs and the link to No. 96 Chapel Lane, the airbnb in Butleigh, which all the best people book.

Two days after Christmas, Wendy, Sue and I sat in the front room. Wendy was writing thank you notes, Sue was doing something on her phone and I was writing my second batch of Christmas cards and blaming their late departure on the Royal Mail, which was still on strike.

Wendy looked up. “I hear bells.”

“It’s the anti-biotics you’re on,” said Sue

Wendy opened the kitchen door. “No,” she said. “Those are bells.”

“They must be practicing,”

“But they always practice on Monday.”

“Well, Monday was Christmas, wasn’t it?”

“So, they’re practicing?” I asked. I pushed back my chair. “I’ve got to get up there.”

I took a swallow of the ever-present tea, grabbed my coat, got into my boots and went to the door.

“You’ve got a torch?” asked Wendy.

“I have my phone,” I said.

I knew where the bells were pulled in St Leonard’s because I had been up in the bell loft the summer of the 2016 fete. I thumped up the street; the bells were quiet and I was afraid I had missed them. But as I turned into dark churchyard, they began again:

I crept along the side of the church to the tower in the back where one lighted doorway spilled out into the night. I climbed the narrow spiral concrete steps to the ringing chamber and peered in the door. I had happened upon a group called the Axbridge Bell Ringers, a group of Somerset ringers who had spent the day traveling around Somerset, ringing church bells.

Axbridge Bell Ringers, Somerset

When they finished ringing the change, they invited me in. They let me watch and then, Gentle Reader, they let me ring a bell. The leader showed me where to hold the rope and how to pull. It takes a very light pull and you don’t pull far. It’s the uptake that can yank your arms out of their sockets. I got into a rhythm and pulled until I was declared a natural, a polite way of saying they were finished with indulging me.

I burst into house through the back door.

“They let me ring the bells!” I exclaimed, hopping on one foot to get my boot off.

“I thought they would,” said Wendy calmly.

The next morning Wendy ran me into Street where I caught the bus for Wells. First stop was Ye Olde Sweet Shoppe one of those old confectioneries that used to be in every London neighborhood and now you can’t find one anywhere. Rows and rows of jars with boiled sweets (hard candies): humbugs, acid drops (not what you think), aniseed balls, Kop Kops, rhubarb and custard, Army Navy drops, Yorkshire Mix (enormous lumps of different flavoured boiled sweets.) I bought a small amount of every form of black liquorice on the shelves.

I was peckish and did not want to dine on my cache of sweets; I was hoping—incredibly—that they would make it to Seattle. (Most of them did). So I went into a pub called The Crown. The very second I sat down with a menu, music began blasting out of speakers. This happens to me all the time. They see me coming, they wait until I am settled and then crank up the music. I walked out.

I tried the Market Place Café across the way. It was quiet except for low talking. “You’re not going to turn on loud music the minute I sit down, are you?”

The young man at the counter laughed. “We don’t play music at all,” he said.

“Is there a wifi password?” I asked.

“We don’t have wifi.”

This was my kind of place. No loud music and no wifi. I took note of the complete lack of pretention. On my table was a jar with sprigs wintergreen, snowberries and a candy cane.  I enjoyed my weak tea and excellent squash soup and relaxed.

I went into the Roly Fudge Shop to gather ammunition for an on-going argument I’d been having with Sue and Wendy about chocolate versus chocolate flavored sweets. They call fudge a chocolate-flavoured (spelt that way) sweet whereas something like a Cadbury chocolate bar is chocolate. (Actually what they call fudge is not even chocolate; it’s penuche but never mind.)

In the Roly Fudge Shop, Fiona explained that a chocolate-flavoured sweet is something that probably starts with butter and sugar and has chocolate added to it.

“But it’s real chocolate that’s added, isn’t it? I mean it’s still chocolate.”

“Well, yeeesss.” But she was doubtful.

Then I realized what was bothering me. “In America when we say something is chocolate-flavored, it usually means some kind of synthetic flavoring has been used, not the real thing.”

“Oh, yes, we’ve heard that.” Both Fiona’s and her assistant’s heads bobbed.

“All right then,” I thought.

I am familiar enough with Wells– having been there half a dozen times—that I know some of the cats. However I hadn’t met Basil who was parked in the middle of the entrance to Wells Cathedral posing for photographs and making everyone walk around him. The woman at reception told me that he lived about a block away and came in every morning to be fussed over. Until recently, his owner had no idea that Basil was the new cathedral cat, the former one having departed this life.

Basil

Wells Cathedral

The next day, I was back in Wells, courtesy of Wendy and Sue who both had appointments there. We had lunch at the excellent Market Place café where I had the excellent minty pea soup.

I had noticed the day before that an older couple had ordered the same squash soup that I had and it seemed as though they had gotten a bowl whereas I had gotten a cup. So this time I asked for a bowl of soup.

“There’s just the one size,” the server said.

“But that couple behind me had big bowls yesterday.”

I didn’t realize it at first but everyone froze. Remember in a previous post when I said that nothing about Americans seem to surprise the British? (I just can’t speak for what they tell their families at night.) The server explained that there were two different styles of bowl but they were all the same portion size. I thought I was only trying to figure out what was available and how I could get a big bowl of soup. After Wendy told me she was a little shocked I decided I had put it too bluntly.

Beaten but unbowed, when Sue and Wendy left for their appointments, I carried my American-ness next door to the Roly Fudge Shop where I asked Fiona if I could video her explaining the difference between chocolate and chocolate-flavoured sweets to play for my cousins.

“They said the same thing you did,” I told her. “But you were so much more polite about it.”

Fiona was game. (She was young.)

“Thank you,” I said when we finished the interview and I clicked off the record button. “They are going to love that.”

The Cathedral gift shop had been closed the day before so I went back today. Who should I find holding court in the gift shop but Basil? Actually he was just in the way but I expect a lot of monarchs have been like that.

Basil Again

Sue called to say they were just parking and to meet them at Boots. From there we went to a Café Nero for “a proper cup of tea.”  The cafe was quiet except for the stereo coughing of Wendy and Sue. I told them I had a video interview for them to hear. I clicked play and we all heard “They are going to love that.” The End. I hadn’t actually begun the recording until the interview was over.

“Well done,” they said.

We walked back to the car as Christmas lights began appearing. Wells is a lovely little town and looked pretty in the twinkling twilight.

More observations of Wells: