London '98

A TALE OF TWO CITIES
Being a Tour of London, Chester, Several Towns and Numerous Charming Villages


Last September in New Orleans, fortune dropped a travel voucher for one thousand dollars into my grateful lap. My friend Tootie Troy has always expressed a great desire to go to London, and I thought of her when I came back to Boston. After months of joyful anticipation, we were off at last.

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 24

Our flight to Detroit was routine. The schedule allowed a comfortable one-hour wait between planes. Our boon companions in the Detroit airport were a merry troop of musicians from Zimbabwe. Unfortunately, their merriment knew no bounds and they decided to occupy their time by practicing while they waited. I was able to lose myself in the novel I’d brought along, Leslie Epstein’s Pandaemonium, but Tootie found them maddening. This musical interlude might actually have been enjoyable had the wait not stretched out for five more hours. And still they played, on and on and on. It was like being serenaded by an orchestra compounded of hurdy-gurdies. I mean, after five hours of the stuff, it all begins to sound like “Pop Goes the Weasel” played over and over by an idiot child. The airline was rather abashed at the delay, as they should have been. They gave us vouchers for $100 worth of travel or a healthy clutch of frequent flier miles. We left at 12:30 a.m. with a prayer of gratitude.
There was more reason to be grateful. Some few minutes before boarding time was announced, Tootie went over to an inordinately handsome young man whose name I fervently wish I could remember – I would send him roses for what he did. She began to chat. Among other pleasantries, she mentioned that she really wanted to get to London because it was, after all, her very first trip abroad and she had just turned eighty years old and she certainly hoped he could assure her that the mechanics were not Iranian. It must have been the bit about turning eighty that effected what happened next.
“Well, let me see what I can do,” he said, taking her ticket, and mine as well. He scribbled on the tickets for a moment, and as a final touch, wrote Happy Birthday on hers, then handed them back. She didn’t quite realize what he had done, but I had my suspicions.
He had put us into first class. [When I got back to Boston, out of curiosity I asked the travel office how much a single one-way first class ticket between Detroit and London would cost: $2,769.00 – apiece!]
We settled into our seats in the highest of spirits, the irritation of the long wait almost forgotten. The cabin was sweltering, but infusions of champagne helped tremendously to cool us off until the air conditioning kicked in. It was my first experience of flying in first, and I now see that one could get spoiled quickly. The meal, which would have been memorable on the ground, was hardly to be believed in the air. A parade of delicacies came to us: salad; soy beef and ginger chicken rolls; smoked salmon with potatoes and spinach. Dessert was fresh fruit, a variety of cheeses and port, finishing with a chocolate mousse cake of such spendor, such— well, let’s just say that if I had enjoyed it any more, the stewards would have had to hold me down and press a cool cloth to my brow. They provided a sleep mask, soft fire-engine-red booties to wear, a toothbrush and toothpaste. I slept four hours on the flight, which is unusual for me.

THURSDAY, JUNE 25

We awoke to a Lucullan breakfast of spinach ricotta crepes and perfect coffee. One hour from London, we threw up the windows to look down on the landscape. Wales was crawling slowly along below us. It was Tootie’s first sight of Britain and naturally, she was ecstatic. I was pretty excited myself.
We landed at Gatwick, and the customs process was smooth and quick. We boarded a train to Victoria Station, the Gatwick Express, and arrived at Victoria in less than an hour. It impressed me as being everything a train station should be. The Victorian detail remains, the vaulting, the glassed roof, but everything is brilliantly lit. Shops and restaurants abound. It is fast and modern, yet retains the classic look of an old train station. Tootie walked along in sheer wonderment, but not easily; her knees, I could tell, were going to give her a lot of trouble. We found a tour operation booth where Tootie got the 4-day passes for the buses and the tube train which she had arranged for in Maryland, then we walked outside for a moment, into a beautiful London day, just so our first glimpse of the city wouldn’t be the dark underground.
But the tube ride from Victoria Station to the Russell Square stop was a nightmare. Tootie’s knees are, not to put too fine a point on it, in worse shape than I had imagined. The stairs in particular were difficult for her. In addition, I had not only my own two bags to maneuver up and down the steps, but Tootie’s huge bag, too. Luckily, it is on casters, but they gave us no advantage on steps.
When we got to the level of the trains, we made our way without too much trouble to the Russell Square station. The square itself is one of London’s small jewels, but first it had to be gotten around. The St. Margaret Hotel was on its south side, halfway down Bedford Place.
The last time I had seen the St. Margaret was 27 years ago. It was much the same, but had mysteriously moved to the other side of the street. (Or perhaps my memory had placed it there.) We checked in, and were shown to our room, in the basement. It was darker than I expected, but quite spacious. The St. Margaret is run by an Italian family, and reminded me, in the public rooms, of Quisisana e Ponte Vecchio in Florence. This hotel, however, managed to have a good deal less style than my Florence digs, but the staff were pleasant and the breakfasts were rather better than that.
I had a much-needed quick shave and left Tootie to rest at the hotel. It has never been my custom on vacation to relax immediately upon arriving, so I made for the British Museum, around the corner. A quick rainstorm came up, one for which my poor umbrella was woefully inadequate. I ducked into the first establishment I saw, the Museum Tavern, where I believe I stopped on my first visit to London. I had a pint of Theakston’s Best Bitter, and asked if they had Scotch eggs on the menu. I had first sampled these in 1971, and had another in 1986. They are apparently no longer to be found at fine pubs everywhere, because for the entire week in London I asked for them in every pub, to no avail.
I walked through Soho and into the bustle of Piccadilly. I had planned to look for a few show albums that might be unavailable in America, and lo and behold, here was Tower Records before me. I went inside and indulged myself in a CD blowout: Sweet Charity (2 discs); Salad Days; The Hot Mikado; and Saturday Night, Stephen Sondheim’s first show, which has just had its first production in London. I walked out again into the cauldron of Piccadilly Circus, and mistakenly walked into the Mall, thinking it was the Haymarket. To reorient myself, I walked to Trafalgar Square. From there I walked up the Haymarket, and stumbled upon the Comedy Theatre on Panton Street. A double bill was playing, one I could not resist, Black Comedy and The Real Inspector Hound. The first I acted in some years back; the second is by Tom Stoppard, and is therefore not to be missed. I made a note to myself to get tickets.
I found myself once more in Piccadilly Circus. From there I walked north to Soho square, in which I discovered I felt right at home. It is planted with lush gardens, and in the center is a small structure, in magpie half-timbering. Soho itself is a welter of restaurants, tawdry night spots, and its natural denizens are in large part members of the demimonde. I felt quite pleased to be there, and Soho was to become one of my favorite parts of London.
Heading back to the St. Margaret’s, I scouted the neighborhood for a restaurant so Tootie wouldn’t have to walk far. One block from the hotel I Found Cosmo Place, a charming side street chockful of pubs and a modest restaurant, Cagney’s. That looked like an ideal place. I went back to find Tootie resting. I woke her and read my novel while she readied herself for dinner.
We strolled over to Cagney’s. The décor is specialized, to say the least. Every surface is coated with images and memorabilia of Jimmy Cagney, and the menu items bear the names of his movies. I had tuna with penne and olives, ending with a “Love Me or Leave Me,” a hot fudge sundae, which gave me terrible spasms of guilt. To walk off dinner, Tootie and I walked around to the High Holborn, around to just past the British Museum, and back to the hotel. We went to bed at around 11, and I slept for nine hours, most unusual for me.

FRIDAY, JUNE 26

I leaped out of bed, refreshed and renewed, and went down to breakfast. The St. Margaret’s offers a good one, a wide choice of items you can combine for variety. Tootie was not quite ready to take the town, so I walked down to a bookstore I’d noticed on our post-prandial stroll. Their specialty is Anglo-Japan books, but I only had eyes for their shelves of various editions of Alice in Wonderland. I found a superb —and affordable— sample and bought it. They were strangely reluctant to cash my travelers’ check, so I walked down to an exchange three doors down. The clerk confided to me that the bookstore owner was an “odd duck,” hence the difficulty.
Back at the hotel, I picked up Tootie, and we walked to the Russell Square station. There, tucked into a side street was The Friend at Hand! This was the local pub I’d frequented in 1971, and I had no real hopes of finding it. I marked its spot and we continued on to the station. We took the tube to Piccadilly Circus, which Tootie found enchanting. After a bit of dithering about, we managed to find the starting point for the London Pride bus tour of London and hopped on. It was the best way for Tootie to see the highlights, and was something of a refresher course for me. She gamely made it up to the top of the bus with me this first time, though when we got back on later, she elected to stay below.
We went by the Aldwych Theatre, and it was there that we got off, lunch our objective. A few doors up Drury Lane, we found two pubs, but both were crowded and smoky. Further along, a small restaurant caught my eye: A Taste of India. Tootie had never had Indian food before, and was game to try it. All went well until I offered the chutney to her. She put a healthy gob on top of her poori, and popped it into her mouth. Immediately, and with an anguished cry, she spat it out onto her plate. “You stinker!” she threw at me, convinced I had played her a trick. I sampled a rather smaller chunk, and it was fiery. The range of chutneys is quite varied, some being hot, others not. Perhaps I should have tried it out first, but at least she had a memorable first try at Indian food. She was distinctly guarded at the buffet, taking only a spoonful of each item. Sadly, most of it was too spicy for her taste, but she professed to have been glad to try it.
We got back on another bus (the London Pride ticket allowing you as many stops as you like.) This took us near the new Globe Theatre, London’s new attraction. It stands on the exact spot where Shakespeare’s original stood – hallowed ground. I resolved to return for a more leisurely look. The tour then took us up to Hyde Park, and I saw for the first time the Royal Albert Hall and the Victoria and Albert Museum. The bus let us out in Knightsbridge, directly in front of Harrods. We went in. In 1971 I had bought a cashmere sweater there, but I’d forgotten how grand the store is, rather more like a museum than an emporium. I found some blackcurrant jellies I couldn’t resist, Tootie bought some souvenirs. When we emerged from Harrod’s, we caught the bus up toward Piccadilly and got out there. Even before the trip, Tootie had expressed a keen desire to plunge through the outdoor markets of London; here, in a churchyard, was a lovely one but it closed just five minutes after our arrival. We got back onto the tube at Piccadilly Circus.
Back at the Russell Square station, I stopped at The Friend at Hand. Alas, it was empty of not only people and pints, but furnishings as well. I was horribly depressed to find it was no longer in existence, but later I found out it was being redecorated. On the way back to the hotel we strolled down Southampton Row and found a nice little Italian restaurant. Tootie had spaghetti with meat sauce, I the spinach lasagna. We had dessert as well, Tootie the flan, and I a delectable crème brulee almost as good as the one I had in Rome in January.
Tootie, as usual, made it an early night. I walked down to Covent Garden, along the Strand to St. Martin’s Lane, then turned to walk north. The World Cup was going on, and all the pubs were full. Bands of testosterone-drenched football hooligans were roving about, chanting in unison, which I found alarming in the extreme. It’s a very frightening manifestation of nationalism on the rise again, and no less unsettling for its being Merrie England. I hope Britain realizes that in these people they have a growing problem.
Still, the old street was fascinating to me. I worked my way north to the High Holborn, then back into Soho, where I found Foyle’s, the huge bookstore I was so impressed with on my first visit. I wandered through Soho, revelling in the play of humanity. Most of the people I saw were your classic nightbirds, and many more were the drunken football fans, speaking in barely comprehensible northern accents made even fuzzier by drink.
When I returned to the hotel Tootie was asleep. I flossed and brushed, then went up to the lounge to read my novel. Presently a smoker routed me from the field and I went on down to bed.

SATURDAY, JUNE 27

I slept fitfully but woke rested and raring to go at eight. Tootie and I had a nice breakfast and walked around the corner to the British Museum. First off, I found Tootie a wheelchair. She plunked down into it and immediately turned into a martinet. Nothing was right: the Museum facilities for the handicapped were woefully inadequate (she was at least half-right there); I was racing about too much; I shouldn’t bump into that lady; there were too many people in front of the Rosetta Stone…
Then there was the matter of her camera. It didn’t work! She thought it was the batteries, so I rushed back to the museum shop to buy her a couple of them, nearly knocking over a couple of old ladies and the statue of Thutmose III Vanquishing the Enemies of Heaven in my zeal to please her, or at least get the hell on with it. She accepted the batteries without a word of thanks, but they were unnecessary. She hadn’t troubled to familiarize herself with the working of her own camera, and it turned out she had simply finished the roll. I considered coshing her with a convenient Greek bust but thought better of it. Halfway through the treasures of the second floor she tired of squawking and the rest of the trip through the museum was less arduous. At the end, I left her in the Museum Shop, and she did her bit of shopping and I did mine. She bought a pair of Egyptian earrings and necklace, then we walked down the street to a charming pub called The Plough. I managed to get her upstairs, then went down for the food, two meat pies with a generous stack of salad greens, beetroot chutney and potato salad. A delightful repast. We had the room to ourselves, leaving the smokers below.
I left her at a souvenir shop, and said I’d meet her at the hotel. We missed one another however, and an exhaustive search of the neighborhood failed to turn her up. So I left a message for her back at the St. Margaret, and went down to Leicester Square to try to get half-price tickets for a show, specifically, the double bill at the Comedy Theatre. I failed to get them, or anything else, so I walked the half block to the Comedy. The box office man advised me to come back at 10 on Monday morning, for at that time a block of tickets were to go on sale at special prices.
Tootie and I had agreed to separate if we lost touch, so I went on down to Piccadilly and took the tube to the Blackfriars stop, and lit out for the Blackfriars Bridge. As I crossed the Thames a light rain began to fall. I hadn’t brought the umbrella, so trotted on across quickly. It was hardly more than a drizzle, so I did the River Walk to the Globe Theatre dodging from tree to tree. At the Globe, a performance was in progress, so I could not see the interior of the theatre. I was gratified to see prominently displayed a bust of Sam Wanamaker, the American actor-director who was instrumental in the re-creation of the Globe. He must be counted a secular saint for bringing this about, and my own national pride was given a bit of uplift since an American had done this for London.
The gift shop was open, and it is first rate. I bought nothing but a coin – a groundling’s penny, a token sold to the masses who stood in the pit to see the shows. The rain, which had come up rather dramatically just as I was going in, abated somewhat. I went outside to admire a cast-iron gate created for the theatre. It is studded with little iron sculptures of plants and animals and fantastic beings mentioned in the bard’s plays. From there, I walked through Southwark on my way back to the bridge. Formerly an area of urban blight, a warren of warehouses and cheap pubs, Southwark is clearly on its way up, due largely to the development of the Globe. I headed back across the Blackfriars Bridge to the City. It was fairly well deserted. Right next to the bridge, I stumbled across the Mermaid Theatre, where I’d seen Sir Bernard Miles in Othello in 1971. He was a bit long in the tooth to by playing wily Iago, but gave a memorable growliness to the role nonetheless. That Othello had been one of the highlights of my earlier trip, and my very first production of the play. Alas, the theatre has gone belly-up, and fairly recently, at that. Sad. I walked almost to St. Paul’s, that magnificent monument to God and Christopher Wren, then up Ludgate Hill, along Fleet Street to the Strand. The City, being London’s chief business district, was quite dead, despite the bright late sun. I trudged on, a bit footsore by now, to Drury Lane and Covent Garden.
In the cellar of Covent Garden, I found a wine bar, the Crusting Pipe, and had a splendid little glass of port. I’d had my first port in London 27 years before, but had only the sketchiest memory of the wine bar. This one affected the look of a dark, dusty cellar, with little alcoves insuring privacy. Great casting. Next to the Crusting Pipe was a fascinating gallery of mechanical toys and carnival attractions, mechanical fortune tellers and the like.
I made my way up to Soho, and on Monmouth Street I stumbled upon Dress Circle, the show music shop that I had been unable to find at Covent Garden. I had only half an hour before they closed, so never got to explore the lower floor. That’s where the real treasures lie, the second-hand CDs and records.
On the way back from Soho, I looked for a nice neighborhood restaurant to take Tootie to, but when I got back to the hotel, she had found a little snack and didn’t want to go out again. So I returned to the bright lights and hubbub of Soho. The choice of restaurants was dazzling; I considered the banquet of ethnic choices, and ultimately settled on my old favorite, Italian. (There must be something profoundly meaningful about this…). Capuceto’s, a couple of doorways off Cambridge Circus, is a tiny hole in the wall, formerly a French restaurant, judging by the faux Toulouse-Lautrec murals high on the walls. It was very crowded, with only a few tables packed tightly together, but I was given a good one. I figured that my orgy of walking through the city justified my ordering something really sinful, so I splurged on the cholesterol high of spaghetti carbonara. The was preceded by avocado vinaigrette, nothing more elaborate than half a ripe avocado in its shell, with vinaigrette dressing lying in the pool created by the seed hole. Simple concept, but a magnificent taste sensation. The spaghetti was almost anticlimactic. Almost. I was reluctant to leave the raffish charms of Soho, so I wandered home slowly, full and happy and enchanted by the bright lights glittering in the evening. A splendid London high.

SUNDAY, JUNE 28

I got up at eight, had breakfast with Tootie, and we set out for the Portobello Road, intent on exploring its famous antiques market. Tootie was reluctant to venture on the tube again, so she took the bus, and I the tube. When I got to the Notting Hill Gate station, I saw no sign of Tootie, so I wandered off in the direction of the Portobello Road, through a neighborhood with the quiet lazy charm of a suburb. I saw no signs of the market, even on the road itself, so when I spied a large woman extracting her hips with some difficulty from the front seat of her car, I asked her where it was. “Oh, dear,” she said, “You’ve missed it, luv. The antiques market is on Saturday. There’s nothing today, only some old clothes.” I had no choice but to return to Notting Hill Gate, and see if I could head off Tootie. I knew the long walk to the non-existent market would tire her out terribly. I retraced my steps, but never did find her. My God, for the second time in two days I’d lost an eighty-year-old lady in the sprawl of London! I wandered around the area for almost an hour, looking everywhere for her, but the city had swallowed her whole. Again.
A rainstorm came up quickly, so I ducked into a second-hand bookstore. What a punishment for me. It was stuffed with goodies, and I began the slow process of weighing down my suitcase. I got a thick collection of comic novels, The Wimbledon Trilogy, and the collected journalism of Angela Carter, every bit its equal in size. When I staggered from the shop with my haul, I still couldn’t find Tootie, but since she had managed all right the day before, I set my mind at ease. Back at the hotel I left a message saying that I’d call at 1:00, and failing that, call again every half hour till I got her.
I made my way down Charing Cross Road, through a thicket of bookstores, stopping only to look for Auberon Waugh’s Will This Do?, which I found and bought, then hurried on down to the National Portrait Gallery. Halfway through the lower floor I went back outside and called the hotel. Tootie was there and we agreed to meet at the hotel at seven.
I went back into the National Portrait Gallery to finish up my tour. It is now far and away my favorite museum in London. The first galleries feature new portraits, and the styles here range from the standard-formal to the wildly inventive. The most memorable to me was a portrait of the distinctly un-memorable John Major and his wife, quite a bravura piece of work. Also on the first floor was an exhibition of winners, from a national competition of portraitists. One hundred portraits were hung, again a pleasing spectrum of styles.
Slowly working my way up to the top floor of the museum, I reviewed the famous and obscure faces that have made Britain Britain. So many of the set images of historical figures that we carry in our heads are to be found here in their original forms. The ones I enjoyed most were the literary and theatre personages from the twentieth century. But all the galleries produced a balance of favorites and surprises.
I walked back to the hotel via a different route, taking pictures for Tootie. When I arrived at the hotel, she had gone out (to a C. of E. chapel for a special program) and I waited around Russell Square for her to return. In the room, she showed me what she had gotten at Portobello Road. There had indeed been a small flea market of some type, which she loved, and she was proud of her purchases, some costume jewelry from the art deco period.
From there, we went to the Amalfi Café in Southampton Row. I ordered the gnocchi alla gorgonzola, a favorite. Tootie had never had gnocchi before, so she tried it now and pronounced it wonderful. Bless her spirit of adventure. After we went back to the hotel, I curled up in an armchair in the lounge and finished my novel.

MONDAY, JUNE 29

I left a 7:30 wakeup call, for there was much to do. Our 4-day passes had expired. I chased around the West End trying to renew them. At the Russell Square station I was referred to the booth at the Leicester Square station. But when I arrived, they sent me to Charing Cross, where I once more came up dry. Finally, I was shunted off to the Piccadilly Circus underground, where after queueing for a half hour I was finally informed that they were unrenewable. After I bought two new one-day passes, I stomped off to the Comedy Theatre and got a ticket for the double bill that night. Waiting in front of the theatre with me was a young woman from Colorado, very pleasant, and enjoying London as much as I had been before my horrible wild-goose chase through the bowels of of the city.
Back at the hotel I picked up Tootie, and we took the tube to Baker Street. The line to Mme. Tussaud’s was long, but moving smoothly. Toots, however, didn’t feel she could buck it, so she went to the Planetarium instead. I stayed the course. This museum, wildly popular with tourists, is pooh-poohed by Londoners. The work is so very good, and so beautifully presented, that I enjoyed myself thoroughly. I spent a good two hours there. Afterwards, I couldn’t find Tootie (again!), so I went on to the Victoria and Albert Museum. A photography exhibit was especially fine. William Wegman’s “Dressed for Ball” was a surprise, so droll that I burst out laughing. But the extensive survey called The Art of the Poster was spectacular, catnip to a designer like me.
In the late afternoon, I strolled down Knightsbridge from the museum, an idyllic promenade. When I got to the Burlington Arcade, I found Penhaligon’s. I had intended to buy a bottle of my favorite cologne, Blenheim Bouquet, but it was rather steepish so I decided to wait. I also stopped at Fortnum and Mason’s to buy Tootie a jar of their marmalade. On my return, there was no sign of her, and I had a 7:30 curtain, so I left her a note and took the tube to Leicester Square.
I had unwittingly chosen the worst possible time to travel by tube. The whole system was choked with people, all desiring to rush along, but all forced to move at a snail-like pace. An oppressive heat hung over everything, and the very escalators were uncooperative. Thousands of people were forced to clomp down stationary escalators, while next to them, others were in full operation, – empty, yet blocked off by sawhorses!
Emerging with relief from the bowels of the earth into the sweet air of Leicester Square, I quickly found a charming little boite, Café Oscar. I sat down at one of the outdoor tables and ordered a glass of red wine and the French specialty sandwich (ham, soft cheese, watercress, on a crusty bit of French bread. So potent was this almost pastoral interlude, compared to the hellish ride under the city, that I relaxed completely. This simple meal was as good as any I had on the entire trip and the wine definitely helped.
Almost reluctant to leave, I strolled over to the Comedy Theatre, just around the corner from the café. My seat was a good one, slightly off to the side, perhaps ten rows back from the stage. The first play, Real Inspector Hound, was exactly what one expects from Tom Stoppard, verbal fireworks and elegant plotting. It’s a stunning take-off on The Mousetrap and similar stage mysteries, and lampoons the country-house setting mercilessly. Black Comedy is an exquisite farce, with dark and light played in reverse. The characters, supposedly in bright light, play in total darkness. At a power outage, the stage is flooded with light. The same actors in the previous play were cast in this one, and all were impeccably, deliciously right.
When I arrived back at the hotel, Tootie was still up. She had figured out the buses well enough to get over to the Globe, then had a pleasant supper at a place on the Riverwalk. I could very well have felt guilty by now, at leaving her to her own devices so often, but Tootie is adventurous and self-reliant. She seemed to be having a fine time on her own.

TUESDAY, JUNE 30

We got up earlyish. Tootie wanted to see the changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace, and adamantly refused to take the tube. She seemed to have a pretty good handle on the buses, so I told her I would meet her right under the Victoria monument at precisely 10:30, on the northeast side. I didn’t want to lose her again. Because of her immobility, I once again took her camera to take shots of the parts of London she’d be missing. I walked down to the Victoria Embankment, beautifully laid out parkland, ablaze with flowers. As I moved upriver, I found the Players’ Theatre under the arches of Charing Cross Station. They feature a program of the Victorian music hall, the English version of vaudeville. I couldn’t resist: I reserved tickets for the evening performance. From there I wandered toward the Palace, taking in turn Whitehall, the Admiralty Gate, Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament, that splendid Churchill statue (electrically charged to ward off pigeons), the stately edifice of Westminster Abbey, and St. James Park. I ended up at the Victoria Monument on time and as arranged. Tootie was nowhere in sight. More and more people gathered, eager for the display of color and pageantry. I scanned the crowds for the better part of an hour, but never found her. It was enjoyable to watch the people congregating there. Bobbies patrolled the crowd on horseback. One of them was a slight, pretty young woman who might have been sculpted in Dresden china. She spent most of her time shooing the human pigeons off the statuary — with a voice like a whiplash.
Suddenly a troop of horse guard appeared, and made their way around the monument. The changing of the Guard was underway. I raised my camera and got as many shots as I could. I had seen it before, but it was still a treat. After it was over, I spied Tootie far away from where we had agreed to meet. She hadn’t gotten many good shots, so I was glad I had. The crowds began quickly to disperse. We wanted to get to the same place, a shop in Piccadilly where she could buy a Wimbledon tie for her son-in-law Tony. She bused, I walked. I strolled through St. James Park, and then past St. James Palace, which is situated in the middle of the neighborhood south of Piccadilly. I found the Wimbledon shop, but Tootie hadn’t made it there yet. While waiting, I had lunch at Pret-a-Manger, a ginger chicken rolled sandwich and an espresso; Tootie ate afterward, after a harrowing crawl down to their cellar to the loo, which she described to me afterward with horrified relish.
We separated again, I to the Burlington Arcade, where I finally bought my cologne, then on to the National Gallery. It was far too vast a collection to explore exhaustively, so I found a few choice pieces. I pored over Hogarth’s series of paintings “Marriage a la Mode,” familiar to me only through the engravings made from it. My prime focus was the several fine Holbeins in the collection. “The Ambassadors,” I found especially absorbing. No portraitist in history has ever improved on him. It is an extremely complex work, a stunning assemblage of symbolism and straight reportage, and a brilliant evocation of the Tudor age.
Before returning to the hotel, I took the tube to Euston Station to buy our train tickets to Chester. I was put into an especially long queue as a result of telling an attendant that I needed a ticket for a senior. I chafed at the wait, but the tickets were 9.50 pounds apiece. Later, Peter and David were to pronounce unbelievably cheap. I called them when I returned to the hotel to tell them of our arrival time, then Tootie and I set out for dinner and an evening of music hall.
Our destination was the Gay Hussar, a Soho institution, known for its Hungarian food and romantic atmosphere. When we got into the taxi, the driver asked us when we would be getting out of the restaurant, and grumbled something incomprehensible about the World Cup. Oh, had we only listened to him!
It was Tootie’s first trip to Soho. To our disappointment, the maitre d’hotel of the Gay Hussar told us that we couldn’t possibly be seated without a reservation, so we trundled down a few doors to a pub, The Pillars of Hercules. Tootie hadn’t yet had fish and chips on this trip, so she gleefully ordered that and a half-pint of bitter. I had the chicken and ham pie, a towering mound of golden crust (under which was mostly air) over a comfortable portion of filling. Quite delightful. Afterward, we both splurged on a pudding, a knee-bucklingly delicious apple and blackberry crumble.
Afterward we strolled insouciantly up to Soho Square, my favorite public park in London, enjoying the balmy evening, the lush gardens, the very London-ness of it all. Then we made our stately way up to Oxford Street to catch a taxi. Or so we thought. What the cabbie had muttered became appallingly clear: the city’s cab drivers were all heading home to watch the effing World Cup. Not a single man jack of them was willing to stop for us. Tootie would not take the tube, and none of the buses seemed to be going in the right direction, so I shepherded her eastward toward Charing Cross Road, signalling wildly at every taxi that sailed past us. Finally, it became a question of either taking the underground or missing the show the show completely, which I was unwilling to do. With Tootie grumbling at every step, I got her down into the tube and we got to Charing Cross Station. Tootie’s a real trouper: this was the only time I heard her bitterly complain at length about anything; she poured scorn on the London Underground for failing to accommodate the handicapped. I must confess that the U.S. is far ahead of the British in this.
The Players’ Theatre auditorium is one level down from its lobby, and Tootie was able to sit in the balcony, which spared her more steps. I ordered a pint of bitter at the theatre bar, after having to streak around to Charing Cross to cash a travellers’ check, and took my seat. Then the show began.
The music hall was different than I expected, and at the same time, not. The music at any rate was very much what I had heard on old recordings. I didn’t know that the patter from the chairman, as they call the emcee, was echoed by the audience. The performers were quite talented and energetic, and the only disappointment was a favorite song of mine, “Burlington Bertie From Bow.” It was sung by a young woman of somewhat more modest talent than the others, and the song was not quite what it could have been. I could barely keep my eyes off the gorgeous pianist, a blond named Andrew Faulkner. I met him upstairs during the interval and found him even more charming close up. He asked me if I was going to be in London for long. Naturally, my romantic’s heart made me wonder what would have happened if I had been alone, and not taking the train north in the morning.
When we emerged from the Players, royally entertained, we were confronted by a huge mob in front of a pub, all thoroughly absorbed in the World Cup, with which I grew more and more disgusted as the trip went on. They were, of course, restless with national pride, which in the case of soccer, always seems capable of turning ugly. We edged past them and sent up a few prayers for a taxi. I knew I’d be unable to get Tootie into the tube except at gunpoint.
In front of Charing Cross Station there was a queue for taxis, so we got into it. With ridiculous infrequency, taxis arrived and dropped off their fares, but not all of them left with new ones. In all, we waited for close to an hour in a queue of no more than five fares. Finally our turn came, and the cabbie returned us to the St. Margaret more quickly than I would have believed possible. It was rather a relief.

WEDNESDAY, JULY 1

I rose for a pleasant shower, but it rapidly became a nightmare. The towel rack at the side of the shower was broken, and I gave it a glancing blow, shearing a sizable chunk off the top of the rudest finger of my right hand. Blood did drip all over the bathroom. Tootie tried to help with a washcloth, but the only thing I could do was elevate the damned hand, a la Statue of Liberty, clasping masses of toilet paper to it. I managed to get dressed without goring up my clothing, and with unbelievable difficulty got the bags schlepped up to the main floor of the hotel. The desk clerk, barely conversant in English, helped dress the wound more permanently, and then it was time to pay the bill. A taxi had been summoned and was due in minutes.
I had taken the trouble to determine the payment in dollars the night before, but they were suddenly balky about accepting travellers’ checks. And we already knew they didn’t accept credit cards. I had tried to be stoic about the wound, but at this turn of events, I thought it might be more efficacious to perform the part of the dying swan. I pulled out every stop on the organ, and finally, the clerk made a panicky call to the manager, who allowed our checks in place of good hard solid pounds. The taxi arrived and we bade a less-than-affectionate adieu to the St. Margaret Hotel. I shall not be returning. We were at Euston in minutes.
Tootie had been antsy about getting there through the morning rush, which I knew would be non-existent in Bloomsbury, but there was no dissuading her from leaving extra-early. So we waited at Euston for an hour for the Chester train. I was restless and explored the station. Tootie sat talking with [to] a youngish man attending a horde of small dogs. Finally track 4 was announced, just before departure, and I corralled Tootie and all the bags onto the train, mere seconds before it slid off into the English countryside. In minutes we had left Euston, and in no time had left “the floure of cities alle” behind us. I had a large pad of detailed maps in my luggage, to chart our progress across the land, but it wasn’t till we were ready to leave Frodsham a week later that I remembered I had them.
Our ride to Chester was idyllic. The scenery was pretty, of course, the hurrying was over, and by now my wound had stopped oozing gore. I settled down to a copy of Punch I had bought in the station. In our progress through the midlands we stopped at the stations of Milton Keynes, Rugby, Crewe, and finally, Chester.
David and Peter were waiting on the platform for us. To say that it was a joyful reunion is to understate the case. I first met Peter in 1985, when he came over to Vokes as director of a play sponsored by Grove Park Little Theatre in Wrexham; we bonded immediately. On a visit the following year I met David, and it was love at first sight. We have maintained this irreplaceable friendship for thirteen years, with an ocean between us, at that. I hadn’t seen Peter since the previous summer, and my last sight of David was several years before, when they came over to Boston to visit Sharyn Walters and me.
We drove through Chester and the villages in between, arriving finally in Frodsham. During the short trip Tootie kept up a steady barrage of chat — so steady in fact, that I scented trouble ahead. We turned in the drive to Kingsley Gardens to Peter and David’s new home. This collection of buildings was formerly a school, I believe. Peter and David’s digs are bright, spacious, and beautifully decorated, yet an air of relaxed comfort prevails.
Peter had given up his large, well-lit room to Tootie, and David gave me his bedroom, a comfortable, bookish room with CD player and television, neither of which I turned on while there. David had arranged to stay with friends down the road. The bed was large and soft, with cool green sheets. The delightfully individualist décor includes a large bust of Beethoven sitting in the window.
Tootie was putting her bags into her room, and I joined the boys in the kitchen. Peter, wild-eyed, asked me if she ever stopped talking, and I could see at once we indeed had a problem. David re-dressed my wound with his gentle hands and I knew all was well. With Peter and David, as with so many of my friends of long-standing, I feel absolutely at home.
The village of Tarporley lies south of Frodsham, on the way through numerous smaller villages, equally picturesque. Thence we repaired for lunch, to a small pub called The Rising Sun. I had a smoked salmon sandwich and pint of bitter, which was perfect. But in the company of three such old friends, cardboard would have tasted like chateaubriand. When we had finished, we drove back to the house to relax. Wimbledon was in progress, so Peter watched – avidly — and even Tootie and I were drawn into it. The chief attraction: the young American player Pete Sampras, a gorgeous black-haired beast exuding sexuality. After a while, I accompanied David downtown to buy petrol. He dropped me off at a second-hand bookstore, but returned for me quickly. The traffic in Frodsham was such that he decided to gas up later.
That evening, Peter had to return to Chester, to fine-tune his production of Godspell which had opened the night before. David took Tootie and me through the maze of villages — Helsby, Alvanley, Mickle Trafford – to Guilden Sutton. We fetched up at The Bird in Hand, a quaint inn-cum-pub, wonderfully inviting, and in a lovely sylvan setting. David and I ordered a couple of pints of bitter, and an order of garlic bread with ham and cheese. I had chicken curry, for which I seem to have a limitless appetite. Tootie settled for breaded mushrooms and a salad which she declared she couldn’t finish. So she asked for it to be put into a doggy bag. I assumed this request would be met with incomprehension, but no, it came back to the table wrapped neatly in foil. (This self-same salad would be unveiled several days later, a sodden mess resembling an Irish bog rather than actual food).
When we arrived home, a guest was waiting at the back door. Phil Edwards breezed into the house, bringing his customary burst of energy which crackles through any room he enters. Phil is wildly camp, a great Panto dame in training. The living room resounded with laughter for an hour or so, then Phil left and David, alas, retired to his friends’ house.

THURSDAY, JULY 2

I arose a bit latish, with a scratchy throat. Damn! My shower was more leisurely and markedly less bloody than my previous one, and Peter’s bathroom is four times the size of the one at the St. Margaret. Quite delightful, in all. Breakfast was dry toast (I was beginning to worry about my brobdingnagian food intake on this trip) and splendid coffee. David was off to work. Peter and Tootie and I drove down to Frodsham. At the chemist’s I loaded up on wound dressings, and found some sugarless blackcurrant candies, to keep my throat moist.
Then we drove to Chester. Tootie was enraptured, as I expected she would be. I certainly was on my first visit, as I was again on this one. We parked in an underground garage. In 1986, Michael Quarrier had taken me all around the city via the Roman wall which remains intact. It would have been exhausting for Tootie, so we sent her on a bus tour, which seemed the best alternate way to get a good overview of the town. Peter showed me to Words and Music, a shop owned by a friend of his. It was a small shop, but with floor to ceiling goodies. I found many things I liked (and my jaw dropped at the sight of the clerk), but bought only an Iris Murdoch I hadn’t read, Jackson’s Dilemma. I went down to the shop below when finished. It was owned by another friend of Peter’s, a violin-maker who had photographed Peter’s show for him.
Peter’s parking pass had expired, so he drove to Wrexham to deliver a birthday gift to his nephew, dropping me off at (yet another!) second-hand bookstore. I prowled delightedly for half an hour, then made my way back to the center of Chester. My eye was caught by a sign on the Guildhall door: Antiques Market, admission 50p. It seemed like a good deal, so I went in. I walked out twenty minutes later with a coin for Tootie (a penny from 1901, with Victoria’s plump visage on one side) and a British Army helmet ornament for each of us. Mine was a lion holding a dagger.
From there, I strolled up to Chester Cross, shooting pictures of the remarkable half-timbered buildings for Tootie, climbing up the steep stairs to the next level, an area denied my friend by her knees, and from where one can get some lovely shots of the town. Then I pressed on to Chester Cathedral. I was let in by two ladies who were quite impressed that I had come all the way from Boston to see their building. I was due to meet Peter and Tootie outside, so I only stayed long enough to take a few shots, and marvel at the stained glass windows.
Returning outside I sought Peter and Tootie. They were perched under a lamppost listening to a troop of musicians in Aztec dress, playing South American music. We might have been in Harvard Square. It turns out that they were actually Hungarian, and only enthusiasts of South American music.
I cajoled Peter and Tootie into the cathedral. An organ recital was starting, so Tootie and I settled down for it. Peter abstained. My throat, however, kept me coughing softly, and a couple of hens in front of us kept casting reproachful looks in our direction, so we left quietly.
Lunch was being served in the refectory, so we went there. Peter was nowhere in sight, but we assumed he was either eating elsewhere, or would join us presently. I once again indulged my endless taste for curried chicken, followed by a cold, creamy slice of banana pie. Peter joined us after all.
Afterward, Peter went to move the car to another location, agreeing to meet us at Chester Cross. It is such a splendid town, with the remarkable magpie half-timbering fronting most of the buildings. As we walked along, Tootie said exactly what I was expecting her to say, that she preferred Chester to London. No stairs to climb, an unrushed atmosphere, antiquity keeping the modern respectfully at bay – it was inevitable she should prefer it. If it weren’t for my unabashed romance with city life, I might well have agreed with her.
When Peter joined us, we walked down to the River Dee. The river is wide, with an ancient bridge too narrow for more than one lane of traffic. The weather was ideal, cool and sunny. We left Tootie by the river while we walked alongside the river walk to the car park, then picked her up. On the way home Peter stopped at the supermarket chain Sainsbury’s, where I was at long last able to find my goal, my grail, my cherished Scotch Egg! Three, in fact.
When we returned home, I went out to the back stoop, and read in the late afternoon light, after gathering in the laundry on the line. David finally got in from work.
On the previous evening Peter had apparently been gang-banged by a particularly fiendish flock of mosquitoes, raising a shocking inflammation on his upper legs. He felt he had better see a doctor before he went to the theatre, and David and Tootie and I left at the same time. Darling David had gotten us tickets to a pops concert at Liverpool Cathedral. We are all three music lovers, so this promised to be quite a treat. On the way to Liverpool, David let it drop that he once worked for Brian Epstein, the manager of the Beatles! I promised to send him the caricature I did of Epstein for The Washington Blade.
David gave us the once-over-lightly of Liverpool, and we passed the space-age drum of the catholic cathedral. Dinner was at a cavernous restaurant called, I believe, Norm and Elsie’s Macbeth, quite unlike anything I’d seen in Britain yet. It had a distinctive air of the Liverpudlian about it, that same quality to be found in The Cavern, where the Beatles first made their name. We all ordered the same dish, a heavenly Thai affair, chicken with coconut and lime over basmati rice.
Right down the street from the restaurant was Liverpool cathedral, a 20th century Gothic church, seemingly as vast as St. Peter’s in Rome. The rosy glow of the late sun suffused it with a highly romantic aura. In this late light, it appeared to be constructed of terra cotta. I was suitably impressed, and especially loved the stained glass windows. The only thing that worried me was my throat. The last thing I wanted to do was cough through the concert, so I kept tossing back the throat lozenges. It was nip and tuck, but I managed to get through it without spoiling it for the other patrons.
The conductor of the Liverpool Symphony was Carl Davis, whose silent movie scores I have enjoyed and admired for so long. The orchestra definitely had its work cut out for it, simply to be heard in the cavernous space. Every note reverberated back upon itself. The first piece in particular suffered from this acoustic problem; it was Mendelssohn’s Fingal’s Cave Overture, and came across as muddy and diffuse, more like Fingal’s Swamp. The second piece, Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll, came off markedly better. It is much more legato, so the sound came across as smooth and creamy. Bizet’s L’Arlesienne Suite followed. Then just before the interval, several orchestra members left, which caused a minor, short-lived stampede from some of the audience, but they sheepishly returned to their seats for the organ piece next on the program. It was some exercise, I believe, by Jean Bonnet, and rocked the cathedral on its very foundations. I’m certain it must have rattled windows as far away as the Orkneys.
The second half of the program began with a piece of Moussorgsky’s, the Prelude to Kovanshchina. It was as muddy as poor Mendelssohn, but enjoyable nonetheless. Handel’s organ concerto, The Cuckoo and the Nightingale, fit the space best of all. The next piece was by Davis himself, In Memory of Anne Frank, which was not especially well-served by the acoustics. The remainder of the program consisted of Elgar’s Introduction and Allegro, and two selections from The Firebird.
Afterward, to save Tootie a long walk up the hill, David and I sprinted up to the car, and returned for her. Purely by happy accident, I was able to sit in the front seat all the way home, so I actually had a chance to chat at some length with David. The evening ended in front of the TV, watching the tail end of some idiotic movie, First Knight, which proclaimed itself a retelling of the Arthurian legend. The actual story – legends of unbelievable beauty and sadness — was mangled badly. In short, it was a just another movie made by ham-handed vulgarians for the armies of the ignorant. Cheap, stupid stuff. Sean Connery, the King Arthur, really must choose his scripts more carefully. Richard Gere, at this point in his career, is probably beyond help.

FRIDAY, JULY 3

I awoke to find a birthday card from Peter and David in front of my bedroom door. I have turned 52, an age that might very well horrify me if I didn’t glance in the mirror from time to time. Still, after forty it’s patch, patch, patch and frankly I would much prefer to be 35. After breakfast, full and delicious as usual, I called Jenny Glover, to confirm that we would be spending Monday with her, a trip down to Portmeirion. It was lovely to hear her fluting voice again (the vocal equivalent of a ripe peach), and I looked forward to seeing her. Peter, as is his custom, was rather tart about her, but even he must admit that she has a good heart.
Peter drove us to Llandudno, the ocean resort due west on the Welsh coast. We crossed the border to Wales via a wonderful, soaring bridge over the River Dee. I thought it resembled a stringed musical instrument rather than a feat of engineering. It vaguely put me in mind of one of my favorite sculptures, the large Picasso in the plaza of Chicago’s Civic Center, but without the female and baboonic associations.
Across the river we stopped for lunch, at a Little Chef, a nationwide franchise quite American rather than British in its décor and general feel. I once again had curried chicken. As we continued on toward Llandudno, we passed a series of low hills. Fitting into the contours of the rock was a splendid castle, sporting enough turrets and crenellated towers to satisfy the most jaded romantic. This sight was a lovely birthday gift.
We arrived in Llandudno, parked the car and strolled down the Promenade. It was a crisp and beautiful day, but the wind off the Irish sea was so cutting, so bloody cold that I wouldn’t have been surprised to spot a polar bear in pursuit of a penguin up the beach. And this in early July! Just before ice crystals began to form on Peter’s and my mustaches, we turned up a street into the town. This was much warmer. The town itself is lovely and inviting, and we stopped at a teashop that served ice cream. I ordered an ice cream/sorbet combination that floored me. The star of the ensemble was a black-currant sorbet, the eating of which made me positively whimper with pleasure. Afterwards we strolled a bit more, I cashed a travellers’ check. We left Tootie to rest while we fetched the car. I would gladly have stayed longer, but we didn’t want to leave the Toots for too long.
On the drive back to Frodsham, Peter took us on a detour, to see another castle. It is in the village of Rhuddlan (rooth-lon), and like so many of the castles in Britain, is being shored up so it doesn’t collapse into a pile of weathered stones. We stopped just long enough to get some great pictures. Rhuddlan Castle is perched on a slight rise over a river valley, a breathtaking vista. The lowing of distant cattle made a lovely soundtrack to the pastoral picture.
When we returned, Peter once more became entranced by the televised Wimbledon matches. Tennis is one of his grand loves, and the sight of Pete Sampras dashing about the court like a great hairy beast could turn me into a fan as well. Presently I read for a while. The London Anthology is something rather to be sampled than read straight through, so I began my Iris Murdoch. Jackson’s Dilemma is a considerably shorter novel than the dinosaurs she has been turning out of late. The Message to the Planet in particular almost made me give up on her; I positively hated it by the time I’d turned the last page.
Peter drove us to Chester that evening. He had provided us tickets to his production of Godspell, and they were good ones indeed. Neither Tootie nor I had ever seen Godspell before. This was a very good production, I thought, even though I had nothing to compare it to. One of the dancers was Russell Steele, whom I hadn’t seen for a dozen years. The set was a vast garden in bright primary colors (the original from which we have all been exiled?), split by a rainbow over which cast members climbed to the upper reaches of the set. The Jesus was a cute little thing, and came out in nothing but a pair of shorts at the beginning. I couldn’t help but (uncharitably) note that he looked much better later, when he had changed into clothes. The Judas, though not so good-looking, was a much more engaging performer.
At the interval, I asked a theatre functionary if it were possible to buy a tee-shirt with the logo of the show on it; Tootie had expressed a desire for one. I also went to the second-floor bar and had a pint of bitter, and bought a roll of something called wine jellies. They were faintly disgusting, but most efficacious in stifling my cough and soothing my throat. The rest of the show was even better than the beginning. It began with Mary Magdalen making her torchy way through the male members of the audience as she sang “Turn Back, o Man.” Of course she made a beeline for my lap, which Peter, sitting next to me, declared was the actress’s arbitrary choice. It was well done, and I have still been unable to get the damned tune out of my head.
After the show, the actors all trouped into the bar, and I greeted Russell affectionately. He still has those lovely long legs and it was a delight to see him again. The lady I’d talked to in the interval brought me the tee-shirt. Tootie was in a transport of delight.
We all drove to a wine bar some blocks away. Many of the cast members and a few outsiders such as Tootie and myself were all packed into one cozy room, which unfortunately filled up with cigarette smoke almost immediately, hell on earth to a rabid anti-smoker like me. Nonetheless I was determined to have fun, and I did. All the men at the next table were gay, and in fact three of them were priests. One visiting American from San Diego I found especially attractive. While a bit on the heavy side, he had a warm brunettiness about him, and those liquid brown eyes that reel me in every time. Alas, he seemed quite taken with his partner. Sitting across from me was Peter’s lighting designer, a woman I immediately warmed to. She was one of the loyalists who followed Peter at the time of the Grove Park coup, and seemed like someone I would like to know better.
After everyone had eaten, my birthday was announced and the dread song was sung. “Happy Birthday” is a song of such appalling insipidity that I’ve always hated it with a bitterness which others find incomprehensible. But sung by this delightful roomful of people, it landed as sweetly on my ears as Schubert’s “An Sylvia.”
I finally stumbled off to bed at 1:30 a.m.

SATURDAY, JULY 4

In the morning, Peter and Tootie and I set out for Wrexham to pick up Fred Evans. On the way out of town, Peter stopped for a moment to see his mother and stepfather, both of whom came to the curbside to meet us. Then we took a series of back roads, breathtakingly beautiful, half the way to Stratford. Eventually we got onto the motorways, but that first hour or so was remarkable. Tootie talked without cease, which was maddening, but nothing could completely spoil the visual excitement. My greedy eye sucked up every scrap of beauty. We even saw, for the first and only time on the trip, a sight Tootie had been hungering for, a cottage with a thatched roof. It was at a fork in the road, and we sped by it so quickly that I almost didn’t have a chance to point it out. I was able to interrupt Tootie’s flow long enough to point it out, so she did get a glimpse. I do wish we had been able to show her more of them, but Peter says that they’re more common in the south of England.
On the motorway, we sped past the outskirts of Birmingham and eventually pulled into that green and pleasant town, Stratford-Upon-Avon. Despite the Shakespeare industry that has turned Stratford into something of a bardic theme park, the town doggedly retains the charm of an English market town. My memory of the place from 1971 had changed its shape entirely, so the visit was in the way of rediscovery. I cashed a couple of travellers’ checks, then we hit that great Elizabethan landmark, the grocery section of Marks and Spencer. The four of us scooted around in the chilly produce and fast food sections and I bought a couple of Scotch eggs – the great desideratum! — and a banana for my lunch. It was a substantial if simple meal, and delicious. The others got rather more conventional food, sandwiches and the like. Then we strolled down past the Swan Theatre, attached to the back of the Festival Hall. It’s a Victorian red brick fantasia, a balm to the eye. At the Swan they produce alternate productions of Shakespeare and other playwrights as well. On the walk behind it we found a couple of park benches along the limpid Avon, where we sat and had lunch. The river was positively lousy with swans. Tootie wanted to be photographed with them; luckily, the merest suggestion of bread on the waters brought a dozen of them scurrying to our side of the Avon like a fleet of frigates in full sail. They’re aggressive, foul-tempered birds, but lovely to look at. Afterward we strolled up the river to the church where Shakespeare is buried. A wedding was in progress, so we were unable to go in. But a walk around the church was satisfactory.
Back at the Festival Hall, we stopped in the coffee bar for a sweet, then went on into the theatre. Our seats were perfect: on the second row, immediately off the aisle. There followed one of the prime joys of the trip, a superb production of Twelfth Night.
The play is set in Illyria, of course, but in this production, Illyria is a candy-colored never-never land. The set was richly imaginative. At one point, Sir Toby and Sir Andrew play a scene in a kitchen dominated by a gargantuan refrigerator, so magnificent that when it was opened, it received a round of applause. In the last act, the street in front of Olivia’s house was decorated by a vast green hedge like no hedge on earth.
Viola wakes up, not on the seacoast, but in a hospital bed, I.V. drip attached. Helen Schlesinger was the best Viola I ever expect to see, attractive and passionate and a first-rate speaker of verse. The Toby Belch and Andrew Aguecheek were both sublimely funny, Aguecheek in particular, an egregious ass in dandy’s dress (modelled on some contemporary political figure, Peter informed me.)
Olivia was played by Clare Holman, unfamiliar to me. She reminded me of the young Judi Dench, whom I had first seen in this very theatre in 1971, playing Portia. The Malvolio was nothing short of brilliant. Philip Voss played him, a huge gooey plum pudding of a performance. He was a straw man simply begging to be knocked down, but his fall was so dramatic that he garnered more sympathy than is perhaps good for the production: his agony was so extreme that his tormentors seemed cruel. And they’re the ones we’re supposed to be rooting for! Sebastian (Simon Scardifield) was simply beautiful. Unfortunately he wanders into the play quite late; I wanted to see more of him, much more.
Feste is usually one of Shakespeare’s most captivating clowns, but the actor here went so far over the top that I wanted to leap onto the stage and press a pillow over his face. But his rendition of “When that I was and a little tiny boy” at the end more than made up for his excesses. It was set to music of such harrowing beauty that I left the theatre completely captivated — gooseflesh time. A song like that should be recorded; I could enjoy something like that for the rest of my life.
Our reactions to the play varied wildly. I loved it, every minute. Tootie was pleased by it, but both she and Peter nodded off during part of Act I. Fred was unimpressed, simply because he has seen so much Shakespeare that impressing him lies somewhere between difficult and impossible. I don’t expect ever to get that jaded — and certainly not by Shakespeare. There is still so much that can be done with him.
Afterward, we streaked back to Wrexham to drop Fred off, then headed on to Frodsham. David was waiting for us. Bless him, he had been to a second-hand bookstore, looking for the collection of J.B. Priestley’s plays I was seeking. He hadn’t found it, but brought me a survey of literature by Priestley called Literature and Western Man, and a nineteenth century biography of John Ruskin. Ruskin is a particular enthusiasm of David’s. This biography, published shortly after the subject’s death, looks like something of a hagiography, but being written closer to his lifetime, may be valuable on that count. Priestley’s take on literature should be a penetrating one.
For dinner, David and I drove down into Frodsham to a take-away fish and chips shop. We loaded up on orders of f&c for David and the others; I had the chicken dinner. To the ladies in the shop, I was something of an exotic. I don’t imagine they get many American patrons. We also stopped at the video store to check out Regeneration, a movie about the war poets Sassoon and Owen, but it was already checked out. Instead we got the video of L.A. Confidential, which David hadn’t seen yet.
The chicken dinner was wonderful, and like everyone else’s food, was piled high with guilt-inducing chips, all topped with a serving of peas in a rich broth which made malt vinegar or catsup superfluous.
Peter sailed off for the theatre, Tootie went to bed early, so David and I spent the evening on the sofa, watching L.A. Confidential, in company with a bottle of chardonnay. The movie is a morally complex one, the best film of the year (to me); I loved watching it again, and watching David’s reaction.
My friendships with David and with Peter are deep and rewarding, and quite different. The bonds are powerfully strong in spite of the fact that a wide ocean — and long gaps of time — separate us. With Peter there’s an intimacy born of a shared passion for the theatre. It’s marked by playful teasing, and the casual observer might not perceive its depth. My relationship to David is a richly complicated one, sort of an amitie amoureuse, a prolonged flirtation filtered through the natural sympathy of two men who love the same books and music. Not far into the movie David invited me into his arms to snuggle together, and we kissed and caressed for the rest of the evening, a much-needed intimacy marked more by romantic feeling than eroticism – but only slightly more. The last of the wine I sipped from David’s own lips. This was not a typical Independence Day – no fireworks, waving flags, etc. — but a most memorable one, the most satisfying day and evening of the entire vacation.

SUNDAY, JULY 5

David prepared a fabulous breakfast: venison sausage (which I didn’t expect to like as much as I did); meusli, coffee, freshly-squeezed orange juice. A feast.
With David and I in the back seat enjoying The Sunday Telegraph, we drove to Phil Edwards and Russell Steele’s in Manchester. The house is in a new development in the suburb of Sale. It’s built of red brick and is filled with light. Off the living room is a small solarium, leading onto a back yard, where Phil goes – unfortunately – to smoke. The picture of happy home life is completed by a thoroughly charming border collie with whom I was instantly smitten.
Phil had prepared a splendid Sunday lunch: superior Scotch salmon and asparagus, topped with hollandaise sauce, peas and baby ears of corn. We finished with a pear and marzipan tart. The dining room was smallish, but the six of us managed to situate ourselves neatly around the table. The conversation, as any conversation including Phil tends to be, was fast, funny and most enjoyable.
We all got our one-sixth of air time at the table, but when we retired to the living room after lunch, David sat down on the sofa with Tootie. He asked her a question and she was off and running. David was held in virtual thrall for the better part of the hour, but at last gallant Russell volunteered to go over the top and take his place in the line of fire. But for that, it was a lazy and relaxing afternoon. Five male mouths hung open with undisguised desire as we watched Pete Sampras carry off Wimbledon. Alas, he didn’t perform a strip tease as an encore. I suppose that would have been too much to hope for…
In the late afternoon, we drove back to Frodsham. Peter immediately left for the Gateway Theatre, which was conducting a fundraising concert. David, Tootie and I stayed home. We had managed to get a copy of the movie Regeneration, which was very good indeed. James Wilby had the proper gravitas for playing Siegfried Sassoon, though I thought he might have been a little too softly blonde to play him. Only on returning to Boston did I see a photo of Sassoon on a book jacket, taken during the war years – an absolute dead ringer for Wilby!
When Peter came home, David poured us some port – Peter abstained, as always. Just before bedtime, Peter showed me some of his videotapes. The most impressive was of his production of La Cage aux Folles, which I now wish I had flown across the Atlantic to see. The costumes and sets were from professional productions, and his Albin was better than anyone I’ve seen except the peerless George Hearn. Incredibly, this production lost money. The patrons should have been howling at the door to get in.
Best of all, Peter showed me a few clips – it was rather late – of a couple of his Christmas pantomime productions. This was my first provocative glimpse of the panto, a tradition unknown in the USA. Essentially, they’re variety shows, with musical numbers strung along a thin line of plot. The one I remember most vividly was Cinderella, the panto dame duties being shared between Phil and one Kevin Howard as the ugly stepsisters. Phil was, needless to say, a major stitch. He has mastered the extravagant playing style necessary to a panto dame, and was got up in something resembling a gift-wrapped package. Simply moving around in the costume must have been a major undertaking, apart from the challenge of acting in it.

MONDAY, JULY 6

We got up early and David drove Tootie and me to Wrexham. We had been to Wrexham before, but he took us along an alternate route, and pointed out the large estate of the Duke of Westminster. On this same road lay Crocus Cottage, in the village of Lavister, a house of warm memories. It was the first home I visited in Wales; Peter and David lived there when I came to Britain in 1986. In fact, the first time I ever saw David, he was standing in the kitchen of Crocus Cottage, wearing only a pair of shorts, and chopping onions (I believe it was onions — memory is faintly fuzzy at this remove) I vividly remember falling in love with the house.
David took us to Fred Evans’s house, and shortly left for work. Fred gave us the tour of the house. He has been toying with the idea of moving, but will most likely stay – it has been his home for fifty years (Fred is sixty) and his memories of his mother are still too potent. He would certainly be reluctant to leave the garden, an inviting little spot – especially given the English habit of turning a bit of one’s own home soil into a personal Eden. The house is narrow and oldish, but with plenty of space for one, and decorated with an amiable degree of quirkiness.
Presently we left, to pick up Jenny Glover. I hadn’t seen Jenny for twelve years, though we’ve been in contact by mail. It was a joyful reunion. She retains her customary warmth and generosity of spirit.
Jenny hasn’t changed materially. The sparse hair is now a bright blonde instead of the strawberry roan I remember, otherwise she is much the same. I prefer my friends to stay the same, or as nearly so as possible. This was the first time I had seen her new house, called Prompt Corner. It is situated, as the name might indicate, on a corner of a pretty street. The lower floor is comprised of a book-lined living room, a dining room with good light, and a large kitchen. Up an alarmingly steep flight of stairs (how on earth does Jenny mount them?) one finds a bath and two bedrooms. Poor Jenny is going to have to desert her home in August, for some drastic structural work must be done: much of Wrexham is over a coal mine, and her house is sagging badly.
We didn’t stay long, but set out for Portmeirion, on the Welsh coast. The drive, as one would expect in wild Wales, was spectacular, great rolling hills, large tarns, and a wilderness of sheep, sheep, and more sheep. The road tended to twist about a bit, and we often looked off to one side only to see where we had gone before.
Portmeirion is an Italianate village built in this century, a generous handful of Victorian-style follies scattered over a spectacular hill descending to the sea. Architectural fantasias compete for one’s attention with vast gardens of flowers strewn about in typically English profusion. Fred maintained that Noel Coward wrote a play – or part of a play – here, but we never found any indicators of the fact anywhere on the grounds or in the literature provided. What we did find was something to entertain the eye wherever it chanced to light. We stopped at a little sandwich shop for lunch, then went across the walk to a shop where Jenny got me two jars of blackcurrant (!) jam and a packet of something called Welsh cakes: my birthday gift.
Tootie was quickly exhausted, due to her poor knees, so she sat down in the lush ornamental gardens while Jenny and Fred and I walked the rest of the village. We went down to the sea and since I had Tootie’s camera, we took many pictures, several of the three of us, which I hope Tootie will appreciate. There is much to see but little to do in Portmeirion, so we eventually strolled back up the hill to the car park.
From Portmeirion, we drove across a causeway to an even smaller village, Borth-y-gest. This features a crescent drive along which are little guest houses, a couple of restaurants and stores. We stopped at one for ice cream. Facing the town across the bay are spectacular mountains and, too far away for us to see, Harlech Castle. Tootie ensconced herself upon a bench to enjoy the view, while Jenny and Fred and I climbed up the hill to survey the mountains and bay from a better prospect. Presently we rejoined Tootie and drove back to Wrexham.
We dropped Jenny off at Prompt Corner, and drove down to a wineshop on the Victoria Road. Since Jenny was preparing dinner, I wanted to provide the wine. Fred and I got out and went into the shop. When we entered, the woman proprietor let out a bloodcurdling squawk: a bird had flown into the shop uninvited. We waited patiently while she took a broom to it. I got two bottles of wine, one being hock, as Tootie has expressed a taste for mildly sweet wine.
Back at the house I poured glasses for everyone and Jenny shooed me into the living room. I sat down gingerly, hoping not to stir up a cloud of cat hair. Jenny’s whole house is presided over by a concatenation of cats, seven, I believe, all of whom stalked through the living room in turn, eyeing my lap as if it were the promised land. None dared leap up, thank God, for which my upper respiratory tract was profoundly grateful. I have always set up seven as the limit of cats one may support before one is considered on the weird side. A purely arbitrary number, but I suppose that puts Jenny on the borderline.
Dinner was quite good, the centerpiece being chicken prepared in the crockpot, with wine and almonds and apricots. We didn’t stay long afterward, since we had another call to make. I hated to leave Jenny as we see one another so seldom.
It had been a dozen years since I had seen our next hosts, Heini and Rommi Przibram. At one time he was president of Grove Park Little Theatre, but as they are good, lovely people, they still stay in contact with Peter.
Rommi made coffee and was sweetly insistent that I add a tot of brandy to mine. I was willing to indulge her. We sat in their living room, under a magisterial portrait of Heini’s father, and chatted pleasantly, mostly about theatre lore. And a little gossip, too: Andrew Lloyd Xerox’s new musical, Whistle Down the Wind, is apparently being savaged by everyone, press and audiences alike. Heini, always vaguely elfin in looks, has grown even more so as he’s aged. He is eighty, so he and Tootie hit it right off. Rommi is mostly unchanged, though her hair is now almost white. Jenny is currently directing her in Soldiering On, one of the Talking Heads one-act plays by Alan Bennett. I think it’s rather game of her to be tackling a 50-minute monologue at the age of 78, but I have every confidence in her ability to pull it off with panache. As on my previous visit, they were the very essence of hospitality. That seems to be a trait common to all my friends here in Britain. British reserve, I’m delighted to report, is largely a myth.
I was pleased that Tootie got to see what so few visitors see, the private homes and personal lives of so many warm and generous people – none more so than Peter and David. I have particularly enjoyed seeing friends from such different spheres of my life get to know each other. I wish they could all meet my family, too, but one cannot accomplish everything.
When we got home, Tootie was tired enough to want to go directly off to bed. David and I sat and relaxed and waited for Peter to return. David suggested that he and I do some travelling together — a driving tour of Spain! I cannot imagine a better trip to take, or with better company. We are twin souls. Of course I feel much the same way when I’m with Peter, but the only travelling we have done together is to New York. Spain should be one of those supremely crucial experiences, for as James Michener has written in Iberia, every romantic must eventually sort out his feelings for Spain.

TUESDAY, JULY 7

After a late breakfast, David played me a new CD of his, a piece by Percy Grainger, with whose work I’m mostly unfamiliar. The Warriors is a bravura piece for orchestra and three pianos, an explosion of tonal brilliance. Darling David already had an earlier recording of it, which he gave to me. Accompanying The Warriors is Gustav Holst’s The Planets, which I don’t have either. Can anyone wonder why I love the guy? Presently a bundle of energy called Phil and Russell blew in the door, to take us to the town of Llangollen, of fragrant memory from my last trip. The International Eisteddfod began that day, but the real attraction was getting to spend some more time with Phil and Russell.
We drove across the border into Wales, and kept going higher and higher. That was mystifying: I remember Llangollen being in a valley. The reason became clear very soon. We were approaching the town from over the mountain. The car wended up a narrow drive, comfortable for only one car at a time. If two cars should meet, one pulls over to accommodate the passage of the other. (This would be impractical in America, where the urge to see the other car hurtling over the side in flames would predominate). The view down was almost harrowingly spectacular, a storybook valley seen from an eagle’s promontory. We finally, after one unsuccessful try, found a place to picnic. The first picnic spot was littered with discarded teabags and a liberal sprinkling of some odd sort of wide-mouthed translucent balloons. They looked thoroughly nasty. A few minutes later, we found another place, with a small groups of rocks to perch upon, our only company the flocks of sheep roving up and down the hillsides.
Phil and Russell had prepared a picnic lunch, salad, sandwiches, tea, etc. Seldom has food tasted as good as this did. The breezes from the valley, the view, the food itself, and most of all the company, ensured this. With the mountain air heightening our appetites, we finished quickly. I threw aside my customary acrophobia and clambered up a rocky defile to photograph my three friends below and be photographed in return. The descent was more careful than the rise, but I escaped without tumbling into the valley below.
The car crept higher along the road. Farther up ahead, crowning a high tor, was a ruined castle. At the first suggestion I would gladly have run up to investigate, but Llangollen beckoned. We chose an even narrower road, brushed over with green trees, for our descent into the town.
Amazingly, given the crowds who had gathered in the town for the festival, we found a good parking space at once, opposite the bridge. We crossed over it, and after cashing more checks, we strolled up the streets of the town investigating the antique shops. I didn’t buy anything but Tootie bought a set of saucers. In one shop there was a dish of old coins which the proprietor said were free, so I picked out one for Tootie, again portraying Victoria.
The next stop was a treat for me. Above a little tea shop was a spectacular second-hand bookstore, one of the largest and best I’ve seen on three continents. I found so very many books I wanted. If I hadn’t disgraced myself beyond scandal with book-buying on this trip, I could easily have loaded up both arms. The Priestley plays still eluded me, however.
I joined the others below, and had a pastry but no coffee.
From there we drove up closer to the Eisteddfod, but our parking luck didn’t hold. Phil let us off while he found a parking space on the other side of the festival. Tootie and Russell and I walked up the hill and went in. We didn’t have tickets for any of the music events, but joyfully shopped in the little tents sprinkled throughout. I got Tootie an Eisteddfod pin. Roving bands of musicians wandered all through the grounds in national costume, but the only music we heard was the occasional choral group which assembled on the flags green from time to time. We left after about an hour and a half, and pretty worn out, drove back to Frodsham.
Dinner that night had been prepared by David with great care and consummate skill. The main feature was chicken in a cream sauce with red and yellow peppers, accompanied by diced melon with prawns (!), all lovingly washed down with white wines. Russell was still in Godspell, so he had to continue on to the theatre. The assemblage was a merry one. In addition to David, Tootie, Phil and me, Peter had brought along John Rowley, whom I’d met when Peter brought him to America. Phil rejoined us after the show. It was a very festive coda to an unforgettable visit, and I hated for the evening to end. What great company!

WEDNESDAY, JULY 8

I got up early and began packing, my heart sinking at the unlikelihood of getting everything to fit in my two small suitcases and shoulder bag. But fit it did. My breakfast with Tootie and the boys was a sad one. Still, I knew Peter and David would be happy to get their lives and their beds back, but oh! how I hated to leave them. We kissed David goodbye and Peter drove us to the Manchester Airport. We had arranged for our tickets by phone, so all we had to do was pick them up, then go to another line to check our bags.
Phil and Russell joined us. When our flight was announced we bade the boys goodbye with the greatest reluctance. It was more an emotional jolt than I would have expected, and I already long to see them again.

At Gatwick, we schlepped our bags down numberless ramps and escalators, and found a help desk. Peter had assured us that it would be easy to get accommodations at Gatwick and he was right. The sweet nymph at the desk found us a bed-and-breakfast immediately. We paid and were instructed where to go, to wait for a blue Mercedes driven by a man named Kammel. He arrived, expertly fitted our bags into the trunk and whisked us off to “The Hunters,” in Crawley, Sussex. It is a modest place, just around the corner from the Three Bridges railway station. It got even more modest as we dragged our bags up the narrow stair to our room. It is run by Kammel and his wife. They are Turkish. They are also smokers, as evinced by the faint musty odor hanging like a threat in the air.
I had hoped that Tootie would want to accompany me up to London for the remainder of the day, but she was too tired. Nothing could have held me back, though. The train station was a ten-minute walk away from the B&B, and my train arrived twenty minutes later. It took just under an hour to get to Victoria Station.
Sitting directly across from me was a solidly built man, quite handsome if somewhat forbidding, with a short, brusque mustache. He might have been anywhere from his late thirties to early fifties, and although I was reading my Iris Murdoch, there was something about him that activated my imagination. I fancied, for instance, that he was perhaps a Coldstream guardsman out of uniform, or some such. He kept his cool blue eyes straight ahead, never once addressing the eyes of anyone (I never saw a sign of a conductor). I found him fascinating in his incomprehensibility, and a germ of a story found its way into my head. Not even a native of Mars would have mistaken him for any nationality but British; he would have been perfectly cast as one of the bulwarks of the Raj.
At Victoria, I frittered away a bit of time in the bookshop, then emerged into the street. I had fully intended to see the new production of Sweet Charity at the Victoria Palace, but it would have put me on a late train, getting me back to Three Bridges after midnight. We did, after all, have an arduous flight the next day. So I cheerfully opted to throw myself into the teeming life of London again. Strolling the byways of a great city is one of my keenest pleasures anyway.
I headed toward Chelsea. My goal was the King’s Road, so I made for Sloane Square, which had changed drastically from my 1971 memory of it. The King’s Road is lined with many shops, and the further along you go, the likelier they are to sell antiques. I finally reached The Antiquarians, a virtual beehive of shops. Never before have I seen such a welter of simply amazing antiques – or so many tiny shops crammed in together. Each had its own specialties. The one that charmed me most completely dealt primarily with small picture frames, from the extravagantly ornate to the relatively simple. Most of them were Victorian, with all that implies. I saw several I wanted, but elected to buy none. My restraint was admirable, considering the number of travelers’ checks I still retained. When I had exhausted the shops in this bazaar, I strolled on down the street to a couple of other shops, deciding to turn around and head back after browsing through a dealer of antique prints. I was hoping to find a small portrait of Victoria but had no success.
The shops soon began closing, and I wanted to see a bit of the less commercial aspects of Chelsea, so I headed south to see some of literary London. My first dogleg down an enchanting street convinced me that if I lived in this great city, Chelsea would be my choice of neighborhoods. The first landmark I saw was on Cheyne Row, the house of Thomas Carlyle. From there I walked to the river, to Swan Walk. Before me lay the quiet Thames, and I walked northeast toward Westminster, my goal Tite Street. London is well aware, and proud, of its literary past, and markers indicate points of interest. As I strolled the Chelsea Embankment, I found numerous markers, the homes of Osbert Sitwell and Swinburne and Burne-Jones. Spanning the river was Battersea Bridge, a mint green and white fantasia which put me more in mind of a wedding cake than a bridge, and very definitely a product of the Victorian age. Not for the first time, I keenly regretted not bringing along Tootie’s camera.
I turned north on Tite Street, finally finding one of my goals, Oscar Wilde’s lodgings. Two doors up from it was the former house of the composer Peter Warlock.
When I got back to the King’s Road, I headed north again, via Cadogen Gardens. I found myself once again in Knightsbridge. Harrod’s was having a sale, which I understand is something of a rarity. The crowds, so well-behaved on our earlier visit, bustled about with the same elevated excitement one might see in Filene’s Basement. I bought a glorious tie, very William Morris, thrushes in the shrubbery, all greens and ivory. A major triumph, I felt. My train time was coming up soon, so I meandered back toward Victoria station. I returned via Sloane Street, and there, sitting on a corner in cool stateliness was another milestone on the Oscar Wilde tour, the Cadogen Hotel. It was there, in the dining room, that he was arrested “for gross indecency” and whisked off to prison. I walked into the lobby, but it was so small, and stuffed with functionaries all too eager to help me, that I went shy all of a sudden and backed out of the hotel. I had little time to eat, anyway, so it was best to get along. From Sloane Square I went up Holbein Street simply because it’s named for one of my favorite painters. Back in the neighborhood of Victoria, I searched for a proper place to dine. The Shakespeare pub looked like a good bet, but was so choked with smoke that I made a fast retreat. The Duke of York was too crowded, and smoky as well, so I made a beeline for a little Italian restaurant, the Portello.
To my pleasure, everyone there seemed to be Italian, with the exception of the tableful of elderly Australians across from me. The Italians must be more stoic than I have given them credit for, for there was no air conditioning, and I felt close to fainting. It might have been because of my brisk walk, but I only know that I was simply on fire. I ordered a small carafe of red wine and the scalloppine all Siciliano, and soon my sweltering state was forgotten.
I didn’t want to miss my train, so I hung around the station waiting for the platform to be announced. It never was, only the time. I bought a snickers ice cream bar to eat en route, and by the time I’d gotten out of the shop, I had to race for the train, boarding only moments before it slid out of the station. The train was packed solid, which necessitated my standing for the first half hour. I had my book so I was happy. I was pleased to note that virtually everyone else on the train was engrossed in a book, and those that weren’t read magazines. On a comparable American train, people are sitting staring ahead dully, bored and vacuous. Britain, at least, seems still to be a nation of readers. Parenthetically, I should say that my eagerness to read while traveling is what saves me from jet lag. If one’s mind is actively engaged, how can one possibly tire?
I found myself back in Three Bridges a bit after nine o’clock, too early to go to bed. I walked up in the opposite direction from “The Hunters” to another part of Crawley. It looked, at least on the main road, so much like a Massachusetts town that I turned around and headed back. Along the street were a couple of pubs. At The Plough I stopped and had a pint of bitter — and met Jack. Jack has soft, liquid brown eyes, short black hair, and a most winning manner. He was friendly –affectionate, even— to an international visitor. His greatest flaw, I suppose, is that he is a doberman pinscher pup. My luck still holds.
Reluctant to go back to the B&B so early, I stopped at the Moonraker, but it was so dismal that I decided to move on. So it was back to “The Hunters” after all. I dropped my bag in the room, and took my novel down to the dining room. The owners are clearly great fans of American film comedy, and there were pictures of the Marx brothers and Laurel and Hardy decorating the walls. The light was yellowish and unpleasant, so I only read for a half an hour, then went to bed.

THURSDAY, JULY 9

When I got up, Tootie was already downstairs. I was awakened by a shy blonde maid. I did my routine and took a quick shower, then joined Tootie for breakfast. It was quite a layout: eggs, sausage, grilled tomatoes and mushrooms. A pleasant man from Scotland, a traveler in computers, talked to us briefly, very friendly. When we finished breakfast, I dragged the bags downstairs and out to the curb. We were conveyed to the airport by Kammel, and after the formalities of checking in found we had plenty of time on our hands. I spent the rest of my pound notes on an extravagant souvenir book of London for Tootie, and the very last of my spare pence (to the penny!) on some blackcurrant candies, the best I found on the entire trip.
The flight to Detroit was as cramped and uncomfortable as our flight over was luxurious. We were squeezed into the middle of the middle aisle, and it was overwarm and a bit cramped. Now I can say for certain that I know how a suppository feels. But I had my Iris Murdoch to read, and I finished it a couple of hours before we hit Detroit, then returned to my London Anthology. The customs process was smooth but slow. We missed our 3:00 flight to Boston by minutes, and had to wait till 5:00 to leave.
Coming into Boston, my sinus problems interacted badly with the air pressure in the cabin. The pain in my ears was intense and unrelenting – can childbirth actually be worse? — and my hearing was affected for over a week. Otherwise it was a happy return. I have often said I could travel for a living, but returning to one’s regular routine — and friends — and work — is its own particular pleasure.