Castle Cary is a market town in southern Somerset but I only know it as the train stop for Butleigh where my cousins live in a stone house with five cats and a rabbit hutch used now for pegging up the washing. Sue met me at Castle Cary; David, her neighbor had driven her. I could hardly believe I was there but then again it felt like I had never left: 95/96 Chapel Lane, the rabbit hutch, the cats (Seamus, Misty, Tabsy, Lizzy and Izzy), the pots of flowers and Wendy looking so familiar, kind and calm.

Lizzy on the rabbit hutch roof, one

Two

Three

And now Pam. When I was here three years ago, Pam (Wendy’s mum) had had a stroke and was in a care home in Glastonbury. In the intervening years, Pam’s house in Burnam-On-Sea was sold and she is now in the little mother-in-law apartment in the house on Chapel Lane. Her hair looked smart though Pam was somewhat crumpled into a chair.  She’s quite voluble except she doesn’t say any actual words. Wendy can usually figure out what she’s trying to say. A lot of the garble sounds like “cuppa tea” and a lot of it probably is. She knew me and still had associations with having stayed with me (twice) in Seattle.

After a welcome dinner of salmon I had the first of 5478 cups of tea and embarked on a three day sugar spree, which came to an abrupt halt when I realized my joints would not support such a diet, but that’s a story for later.

Wendy played a video that became the basis of a week’s worth of laughs. I had to watch it at least once a day and I finally transcribed it. A Scottish comic named Janey Godley who does voice-overs of political figures just about shut down YouTube with this one of Theresa May giving her last speech to Parliament. You can read the transcription below the link.

“Well, and so I face the final curtain. I got my special Margaret Thatcher jacket on for the job today and the good news is I won’t have to look at that bastard Corbyn and his gloomy face across the table one more time.  My menopause has been up to fucking high dose since I started. Between the debacle in the Brexit, the mess that Boris Johnson’s goin’ to take this country in, good luck the fuckin’ lot of you, that’s goin’ to be a pile of shite and I’ll tell you somethin’ for nothin’: I am goin’ to get ‘n a caravan, pud on me sandals and I’m goin’ pud me toes in the water, so aye. Fuck the lot of you.

(She sits down. Applause. She gets up and starts to leave.)

“Aye, whatever. Move. I’m outa here. Move. Move yer arseholes. Move. In my way. Move ya dick. Move. Don’t touch me. I fuckin’ told you not to touch me. Open that door, Frank! Frank, open the door. I’m outa here. Bunch of fuckin’ arseholes.”

All week, one or the other of us came out with the periodic “Aye, whatever” or “Frank, open that door.”  Simply saying “move” would set us snickering.

I had only one full day in Butleigh and I used it in part to visit all the parts I remembered from my last visit: the drain, the wooded path off the drain where I could sometimes see sheep grazing, St Leonard’s church, the High St at the top of which is now a cafe. I took videos and narrated as openly as I dared.

Over and again I passed a man in the drain who was either painting a green fence or sanding away the drips from his painting.

“Are you smoothing it off?” I asked

“No, I’m taking off the drips because well, it’s dripping. Is that a North American accent I hear?”

I stopped and we chatted about his daughters who both live in the states.

I popped in to see Marian, David’s wife from next door. Her mother died since I was last there and like me when my mother died, her creative life began to flourish and her world had opened up. She gave me a handcrafted wooden heart and one of her aromatherapy oil blends. I toured David’s garden of dahlias, tomatoes and huge pumpkins.

Sue had to work –she runs the village post office-shop–and I was down to the shop several times to watch people come in and out. They all thought I was ahead of them in line and I kept saying, “No go ahead, I’m loitering,” and Sue would call out, “She’s with me.”

In the afternoon Pam, Wendy and I looked at old photographs and pieced together what we knew of the family connections. I had a great Aunt Ann who corresponded with the Cornish side of the family;  I found the addresses in her address book after she died and wrote to a Miss Hazel White. Hazel was in her 70s at the time and I was in my 20s. A few years later I traveled to Harrowbarrow, Cornwall to meet this elder. Hazel showed me the cottage of my great grandfather, James Knott who emigrated as a young man to Walla Walla, Washington. She made me a family tree showing James Knott as the brother of Elizabeth who married William White. The Whites and the Knotts became family in the late 1800s.

I visited Hazel several times before she died. By then I had met her niece, Pam, the granddaughter of Elizabeth White (Are you getting all this?) and Pam’s husband, Mervyn. They came twice to Seattle and stayed with me and I made several more trips to Cornwall to visit them. Mervyn died about five years ago and Pam had the stroke. By then I had met the next generation, Pam’s daughter, Wendy and her longtime, friend, Sue. Wendy and Sue are closer in age to me than the other generations and they more like family to me than almost anyone left on earth even though the genealogical connection is distant.

The next morning I walked to the shop with Sue. I could seriously spend a week in Butleigh just going to the shop. There’s always something interesting happening. On this morning a woman was sitting in a motorized cart on the sidewalk.

“Has anyone seen you yet, Caroline?” Sue asked

She leaned into her bunched up shopping bag. “Not yet.”

“Give me your list. I’ll do it.”

Caroline handed over a list, a shopping bag and her purse. Sue collected her items and Julie at the register totted it up and took the money out of the purse. I took the bag and the purse out to Caroline and got all the credit.

I found several more reasons to go back to the shop: stamps, then cash. Only my card wouldn’t work for cash so the postmaster did a kind of voodoo whereby I could get 70 GBP.

“I expect you don’t want me to tell anyone about this,” I said.

“That’s right. No one.”

“Not even Sue.”

“No.”

“Or write about it in my journal?”

“Not that either.”

“Will do.”

Back home I sorted a box of Sue’s cards–she’s a talented photographer--and bought a stack. Then I read aloud all the synopsis on the backs of Pam’s E.V. Thompson novels while holding the book covers for her to look at. When I’d had enough of Cornish bodice rippers, we watched “Dad’s Army.” Finally Wendy’s sister, Joy arrived to stay with Pam and the three of us left for Cornwall.

My last night on Islay brought a doozy of a storm. I wouldn’t have minded being stranded another day but the next morning, ferries were running. However they were only running from Port Askaig, which is more sheltered than Port Ellen. We were taxied up the high road and rushed unceremoniously onto the car deck of the ferry just before it moved out into the Sound of Islay. By then it was a beautiful warm day with clouds and blue sky but the wind was still strong.

I got a cappuchino on the ferry.

“Did you want chocolate with that?”

I couldn’t think what he was asking. Did he mean chocolate covered espresso beans like in Seattle or did he mean a Cadbury flake?

“Chocolate, “I repeated. “Where would I put it?” (It was chocolate; why did I care where he put it?)

“Where do you think?” The Scottish, I notice, can be blunt like that.

I sized him up. “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe a drip into my veins?”

He laughed. “Maybe in five years” and sprinkled chocolate powder on the coffee.

I was truly sad to leave Islay. I loved the wild and stark look, the feel of an island, the scent of the sea, the friendliness of strangers and the warmth of the people I had met, especially the wild and magical Rachel; and Margaret and Harold at The Grange.

Glasgow replaced the wind in my face with a batting around of people but I had come back to a little corner of the city that felt familiar. When I arrived in Glasgow a week earlier after nine hours on the plane and five on the train, I felt dazed. At Glasgow Central, a policeman had set me in the right direction to my hotel, which was just around the corner on Argyle St, a few blocks from the Clyde. I walked down to the Clyde after getting settled and crossed the river on a foot bridge, the Tradeston Bridge. That was the extent of my adventures in that first 24 hours of travel.

In Glasgow Central

Breakfast the first morning was at “sex-thairty” and it was a country house spread: a row of covered hot dishes and islands for fruit, cereal and bread. A compote of berries was called Forest Fruits, which tickled my imagination. Were they picked by piskies?

As I ate I watched a woman with whom I had ridden the elevator and who was ahead of me in the breakfast room: a gratuitously rude person who sighed with Weltschmerz when the hostess asked her for her room number. She signaled how put upon she was by tossing her head and saying, “I don’t know. Three something.” To heap insult upon her, the hostess asked for her name and finally located her on the list of guests who had paid for breakfast. The hostess and I had a gossip about her after she swanned into the breakfast room.

Arriving in back in Glasgow after the week on Islay I taxied from Buchanan Street Station to the same hotel around the corner from Glasgow Central on Argyle St. To stretch my legs, I walked the opposite direction from the River Clyde. I found a little loop called the Argyle Arcade, which was shop after shop of jewelry, each window glittering like a million stars. The shopkeepers were all in severe black and looked like they might possibly be armed.

I carried on past the public library where someone had put traffic cones on a statue of Wellington and his horse. A group of Japanese girls were giggling and taking pictures. At George Square, I turned back and turned in early for the night.

Wellington with Traffic Cones

I pulled my suitcase over to Glasgow Central early the next morning, the better to partake of anything on offer in the first class lounge. The first class Brit-rail pass that one can get in the states is ridiculously inexpensive and is worth all the perks, one being all the free food, drink and comfort in the lounges. I hit the jackpot in Glasgow: a huge bowl of little gluten free Bakewell tarts, which were yummy in the extreme. Every time I went by them (for a coffee, fruit, water, a paper, the toilets) I stuffed a few more into my pockets. I savored them for the rest of the trip and still had five when I landed in Seattle two weeks later.

In the train in first class, one has already paid for everything that is offered. The tea trolley rolls down the aisle regularly and on long trips like Glasgow to London there’s a meal served. I luxuriated in the comfort and the space and peace at least until Lancaster when a ghastly couple with whacking great colds sat down across the aisle from me and hacked all the way to London. I thought, So help me, if I catch your cold, I will hunt you down like dogs.

Using the loo on the train is always interesting. The first class loo is as big as a walk-in closet whereas in other cars there’s hardly room to sit down. It’s also as complicated as a Smart TV with buttons here and vocal instructions there. I lurched into one with ear-buds in, listening to a playlist I had collected. I didn’t quite get the door shut properly. Over the music, a strident American accent shrilled “Door did not shut, door did not shut!!!” I fumbled with a button. “Door did not lock, door did not lock!!!!” I pushed the button harder. “Door is locked, door is locked!!!” The drums of Verdi’s “Dies Irae” had started and I found myself staring at the toilet, which was purple. A garish purple. The strident voice, the “Dies Irae,” the train rocking, a purple toilet, just a bit surreal.

In London, I bussed from Euston to Paddington and to my home away from home, the Paddington lounge, familiar to me because the west country trains leave from Paddington station and the west country is where I always go sooner or later because my cousins are there. I helped myself to a handful of GF Flapjacks baked by Mr. T.G. Pullins bakery in Yatton, Somerset; I came home to Seattle with several of them still in my possession. I also pinched biscuits for my cousins, Wendy and Sue, who I would see in a few hours. The three of us would embark on a new adventure.

It rained hard my third night on Islay. I looked out the window early morning and thought it was yet another reason I would miss Rachel. I had to get around on my own for the next two days. But by the time I came down to the breakfast room at The Grange, it was clearing up outside.

Maggie made me the same breakfast every morning: orange juice, 1 egg, 1 rasher of bacon, GF toast and tea. (In case you aren’t familiar with bacon in the U.K., it’s more like what we would call ham and it’s very tasty.) After these breakfasts, I wasn’t usually hungry again until mid-afternoon. Harold chatted with the guests and we all heard about everyone’s adventures of the previous day. The Barrow-in-Furness brothers had left and in had come various young American couples and a jovial fellow from Burnley who was there to catch and release sharks for the fun of it.

Everyone had tales to tell about walking the Three Distilleries Pathway that begins just around the corner from The Grange. It’s a distance of three miles. The first half mile gets you to Laphroiag; a mile or so later, Lagavulin and at the very end, Ardbeg. Today was my day.

Harold gave me a lift to Laphroiag (pronounced la-froig) to get me started. A long time ago, Laphroiag distillery ran a hugely successful marketing campaign whereby you could own a square inch of the land. I don’t remember actually paying any money, I think there was just some official looking form to submit and I was sent a certificate saying I owned a piece of Laphroiag. I was at that time just starting to enjoy the scotches I referred to as “the smoky, peaty ones,” of which Laphroiag is one of the best.

Entrance to Laphroaig Distillery

Harold told me to collect my rent when I visited the distillery. I thought it was just one of his funnies but in fact if you tell them in the gift shop that you want to collect your rent, they give you a mini bottle stamped “rent paid!” They actually have the coordinates of the square inches catalogued and you can put a wee flag from your country on your square inch. I didn’t have any documentation with me but they said to put it anywhere I chose. Clearly this was a marketing scheme that became happily unmanageable.

Catalogs of Friends of Laphroaig

My plot, Laphroaig

The distillery is an impressive estate and squeaky clean as was Lagavulin up the road. I had a wee dram of lovely 19 year old Feis Ila in the comfort of the Lagavulin bar and mused about drinking whisky at 10:00 in the morning. Feis Ila is a scotch from the Caol Ila distillery, which I learned was owned by the same people as own Lagavulin.

Behind Lagavulin distillery on a little peninsula are the ruins of Dunyvaig Castle. I walked out to the ruin to get the iconic view of Lagavulin distillery.

Iconic Lagavulin

The wind was blowing and the day was damp but it wasn’t cold. There would no doubt be more rain before too long but while on the footpath, I stayed dry. I enjoyed the sight and smell of the sea, the green grass, the enormous cows and the wonder that I had come such a long way to this island that I have wanted to see for so long.

Ardbeg was the end of the Three Distilleries Path. I had lunch, having been told I could get a “lovely lunch” in their café. I had thought I would curl up after that and have a wee dram and write but there wasn’t any place to do so. I said hello to one of the servers who lives down the road from The Grange and who has a cat named Bob. Then I walked out to the bus stop to wait for the bus that would take me back to Port Ellen.

Waiting for the bus at Ardbeg

It began to pour just after I got on the bus. This was to be my experience all the while I was in Scotland. I was generally aware that it was raining or had rained but I never got caught in it.

I explored Port Ellen. A post office shop called The Blue Letterbox, the Spar grocery shop (Spar is a chain of convenience shops), the Co-op, which seems to be everyone’s preferred place to buy groceries and down at the end of the high street, an old family-owned everything shop called Macaulay and Torrie. I walked down to the port and looked at the war memorial festooned with a wreath, poppy images and poppy-painted rocks.

War Monument, Port Ellen

Finally I ended up at the Islay Hotel for a cup of tea and a piece of cake.

The next morning I took the bus into Bowmore, the largest village on the island. I visited the round church at the top of Main Street, then called into the tourist center to get some help with my plan for the day. I wanted to explore Bowmore, go to the Islay Woolen Mills and have a leisurely lunch somewhere. Here was the plan we worked out:

Immediately: explore Bowmore for an hour and a half

12:39: Take the bus to Bridgend and have lunch in the Bridgend Hotel (They do a “lovely lunch.”)

2:50: Take the bus to the Woolen Mills, which are not a stop but the drivers (most of them anyway) will let you down there if you ask.

3:50: Stand on the edge of the road and flag down a bus to take you back to Bowmore.

Main Street, Bowmore

At the Bowmore distillery I sweet-talked an 18 year old dram out of the bartender instead of the 10 year old they were offering as samples because I told him I could get that in Seattle. I had a good natter with Ron at the Celtic House, a book shop to die in. I wanted to buy every book I saw. Authors I’d never heard of, books about Islay and Jura, books Rachel had recommended.

Then I popped up to the tea room above the bookshop where I put in ear buds and found Bach’s Mass in B Minor on my phone. I was upping the volume the better to hear it when in my line of vision someone was waving at me and pointing to her ears. I took out my ear buds and she told me she didn’t think I was plugged into my phone. I could hear Bach all over the shop! I pushed the plug in firmly and the baritone voice stopped.  Next to me two octogenarians were doing quite well whizzing around on their phones.

When I left I leaned into the woman who had signaled me and said “Technology is going to be the death of me.”

She laughed, “No worries!”

I caught an earlier bus to Bridgend with the same driver who had brought me to Bowmore earlier. When I finished my lovely lunch at the Bridgend Hotel I decided I would walk up the road to the Islay Estate. The road is two lanes and no shoulders but I was told that after a bit I would see a footpath. I never saw the footpath so I walked a mile up the road to the estate.

The Islay Estate was a kind of Downton Abbey affair back in the day of the Campbell Laird who owned it. In the yard which use to house the smiths and joiners and other professions necessary to keeping the lord and lady and their entitled children ensconced in their privilege there are now crafts-people and galleries. Several places were closed and the rest looked a little tired. I walked first in the kitchen garden, which was being put to bed for the winter. It must have been magnificent in its day. Then I visited with Elizabeth Sykes, a batik artist who is in the process of retiring and who Rachel had told me about. She made me the best cup of coffee I had had since I left Seattle.

“The Americans and the Germans all seem to like my coffee,” she said.

I went back to the main road, which I persist in calling the highway and confusing everyone because technically the main road is the low road. In the car park a big burly man with a red beard asked me if I was lost. I said I was hoping to flag down a bus to take me to the woolen mills.

“Hop in,” he said. “I’ll take you.”

His name was Rob. He was kind, drove very fast and talked non-stop. He left me at the top of the drive to the woolen mills and I followed the sound of rushing water until I came around a corner and entered the mill shop. An elderly man presiding at the counter asked me what I would like. I said I didn’t know, I had just come in the door.

“Well, look about!”

I looked about the gorgeous shop that smelled of wool and damp. In the back the looms were crashing away and I took a quick video while the weaver wasn’t looking, getting closer than I was technically allowed.

I noticed a portrait of a young man who could be no one other than the elderly man at the front counter, the owner, Gordon Covell. Another name I knew from Rachel’s tutelage. I introduced myself and said Rachel had told me about him.

I had to lean in to hear his thin voice say, “It wasn’t me. I wasn’t there.”

I burst out laughing.

At this point in my adventures, I was a mile from the nearest bus stop and it looked like rain. I went to the top of the road and hoped the bus I knew was coming would stop when I waved. It wasn’t the Islay bus I flagged down; it was a school bus. Evidently they will pick up anyone by the side of the road, too, so I rode into Bowmore on a school bus. I waited ten minutes in Bowmore for the bus to Port Ellen and once I was seated inside it started to rain.

At the Co-op in Port Ellen, I picked up some yogurt for the evening and found Margaret, my hostess, in the shop.

“Pop into the car—it’s the white one just across—and I’ll give you a ride up the hill.”

I popped in. I sat there uncomprehending for a bit thinking incredulously, “What is the steering wheel doing over here?”

I popped out and went around to the rider’s side. Margaret laughed when she got in the car; she had seen me. They could run a contest of the sighting of tourists getting into the wrong side of the car.

The wind was whipping up when I went to bed and I wondered if the water would be so wild in the morning that the ferry wouldn’t run. Stay tuned.

My second morning on Islay Rachel drove us to the west part of the island to Kilchoman distillery. This was to be my only official distillery tour although I called in at the gift shops of nearly all of them. I’m glad Kilchoman was to be the distillery I toured because I like their Scotch and I don’t see much of it in Seattle. Also Kilchoman is self-sustaining. Everything is created, used and recycled. They grow the barley, harvest and thresh it and feed the chaff to the cattle. They dry the barley, smoke it and make the mash. They extract the liquid and fertilize the fields with the mash.

Kilchoman

We began the tour with  jiggers hanging around our necks on lanyards so we could sample every step of the process from the early beery taste to the new make, which was just astonishing. I can still feel its intensity and my surprise at its finish. It was like absinthe: liquorice-flavored and very strong.

I was impressed by how immaculate the place was. All the distilleries, in fact, gleamed like expensive cruise ships.  Important to keep in mind when the water in the loo ran brown from all the peat in the earth.

While I was on my tour Rachel ate a bacon roll and read Advancing the Retreat, which I had given her. I brought one copy with me knowing I would meet at least one person I would want to give it to. Rachel has an MA in Scottish literature and a degree in pure architecture and in landscape architecture. Houses she designed dot the island. She has studied engineering, religion, and women’s studies. We talked books, literature, feminism and spirituality. We were our own little cross-discipline seminar as we bounced all over the island of Islay.

For a picnic on Machir Bay Rachel built a peat bonfire and gave me a tea in a bone china cup.  I’m still annoyed with myself that I didn’t go barefoot in the water. It was cool and overcast but that has never stopped me. Yet one more reason to return to Islay is to wade in Machir Bay.

Machir Bay

Islay is shaped like a crab claw. As we drove down the inside of the west pincer along Loch Indaal, we got glimpses of the other pincer, better known as the Mull of Oa, pronounced Oh. At the very end of the Oa is an American war monument, which thankfully we did not take the time to visit. I heard an awful lot about the monument when people learned I was American.

“Oh you’ll want to see the American monument on Oa, then.”

“Why would I come all this way to go look at an American phallic symbol?”

But nevertheless there it was, coming in and out of our line of vision as we drove. Rachel and I made a comment or two about it.

We called in at Bruchladdich distillery, sampled whatever wee dram was free (although I think Rachel finagled me something off the menu) and visited the village shop.

At the Laddie Shop, Bruchladdich

in the village shop at Bruchladdich

Rachel was on a hunt for some particular chocolate truffles to pair with whisky but we apparently were too late. It seems they go fast. The last place we looked was the kitchen of a little craft cottage where the truffles originate: An Gleann Tablet.

A glean is a glen. “Tablet” is a little harder to explain as Rachel found when she tried to explain it to me. The tablet at An Gleann  looked like penuche but that wasn’t a reference point for Rachel. I said penuche was a kind of fudge, it just wasn’t chocolate.

“Tablet isn’t fudge. It’s Tablet. It doesn’t even look like fudge.”

I gave her that. It didn’t look like fudge. It looked like toffee.

“The texture is grainy,” she said. “And it’s not chocolate. Fudge is chocolate and creamy.”

Now this was confusing. I bought what was labelled “Scottish fudge” at the Coop down the hill from The Grange. It was grainy and tasted of brown sugar but it was still called fudge. The stuff at An Gleann turned out to be world’s better than the stuff from the Coop but it was of the same species.

“It’s like brown sugar fudge,” I said at which comment I thought Rachel might drive away and leave me.

It was round about here that I pinpointed the feeling that though I was about 12 years her senior, Rachel felt like a big sister. Something about the easy way she was with me. Maybe it was her openness and her frankness. Maybe it was the way her accent worked on me. I was always a little behind her mentally because I was doing so much translating in my head. I had some difficulty understanding not just Rachel but much of Scottish speech yet I found it endearing. There’s music and laughter in the Scottish voice.

We were talking about people’s worlds being their cell phones and I said I wondered what would be the outcome down the road.

“I don’t wonder,” she said. “We’ll all be rowboats.”

Rowboats? I thought. Was this some kind of word play or metaphor? I played along. “Who would row the rowboats?”

She gave me another of those looks like she suddenly realized I was an escapee from a mental institution.

“Rowboats!” she insisted. “Rowboats, rowboats!” She tapped her head. “Think of the context, Elena! Rowboats.”

“Oh.” I suddenly got it. “Robots.”

“Yes, Rowboats. Think of the context of what I am saying.”

“Rachel, I’m getting 80% of it!”

It was gloomy that Sunday, not many people about, and of course many businesses were closed. A light rain came and went. I had hoped to see seals on the rocks at Portnahaven but there was only one who seemed interested. I sang to him and he bobbed up and down in the water, watching us.

After Portnahaven, we started up the west side of the island to Tormisdale Croft where Anne sat spinning and there was no internet access. The sound of the wheel in the quiet of the shop was mesmerizing. No wonder Anne was so calm and bright.

Ann carding at Tormisdale Croft

Anne had just acquired two piglets from a neighbor and she and Rachel had a natter about that. Everyone seems to know everyone on the island and more importantly, everyone’s business. Rachel, especially is a walking network of people and information about Islay, Jura and no doubt Colonsay where she was born and Oronsay, two little islands in this group in the southern Hebrides.

On up the road was Kilchiaran Chapel where we sat in the nave of the ruin and paired tablet with whiskey because we hadn’t found the truffles. I liked the tablet with Laphroaig although the combination of sugar and alcohol is not smart for me.

Kilchiraran, Islay

I learned that putting a drop of water in the Scotch to “open it up” is an old-fashioned idea that the Americans like because it brings out the sweet but leaves behind some of the complexity. Rachel suggested I close my eyes, put my nose in the glass and draw out the scent before letting a drop in my mouth. Then savor it and pay attention to its subtleties.

Another language puzzle: Rachel said that when I saw the prefix “kil” I should think of monks’ sales.

Sales, I thought. Like medicinal wine sales? Or sails. Was this another boat thing?

“Monks’ sales, Elena. Think of where monks live.”

“Oh, cells,” I exclaimed.

“Exactly. Sales.”

Kil, cella, the altar of a temple. I truly will never forget the mean of the prefix “kil.”

The next word game came up soon enough. Rachel asked me if I had any pates.

“Spell it,” I said.

“P-e-t-s.”

“Oh yes, I have a cat.”

The Hide

The day ended with a visit to the Hide at Loch Gruinart. I had never been in a hide before. It’s peculiarly suited to patient people, which I can be on occasion. But by then I was tired. My two days with Rachel had come to a close. I would miss her, her spirit, her generosity, her humor and intelligence.

But I’d be glad for some time on my own, which I had the next day.

Corryvrecken is the name of a famously fierce whirlpool off the coast of Jura, the island north of Islay in the Hebrides. George Orwell and his small son were lucky to escape it drenched, but with their lives. I submit that there’s another corryvrecken on Islay and her name is Rachel.  She was my guide for my first two days on the island, having created for me a “wild and magical bespoke tour” – that being her inimitable brand.  I was well into my email acquaintance with her last winter in Seattle before I recognized what bespoke meant.  I thought she was organizing a tour to which I was improbably offering my input and others would be joining us.

But no, it was Rachel who was leaning against her white Volvo waiting only for me to disembark from the Caladonian-MacIntyre ferry from Kennacraig at Port Askaig, Islay, Scotland.  By the time I got to Islay I knew I had gone somewhere far away. There was the nine hour plane from Seattle to London, five hour train from London to Glasgow, three hour bus from Glasgow to Kennacraig and two hour ferry to Port Askaig.  Yes I could have flown the whole way but what’s the fun in that? I wanted to know where I was going.  There was plenty of time to think about what the hell I was doing during the long, tiring journey .

The bus from Glasgow to Kennacraig could have been a ride through the evergreens of the Olympic Peninsula except the mountains are smoother and less rugged looking. We followed Loch Lomond for a while. I think I saw the “steep, steep side of Ben Lomond” but I couldn’t be sure as it didn’t look all that steep to me. Next to me a young woman was blowing out her ear drums through her ear buds so I put in my own and found Walter Berry singing “Mache diche, mein Herzen rein.” Winding through the Scottish lochs on a two lane road listening to the St Matthew Passion is an experience not to miss.

A woman got on at Crarae and announced to the entire bus, “I’m wet, I’m tired, I’m in a bad mood. I’m going into town for my drugs and booze and to do my yoga.” The bus laughed and I smiled but I also thought, oh god, that’s me all over again.

Cal-Mac ferry, Finlaggan, to Islay

At the port of Kennacraig, there is just enough time to buy a ticket and walk the gangway onto the Finlaggan, a gleaming, elegant boat, more like a miniature Queen Mary than a ferry. I was all over it. I chatted for a long time with Peter over a bowl of soup. Peter goes around the world visiting bothies, remote cabins used by the most intrepid hikers, making sure they are still secure and safe. I stood outside in a breathtaking wind as the boat sailed alongside Jura. A white van moved along the island road and the woman next to me commented. “There’s rush hour on Jura.” I found the “quiet room” at the end of the ride and sank there into my jet-lagged thoughts until time to disembark and to meet Rachel.

Rachel is tall and exudes energy. Her voice and her eyes are full of mischief, humor and little nonsense. After two days with her, I decided she was the incarnation of a gude faerie in the Seelie court. (look it up). We drove down the island, talking easily. The afternoon ferries from Kennacraig go to Port Askaig at the top of the island. My destination was Port Ellen at the bottom and where the morning ferries come and go.

Port Ellen, Islay

I stayed at The Grange, a big yellow guesthouse at the top of Mansefield Road. There I was entertained and looked after by Margaret and Harold Hastie.  They gave me a large room with a view of the harbor and at night, the moon.  Harold, who not incidentally also has the mischief in his eye, hoists a flag from the country of each of the guests. When Rachel pulled into the drive, an Australian and an American flag were flying high on a flagpole outside the guesthouse.

The Grange, Port Ellen

I was touched. I felt so welcome. Even so, I said I wasn’t sure I wanted anyone to know I was American. Fly the flag, by all means, but tell them I’m Canadian! Or at least know that I didn’t vote for Trump. Over and again people said they’d yet to meet an American who had!

view from The Grange, the harbor, the American flag

A lovely antique piano so vintage that the Hasties can’t find anyone to tune it sits just inside the house where I saw it every time I entered and left the house. I played a piece of music entitled “Westering Home,” an old fashioned tune in three time written about Islay by the Scottish composer of the 1920s, Hugh Roberton. He also wrote the tune to “Mairi’s Wedding,” which my OK Chorale has sung and to “All in the April Evening,” whose ghastly text was popular in its day. Harold and the guests came to listen as I played. It has a sentimental magic and I felt its pull myself.

Westering home, and a song in the air,
Light in the eye and it’s goodbye to care.
Laughter o’ love, and a welcoming there,
Isle of my heart, my own one.

Tell me o’ lands o’ the Orient gay,
Speak o’ the riches and joys o’ Cathay;
Eh, but it’s grand to be wakin’ ilk day
To find yourself nearer to Islay.

Saturday morning I breakfasted with Ken and Derek, two brothers from Barrow–in-Furness in England although Derek now lives in Australia now which accounted for the Australian flag flying outside The Grange.

“Barrow-in-Furness,” I said. “That’s the home of the woman who wrote the war diaries for Mass Observation.”

Ken thought for a minute, “That’s right. Nella.”

It took both of us until the next day to remember Nella’s last name: Last. Ken said he quite liked his town being known for the “lady who wrote the war diaries.”

Rachel picked me up at 9:00 and for the next two days I felt repeatedly that Rachel and jet lag don’t mix. She radiates life and energy; I had to rally myself to keep up. We took off north toward Port Askaig, peeling off the main road to a narrow one in order to avoid Bowmore, the largest village on the island.

“We’ll take the high road,” she said.

“What’s the high road?” I asked, thinking I might get some geography surrounding the Loch Lomond song.

She looked at me as though she was afraid she had a nit-wit on her hands for the next two days. “It’s not the low road,” she said.

Oh.

on the Jura ferry

At Port Askaig we drove onto a flat bed that turned out to be a small ferry like the Port Townsend-Whidbey Island ferry used to be. It pulled away and I got out of the car to enjoy what later was called the best day they had had all summer (a few said it was the summer): warm with a brilliant blue sky, sun and always wind. At the crossing’s end I walked onto the island of Jura.

Jura  (pronounced like it’s spelled but you have to be able to make one quick roll of the r;  by the way, Islay is pronounced “eye-la”) was my special request. George Orwell spent the last few years of his life on Jura, writing 1984. While I loathe that particular novel, I love just about everything else he wrote and have no end of admiration for him as a person. His old home, Barnhill, is still there but the main road stops before it gets there and a rugged vehicle is needed to go the final two hours of travel. The thing to do would be to go in with several days’ provision and stay.  That’s my plan for next time.

We parked in the only village on the island, Craigshouse, and had lunch at the Jura Hotel where Rachel’s friend Maggie joined us. Maggie’s parents had been neighbors of Orwell up at Barnhill and I could barely keep myself from leaping on her when she sat down.

Her father had helped George dig his garden and they’d stop for a “tot of rum.” He was quiet. He was ill—he had TB. His sister, Avril, was there looking after him. Maggie apologized that she had so little to tell me. It was before she was born and before Orwell became famous.

“Oh, Maggie,” I said. “You’re four degrees of separation between me and George Orwell and I’m delighted to have met you!”

Maggie gave me one of her free drams. When you live on Jura, you get three wee drams a month in the Jura Hotel. A wee dram is somewhere before one and two fingers. I had a dram of Jura Scotch called Sevenoak.

Rachel and I visited the distillery just across the road, then carried on up the island over the Three Arch bridge where I could see all three Paps of Jura. Mostly you see just the two and they look suspiciously like breasts. I found out later that was the whole point. Pap is old Norse for breast-shaped hills. I can’t imagine anything in America being called a pap; the Republicans would throw a sheet over it.

All three Paps of Jura

At Knockrome we plundered an old telephone kiosk that had been turned into a wee book shop. Further up the road was a post box that had discontinued service for two years because a starling had taken up residence in it.  When the bird died, a plaque commemorating Mrs. Starling’s residence was attached to the box.

Rachel at Kiosk book shop at Knockrome

postal box plate in loving memory of Mrs. Starling whose home this was. . .

Back in Craigshouse we visited an old photo gallery of island life in a tiny room off the church. It smelled of a century’s worth of damp. The black and white photos were group according to activity: farming, school, church. One old woman with a forbidding face was captioned The Stramache and I learned a new word. A stramache is an uproar, a row. Apparently this Stramache was a terror.

Rachel suggested I nonchalantly drop the line to Margaret and Harold that there had been a stramache on Jura and see if I could get them wound up. We practiced my nonchalance but I couldn’t quite pull it off on the Hasties. I tried it the next morning at breakfast. Harold got that gleam of mischief in his eye and looked as though he wasn’t quite sure whether or not to believe me

“Did they call out the coast guard?” Harold is in the coast guard so he’s seen a fair number of stramaches.

I grinned. “No, I was just trying out my new word.”

We came off Jura mid-afternoon and went to Finlaggan, the ancient seat of the Lord of the Isles. I tried to read some Scottish history before this trip and got hopelessly confused having very few reference points in the long history of the Celts and the Scottish tribes .  The natives of the islands were the Celts who are best understood as a language group that included parts of Ireland and Scotland plus Wales, Cornwall, Brittany and even down into areas of Spain. The ancient seat in this case, would be a Celtic one.  The word Lord is better understood as King as that is essentially who occupied the ancient seat.

Finlaggan is now a ruin on a small island. At the visitor’s center I met Catherine, the docent. I sussed right away that this was not a woman one asked stupid questions of.  I’d be afraid she would demand why I hadn’t read the material.

Rachel at Finlaggan

We wanted to walk out to the ruin but the past week there had been so much rain that even the boardwalk was underwater, up to two feet in places. The efficient Catherine, however, had laid in a supply of wellies and people were sharing them. When they became free, Rachel and I set out down the path and waded out to the ruin.  Rachel made me a gin and tonic out of Lussa Gin, which is distilled on Jura, and local tonic water that had quinine in it, which I don’t believe we can get any longer in our nanny state. We sat on the stones and talked as the wind played up the grass. The light and the wind felt magical and I thought, “the isle is full of noises.”

Finlaggan is a label that gets put on an affordable Scotch that I buy at Trader Joes. I learned from Rachel that all the distilleries take turns contributing to it. Over the years I have probably sampled Scotches from all eight distilleries; I just didn’t know it at the time.

Finlaggan marked the end of my first day on Islay. In the two days with Rachel, she would every so often go on a tear about Scotland, Gaelic, history, whisky, feminism. As an educator and business woman in whisky, she negotiates around entrenched male attitudes. I bet the men only mess with her once. She is passionate about her heritage. “Stop me if it’s too much,” she said. “My friends called me ‘Tartan Drawers.’” I went to bed early, the better to be ready for her in the morning.

I got my naturalization papers last week. I made it past the health screening in spite of having a concussion.  After reading that you could be forgiven for thinking I still had one. Anyway, here’s what happened:

On Thursday in an accidental maneuver too complicated and boring to describe, I knocked heads with my dear friend Nina (rhymes with Dinah). The crack reverberated in my head more than it did in Nina’s and I was left with a crashing headache, which I ignored until I started feeling slightly woozy and other parts of my body started protesting. I had to cancel my students and lie down for the rest of the day.

The next morning I felt slightly better but still had vestiges of headache and wooziness. However I had a special appointment I could not miss. I was to be the Special Friend of my piano student, Sophie, at Special Friends Day at Perkins Elementary.  The students were to present their study of The Immigrant Experience at Ellis Island and there were to be *snacks.*

On the drive over, I imagined that I’d be sitting in a darkened and quiet auditorium next to Sophie until she got up to do her part. It’s been a while since I’ve been in a grade school. The place was noisier than a cocktail party and excited kids careered from room to room as though looking for where they last set their drinks. I took a deep breath. It was important I not wimp out just because I had a headache, felt nauseated and was allergic to this kind of atmosphere.

“You can do this,” I said.

A smiling adult approached me. “Are you a Special Friend?”

How could that not make someone feel better?

Sophie started us in the Snacks Room where heritage foods from all over the world were laid out, complete with ingredients labels for sensitivities to things other than noise. At the end of line I was offered the choice of bottled water or lemonade.

“No coffee?” I asked.

The Special Parent sagged. “I wish,” she said.

A bell rang and we were herded into the next room. Sophie and I quizzed each other. I asked Sophie a series of questions for immigrants to answer before they (we) could get off the boat. General questions about origins and health.

Then Sophie asked me questions on the actual citizenship exam. I could not have correctly answered half of the questions two years ago. I will say this for the current administration: many of us have learned more about government, politics, and espionage than we ever expected to or possibly wanted to.

From the screening and testing room, Sophie took me down a hallway that contained paper mosaics of the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.  Posted next to the lovely art were the immigrants’ identity papers. Sophie, for the purposes of the project, was part of the Miller family. Evidently the entire fourth and fifth grades had been organized into various families. Each family member had an identity card.

It was around this point that I got a lump in my throat. The presentation had been carefully put together and laid out. A lot of white paper, pens and colored construction paper was enough to evoke in me a thoughtfulness about how we all got here and how utterly heartbreaking it would be to lose what we have.

The last thing we did was to get our naturalization papers. Here’s mine:

It had been a long time since I had been in Perkins School. Let’s see, umm, 35 years. I taught music in Perkins Pre-School for two years. I was the Music Lady. Every 45 minutes a new group would troop in to sing songs and play rhythm instruments and do interpretive dance.

In the Orange Group was a little girl named Jocelyn. She’s the daughter of my friend Nina on whom I cracked my head as related in the beginning of this post. That’s Jocelyn sitting next to me on the left. We all were sawing our fingers under our noses singing Vio-vio-violin. The little witch with blonde curls on the other side of me is trying to figure out which finger goes where on the nose. It’s good to have a special friend to help with things like.

I’ve just published my first novel. I began it in 1997.

I was part of a “spirituality group” that imploded from suppressed resentment, unbearable competitiveness and hurt feelings. One evening everyone popped off like a batch of homemade root beer in the basement, one at a time like a series of timed explosions. One woman turned to me and cried, “You’re just like my sister. Why can’t you leave things alone?” It could have been a Saturday Night Live sketch. All these people trying for months to be their version of spiritual and their humanness couldn’t take the pressure. It was the seed of my novel.

I got about 50 pages into a story of which this explosion was to be the climax and got stuck. I put it aside. Over the next ten years I got it out and tried to work with it. Nothing.

Then I wrote my memoir, 99 Girdles on the Wall. The memoir slipped onto the page like a pit from an over-ripe plum. When I had a better grasp of what I was doing, the writing flowed. I certainly knew my life better than anyone else. I had first lived it and then analyzed it in therapy, bringing me to about age 52.

In 2011 when the memoir was published I started my website, Local Dilettante Studio and this blog. I wrote a weekly post for six years before I lost steam. In all that writing, giving myself my own deadlines, my style improved. Plus I was living what was once my highest aspiration: to be a weekly columnist, writing whatever I wanted like George Orwell’s “As I Please.”

My blog posts had recurring characters, principally my long-suffering friends and neighbors who might be at home in a novel. The old idea from 1997 started to cough and clear its throat. My college roommate, Putzer, The Attorney encouraged and occasionally prodded me to start up and then to keep going. She offered to read everything I wanted to send her: notes, character sketches, outlines, drafts. I sent her everything (for years) and she always came back with “Carry on.”

I couldn’t write at home. There were too many distractions. So, once a quarter I went for a week-long retreat on Whidbey Island where I wrote six hours a day. Slowly the book took shape.

Writing a novel became a process of problem solving. I needed characters. I thought of some characters. I sent the character sketches to my neighbor Gwen who knows something about just about everything; she dressed them and gave them cars. It took me the longest time to internalize the fact that my characters weren’t going to do anything unless I made them do it. It wasn’t like a memoir where something had already happened and I just needed to remember it, elaborate on it, or as my Aunt Frances would say, lie about it. I could have them do anything as long as I could make it credible.

I needed a setting. To reduce complications over locale and logistics in the story, I set the novel in my neighborhood and had my own house and garden in mind for the March home.

I needed a structure. I had an idea of several plot lines that I wanted to inter-twine with each other. I read novels and plays, trying to pay attention to the structure of plots. Nothing. Well, nothing that opened the computer and made an outline for me.

I hired an editor (Jennifer D. Munro) who helped me develop my plot ideas and gave me some help with structure. She introduced me to my next problem: Point of View. She analyzed what I had written and demonstrated how I was in and out of every character’s head, including the dog and the cat and without any focus.

I read some tomes about POV. I read short stories, paying attention to point-of-view. I tried my story in first person, didn’t like it.  Finally I chose four characters who would tell the story. Well, four characters and a snake; that is to say the Ouroboros who (loosely) became the narrator when the spirituality group met.

When I decided on who would be telling the story, it finally flowed. The writing went faster and I didn’t have any major roadblocks, just small solvable problems. The last thing I did was read it aloud slowly. This helped me catch awkward sentences and words that were repeated too often. Once I declared it finished, I sent it back to Jennifer who copy-edited it.

If you are writing your first book, don’t skip the copy-edit and don’t confuse it with proof-reading. I had half a dozen proof readers: friends, English majors, retired editors and two people who were prototypes for two of my characters who I mostly wanted to okay things so there wouldn’t be some nasty law suit in my future. The copy-edit is different: little elves standardize things like the spaces between the dots in the ellipses and make sure all the single digit numbers are spelled out. Otherwise your finished book will be like you in the first shirt dress you made in the 1960s, all pressed and fine, and your slip showing.

After the final proof and the copy-edit, you Don’t Touch It. You send it to your next handler. In my case that was my book designer, the inestimable Vlad Verano. He worked his magic with the interiors and the cover design. It was anti-climactic to upload onto the Ingram website but it was a relief for it to out of my hands. There was another round of proofs, both of the print copy and the e-pub. Then there was the excitement of having 100 books delivered to my door, which I chronicled in The Drang Before the Sturm.

The book launch, a huge success, is over. Now I am hustling to line up at least one reading a month because this is how one sells a book, whether it’s traditionally or self-published. The early reviews tell me it’s funny (as planned) and there’s a nice build-up of suspense (one of the problems I learned to solve.) I hope you read it and if you like it, put a review somewhere and tell a friend. Thank you!

How like a winter has this quarter been, like a winter.* It’s been unseasonably cold and has gone on for too long. Taxes loomed over everything, as always until one gets them done, making January even more dreary than it already is. God bless the Capricorns, they can’t help it.

I wasn’t especially excited about our OK Chorale/All Present St Patrick’s Day concert at the end of this quarter. The OK Chorale struggled with a lot of new music, which always comes together in the end except for the times when it doesn’t. On the All Present side of things, we had whittled down our Irish songs until there weren’t that many left. The list was further eroded by the fact that the Ukuleles could only play two of them, one of which I nixed, “When Irish Eyes are Smiling,” because I’m sick of it. I christened “Bill Bailey” an Irish song and added it to “Harrigan.” Then there were two.

Ginger, one of our All Present regulars and a fellow piano teacher, lobbied hard to put “When Irish Eyes are Smiling” back in. Both she and her husband have the Irish in them and she felt there wasn’t enough of it in the program. Particularly “When Irish etc”. She pointed out that everyone knew it; couldn’t we just tack it on to the last sing-a-long song? So I had an extra song sheet printed especially and everyone in the audience got a song packet and a sheet just so we could sing about Irish eyes.

I was planning to smile a lot and get through the concert. Instead it was a roaring success and I got teary during all the sentimental songs. “When Irish Eyes are Smiling” rose through the hall, getting louder and more relaxed and rowdy every time we came round to the chorus. You could almost imagine everyone was in their cups it was so fulsome. I sat playing the accompaniment with tears pooling in my eyes.

What was making me emotional was not so much the song, which I loathe, but the fact that everyone was singing together. It’s like when we sing “Joy to the World” at Christmas. Everyone knows it, everyone sings it and something happens that threads us back into the past and connects us to humanity.  Even if it isn’t part of our culture, as with the Filipina in All Present, people are singing together.  It strips away our pretensions and worries. It links us to each other if not in memory or culture, in the heartbeat of rhythm and the voice of melody.

The audience rocked out to “Hey Good Lookin’.” For my money, this song should be sung at every sing-a-long, everywhere, all the time. I have an evangelical fervor about it because I am a recent convert. When the Ukulele band introduced it I called it “that sexual harassment song.” It was pointed out to me that it’s a unisex song. If I thought a man was asking a woman what she’s got cooking and that meant a woman’s place was in the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant, that was my problem. Anyone could be in that kitchen. And the song wasn’t about cooking in the kitchen at all. Madame Metaphor had missed it completely. In any case, it is the rowdiest, catchiest, most fun-loving, toe tapping song imaginable for group singing.

The highlight of the whole concert for me was when Ben sang. Ben is a slight, thin man who is currently living with Parkinsons. He asked The Other Susan to stand with him when he sang. He stood unsteadily and his hands shook as they held his music.  Then he sang. What comes out of Ben when he sings is vibrant and strong, a high ethereal tenor. He sang the verses of “Wimoweh.” Then he smiled his wonderful smile, full of sweetness, relief that he had gotten through it and surprise that the ovation was so stunning.

After the concert he told me, “I’ve waited 50 years to do that.”

“Oh, Benny!” I said and hugged him.

Apparently Ben has lived with his wondrous instrument and for reasons I can’t fathom, has never been given the opportunity to use it. He’s auditioned for choirs and he has asked to sing in churches. Nothing. I don’t understand this. Maybe someone had parents who bribed directors into letting their little Brittney Spears Wanna Be get in and there wasn’t room for someone with real talent. There seems to be a lot of that going around. Or I could put it down to the snobbery of some churches. It’s inexcusable.

I was proud to put Ben on the promotional posters as the featured soloist at our little concert.  I am already thinking about what he might do next. One day Parkinsons will take his voice. I want to give him lots of chances to share it before that happens.

Ben

* one of the Chorale songs was a setting of Shakespeare sonnet # 97 “How like a winter has my absence been.”

I never visited my friend Louise when she lived two miles from my house. She was my singing student before we became friends. Then she moved to Oregon City and I spent five hours travel time to visit her there.

I’ll get to that in a minute. First there were the books. Or rather, The Books. A shipment of three boxes containing 100 copies of my first novel, Advancing the Retreat. I ordered them as soon as they were available from the distributor and wouldn’t you know it they were scheduled for delivery just about time the train left Seattle for Oregon City.

I already had Erina, the energetic neighbor girl, feeding the cat in the evening because Bill who usually takes the evening shift was also going to be out of town but it was his birthday and he was going skiing. I told Erina about the books.

“Do you want me to pull them inside for you?”

“Oh that’d be great.  .  . Do you want to write that down?”

“Oh no, I’m fine.”

I looked at her skeptically then alerted Gwen who was feeding the cat in the mornings. Gwen told me I could arrange for UPS to notify her when the boxes were delivered to my door.

This necessitated my creating an account at UPS, which took actual life blood out of me. I saw no way to alert a third party upon delivery. I haven’t enough life blood to spare to learn how to do such things by phone or –God help me—wrist watch. I considered taking my laptop with me just to get the UPS notice but the great attraction of being on the train was to be away from electronic leashes. I dithered over whether to pay $15 and have the boxes delivered the following Monday when I would be home. I abandoned that idea but managed to instruct them to deliver the three boxes to the side of the house. There was no way to specify which side of the house so I was able to worry about that for a while. This is my first novel, you understand.

I told Gwen she was not to leave the neighborhood on Friday during the hours of one and four or until the boxes came. She saluted. I asked my friend Tim if he would stroll up here at 5:00 and check everyone’s work.

Then I told myself, “STOP!”

Friday morning, UPS notified me that due to weather conditions in the Midwest, my delivery was postponed til Monday. Big sigh. New blood pumping in. I texted Erina, emailed Tim and told Gwen she could stand down.

I was off to Oregon City with a light heart. I was pitifully excited about going someplace I had never been before, even if it was only a suburb of Portland. And I love the train. I love the station and walking down the track, feeling like I’m in a Hitchcock movie, hoping the similarity ends there. I love watching the world go by at a pace faster than a stagecoach but slower than a plane, more spacious than a car and with room to move around. The people one meets. The sway of the cars on the track. The ability to pee when one needs to.

It was a semi pleasant ride but not so lovely as in my anticipation because I had forgotten the value of booking business class. In coach I was crammed next to a big, cheerful, galumpy  woman who was going to visit her twin for their birthday. She needed me to plug in her phone because she was diabetic and couldn’t reach the plug in. I learned a great deal about her in such non-sequiturial ways. We became BFFs when a seat went spare behind us and the attendant offered it to either of us. My seat mate left me to expand into two seats. After that I was quite cheery with her off and on through the slat between my two seats. I caught hold of her sweet vibrations of excitement about seeing her twin.

There was another passenger on the train who made an impression on me when we stood in line for the bistro car. He also seemed to be bubbling over with some wonderful anticipation. He was going to Portland and he hadn’t been there in a long, long time.

“Why’s that?”

“It’s kind of embarrassing.”

I braced myself for a family-from-hell story.

“I been in prison for the past 26 years.”

Twenty six years and he looked to be about 50. I was curious as hell what he’d been in for, but 26 years? I didn’t want to bring it up.

“When did you get out?”

“At 10:10 this morning.” He emanated joy.

I teared up. “Congratulations!” I thought what an amazing morning he must have had, just moving around in the world. “I am so happy for you!”

He grinned. “It’s kind of embarrassing,” he repeated.

“Hey,” I said. “We all have embarrassments. The trick is to know who it’s OK to tell.”

I bought a bag of 4 potato chips for $2.25 and my new acquaintance ordered a sandwich. I started to leave then turned back and whispered in his ear, “Do you need any money?”

“No ma’am,” he said. “But thank you.”

“You made my day,” I said. “I am so happy for you.”

At Louise’s new house I had two cats at my disposal: Stop That Sammy and Get Off the Table Davy. Sammy was a remarkably friendly tabby, going right away for a complete face inspection. Davy, a little more cautious, is a tuxedo cat with bedroom eyes. I encouraged them to sleep with me but I mostly got nocturnal visitations from Sammy who squirmed on the bed and batted my belongings around on the night stand.

After a relaxing weekend, I scored a bit of a coup on the train home. I wanted to upgrade to business class but the car was full. Oregon City being an early stop in the run I got a single window seat-with-table facing north in the lounge car. The staff told me I could stay there the whole trip, which I did. I read, wrote, knitted and chatted; and arrived home to the beginnings of a snow storm which developed blizzard qualities before it finished.

In the midst of the storm, my 100 books were delivered and I was able to collect them at my front door. If you want a copy from my delivery, you’ll have to come to a reading:

Friday, Feb 15, 7:00 PM– Ballard Writer’s Collective Annual Event, Sunset Hill Community Center.

Tuesday, Mar 12,  7:00 PM– Book Launch, Phinney Books

Thursday, April 11, 7:00 PM– “It’s About Time,” Ballard Library

Meanwhile please consider buying a copy from your local bookseller. I think you’ll enjoy the read.

My friend Karla is from Holland, land of liquorice. Black liquorice. If you consider red vines to be liquorice you can stop reading right now even though this post isn’t about liquorice at all.

Karla told me they have a saying in Holland “liquorice poisoning.” That’s when you spend all evening (or days) with your hand going back and forth from the candy bowl. It’s akin to Death by Chocolate.  Then she went and introduced me to Salmiak Rocks, a slightly salty/sweet Dutch liquorice. I currently have liquorice poisoning but that’s only by the by.

I also have Verdi Poisoning. Verdi’s Il Trovatore has just finished up a run at Seattle Opera. While I gather it is one his most loved operas, I don’t remember ever seeing it and I wasn’t familiar with many of the well beloved and famous songs. At Seattle Opera I saw it twice. In between I ordered the score. While I was waiting for the score, I sat at the piano and sang every aria from Il Trovatore I could find in the house. I found myself saying “Strrrrrride la VAMPa” for no apparent reason other than that I live alone and talk to myself a lot.

It began with my neighbor across the street, Bill, asking me if I wanted to go to the dress rehearsal of Il Trovatore. His parents are huge opera goers; part of their subscription includes dress rehearsal seats, which Bill and his sister usually avail themselves of. Bill’s sister being otherwise engaged, he asked me.

I had never been to a dress. We had excellent seats smack in the center of the first tier. But I was otherwise not impressed. The singers were marking, not really giving it their all, which we had been warned about but I didn’t expect this to detract from my enjoyment. It did.

I was disappointed in the soprano (Leonora) anyway. I require an exceptional soprano. This one had one of those voices whose beauty had been trained out of her. And the mezzo (Azucena) wobbled. To my ears she needed more frontal focus to disperse some of that breath that was hanging around in her throat. Ironically, the only voice I really loved was that of the tenor who sang Manrico and he had a cold.

In Il Trovatore, most of the action has already taken place and is relayed in the arias and choruses. It’s a grotesque and repulsive story that involves a baby being thrown into a fire. In this production we learn this not just through the music and super-titles but with the help of a shadow play behind a curtain. When you’re sitting in the center of the house, it’s right in your face: a woman tied to a stake, struggling to free herself from the fire and the mezzo tosses in (what she think is) her baby. It was horrifying. I couldn’t stop commenting on it on the way home. Bill kept saying, “All operas have horrible plots.” I kept saying, “But it was a baby.”

Though it had been a sleepy performance (except for the baby), I could not get the music out of my head. That was when I started looking through my books and CDs to find arias to play. I scrolled YouTube. I stalked Il Trovatore.

Then I walked around Green Lake with my friend Nancy who had just seen the production with The Other Cast. She and Scott had loved it so much they were talking about going to see it again. The music was already zinging in my head. They had seen and heard something apparently stunning. I wanted to hear the other cast.

We found a time we could all go together. Nancy and Scott went SRO and I went with that golden ticket, the Senior Rush. You show up before curtain and present your rush ticket, whereupon they find you a spare seat and no matter where it is in the house, it costs $45.

I almost always manage to get in a box. A Box! At Aida, I had Box #1, practically hanging out over the stage. I could have thrown up from excitement, right onto the first violins. I sat next to the guy who had turned the ticket in and who obviously was unhappy his chosen partner wasn’t there with him. I told him how delighted I was to have the seat because I was a singing teacher and those of us who actually teach singing can’t always afford to hear singing.

“You teach?” he perked up. “Where?”

“Oh I have a private studio.”

“Oh.” He turned away in disappointment. Not only was his chosen partner not there, the singing teacher he had to sit next to wasn’t even a professor at Julliard.

At this performance of Il Trovatore, I again got a great box seat and a congenial seatmate as well. The guy on my other side was a jaw-clicker but he smelled good and my pleasure was not impinged upon.

I was forward in my seat most of the evening. I will confess that much as I adore opera (and Shakespeare,) I do tend to take a little snooze at some point. On this particular evening I didn’t. The soprano was everything I could have hoped for. I could have died and floated away on her voice on “Tacea la notte placida.”  It was the same wonderful tenor, now a week past his cold! The mezzo had a nice frontal edge and a range and flexibility that was electrifying.

I looked down at my lap when the baby was thrown into the fire.

It was a transcendent experience. Nancy and I compared notes all the next week.

“That fast one that comes after the slow one, what is it? It runs through my head all the time.” (We determined it was “Di tale amor”—it comes after “Tacea la notte placida.”

“I am listening to Joan Sutherland sing it right now.”

“I’ve found “Il Balen” in my arias for baritones and was just playing it.”

“I found Leotyne Price singing “D’amor sull’ali rosee.” I’m getting that CD.” 

“Stride la vampa.”

“Ah, ‘Stride la vampa!’”

“Do you think you might want to see it again.”

“Maybe. Would you go?”

We didn’t, but we both thought about it: that’s Verdi Poisoning.