You all know my neighbor Gwen by now. My neighbor Gwen who knows something about just about everything.

When it comes to gossip and goings-on, Gwen and I have pretty much got the neighborhood covered.  In spite of her tall fence, she seems to know a lot about what goes on to the southeast while I have the northwest covered.  Due west is the cemetery wherein live the least troublesome neighbors of all except during that awful period of the skunks.  Not that our neighborhood is troublesome. Quite the contrary.

Most of the trouble that concerns me concerns cats. Now that my Winston is a cranky old man I don’t have to pay off the owners of the cats he’s fought.  Artemis doesn’t fight now that she and Bill’s cat, Suli have finally come to An Understanding. There’s a new bully in town: a red-orange cat with a fluffy tail who terrorizes Suli and Gwen’s cat, Lucy.

Cranky Old Man, Winston

Suli can pretty much take care of herself.  I’ve seen her take on a German shepherd.  She’s drawn blood from me on more than one occasion. One minute she’s purring and rubbing me and the next minute she has launched herself at me and red welts are rising on my arms.  Somewhere in between the two states she has apparently told me that she’s had enough and I haven’t respected that.

Suli patiently waiting for Bill to come home

Lucy is an old cat.  We aren’t sure how old exactly, but she’s certainly older than Winston who is 15.  As she has aged, she’s drawn lines in the litterbox (so to speak) with various neighborhood cats, principally Cosmo who finally moved to Oregon.

In her young days, Lucy was quite the little outdoorswoman. But she was never the same after being stuck up a telephone pole for four days while neighbors were on the horn with Gwen who was in Texas.  Finally someone came with a tall ladder and fetched Lucy down.  After that Lucy spent her days inside the fence.  If you could see the camera-ready garden hidden inside Gwen’s old fence, you probably would, too.

Recently Gwen told me that some rogue cat had figured out how to get in Lucy’s cat door.  It’s one of those doors that require the cat to wear a magnet to which the door responds.  The magnet door lets Lucy into the basement.  Up the basement stairs and another cat door lets her into the kitchen. Gwen and Lucy curled up in the plaid room reading and napping, respectively, heard the kitchen cat door open and looked at each other.

“What’s wrong with this situation?” they asked.

The outside cat door

Lucy probably knew who the intruder was, but for several of his illegal visits Gwen only heard him.  But then she hit on the most ingenious idea.  Gwen, the technology wizard, could probably fashion surveillance equipment out an angel food cake pan, indeterminate wires from a box in her garage, and an old computer.  Here’s what she did: she hung a mirror on the fence outside a bay window so it reflected the outside cat door.  When she heard the cat door opening she could stand in her front room and see the activity at the cat door. Still she wasn’t fast enough to spot the cat.

The surveillance equipment

Gwen bought a different kind of door, the kind that requires the cat to wear a coded medallion.  A code that can be changed.  Now Lucy clinks like she has never clunked before what with her new medallion, her proof of rabies shot, and her I.D. tag.

Gwen finally spotted the intruder.  She heard the sound of the cat door trying to open.  The intruder waited expectantly for the door to open and apparently was mystified enough to wait long enough for Gwen to take her position in the bay window where she saw a butt and fluffy red-orange tail.  It was the bully cat.

The surveillance post

Now we are both on the lookout for the orange-red cat.  I have chased him out of my yard several times.  I chase him down the street until he goes under a house or somewhere I can’t follow.  When I see him scaling Gwen’s fence I e-mail her. I’ve not managed to get a photo of him but I’ll leave you with one of the cat who started this blog post:

Lucy with giant medallion

(This is the final post in a series about a 40th college reunion
Walla Walla Begin Again
Doin’ Our Stuff Again
Memories and Menus)

When last we met I was curled up in fetal position in Mem after getting away from the raucous music at the all class reunion picnic on Ankeny Field.  When the band packed up, I crept out and joined Bruce and Helen who were watching the tennis in the (new to me) courts jutting out onto Ankeny.  A bit much, I thought, but then I don’t play tennis and I was cranky from the picnic that I didn’t pay for and shouldn’t have crashed and it served me right if the band was too loud.

Picnic on Ankeny Field

The next event that interested me was the choice of faculty open houses.  The English department was not represented so I chose to go to Rhetoric Studies as the closest I was going to get to English literature.  Bruce and Helen and I found our way to the home of Dr. Heather Hayes who had laid out a spread from Olive, the deli on Main St. and I was able to finish my lunch.

Dr. Hayes was fun, energetic and passionate about her field.  She is the kind of intellect I like being around: one that doesn’t let you feel inferior for not knowing as much as she does.  It’s how I learn.  I learned to play Scrabble by playing repeatedly with someone who won every time and never once treated me like I wasn’t a valuable player.

In the process of a lively discussion I learned to pronounce synecdoche , a word that stumps me every time I try to say it.  I got the best explanation I have ever gotten for what exactly a meme is.  I learned the difference between rhetoric and oration and between literary and rhetorical analysis.  I don’t mean to be ungenerous but I’m not going to be more specific about any of the above.

Back at home, I took a nap.  When I wandered out to the kitchen, John was leaning against the sink.

“She finally shows up,” he said.

“90 per cent of life is showing up,” I said.

I opened the door to the liquor cupboard and pulled out the Jameson that Debi keeps on hand for a few of us.

“And the rest is being prepared.”

(Deb, do you still have that bottle of Jameson?” I emailed her last week.

“I have two bottles,” she wrote back.  “Will that be enough?”)

Jim found me a small funnel and I decanted whiskey into a hip flask, which just fit in my purse.

Marcus Whitman Hotel
Walla Walla, Washington
The Blue Mountains

Our class reunion dinner was at the home of a Whitman graduate.  Usually the dinners are held at the Marcus Whitman, the grand old hotel of Walla Walla (I’m so glad to get a reference to this icon into a post.  I was wondering how it would happen.) As nice as the hotel is, the dinner was so much more intimate at a home. A very large old home of which Walla Walla has a glorious supply.
The buffet was good, especially the shrimp and the tiramisu—though not at the same time.

I poured some of my Jameson into a wine glass and sipped along with all the wine drinkers.  A few people in the know held out their glasses and whispered to me, “Hit me!”

Jim, my fellow introvert, and I had a pact that we would leave at a mutually agreeable time, when both of us had had enough noisy socializing.  We left together and I was asleep when everyone else came home.

John had some kind of pact with the devil that is Alaska Airlines; he was leaving from Portland even though he flew into Seattle. I had a ride home with my Seattle neighbor Bill who was in town to visit his son Christoph. When they arrived to fetch me, I introduced them to the bunch of us congregated at Debi and Jim’s house.

Worlds collide: My neighbor in Seattle in the living room of my 40 years ago roommate at Whitman College.  I am so momentarily stunned that I falter halfway through the introductions. Connecting the two worlds is Christoph, the sophomore at Whitman who is exchanging contact info with Debi who is always good for a home-cooked meal (cooked by James but stay in my flow.)  It is a precious moment in what has felt like a precious weekend.

“I was spinning out of control a few days ago,” I said to John on the ride over.  It was apropos of nothing.  I guess I thought he was following my unspoken thoughts.

“For any particular reason?” he asked “Or just something to do?”

“Very funny.  No, I was excited about the weekend.”

The weekend itself had felt like being in a spin cycle.  There was so much to do and so many people to be with.  There was Mary-Ellis who I don’t see often enough and with whom I always have conversations that make me feel acknowledged, understood and loved.  There was John who I had seen once in the past 30 years.  There was Bruce, also only seen once, and Helen who I had never met.  There were the two professors I met. There was the gorgeous campus.  There were all the supernumeraries who made up the backdrop and set for the weekend.  There was the lack of sleep.  There were the periods of regression and self-doubt that I haven’t mentioned in these blog posts because quite frankly I don’t want to go there, other than to say they came up in the odd moments. Put it all together and it felt like a dream, like something that didn’t quite happen.

I wonder what our 50^th year reunion will be like.  I wonder if we’ll get golf carts for the parade of classes.

This is the third in a series posts about a 40th Whitman College reunion that begins with Walla Walla Begin Again.

On Saturday morning were the class photos, the parade of classes and convocation.  For the photos we all congregated on the steps of “Mem,” the Memorial Building, a truly iconic structure to Whitman students.

Memorial Building, Whitman College

I watched Nancy, the director of the alumni office, as she arranged us so that everyone’s head was visible.  I had nothing but admiration for the good energy that flowed from her while she laughed and smiled and directed traffic with her arms.  The last time I had to arrange the OK Chorale to sing, I yelled at them.  We were on the ferry and the space wasn’t optimal.  Still I could not believe that a group of adults who understood that they were there to sing, that there was an audience and an accompanist (me) could do nothing but stand there helplessly in little clumps facing every which way.

“Just MOVE!”  I shrieked.  Not my proudest moment.

I am going to remember how much fun Nancy seemed to be having when the Chorale is at the Green Lake luminarias and our time slot is sifting away.   I am going to smile and laugh even if on the inside I am shrieking, “What the fuck is wrong with you people?”

I have showed up in the past for class reunion photos but I had no idea what the parade and convocation were about.  I would usually wander off to do something by myself after all the social stimulation of having our picture taken. When the photo was taken on Saturday, we were herded over to a designated spot on Boyer Ave where we waited until all the reunion classes had been photographed.

I chatted with people I had never spoken to before but who I had probably seen numerous times.  When I was a student, there were 1000 of us.  You couldn’t walk across campus to get your mail without passing pretty nearly everyone enrolled.  And who you didn’t know, you heard about.  Someone was always talking about someone else to the point that names became familiar but not necessarily the faces that went with them.

We lingered in the bright sun and chilly morning air.  No place does beautiful fall days like Walla Walla.  People (male) came up to me.  I read their name tags and thought, “Wow, one of the cool kids is talking with me.”  Or people (female) said hello.  I read their name tags and thought, “Yikes, I was terrified of you!”  I had some lovely conversations with people I had never spoken to before.

Bruce asked me to take a photo of him and a classmate whose name I cannot now remember although we had a long, interesting conversation.  He handed me the smart phone.  It was heavy and unlike anything I was used to.  I pointed it toward the two of them and looked at the screen.

“Bruce, all I’m getting is your crotches.  Is that what you wanted?”   It would have made the photo request unexpectedly interesting.

Bruce showed me how to pull the screen in and push the scene out.  I took a conventional photo.

I walked to what we used to call the SUB (student union building) but which is now called the Pete Reid Center– something I cannot call it– for some water.  I wandered back.  We waited.  All of a sudden “Louie Louie” began to beat its way down Boyer Ave.  A ragtag bunch of middle school kids in bright red shirts reading “Touchet Indians” came marching past blowing and pounding their instruments.

Touchet is a small town on highway 12.  When you pass through Touchet, you know you are almost to Walla Walla.  It’s the last landmark before the Whitman monument..  Apparently the college usually asks the Walla Walla High School marching band (the cool kids by comparison) to play at the reunions, but these kids were so precious it made me cry.  There weren’t that many of them, their sound barely meshed, they were nervous, and the school is probably so strapped for cash they can’t afford uniforms that don’t read “Indians,” but they were my favorite part of the morning.  So small town, so corny, so splendid.

Behind the band came the class of 1951 in little carts and jeeps. They scooted by, honking and waving. We fell into line after the class 1961.  They marched us all down Boyer Ave and up the steps of Cordiner Hall.

“Aha,” I thought.  “This is how they get us all to go to convocation.”

I peeled off and went to the bookstore to look at the reunion kitsch and to pinch a few more reunion pens.  Then I went for a slow walk following what used to be Lakem Duckem from Park Street across Boyer to the amphitheater where our  commencement ceremony was held on a beautiful May day in 1976.  Lakem Duckem has been elongated into a stream.  People can no longer be “laked.”

Barefoot children with painted faces, their bodies twined with ivy were running around playing Tree Scouts or something like that.

What used to be Lakem Duckem

“And look,” they said to me.  “We’re barefoot.”

“And I love that about you,” I said.

Not a game boy in sight (Is that even a thing anymore? Again, trying to be cool.) These are the children of Whitman graduates: children who knew how to play outside.

I sat on the steps of the Hunter Conservatory, which used to be called MacDowell Hall until a student came along and opened the building.  Inside I went into Kimball Theater, which also used to be called MacDowell Hall.  The whole thing was MacDowell Hall.  It was its own play on words: the big hall itself and the mini hall that was the little theater.  It was where the music professors had their offices and where the practice rooms were and the small theater for recitals.  I stood on the stage and sang, looking around and thinking how un-intimidating it all looked now.

Hunter Conservatory/ MacDowell Hall

Inside Hunter Conservatory/MacDowell Hall

Eventually convocation let out and the all-class reunion picnic began on Ankeny Field.  Apparently I hadn’t signed up (or paid) for it and when I heard the band blast itself all the way to the Green Lantern, I knew why.  When I read there was to be live music, I had anticipated that I would hate the band and I did.  I was hungry but they wouldn’t sell me a ticket or give me a plate so I took a water glass and helped myself to what looked like Spanish rice and some pulled beef and an apple.  I found Mary-Ellis, Phil, and John and sat down with them.

John and I reminisced about a column called “The Trouble Shooter” that showed up in the Feb 26, 1976 issue of the Whitman College Pioneer, the school newspaper.

Dear TShoot,

 A bunch of us were wondering what the food really is in the Jewett kitchen.  Not what’s on the menu.  We want the real lowdown on the kitchen. 

The Trouble Shooter printed a menu purporting to be a more accurate description than the menu posted in the dining hall.  It included:

Julia’s Child
French Toes
A sordid fruit juice
Snot Cakes
Sip ‘n’ Rinse cocktails with strep syrup
Gangreens
Grilled Sneeze sandwich
Finger sandwich—open face
Scurvy
Chocolate Mouse
Carbon
Corns
Hair Pie
Cold Slav
Chef’s Surprise

The advising professor, a scholarly and proper British man, commented that while he upheld the right to free speech, this column was particularly tasteless—which in itself is a funny comment.

Eventually the loud music drove me to curl up in fetal position inside Mem.  Here I will leave you while I recover.  I’ll be back with my 4th and final installment of the 1976 Whitman College Reunion weekend.

(This is the second in a series about a 40th college reunion.  The first is Walla Walla Begin Again)

On Friday morning, I sat with Debi over coffee for a long time before walking the few miles to campus.  Mary Ellis pulled up alongside as I walked along Birch, headed for the Marcus Street foot bridge across Mill Creek.

“Halloo,” she sang out.

“Hey, what are you doing?”

“I’m showing Phil all the churches I tried out.”

I looked at Phil and thought about my friend Nina (rhymes with Dinah) saying that she and her husband agreed years ago they wouldn’t attend each other’s reunions.

“How fun for Phil,” I said.

Mary Ellis laughed her infectious laugh.  It gurgles and bubbles.  It brings me along like my Aunt Frances’ laugh used to.  When Mary-Ellis laughs, the world is a wonderful place.  Phil, by the way, is a good sport.

Olin Hall, Whitman College

I chugged along after that because Debi and I had a 10:00 class in Olin Hall: Shakespeare with Dr. Teresa DiPasquale.  The text under under observation was “The Rape of Lucrece,” one of Shakespeare’s two long narrative poems and one which I had slogged through several summers ago and got nothing out of it that I didn’t hate.  After one 50 minute class with Teresa, I am keen to read it again because now I have several ways to access it.

I so appreciated hearing a woman talk about this poem.  I looked at the 19 year old boys sitting there while she talked rape, menstrual blood, and vagina and thought that this class could never have happened in the 70s.  I also thought that a man should never teach this poem.

As I watched Teresa turning over the pages of her Shakespeare and saw all the notes written in the margins, I thought how much I wanted to be a student again.  To sit here and talk about a text.  A text.  The word itself is enough to get me excited.

Lunch at the Walla Walla Bread Company Left to right: John, Debi, Phil, Mary-Ellis, Elena

After lunch at the Walla Walla Bread Company, Mary-Ellis and I went for a walk together, she still noticing churches.  In one parking lot was a labyrinth.  Long ago we had walked the labyrinth at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco together.  As I walked this one, I reflected that Mary-Ellis is my oldest friend in the sense of known for the longest continuous time.  We’ve kept in touch for 40 years.

“And that was only because we didn’t live in the same town,” I said.

“I know you always say that,” Mary-Ellis said.  “What do you mean?”

“There was a period of about fifteen years when I blew up every relationship I was in,” I said. (I had some dark times: read my book.)

Mary-Ellis is the only one of the group I could safely rely on to not bore me to death with sports talk.  I love that John is passionate about running.  I love that Debi, our little Putzer, is passionate about cycling and about the young cyclists she nurtures. I am passionate about singing and I recognize passion when I’m in its energy field.  I like hearing about the running and the cycling up to a point but purely out of love.  I think they sometimes mistake love for actual interest. Even Bruce ambushed a perfectly innocuous conversation with baseball statistics and scores and plays even after I told him I wasn’t interested and I truly did not want to hear any more.

It’s not that Mary-Ellis isn’t interested in sports.  She is. She has a son who’s an athlete.  But we go other places when we talk. We talked several times over the weekend about the self-doubt we had while at Whitman.  We were confused and often lonely.  I particularly felt isolated in my confusion.  There was so much I didn’t understand about myself. In the 70s Whitman may have been a good place to be for academics, not so much for mental health.

Mary-Ellis

Mary-Ellis and I pledged Alpha Phi together as juniors.  We could hardly get through the initiation ceremony for giggling.  People joined sororities and fraternities for different reasons: some took it as seriously as a religion.  Others wanted to find friends.  Mary-Ellis and I found each other.

Mid-afternoon I met up with Christoph, son of my neighbor Bill across the street from me in Seattle.  He’s a sophomore and newly moved into the Phi Delta Theta house, a place I was afraid to go into when I was a student.

Phi Delta Theta house, Whitman College

Christoph and I walked around campus talking about the buildings that are there now and the buildings that were there when I was a student.  I saw the magnificent science building, definitely not there when I was.  I pointed out where I lived in Jewett as a freshman.

The Phi Delt house was distinctly un-scary.  I actually didn’t want a tour.  I just wanted to step inside.  My father was a Phi Delt at Whitman College in the 1930s.

Christoph mowed my lawn for me last spring.  When I asked him his price, he said “Nothing.  We are good to our alumni.”

I gave him a $25 tip. We are good to our students.

Mary-Ellis and Phil took me back to Debi and Jim’s house where I was to sit with Helen who has middle stage memory loss so Bruce could go on an alumni bike ride.  I made tea and she and I talked a little bit.  I spent some time trying to figure out the Smart TV, which was clearly smarter than I was.  I finally got a woodworking video that demonstrated how to whittle a cookie mold out of wood. It ran for half an hour, and then started up again.  Since Helen had enjoyed it the first time I knew she’d enjoy it again because it would all be new to her.  It ran three times and I knit and drank tea.

I ordered a dozen cupcakes from a place called Frosted and called Jim to ask him to pick them up on his way home from work.  Kind of fun not having a car and everyone being at my beck and call.  It was actually a pleasant afternoon and I enjoyed being with Helen.  Even when memory is stripped away, the essence of a person can still be there and she is a lovely person.

Debi came home for a break from her duties as reunion co-chair and put her feet up.  She had been on the cycle ride in the capacity of domestique.  If you don’t recognize this terminology I’m not in the mood to explain.  My blog is a sports free zone except for when I want to complain:

Sitting around chatting someone mentioned “EPO” and I asked what it was.

“Well,” Debi intoned –she talks slowly. “If you are an endurance athlete of any kind, be it long distance running, be it cross country skiing, be it cycling, the more your oxygen carrying capacity—“

“For the love of God,” I said. “Can’t you just answer the question?”

“I was trying to,” she said earnestly.

“No, you weren’t.  You were using an innocuous conversational moment to bore me to tears with sportspeak.   You’re like an addict.  I can’t listen to any more! What is EPO? One short sentence.”

“It’s a drug to increase red blood cells.”

“Thank you.  Was that so hard?”

“I was also going to say,” she injected rapidly. “It was what brought Lance Armstrong down.”

There was a reunion supper at a brew pub that evening.  I hadn’t signed up for it because I knew we would be shouting at each other over some hyperactive sub-woofer (Is that even a thing anymore?  I’m trying to be cool.) in an enclosed space and I would hate it. Jim had planned to go “because Debi wants me to” but when he found out I was staying home, he got out of it. We spent two lovely hours not talking.  Jim was on the computer and I wrote using one of the promotional pens we got at registration.  They roll easily across the paper and are much nicer than the ones they gave us at the 35^th reunion.  They are really too good to give to Gwen who is feeding my cats; in any case, her house is more or less paper free. I think I came home with six of them.

A little before 8:00 Mary-Ellis called. “Are you in bed” she asked.

“Ha, ha, no I am up and ready to make music.”

Our little group got together with my guitar and John’s banjo and did some singing.  John sang a few songs and Bruce performed Schubert’s “Die Forelle.” But it was Mary-Ellis’ night.  She performed the Cowardly Lion, some funny lyrics to “Drink to Me Only with Mine Eyes” and “Boom Boom Badushka:”

“Boom Boom Badushka, that means that I love you,
And if you’ll be my baby, I’ll boom badushka you.”

Did we even know what that meant when we sang it at college? Or Mary-Ellis’ other comic song: “I’m a ding dong daddy from Dumas and you ought see me do my stuff?”

We surprised Mary Ellis with the cupcakes to celebrate her birthday and finished the evening with “Auld Lang Syne.”

And the morning and the evening were the second day.

Mary-Ellis doing her stuff.

Birthday Cupcakes

John

Together Again after 40 years. Back row left to right: John, Andy, Jan, Jim, Mary-Ellis. Front row: Bruce, Elena, Debi, Helen.

(This is the first in a series.)

This past weekend was the 40^th reunion of the class of 76 at Whitman College.  All my favorite people minus one were going to be there so it was shaping up to be something special.  Walla Walla has always been a magical place to me, going back to my childhood when we visited my great Aunt Ann in the house on the corner of Shady Rill and Marcus Street, now owned by the college.

Walla Walla is a beautiful old town on the way to nowhere else.  It’s its own destination.  Whitman is a charming campus, which these days reeks of money.  You could eat off the steps of the classroom buildings they are so well maintained.  A private liberal arts college is essentially a four year summer camp for (very) young adults and in many ways we were cossetted at Whitman.  Still our minds were valued by our professors and so we learned to value our minds and the process of learning.  Everyone in my favored group has continued to learn and in various ways to give ourselves back to the world.

It was a mixed experience for me, being a college student.  The further away I get from my college days, the more rhapsodic I feel about it.  I was excited about the reunion but as date approached, regression sucked at me. I had a dream that everyone was mean to me and I went home early.  In waking life, I closed off all means to a fast getaway by making plans to ride across state with one of my beloved group.

John’s (poly-sci major but he acted like an English major) plane from Boston landed late morning and we were on the road by early afternoon.  A cross country (and assorted running events) coach, John was, is and always shall be a long-distance runner.  Physically he is a piece of sinew with a head.  Every inch is lean muscle.  I fully expect he will one day be featured on the cover of a magazine I hope classier than Time as a 95 year old marathon runner with better time than say, the 70 year olds.  He’s qualified twice for the Olympic trials in the marathon.

“So,” I, the artiste, cast around for how to phrase it.  “The groups you work with: do the players already know the game and you work on training and technique?”

There was a change of atmosphere in the car: a mix of patience, exasperation and amusement.  “Well, first of all they’re athletes, not players. And they run in an event.  It’s not a damn game.”

“Oops.

“Don’t worry.  I get that a lot.”

We drove across state via Yakima.  It’s the loveliest way to go, especially now that you don’t actually have to go through Yakima. We never ran out of things to say.  We were still talking happily when we crossed into Oregon.  For those of you who don’t know the geography, the drive from Seattle to Walla Walla via Yakima does not involve crossing into Oregon.  I have driven across state probably 100 times and I have never once strayed into Oregon, the border of which is seven miles south of Walla Walla.

“We shouldn’t be in Oregon,” I said. “How did this happen?  Weren’t you watching the signs?”

“I was following you.  I thought you were navigating.”

“I didn’t know there was even a highway to turn onto,” I said. “Everything always seemed to flow towards Walla Walla.”

We pulled over at the 395/730 junction to look at the map.  A proper Rand McNally paper map.  That’s who we are.  Somewhere outside the Tri-Cities we missed a sign that would have taken us to Walla Walla and now we were south of Columbia River.  But you know what?  Next time I go to Walla Walla I am going to make this detour on purpose.  I had no idea how beautiful was the approach from Oregon.  We drove along the Columbia River through basalt monuments that are the Wallula Gap, the light causing the water to shimmer and now I wish I hadn’t talked so much as we came through.  Words are for later—like what I’m doing now.

Wallula Gap

Once we were underway again I remembered that I had told Debi I would text her when we left Seattle.

“We’re an hour away,” I texted laboriously. I’m not good at texting.  I have my father’s big thumbs.

“I’ll pick up your registration packets,” she wrote back.

“Get me one of everything’s that free.” That text took me five minutes.

“Will do.”

Finally we were there at the home of Debi (English major) and Jim (Biology).  There was funny, kind Bruce (German major) and his wife Helen (French but at UCLA).  The only one missing was Mary-Ellis (English) and her husband Phil (I don’t know where he went to school but he is an attorney) who I was soon to see at the Green Lantern, a tavern famous among Whitties of our generation although we had never frequented it or in most cases, even been to it.  At the Green they set us up outside where it was cold and dark but there was a fire pit and it was good to be together.

And the evening and the morning were the first day.

When I was up on Whidbey, one of the wildlife issues was field mice.  In the city we deal with rats.  I know they are everywhere and lord knows I’ve had my adventures with them but I hated those adventures.

On Sunday I went up to my local Fed-Ex to do some printing.  I like to go when Vince is there because he is a sweet, helpful guy with a charming smile who does a beautiful job with my cards and never gets impatient when I ask him to fix punctuation or tighten a crop.

One of the doors was propped open on Sunday but I think (I hope) I came through the other one.  Vince was at the front desk looking his usual calm self but before I could get in a word he asked me, “Do you want to see something gross?”

“Sure,” I said.  I thought it was going to be something funny.

“Look over at the door,” he said.  “There’s a rat caught in it.”

I walked towards the door and immediately reeled back. There was indeed an animal caught in the hinge side of the door.

“Are you sure it’s not a squirrel?”

I walked all the way to the far wall to come around to the other side of the door just to look out the window and see from that vantage point a rat’s tail.  The rat had tried to slip in when the door opened and was almost but not quite bisected.

“When did it happen?”  I asked.

“Just now,” Vince said.

“Damn,” I thought. “I meant to come an hour ago.”

“What are you going to do,” I asked Vince.

“I’m not sure.  They don’t pay me enough to touch a dead rat,” he said.  “I’ve been trying to get a hold of the store manager and Animal Control.”  He took a deep breath and folded his hands on the counter.

“What can I do for you?” he asked politely.

“Oh no,” I said.  “I’ll help you figure this out first.  Animal Control is not going to do anything.  Did you try a pest control service?”

Someone came in wanting help using the copy machine at the same time Vince’s manager called back.

“I’ve got to take this,” he said.

“That’s okay,” I said.  “I’ll help her.”

It was a woman with two small girls in tow.  “Hi,” I said.  “I live here.”  Sometimes I think I do.

I got the woman with the two girls set up in time to help the next customer who came in.  The third person to walk in was none other than my good friend Kay.  She, like me, comes to this Fed-Ex when she knows Vince is working.

Kay did a thorough inspection of the rat, complete with appreciative comments about his size.  “We’ll help you get it out,” she said.

I didn’t like the sound of that “we.”  Still I volunteered to hold the door open if I didn’t have to look down.

Vince got off the phone and reported that someone would be there in the next four hours.

“Never mind your facilities person,” Kay said. “Do you have something we can poke it out with?  When the door is open, there’s room to push it through.”

A man marched in, his arms full of a project and immediately began to tell Vince what he wanted done.  Kay and I looked at him speculatively.

When he finally noticed us, he said, “Oh, I’m sorry.  I interrupted.”

“We were waiting for you,” I said.  “We were waiting for a nice man to come in and help us with something.”

He grinned.  “What do you need?”

We introduced him to the dead rat and I will say this for him: he was a good sport about it.  Vince tied some discard-able paper around a yardstick and the man held the door.  Kay pushed the rat out with the yardstick and then kicked it into the street next to where her car was parked while I stood in the store and shrieked.

She came back in, smiling.  “Sissies,” she remarked.

That was Sunday.

Tuesday morning I found Artemis in the cabin off my sunroom, presiding over a rat.  She and I stood and looked at each other for a long time.  I don’t know what she was thinking, but I was thinking, “Oh no. It’s started.”

I got close enough to see that the rat was twitching a little bit.  It was also quite small.  A baby.  That squeezed a little compassion out of me.

It was still breathing when I popped a box over it and weighted the box with a flowerpot.  When my friend Madelaine showed up for Tuesday morning watercolors, I said I had a huge favor to ask.

All I wanted was for her to be with me while I did whatever it was I decided to do. The little guy was in distress and it would have been merciful to kill it but I can only deal with rats if I don’t have to look at them.  And I don’t like to do things that put in my mind images that will disturb my sleep.  The world has enough on its plate without me serving it a sleep-deprived self.

In the end I slid a piece of cardboard under the box the way I would slide a piece of paper behind a glass in which I had trapped a bee.  I took it outside and managed to toss the whole thing on a pile of garden refuse without actually looking at it.

Sigh.  There are so many beautiful aspects of the fall.  My apple tree is leaning low.  The apples are growing in bunches like grapes.  Even though I didn’t thin them this year, they are larger than they have ever been with less scab and fewer worms.  It’s a great time to be alive.  It’s always a good time of year to be a cat in my household.  A rat not so much.

Last May when I was two weeks away from my trip to England, I started a folder called “Stuff to Do When I Get Back” and began tossing notes quite liberally into it.  After spending an idyllic June in England, I came home to my life, which includes wonderful friends and neighbors, my two cats and the spillage of all my interests into my work life.  My private students showed up for their lessons.  My watercolor class, All Present and the OK Chorale began .  .   . and ended.  At the other end of the summer, I still hadn’t opened the folder labelled “Stuff to Do When I Get Back.”

“When I Get Back” has taken on new meaning because I am now on Whidbey Island, trying for the fourth time to work on a novel I keep telling myself I’m writing. As a last resort, I am doing an outline. I’ve resisted this because my mind doesn’t function in a linear way and outlines have never been much use to me.  In fact I don’t think I ever actually made one. Ever. Even in school. I decided that since this novel has stalled four times already, I would try an outline. Then I could work on the story in chunks to match the way time parcels itself out in my life.

I’m up at my usual idyllic locale on the island, the Buddhist meditation retreat owned by my voice teacher, Tommie and her husband.  I usually come up for a long weekend, intending to write, but I spend the first two days watching for deer, walking in the woods and reading poetry.  Then it’s nearly time to go home.

I have been here a week. With one day to spare I have succeeded in creating a decent outline for a novel. My big break came on Day #2 when I was thinking how easy it had been to write a memoir: 99 Girdles on the Wall. I already knew what had happened; I only had to tell the story in an entertaining way.  In trying to write fiction I got stuck over and over thinking that nothing had happened that I could re-call and write about.  As my friend Debi (Putzer, the Attorney) elegantly put it, “It’s a lot harder to make things up from scratch than to lie about what happened in the first place.”

I had characters I liked: my neighbor Gwen who knows something about just about everything dressed them and gave them all cars. I had a plot I could live with and several optional endings.  I had been studying the structure of plays, novels and TV shows for the past two years.  Finally I asked myself, “well, could such and so happen?” Then it was a short trip to “Well of course, it could. Make anything happen that you want to.  Just enjoy the process of writing it.”

This is exactly what I tell all my students: The whole point is the process. Don’t ask yourself if you have talent or if you’re as good as someone else or if something could happen.  Just wallow in the experience and see what happens.  So I’ve wallowed in my outline.

This is what no TV, no phone and no Internet access can do for a person. Actually all three are available—case in point the posting of this blog entry– it’s just that I have to pack my computer and phone in a bag and go down the hill to Tommie’s studio.  I’ve been down there every day to use the piano but I’ve mostly left technology behind in Seattle.

I’ve never been here in the fall.  (Correct me if I’m wrong but it seems to me that we changed from summer to fall in one day and that day was Friday, Sept 2, the day I came up here.)  I’ve been entertained by a slightly different cast of wildlife than in the spring.  For one, I smell skunk.  I haven’t seen any and Tommie doesn’t know anything about them but I swear I smell skunk and I am not without some experience of skunk.

There are twin fawns scampering around the retreat center.  They appear to be motherless children taking care of each other.  I’ve figured out a few of their habits.  When it’s clear in the late afternoon, they sun themselves like a couple of cats near an old tree that I can see from the east facing windows in the Buddha House. At dusk they tend to hang out around the main house down the hill.  In the morning I hear them up the hill near the meditation cabins.  I especially like coming upon them unexpectedly as I leave Tommie’s studio or head to the woods for a walk.  Their heads come up and they stare at me.

“Whatcha doin’?” I ask.

“Nothin’,” they say defensively as kids all over the world do.

I sing to them and watch their ears go up.

“Could you be any cuter?” I ask.

I’ve seen more rabbits than I usually do.  One bright little guy hangs out under my car every morning, nibbling the grass.  I think a whole rabbit clan has a hole in that tree where the fawns sun themselves because I see them leaping around, disappearing and re-appearing there in the mornings. Except for their bright, white tails, the rabbits are the color of the foliage. When the scamper and jump, their cotton ball tails scribble in the air like sparklers on the Fourth of July.

In the woods I’ve found snakes either slithering out of my way or refusing to. One rather large garter snake (which I know can’t hurt me, yeah, yeah, yeah) stretched his full length across my path in the woods, leaned on his elbow and taunted me.

“Ok, move now,” I said. “Not funny.  Move.”

I waved a stick at it.  It stuck its tongue out.

“You’re scary. Go away.”

I picked up a branch the size of the proverbial ten foot-long barge pole, flicked him to the side, and hurried past.  I’m pathetic, I know.

I’ve learned how to get from the retreat into South Whidbey State Park via the Fern Gully and Wilbert trails and had many adventures in my daily visits.  I met a family of chipmunks where the Wilbert trail crosses the highway to the main entrance of the park.  I saw numerous woodpeckers and met Dave, a birder who told me their official name: dryocopus pileatus. I wished he was as shy as his dog, Sephera, but I guess birders spend so much time being quiet that when they get the opportunity to talk, they never shut up. He was a cheerful guy, though and I liked knowing he was in the woods.

I learned that a fastidious, life-long city dweller could crap in the woods and survive.  Of that episode I will say no more.

At a diversion along the Wilbert trail is a sign next to a cedar that says “Ancient Cedar.”  I had passed the sign many times, always thinking to myself that the cedar didn’t look all that old to me.  One day it occurred to me to look beyond the sign and sure enough, down the little diversion was as massive a tree trunk as I have ever seen except maybe that redwood in California you can drive your car through.  It looked twelve feet across.

Ancient Cedar

On the Fern Gully Trail

It’s been fenced in and a sign says that the tree is over 500 years old.  Back in the 70s the Wilberts, among others, had thrown their arms around it to prevent its being felled. I stood for a long time, staring at it, and weeping.  This tree was here when Shakespeare was staging Hamlet.  It would be nothing out of the ordinary in say, England, but here in the Pacific Northwest, it feels, well, holy.

Tomorrow I head back to Seattle.  With any luck all that “Stuff to Do When I Get Back” will be past its due date.

(This is the final entry in a series that begins with A Night in Steerage.)

The third week of June was a strange time to be in London.  Brexit was approaching its vote.  A beloved MP, Jo Cox, a strong advocate of immigration, had been assassinated outside her constituency office in Yorkshire.  The country was stunned for two days and then went back to political crapola as usual.  It was hideously humid and thundery showers were in the forecast.  I bought papers, listened to the news, and kept an eye on the weather.

During the night before the Brexit vote, great cracking thunder disturbed my sleep.  All night long persistent rain plopped on the porch outside my hotel door. In the morning I learned there had been flash floods all over the south of England and as a result some trains were not running, including the trains from London to Canterbury.  What luck that I had made the decision to go yesterday.

The rain let up around 9:00 and looked like it would hold off until late afternoon so I set off for my be-heading at the Tower.  I took the 23 bus to Trafalgar and spent some time walking around looking at the lions and the pigeons and the famous buildings.  It’s as majestic a place as Piccadilly is seedy.

I walked down Northumberland Ave and found the Clipper River Bus at the Embankment Pier.  Once on the boat I struck up a conversation with a man who was on his commute to work.    After we passed under Westminster Bridge I looked back and saw Big Ben and the Parliament buildings framed by the bridge.  I jumped up to take a photo. Coming back, I gave my companion a sheepish shrug as though to say, “I’m a tourist, after all.”

“It had to be done,” he said cheerfully.

Had to be done

So, apparently, did the Tower “have to be done.”  Now that I’ve seen it, I know that I didn’t have to.  I’m glad I did but it’s just a check off the list.  Too many people, too many supercilious staff persons, too much stimulation.  What made it most interesting was the gloomy sky and the threat of rain.  The closeness was nearly unbearable.  I have never sweat like that in my life!

Traitors Gate is all cemented up but you can see where it was, the entrance for those unfortunates who were not going to be leaving the Tower alive or at all.  I looked at it for a long time, standing on the Clipper dock in the shadow of the Tower Bridge.

Traitor’s Gate–the green bit right of center under lettering that says “Entrance to the Traitor’s Gate”

The ravens.  What wonderful birds!  They were obviously smart and used to people.  One could get within a foot of them and they posed, and then changed poses over and over. With no hint of superciliousness.   I started thinking of them as Henry VIII’s ravens.

There are lots of steps at the tower and for the past few days my left knee had been complaining about going down steps so I decided to just cut to the chase.  I felt like a ghoul for asking but I approached one of the supercilious.

“Where is the Anne Boleyn .  .  . um.  .  . place?”

“The place of execution?” asked a raised eyebrow.

“Yeah, and the–” I swallowed. “Torture chamber?”

With directions I saw what I came to see, sometimes over the ear of the person in front of me and then found myself another Salad Niçoise and got back on the Clipper.  I had expected to spend more of the day at the Tower but it was checked off by noon.  The rest of the day was to be devoted to used book stores but I knew I didn’t have the room to pack books home unless I checked my luggage, which I didn’t want to do. Another consideration was to stay ahead of the rain.  I wanted to be at a bus stop or on a bus when the predicted downpour began.

I ended up getting off the Clipper at Bankside, connecting another dot of the London-in-my-head map.  There was The Globe and the Tate Modern.   On Tuesday it would have been easy to have walked across the millennium foot bridge—the wobbly bridge they call it—and find a bus on the other side.  But then I wouldn’t have met the French couple, found a bus map and had “a lovely tea at The Delaunay.”

St Paul’s from the wobbly bridge

Walking across the Thames on the wobbly bridge provides a progressive view of St Paul’s Cathedral.   It walked me right up to the reception where I paid $25 to go into the cathedral and watch a lot of people sitting around looking at their cell phones. I’ve said that walking into a cathedral takes my breath away and usually makes me cry.  Not so the Italianate St Paul’s.  I walked in and thought, “OK , You’re grand.  I get it.”  The most interesting part of my tour of the cathedral was to note that Thomas Morley, Jeremiah Clarke, and John Stainer were all organists at one time.

I went to a service at St Paul’s in 1977 during my first visit to London.  We sang the hymn that repeats “Rejoice, again I say rejoice.” Behind me was a young, clear, effortless soprano voice.  I have never forgotten the way her voice sounded like clear, running spring water.

One of the day’s more tedious features was that in the morning, while still on the Clipper, my handbag strap gave way right off the bag.  I had brought my raincoat in a garish orange plastic bag because I had forgotten its very tasteful carrier in Wendy’s car.  Now I had to cram my handbag in there as well.  It got heavier and heavier what with water bottles and the small items I picked up at gift shops along the way.  My back and neck didn’t like the weight so I had to lodge it against my hip like a baby and walk around London that way.

I found a bus going to Trafalgar where I had tea at St Martin’s in the Field and tried to decide what to do next.  A whole afternoon in London for the picking.  I was worried about how much was left on my Oyster card.  I was completely in the dark about how much the bus had been costing.  The boat had taken off £13 and I knew I was down to £5.  A group of Transport men on a break were cheerfully elucidating.  The bus was costing me £1.40 a ride.

“Well,” I said. “With £5 I could ride all over London.”

“Cheers!” they said, laughing.

I decided I would go to the Dickens Museum.  I had been there in 1977; it was time to re-visit again, especially since last summer I had read all 14 novels. I walked up Charing Cross Road and found all the used book shops.  It nearly killed me to walk by them.  Inside were hundreds of old interesting smelling books with inscriptions like “Simon de Monfort, Cambridge, 1956” printed inside the cover in an exotic British font.

I got on a 38 with a bus driver who said, “Show me your map and I’ll tell you the closest stop.”

Bless him!  People were so good to me.  I know I must have brought something to it, though, something along the line of finding the England I was looking for.  When I asked for help or directions and got not only the information I required but that lovely accent falling all over me like a fine spray on a hot day, I was so sincerely delighted and grateful that I pressed my hand on arms and said “Thank you so much.”

I loved the museum just as I expected to except that it was so close and muggy, I could hardly bear myself.   I keep bringing up the humidity because there is a connection to and an epilogue with something I mentioned in an earlier post: The Astral Cream.  I had bought a big jar of it, knowing that I wouldn’t be able to take it home with me so I was using it freely.  In fact I was coating myself with it. It’s a rich, thick hand cream but I was using it morning and evening like body lotion.  I could feel it practically hanging onto my body as I walked all over London in the humid air.

At one point I thought, “Gee I wonder if all this perspiration should be mixing with the Astral cream.”  I got my answer my first day back in Seattle and found welts on my arms and a galaxy of red dots on my legs. Prickly heat rash. Nice.  But I will say this: it wasn’t as bad as the sciatica I brought home last time I went to England.

But I am getting ahead of myself.  Back at the Dickens Museum, I alternately longed for the rain and was concerned about where I would be when it finally came.  It came as I walked up Grays Inn Road toward Euston and St Pancras where I had been the day before.  Another city connection fell into place.  The rain was light at first and so cooling that I enjoyed it falling on me.  Just as I got to a bus stop, I turned around to see a 205 approach at the same time the skies opened up.  From the top of the bus I looked through the spattered windows at two motorcyclists with helmets that said “Fuck the rain” on the back.  In the end I only needed that frigging raincoat for a block and a half to the hotel.

As I approached the hotel a van drove by with a horn atop like the political campaigners in the old movies.  It was blaring Vera Lynn singing “There’ll always be an England.”

“Oh, the Brexit vote,” I thought as I stared after it. “Today is the day.”

When I awoke the next morning, I reached for the remote and turned on the television.  “Leave” was splashed across the screen and the newscasters were looking a bit uncertain, I thought.  I heard the phrase “an historic occasion” more than once.  I was shocked.

I hadn’t paid a great deal of attention to Brexit during my three weeks in England, busy as I was with village fetes and all.  I did notice that out in the country I saw a lot of “Leave” signs but once in London they were mostly “Remain.” The few people I talked with—like the man on the Clipper river bus—told me they would be glad when Friday came and they could stop hearing about Brexit.  He must have assumed that the “Remain” vote would win out and nothing much would change.  As things stand now, we are all going to be hearing about Brexit for a long time to come.  I understand that as soon as the results came out a new group began forming that called itself “Regrets-it.” That is pretty much all I have to say about Brexit.

I was making my own Brexit that very day and felt empathy for the “Regrets-its.”  I didn’t want to leave.  The last thing I did was go for a walk in Kensington Gardens along The Long Water that turns into the Serpentine once the gardens become Hyde Park.  I listened to the bird song and watched the swans, so lovely on the water and so undignified grooming themselves while sitting in their own poo.

I pushed my suitcase to Paddington, walking slowly like a dog with its tail between its legs.  I was sure I’d be back.  There will always be an England and I expect I will always find the England I am looking for.

(This is the twelfth in a series that begins with A Night in Steerage.)

I’ve wanted to see Canterbury Cathedral for as long as I can remember.  Never more so than after I read The Canterbury Tales a few summers’ ago.  It was on the itinerary for Wednesday but I almost didn’t go.   There were “thundery showers” in the forecast for Thursday and I couldn’t decide if “thundery showers” were more suited to a pilgrimage or a trip to the Tower of London.

I decided when I walked out the door that I would save the Tower of London for Thursday.  I got on the 205 bus to St Pancras and then a high speed train, which deposited me at Canterbury West in an hour.  From the station I couldn’t see the cathedral so I didn’t know how easy a walk it would be.  A taxi set me down in Sun Street so I approached the cathedral from the west.  Suddenly there was the Christchurch Gate.  I can’t think how many times in England I have said “There it is!” when I’ve come upon some place that has been in residence in my imagination for years, if not a lifetime.

Christchurch Gate, Canterbury

I walked through the gate and there stood the old girl, worn and dusty as a pilgrim. I cried as I always do when I enter a cathedral. They take my breath away.

I followed the little guidebook to the site of the murder of Thomas à Becket. Hanging above the site is a dark, ominous looking metal sculpture of knives and swords.  At the kneeler, I looked down the way I do when I’m studying my cuticles instead of praying. Carved into the floor is the name Thomas.  It’s a powerful exhibit.

Sculpture above the site of the murder of Thomas à Becket

At the site of the murder of Thomas à Becket, looking down from the kneeler.

I went to two services at the Cathedral.  At 11:00 AM on the second, every day since the end of World War I, the bell from HMS Canterbury, disabled in the battle of Jutland, is rung and a page is turned over in the book that lists the dead from all wars since.

As soon as this was over, I went to the crypt where we were told to not take photos and people were taking photos. There I participated in another communion service, this time on the site of the original burial of Thomas à Becket. My communal partners included sixty school-children from Germany, ages 12 -14.  They were pretty cute and probably fairly bored.

Canterbury Cathedral doesn’t sparkle like Wells Cathedral does, but somehow that seems appropriate to its history and its significance.

The Canterbury Tales is a museum of sorts.  You go on a little pilgrimage though the sights and smells of the 14^th century, watching tableaux and listening to the characters from The Canterbury Tales tell their stories.  It’s staffed by people in old costumes, talking in a sort of bastardized Shakespearean English. I got no end of respect after they found I had read The Canterbury Tales in Middle English.

After buying fudge from the Fudge Kitchen, I was ready to go back to London. I asked at the Tourist Info center how much trouble I might get into trying to walk to Canterbury West train station.

“Oh, no trouble at all,” they assured me.

“Please don’t tell me I can’t miss it!” I said.

It turns out that all I had to do was carry on down the High Street, called at various stages the Parade or Peters Road, and turn right at Station Road.  It was barely a quarter of a mile and I didn’t miss it.

I got back to London late afternoon.  I knew there was a church in back of St. Pancras Station that was worth seeing.  I couldn’t remember why it was worth seeing but I was glad I persevered in finding it.  Naturally I thought that if it was in back of St. Pancras station, it would be in back of St. Pancras station. So I looked out the enormous window of the enormous station.  There was nothing back there except busy streets and boring buildings.  But I spotted an arrowed sign that said “To St. Pancras Old Church.”  When the trail went cold, I asked someone in an official-looking uniform and he told me exactly how to get there.

“And remember,” he twinkled. “It’s not pancreas!”

“And not kidney or gall bladder either,” I agreed.

Talk about taking my breath away: St. Pancras Old Church transported me right into the 19^th century as sure as any time machine could. It was straight out of Dickens with the tall iron gates to the churchyard and the old headstones in disrepair.  The tiny church doesn’t just smell of damp; it smells of old damp. On a close, overcast afternoon with a storm threatening, the atmosphere was perfect.

Gate, St Pancras Old Church

I remembered what I knew about this place: This was where Jerry Cruncher and his son went body- snatching in A Tale of Two Cities!  Yes, I know he was a fictional character but the point is, this was a place Dickens knew well.

Interior, St Pancras Old Church

Thomas Hardy was once employed to work in the churchyard.  To note his opposition to the encroachment of the railways, a living tree in the cemetery that is fused with old headstones is called The Hardy Tree.

The Hardy Tree, St Pancras Old Church

Under The Hardy Tree, St Pancras Old Church

I stayed at St. Pancras Old Church for a long time.  I could hear the city roaring in the background but inside the gates, life was protected, sacred and full of spirits of the past.

St Pancras Old Church

I worked my way back to Euston Road by walking through St. Pancras station. In the morning I had noticed there were pianos every 25 yards or so. In the late afternoon, people were playing them.  A young woman was playing Mozart.  Someone else was playing jazz and at the far end a man was playing a ragtime of “Buffalo Gals.”

After a bit of a hotel rest, I walked back up to the Edgware Road to Marks and Spencers to buy some of that Luxury Gold tea that had won the taste test in The Guardian.  They were all out of Salad Niçoise at Pret à Manger but I got a chicken salad that was just as good.  I fell asleep over an episode of Foyles War.

(This the eleventh in a series that begins with A Night in Steerage.)

London is my favorite city in the whole world but I ached on the way to the train station.  I had loved not feeling (completely) like a tourist.  Wendy, Sue and I had gotten on well together and I felt a lot of affection for them.

For these reasons the train ride to Paddington was dreary and sad. I cheered myself up by helping myself to everything I could off the tea trolley.  And again at the lounge in Paddington where I had a cappuccino and tried to think what I should do first.  I decided the first order of business would be to see if I could get into my hotel early.   Since there were no public phones to be had, not even in the First Class Lounge, I sized up the room of folks waiting for trains and chose a couple to hit up for a local call on their cell phone.

Success! My room was ready.

When I handed the phone back to the couple, the woman asked, “Did I hear you say your name was Richmond?”

“Yes, that’s right.”

“That was my maiden name!”

There followed a genealogical conversation wherein we decided we must be related and I left the lounge smiling and thinking, “This trip feels charmed.”

My hotel was one of a village of hotels around Paddington station, cheap, clean and convenient to everything.  I dumped my stuff , got myself an oyster card, and with the help of Pedro at reception, got on a 205 bus going along Marylebone (pronounced Mar le bun) Road to Baker St.

I was on the spy trail again.  I wanted 64 Baker St, former S.O.E. headquarters.   I knew that all I was looking for was one of those plaques. I had seen it dozens of times in documentaries but the point is I wanted to see it in situ.

“There it is!” I spotted it and crossed the street to stand under it and let my imagination loose.

Just before Marylebone High Street turns into Marylebone Road was the Garden of Rest, a sweet, quiet little park.  Charles Wesley is buried there.

When I came out of the park, an old woman with calm eyes said to me, “It’s a lovely park.”

“Yes, it is.”

“So many places to explore in London,” she looked at me as though she pegged me for the pilgrim I am.

“Do you know if Charles Wesley was the hymn writer or the preacher?” I asked.

“The hymn writer, I think,” she said. “I get them mixed up, too.”

And she was gone. (To all the things that will not notice when we die yet lend the passing moment words and wings.)

A notation on my map said there was a Dickens plaque on the corner of the two Marylebones.  I was on the corner.  I had to find it. I looked around.

“Oh god,” I thought. “I’ve got a blister on my toe and I don’t even know what I’m looking for. I’m never going to find this plaque.”

I was standing right under it. Charles Dickens wrote six of his novels in a house on that site. I tried to decipher the novels from the sculptures on the plaque but all I could think about was my toe.  I went back to the hotel, put a blister band-aid on my toe, changed shoes, ate something from the mini-bar I had assembled from Wendy, Sue and the tea trolley on the train, rested up and was out the door in the opposite direction.

I walked the length of Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park from the Marlborough Gate to the laughably gaudy Albert Memorial and the venerable old Albert Hall and finally brought my dogs home for the night.  I fell asleep during “Went the Day Well?”

The next morning I was up early and out with the commuters. I will remember for as long as memory serves that the 148 in London terminates at Camberwell Green.  Every time the bus resumes after a stop, a voice says so.  Since I saw and heard nothing to indicate the stop at which to disembark for the Imperial War Museum, I rode the 148 all the way it its terminus south of Elephant and Castle.  It was hot and I had to pee as I waited for a bus back to town.  When I disembarked from the ingoing bus, the driver made made sure I was facing the right direction toward the impressive edifice that is the Imperial War Museum, IWM London, and I spent the morning there. 

Spitfire

Violette Sazbo’s code poem by Leo Marx

Again I headed for the S.O.E. exhibit and this is the last time it figured on my To Do list.  There was way too much information to take in.  Much of what I wanted was filed away in the education and research rooms and I didn’t have the energy to pursue it so all in all I think I enjoyed the little museum at Beaulieu better.

I wandered around Elephant and Castle, trying to figure out how to get to the next thing on my itinerary, the Globe Theatre.  Without my earlier research I would be wandering there still.  Eventually I ended up at Bankside, the area along the Thames just up from the Southwark Bridge.  Let’s all say Southwark.  Wrong.  It’s pronounced “Su-thick.” What American would ever have guessed?

Hordes of schoolchildren swarmed the area, making it seem hotter and stickier than it was.  I drank a lemonade practically in one swallow and bought a ticket for a tour of the Globe.  When my tour started, Tony, the guide began collecting tickets:

“Thank you, lovely, thank you, cheers, thank you, brilliant, lovely, brilliant, cheers, thank you.”

I’m not sure but I think I stare when someone launches into a patter like that. And then I write it down.

There was a rehearsal going on for Macbeth that very afternoon, a piece of which we got to watch.  It wasn’t the play per se but the jig that’s done at the end.  I wouldn’t have thought a production of Macbeth would end with a jig but I learned that plays ended with a song or dance so everyone would know it was time to go home.  There were no curtains to come down.  The theater is open air, but is built so that in the event of rain, audience and players don’t get wet.  The thatched roof hanging over the stage and stalls is the only thatched roof allowed in London.  They don’t want a repeat of 1666.

After the tour I had to find the plaque that indicated the exact location of the theater.  Found it. Breathed the air.  Took the snap.  I have a strong sense of the jolly old genius loci.

Then I had to figure out how to get back to Paddington.  I had become good at working without a map.  I looked for a double decker bus, any bus, and stepped on to ask what bus I wanted for wherever I was going.  That usually got me started.  Or I asked people on the street.

I hailed a man in a T-shirt that read “Something wicked this way comes.”

“Hallo, Macbeth person!”

He looked down at his t-shirt.

“Can you point me in the right direction for a bus to Paddington?”

See, this is the problem with always having used the subway.  You get places faster but you have no idea about how the city connects to itself.  There were any number of easy ways to get to Paddington but I didn’t know any of them at that point.  Actually neither did the Macbeth person but he said if I caught an RV-1 two streets over, it would get me across the river.

“Are you an actor?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“Your voice.” I indicated my throat.  “You sound hoarse.”

“Yeah, I did some children’s performances over the weekend. Cheers!”

(To all the things we are not remember by, which we remember and bless.)

I caught up with a French couple who were waiting for the RV-1 and we rode together across Waterloo Bridge.  She had a bus route—she got it in the subway, who would have guessed?—and helped me figure out which buses would get me to Paddington from Aldwych.

Before I started for home I went into The Delaunay, a restaurant and attached Konditorei.  It was a beautiful and restful old place with classical music playing.  I had a splendid (GF) raspberry poppy seed cake and an enormous pot of tea.

I remembered Chris of the Wookey Hole bus ride telling me about the coffee she had in the Conservative Club in Wells.

“I had a lovely coffee there.  I’m not a conservative and you don’t have to be to go in.  I always call there.  I had a lovely coffee.”

I had been wondering what constituted a “lovely coffee.”  Was it that the coffee was good or the cake or the atmosphere or all of the above?  When I came out of the Delaunay, I thought, “I just had a lovely tea.”  It also occurred to me that I always seem to find the England I am looking for even if it involves a certain amount of disassociation.  The Delaunay might be a place for Austrian expats but I had a lovely tea there.

I was happy to be on the top of a double-decker, far from the madding crowds of Piccadilly Circus, Regents and Oxford Streets.  At Paddington I popped into the subway and got a bus route map.  That evening I fell asleep over a “Midsomer Murder.”