Pam's Tall Tales

A Special Summer Solstice

This summer solstice was magical. We strolled along with the dogs to buy a yellow hibiscus tree from the old Italian flower shop owner and then took a leisurely scenic drive up the Hudson valley and along the steep cliffs of The Palisades.  We stopped at the top of Bear Mountain to take in the panoramic vista. The Palisades and Bear Mountain Park have an interesting history that is told  in historic photographs fired onto ceramic tiles that line the inside of the Gerge W Perkin look-out Tower.
After a light picnic we descended deep into Sullivan County to to visit my favorite colleague who lives in Jeffersonville, which lies within what remains of the Borscht Belt, close to Bethel, site of the legendary Woodstock festival.

We have known Gert and Doris for nearly thirty years.  They bought their farm for a song many years ago as a weekend escape from the city and have restored it lovingly.  They grow apples to make home-made cider and mow their 40 acres of pasture for hay.
They love art and music as much as science and have befriended the artsy intelligentsia who mingle among the rural Green organic farming community. Every year Gert and Doris host a benefit concert in their barn as part of a “Weekend of Chamber Music” run by a group of talented musicians (in this case Judith Pearce, Andrew Waggoner, Nurit Pacht and Pavel Vinnitsky) who take a break from their day jobs at the Met and in teaching colleges during the summer months to give performances throughout the Catskills. 

The music was eclectic and interesting. The setting in Gert’s big restored barn was soothing. After the concert was over we sat around and ate Doris’s home made supper, sipping wine in good company into the long sultry summer evening – until the sun set behind the lilies and bulrushes lining in the pond.

Gert's Farm (photo courtesy of Gert and WCM)

For more pictures and more information on Weekend Chamber Music 

 

In Sickness and in Health

For the last month my family have been on a roller coaster. In early March, aged parent was admitted to hospital with pneumonia and discharged the next day to convalesce at home. My siblings held the fort for a fortnight. I arrived three-weeks ago thinking I would be nursing a 93-year old man through an acute infection by cooking up hearty soups and tasty casseroles. Within a week his situation deteriorated rapidly, his ankles swelled and his chest began creaking like an old piano – symptoms of chronic heart failure. His GP was a saint and made three house visits, but by the weekend a man who 6 months before had been riding his bicycle could no longer lift himself from the chair. The hospital sent an ambulance and thanks to the oxygen supplement he’s now in happier spirits, but his doctors have a difficult task. For two weeks they have tried to  to relieve the excess fluid pressure on his heart without polishing off the kidneys in the process. If they can sail between this medical Scylla and Cherybdis to stabilize his situation, then he will be transferred to a rehabilitation ward to help him regain a measure of independent living. Faced with an uncertain prognosis we have scurried to plan for every possible outcome by interviewing home-care companies, vetting and visiting residential facilities, upgrading the house infrastructure to facilitate home-care. It has been a whirlwind eye-opening induction into the world of elder-care.

Amid this were some moments of respite to be cherished.   My sister sent a coffee press to help with my jet-lagged mornings and came up for two days to drive me to Macclesfield hospital via my beloved Bosley Cloud, Wildboarclough, Wincle and Higher Sutton – a route that sooths the spirit by its vaste wild beauty.

Bangers and Mash at The Robin Hood, Rainow with "Dearly Demented Sister" and "Soul of Patience" Brother-in -law

My distant cousin, Paul, with whom I share the family tree hobby, drove over from Warrington to give me his great grandmothers invitation to my parents wedding. My school friend Gill, with whom I have shared all the important ups and downs of life, came twice to provide her sage District Nurse advice, solace and friendship. In each case we dined at some lovely ancient Cheshire pub – the Bears Head at Brereton, The Swetty Arms at Swettenham, the Robin Hood at Rainow. Dads neighbors, Sylvia, Harry, Sue and John, and bicycling buddies, Paul and Hamish, called, visited, drove us to and fro, listened and provided important advice, support and freindship.

Roast Lamb at The Swetty Arms, Swettenham, Cheshire

Having to leave in the middle of all this is an unpleasant corollary of working abroad. Expats set out on our big career adventures to new lands as young people - a quarter of a century later we find ourselves distant from elderly relatives in need of our care and torn as to where to retire when our children and our grandchildren have grown up as citizens of other countries. The Seven-UP documentary, which traces the life path people of my age group, has highlighted this dilemma in the case of one participant, Nick, who grew up on a farm in Yorkshire Dales wanting to study the moon and be an astronaut, and as a legacy of Maggie Thatchers gutting of the British university system, left the UK to make his career as a physicist in Madison, WI. 

Bro, The Good Son, with Dad

This situation also crystallizes that my siblings friends and I are now on the downward slope of the Gaussian curve of life. In thinking this over I have decided that there are three essentials to maintaining a long quality of life  at home as one ages.  First, you need a good son, like Bro, who is always there in times of need.   Second, you need to rip out the bathtub and  install a wet room - on the ground floor - sooner rather than later, and third, and equally importantly, you need to live within walking (motorized wheelchair) distance of a Cheshire pub. Remarkably Brereton Hall gatehouse fulfills these two latter criteria and has just come on the market. I’m very tempted - and to my American husband - it’s as good as an English castle.

The Gatehouse to Brereton Hall

 

The pub next-door: The Bears Head, Brereton, Cheshire

The Big Freeze

We should have known  that something bigger was afoot when we awoke to frozen pipes. But the plumbers assured us it was their mistake - not enough ethylene glycol in the system. So after a chilly day of repairs we thought our troubles were over, left our "Winter Palace" and set out on the long journey home. Our New Year's Day drive through the Hiawatha Forest, which stands sandwiched between Lakes Michigan and Superior, was spectacular - bright and sunny. We stopped to take in the immense beauty of Lake Michigan's northern shoreline - frozen as far as the eye could see. 

Snow measure by the Lake Michigan shoreline

 

Frozen Waves

 

Lake Michigan's Northern Shoreline looking south

 

Husky Heaven

 

 

The Great White North

 

The Long Suffering Husband in his Element

Then we got a text from our dog walkers in New York warning us about the storm. I checked the forecast - the prediction looked bad.  Sure enough, an hour later we were struggling through menacing conditions.  The snow swirled across the road and every hundred yards we passed cars in the ditch on the side of the highway.  The drop in visibility caused by snow flurries coincided with dusk. After a hour of witnessing car after car that had careered off the icy road we decided to pull into Ann Arbor.  The exit ramp was lethal and we ended up slithering sideways into a parking lot. But everyone had the same idea and, as a result, the motels were full and there was "no room at the inn" for the dogs.  So we were forced to struggle back up the ramp and on to the highway for another hair-raising hours ride to our reserved room in Toledo.  The next day we had to dig the car out of the driveway. The conditions remained menacing. Toledo was encircled by crashed cars - we saw at least 20 in the ditch within as many miles - and at this point decided that our original plan to cross the Pennsylvania wilds on I-80 under these conditions would be madness. So we headed 3 hours south to Dayton, OH and on to Columbus, in an effort to skirt the storm but make it home on I-70 before the second predicted storm could overtake us.

The detour

 This was the worst day, every city was ringed by cars in the ditch and as we approached Pittsburg we were held up for an hour because a truck had careened off the road just ahead, hit the embankment and exploded. The cabin was flattened, firmen had sawed out the driver who was airlifted out by helicopter.  This was the last straw. We pulled off the road and into a wonderfully dog-friendly Ramada that turned out to be set on the top of some retired Pittsburg coalpit.  We prayed that the treacherously steep road  would be ploughed by morning. It was! The next day was fine and clear, the storm had passed north and on to New York and Boston and we were able to follow the salt and grit trucks clearing the roads in its wake. Now the snow has gone but we have freezing air. New York is -19C and our Winter Palace in Channing, MI, at -26C is fit for The Snow Queen. If anyone knows how to effectively heat or insulate an A-frame house let me know. I've searched the web and it doesnt look promising, but more of that later. 

Milwaukee Art Gallery

A few years ago, when the funding first got tough, on a day when I was feeling downtrodden, an email flew into my inbox like an angel on the wing. A colleague had written to tell me of an endowed chair.  A few days later I got the call - come out and give us a seminar, stay a few days and see how you feel about it. My hosts  were  very gracious.  They spoke of the difficulties in recruiting candidates to the mid-west from east coast institutions.  As one faculty member there put it, they have to counter "The Stockholm Syndrome that keeps scientists from leaving institutions that are money-driven hollow vestiges of their former glorious academic past".  Milwaukee perhaps had a harder time as  for many it remains linked to Jeffrey Dahmer, the serial killer, and Fonzie (Henry Winkler), the star of the TV series, Happy Days .  

I found Milwaukee to be an interesting town, a proud industrial behemoth built on "beers and gears", home to the producers of Miller's Ale and lawn mowers - not unlike the Manchester area where I grew up.  The  local bratwurst, heavy architecture, and stocky populace are all products of the bavarian diaspora that came here to farm at the turn of the century.  It also has a lively counter culture, a veritable "east village-like" demi-monde centered around Brady Street. Its Historic Third Ward could compete with Soho for fashionable lofts and coffee shops and its central canal and new waterfront development aspire to an Amsterdam mode of living.  

Three other things were  persuasive. First the ladies.  The position was to be endowed by friends of the deceased and it was clear that the decision rested firmly with the women. One, who was herself unwell,  placed her hand on my arm in a way  in a profound and inspiring way that  conveyed - we trust and support you - do your best.  Then there were the "lady riders".  Milwaukee is  the home of Harley Davidson, and the Lady Riders, as my hosts explained, were an highly effective fund-raising foundation of motor cyclists.   The third was the Milwaukee Art Gallery. It houses a superb collection of expressionist German art but the building itself is truly spectacular. I could have stood all day in the soothing serenity of the dappled light that poured in through its oval window that opens on to the blue expanse of Lake Michigan.  The Trustees had great insight to persuade the Spanish architect, Calatrava, to design their outside public space. He created  a structure, somewhere between a sail and whales fin, that opens in a spectacular undulating motion reminiscent of a ray swimming. It is as awe-inspiring as the Sydney Opera House and a testiment both to  the architect and the the burgher work ethic that strove to make possible such a truly magnificent building.

On my last visit the airport televisions blared stories of the endless foreclosures sweeping across the nation.  Midwest airlines, who would have flown me back and forth cheaply to New York, with the dogs for free, went under. Endowments sank countrywide pitching academia into a brutal meltdown. So in the end I didnt go, but I save a soft spot for Milwaukee, its strong supportive women and its beautiful symbol of civic pride by "the shining big-sea water".

 

Winslow Homer's Adirondacks

Adirondack-Lake

We have just spent a week in the Adirondacks, the pristine mountain range in the north of New York that was the setting for Fennimore Cooper's "Last of the Mohicans".  Besides scenes, from the movie of the same name, of Daniel Day Lewis running bare-chested through the woods, nothing captures the beauty of the Adirondacks and its forboding wildness like the watercolors of Winslow Homer. Homer spent many summers hunting, fishing and painting water colors of his guides, dogs, fish and deer.

Three-Men-in-a-Canoe

Homer was a New Englander who learnt to paint water colors from his mother and became a commercial illustrator. He disliked his official job and after achieving fame, his advice to younger artists was  "Look at nature, work independently, and solve your own problems." He painted the area in the 1880's during the time when  Lake George became an attractive destination for wealthy New Yorkers to escape the heat of the city by steaming up the Hudson to spend their summers in Grand Hotels  along the Lake. 

Canoe-in-the-Rapids

We stayed in a beautiful 3-storey log house belonging to one of the oldest of these hotels, Trout House Resort.  The resort itself, which lies on the shore of Lake George  has undergone a number of reincarnations over the years and now comprises a series of log cabins nestled in the little town of Hague. Our house, "Seven Gables", was built deeper into the woods by the current owner, Mr. Scott Patchett, and constructed from logs cleared from the site. Mr Patchett's woodmill was down the lane. Perhaps for this reason our daughter one day made the unfortunate mistake of calling him Mr. Hatchet.

Woodchopper-in-the-Adirondacks

 Seven Gables was near enough to a Pharaoh Wilderness Preserve for us to find  tracks that looked like those of a bear crossing the path from steep woods down to the stream. The dogs, picking up the scent, dragged us into the ditch there every day. 

The-Woodcutter

The village of Hague has become very quaint. Twenty years ago  the General Store sold wellington boots, flashlights and fish bait. Now it sells artisan loaves and gourmet sandwiches. A superb little organic restaurant advertizing "home-cooked food" has opened up in the old drapery opposite. If I ever wished for a weekend house on a lake this is where I would look for a cottage. 

The-Adirondack-Guide

In the past, Hague,was  famous for an incident in which Ottawa indians fighting in the French and Indian war captured and cannablized British soldiers at Sabbath Day Point. Later,  together with the neighboring town of Ticonderoga,  it became famous for its graphite mining and its main street is called Graphite Mountain Road.  It was also infamous at the turn of the century for the Lake George Monster. George, as he is known, was a wooden tail- waving fish contraption that could be mechanically activated to leap out of the water and frighten unsuspecting tour groups.  This hoax was cooked up by a painter Harry Watrose to scare his fishing rival, Colonel William Mann, owner of a scandalous newspaper. George generated several scandals of his own before being decommisioned and shipped to the Carribbean to perform in street carnivals. However he has recently returned and is installed in the Hague community center. 

Postcard from Charleston

The New York winter kept us in feather coats until April.  Needing warmth, we booked an early flight and stepped off the plane two hours later into a glorious Charleston, South Carolina spring morning. After crab cake and grits at “High Cotton” we strolled down Church St., the most romantic road in the USA, to photograph the Hugenot church and neighboring pretty pink houses glistening in the sun like iced wedding cakes. 

French Hugenot Church, Charleston, SC

We caught a rip-roaring matinee of Cole Porter’s “Anything Goes” at the Dock St. Theatre, America’s first theatre that opened 1736 and is now housed in the former Planter’s Hotel, built in 1809. The sun was still shining when the theatre let out so we walked along the sea wall to get our bearings and capture the “Rainbow Row” of seafarers houses lining the Battery.  The Battery was built to protect Charleston from Spanish marauders and was also the site where Colonel William Rhett hung pirates at low tide cutting loose their bodies at high tide as fodder for the sharks and alligators. 

Pink House Church St, Charleston, SC

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rainbow Row, Charleston SC

Charleston was founded in 1670 and one of the earliest British colonies run by the Lord Proprietors.  Unlike colonies to the North, Charleston had no religious mandate and was populated mainly by British colonials from Barbados. By 1775 is was the fourth largest city in British America after Philadelphia, New York and Boston and its prosperity was based on mercantile trading of indigo and “Carolina Gold” rice harvested from the surrounding plantations.  Following the example of their namesake, Charles II, Charlestonians indulged in a hedonistic lifestyle.  The wealthy planters built enormous, beautiful houses. Many of these old neighborhoods remain intact today thanks to the activities of the Historic Charleston Foundation that holds a “Festival of Houses and Gardens” every April. We signed up for three of their tours. These proved notable not only for the magnificense of the houses but also for the Southern hospitality and amazing hats and bow-ties worn by their lively octogenarian volunteers and guides, who were decked out for the occasion in full Sunday best. 

Charleston house with Wisteria Fence

Charleston is a city of Caribbean pastel houses, balustraded balconies wreathed in confederate jasmine, wrought iron gated secret gardens, palmettos, live oak and crepe myrtle trees swaying with Spanish moss and walls draped in wisteria. It is also a town of good food, pedicabs, a burgeoning art scene and the Spoleto Music Festival. Charleston is good for the soul, charming and dripping in history at every turn of the road.

House with green wrought iron railings

Charleston survived a Great Fire (1740), an earthquake (1868) and two wars of secession.  It won the first battle of the Revolution but fell three years later under bombardment from British canon located on the neighboring islands.  The British told General Moultrie he had “made a gallant defense but that a great many rascals had given them information”.  The British Colonel “Bloody Tarleton” and Sir Henry Clinton then proceeded to illegally overrule the conditions of surrender, demanding oaths of loyalty to the crown from the citizenry and hanging as traitors those who refused.  All this is documented in moving paintings and letters held by the South Carolina Historical Society that occupies the “Fireproof Building” adjacent to federal, state, city and church buildings that make up the “Four Corners of the Law”.

Four Corners of Law, Charleston

eventually the brutality of the British was their undoing. After the war ended Charleston ladies feted George Washington. His statue stands in the park next to the Fireproof building along with tributes to General Beauregard, whose forces fired the first shots on Fort Sumter that started the American Civil War. Fort Sumter stands two miles out from the battery and guards the bay. We took a chilly boat trip and realized 10 minutes out to sea that nothing would be left to see except the Indigo South Carolina flag fluttering in the breeze – it comprises the palmetto and crescent – that commemorate the spongy palmetto stockade and crescent armor that saved General Moultrie from British bombardment.

Mr. Williams Jnr House

Broad Street divided Charleston historically and continues to do so socially to this day. On Monday, we toured the downtown historical district. Here the great fire of 1740 had lead to a preference for brick. Charleston lacks stone, therefore fake stone façade was etched into the stucco and the streets were paved with ships ballast. Houses were packed together with their sides facing the street and balconies, supported by Greek columns of different style on each floor, were erected to catch the sea breeze. On Tuesday, we walked the more northern “suburban” Wentworth, Hassall and Charlotte St. neighborhoods, where the planters moved out to build their larger mansions and town houses.  On Wednesday, we drove to the neighboring Magnolia and Middleton rice plantations for a wine tasting and dinner.  The gardens were a riot of azaleas and Spanish moss. Rice paddies along the river, creeks and reflecting ponds, were replete with alligators. 

Magnolia Plantation

On Thursday we took the Palmetto Carriage Company’s mule ride – I had major misgivings about such an obviously touristy trip – but it was recomended by many locals turned out to be the highlight of the holiday. The guide was extremely knowledgeable and we wished we had taken it earlier in the week. In fact, I was so impressed I was ready to sign up for the pirate re-enactment walking tour run by his best friend in full swash-buckling drag. On Friday, we took one last stroll through the historic district, cruised the art shops, then snuggled into the sofas nestled on the rooftop of Henry’s Bar and ate our final bowl of divine she-crab soup.  It was a great six days.  As we drove to the airport the heavens opened in the wake of an Alabama tornado. By the time we reached New York we needed our feather coats.  

Roadtrip to Michigan

The start of our two-day drive to Michigan for the Fourth of July 4 boded ill. In keeping with the holiday we tried to take the famous American escape route from the British, the George Washington Bridge.  An accident near the bridge caused a detour.  Two hours later we finally managed to exit of the Isle of Manhattan via the Lincoln Tunnel and drove hard across New Jersey. 

Bloomsburg PA

The interstate (I) highway system, like motorways and autobahns worldwide, is built for getting from A to B without seeing anything in between.  Every now and then I can’t take it anymore and we peel off onto the blue highways. We found respite, both culinary and spiritual, as we crossed over the New Jersey State border into the civilization of Bloomsburg, a small Pennsylvania college town. Bloomsburg was founded in 1802 like much of Pennsylvania, by German Burghers, and it shows in its weighty architecture. It’s a town I would like to go back to and explore more along with the dairy and quilting shops of the Amish that lie just to the South.  Pennsylvania is in fact an interesting section of I-80 that takes the entire afternoon to cross. In the east, rolling wooded hills give way at the mighty Susquehanna River to the central Pennsylvania Wilds, an area just south of the Allegheny Appalachia, comprising deep valleys and gorges. 

The Mighty Susquehanna River, Clearfield, PA

These are followed by hilly farmland with beautiful red barns, and fields — that look as if brushed to make them tidy — reminiscent of the Schwabian alps.

Classic Pennsylvania Farm

Crossing into Youngstown, Ohio the land flattens and the immense size and emptiness of the country becomes apparent, two hundred miles of pancake flat farmland, three times the size of Holland, dotted with red and white barns and farmhouses and the newer steel silos. 

Ohio farmland

We failed to make it to Toledo and ended up in a dingy but dog-friendly Motel 6 in Milan, OH just off the highway.  Jack at least was thrilled because he realized instantly that a day in the car and a shabby motel means he gets burgers twice a day.

In the US you can travel for half a day without seeing a change in the landscape but surprisingly the state borders are often points of abrupt change.  Wooded field borders signal the transition from Ohio to Michigan.The spruce begin even in the lower peninsula of the Michigan snowmitt.

Michigan Pine

 We drove up the middle of the lower peninsula sandwiched between Lakes Michigan and Huron. Five hours later we crossed the Mackinaw Bridge. The beauty of the Great Lakes is breathtaking. In summer, Lake Michigan sparkles a deep blue.  In winter the white sand beaches are lined with snow and ice.

Mackinaw Bridge

Gros Cap Roadside Park, Michigan U.P.

 Michigan’s Upper Penninsula, UP, is hailed by the local airline industry, American Eagle, as a playground for Chicagoans. In winter its snowy forests offer skiing and snowmobiling, but in summer its tundra nature is a force to be reckoned with and mosquitoes pound onto the window screen and feast on unsuspecting tourists. It’s a strange world of beautiful shorelines, towns with the exotic names of its Native American, French fur trapper, and Catholic Missionary past. 

Lake Michigan Shoreline, Hiawatha Forest, MI

 Deep forests and wildlife that bring with them an unsettling underbelly of hunters — knife shops are the most frequent tourist shop along the road after pasties and smoked fish.  The Mackinaw bridge empties into the Hiawatha Forest. 

Hiawatha Forest, Michigan Upper Penninsula

 Its logging and mining past is very interesting - this is Paul Bunyan territory with Tall Tales of lakes of blueberry pie and tree felling sagas that held my children spellbound around the campfire many years ago.

Paul Bunyan outside the Hiawatha Forest Tourist Information

The beaches are spectacular and empty, the water is clear and, lacking salt, is very refreshing.  Jack did not agree. His coat and paws are made for snow and ice and not for swimming. He would prefer the snowy beaches in winter. Besides he was eager for his third burger at Clyde’s, a family roadside drive-in in Manistique.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Four hours later we passed through Escanaba and then sighted the big concrete bear and the Thirsty Whale in the next major town of Norway and arrived in Iron Mountain in the early evening.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The cabin, nestled on the Menominee River, was beautiful but the mid-west heat wave struck the same day, driving the temperature to 105°F. We sweltered under the neighbor’s pines and camped out on Dave’s sister’s shady porch sipping gin and tonics, the tried and true British remedy for the heat and mosquitoes.

Edgewater cabins, Menominee River, Iron Mt, MI

Jack came down with an ear infection that required an interesting trip to the local vet. The clinic had an interesting wood carved totem of an indian lifting a bear cub that somehow got deleted from my phone. The vet clinic backed onto the iron mining museum and was situated near the few remaining miners cottages of Iron Mt.  In the 1800s The UP was a major center for mining of iron and copper.  Irish, Cornish, Italians and Scandiavians and others left their homelands to work for a dollar a day in the Michigan mines.

 

Twenty-five years ago we found a very old book in the basement from Dave’s uncle with the history of the mining in the U.P.  The Cornish brought with them mining skills from their local tin mines and of course their beloved pasties, now a local delicacy.  The book told stories of how the Irish would march out into the woods on a Saturday night to drink and brawl in “Hell towns” in the woods like Calumet, now a remarkable ghost town that I need to go back and photograph. It described the silent Scandinavian bachelor farmer types memorialized in “Lake Wobegon stories” and the Italians, short and stocky, who provided the muscle in the mineshafts and a few Dutch from the lower peninsula thrown in for good measure.  They came by the boatload through Staten Island and Sault Ste. Marie.   Dave’s 40^th class reunion told it all – tall blonds with short Mediterranean husbands – a melting pot of Izzos, Santinis, Eriksons, Van Lanens and Frendeweys (Vroegindeweij).

On July 3^rd the Frendewey's took a trip around the Spread Eagle Chain of Lakes just across the border in Wisconsin while picnicking on the pontoon boat.  The three brothers relived their youth and dived into the lake with the nephews and nieces.

At dusk we gathered with neighboring boats for the firework display. It was lovely, each boat lit by a single light gently rocking together in the calm and breeze of the lake. As the moon rose, candle lanterns were sent up. Then the fireworks began.

 

Lantern over Boats gathered on Spread Eagle Lakes MI

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Salford was Never this Shiny in Lowry’s Day

There is nothing as lovely as a long train ride in a jet-lagged dreamy state.  As we set off from St. Denys I drifted along enjoying the morning sunshine and the pleasant lilting voice of my fellow Scottish traveller. Someone once told me that the degree to which people reveal their thoughts is inversely proportional to the length of their train journey.  It is true, by the time she alighted in Wolverhampton I knew her entire life history. As we emerged into the lovely greenness of Staffordshire the train gained speed. Crossing the border to Cheshire, suddenly I caught a glint -- the white water tower -- there it was, perched like a Victorian ornament on top of a wedding cake -- Congleton! I strained to see but we were through in a rattle of rail. On we sped along the Pennines to Manchester.

I first visited Manchester as a teenager. In my memory it is slaked with industrial grime peppered with the excitement of an adventure into the big wide world.  I can honestly say I have never seen the sun shine on Manchester and this trip was no exception.  One personal reason for attending the meeting was to see if all that Manchester rain would wash away my homesickness. By day three brisk tea was required to face the grey mornings, by day four I was nearly cured.  But, Manchester is like Philadelphia, a dour industrial city with an imposing past, and when you come from there you always feel the need to defend it, to extol its burgher work ethic, tout its cosmopolitan King Cotton past, and…. when pressed by skeptics…. well…. at least its not Birmingham.  The meeting itself was a success -- held in the The Palace Hotel and with receptions in Manchester Town Hall and other grand Victorian buildings of industrial weightiness.  I saw a lot of central Manchester, largely because I am “geographically challenged” when it comes to maps and equally dazed by verbal directions.  Lost at every turn, I wandered back to the hotel in entirely the wrong direction via Piccadilly Gardens where drunken boys spilled out of bars and pale damp Mancunian girls, braving the bracing winds with nothing but a fake tan on their bare legs, brought back amusing memories of my own teenage attempts to effect the impossible.  Thank god for signs to the station or I might have ended up in Bury. One evening we took a collegial outing to another of Manchester's pleasures, East Z East, a fantastic indian restaurant, that had the added advantage of being at the base of my IBIS hotel on Princess Street, so at least on this night I did not get lost.

The conference over, I arranged to meet up with Big Bro and jumped aboard the tram for Salford Quays. Whoever picked the name “Media City” for the last stop on the line should be shot.  But setting that aside, Salford was a revelation.  In my memory, Salford was to Manchester what Queens is to Manhattan, a wasteland that, as the cab barrels along from JFK to the city, you close your eyes and think, “why have I come back to this”.  But Salford is transfigured! The economic upswing of the previous decade has transformed it into a kind of modern Amsterdam with beautiful well-designed glass buildings dipping their toes into the canals and waterways.

Salford Quays

Bro was waiting on the platform in the lashing rain with my sister-in-law, who is universally acknowledged to be “The Only Sane Family Member”. (God knows what made her marry into our line, particularly after becoming acquainted, in the biblical sense, with Bro’s feet).  Bro was wearing something tweedy that looked like it couldn’t make up its mind whether to be a trilby, a deerstalker or a cowboy hat.  Hats are a fetish in our family. At the height of the Cold War, my father, ever the rebel embarrassed us by wearing a Breshnev number.  Bro claims it is male baldness in a biting wind and not foppery that leads to this bizarre behavior. I am not convinced.  Arguing against this hypothesis our Dear Demented Sister, (DDS), who has voluminous hair, does it too. Her husband, “The Soul of Patience” has also fallen under our viral influence and I must confess that one Christmas I talked the “Long Suffering Husband” into buying me a hat that Ghenghis Khan would have been proud of.

Still it cannot be denied that a hat, any hat, however odd, was needed as we beat through the rain to the Lowry Museum. The Lowry was, when said and done, chock full of wonderful Lowry’s and, descending from a dynasty of Mersey Flatmen, I of course found myself particularly drawn to one of a large black barge beached in the mud of the Manchester Ship Canal. We viewed them all and then spent an equal amount of time in the museum shop buying ballast for the suitcase in the form of hefty books. Bro plied us with Gin and Tonics, and treated us to a wonderful dinner in the museum restaurant after which, merry and fed, we dashed off to see  Loves Labors lost done in a broad Lancashire accent.

Next day, as the rain continued to slash down, I settled into Bro’s sofa and opened my laptop.  There revealed in the browsing history, lay the full irrational extent of the homesickness -- all those listings of wind swept stone cottages in Wildboarclough. Bro was amused and I could see he was already weighing the prospect of a few holidays up there with some long hikes with a good pub at the end.  The Only Sane Family Member tactfully pointed out that inability to drive and advancing age might prove incompatible with life atop the peak district hills around Buxton where snow regularly cuts off the roads in winter.  The rain put paid to plans for a drive in the direction of “The Cat and Fiddle” to scout out “cottages I want to buy when I am rich”.  So instead we set off for Quarry Bank Mill to learn how our ancestors, The Mather’s, wove cotton. Of course this also meant the added delight of drinking pots of brisk tea and enjoying generous portions of cake -- good old National Trust.    

“Remembrance Of Things Passed On The Way to Romsey And Why My Brother-In-Law Is Going Straight To Heaven”.

So, the Dear Demented Sister (DDS), insisted that the first “port of call” after disembarking from the overnight transatlantic flying sardine can, otherwise known as BA steerage, would be her new barge anchored in the Solent. Remembrance of her previous vessel “Marge the Flatulent Barge” that basked on an idyllic mooring in the Thames belching forth foul odors with every opening of the bathroom door, precipitated a battery of panicked excuses: age, decrepitude, the logic of unidirectional travel from Heathrow “TO THE SHIRES”. Last, I came clean and pointed out the compelling need for civilization in the form of FLUSHING TOILETS.  At this, DDS dug in her heels and threatened to take umbrage if sisterly dues were not paid at the point of entry.  Once provoked, DDS is, though nine years my junior, as the French would say, formidable.  She dispatched THE BLOKE to sally forth and take hostage.  Captured at the customs exit, I steeled myself for 48 hours of jet-lagged constipation. 

DDS and I do not share the allele for “love of watery places and living in cramped holds”.  I do not blame her.  As The Bloke would say, and often does, “I blame the parents”.  She inherited this trait from both sides: our paternal Evans clan built boats in Bangor and the maternal Holdens plied the Mersey on Barges since the days of yore.  She can’t help it.  The pleasure of living in squalor, beached on a mud flat, is etched deep in her genes.  I, in contrast, was handed down the landlubber allele; I cannot even swim.

The Bloke and I discussed DDS, and how she got to be that way, for two hours along the faceless motorway from Heathrow to Hampshire until we reached Winchester. There, at last, the road became familiar and I realized it was forty years since I had driven along it.  All that 18-year-old student’s angst flooded back.  Fifty-eight! How did that come to be!

DDS was waiting in the garden.  She piped us aboard the mighty “Salvador” and proceeded to the tour: a blow by blow account of sweat and toil poured fore and aft to transform the rusting hulk into a two-story edifice complete with sun deck, floating garden and an enormous yellow river room.  As we approached the stern, I braced myself for foul odors. DDS flung open the door and, triumphantly, flushed the toilet – the air was cool and pleasant.  Bliss -- not only was human sewage dispatched from Salvador in modern style but even the four felines who contributed liberally to the stench on Marge had been tamed by a magnificent feat of modern engineering that automatically sensed, scraped sterilized and spat reconstituted cat poop down a shoot, out the port hole and into the Itchen.

Impressed but in a jet-lagged daze I failed to pay due credit to these heroic endeavors. Reaching the bows I came to my senses and, leaping to make amends, proceeded to expound on the amazing beauty of guest quarters within the wheelhouse.  And beautiful it was, with windows all around, a place that reminded me of Dylan Thomas: 

“Captain Cat, the retired blind sea-captain, asleep in his bunk in the seashelled, ship-in-bottled, shipshape best cabin of Schooner House dreams of never such seas as any that swamped the decks of his S. S. Kidwelly bellying over the bedclothes and jellyfish-slippery sucking him down salt deep into the Davy dark where the fish come biting out and nibble him down to his wishbone, and the long drowned nuzzle up to him”.

Despite her water loving genes, DDS seemed unappreciative of these ruminations of the Welsh Bard.  She looked dismayed.  I realized too late I had unwittingly made the BIG FAUX PAS of the trip by lavishing praise the only part of the boat she hadn't yet renovated.

Still DDS is a generous spirit. Triumphant from her plumbing successes, she set aside the wound (at least for the time being – no doubt to be nursed as ammunition for future family feuding) and coerced The Bloke to take us on a drive down memory lane in search of all my old abodes and haunts.  We tracked down the Victorian hovel in Tennyson Rd, Portswood, took the Bevois Valley dive to St. Marys, still a den of sailoring iniquity after all these years, then set out for the dump I lived in at the back of Shirley High Street, the so-called longest high street in the UK, where the sausage factory wafted odors that could outcompete Marges’s flatulence. Mercifully roadworks diverted us. So after glimpsing the Tenovus Labs at the General Hospital where the “career” began we struck out for Romsey, my first real home.

The sun shone on Romsey, as it does always in my memory.  The corn market bustled, the bread shop still baked, and the Abbey, with my children’s school all set in stone at the side, stood solid. The Women’s Institute Hall, where we mothers would surge through the Abbey gateway when the door opened to scoop up beautiful branches and preserves, was still there. The white cottage, nestled in the Abbey buttresses, the one  “I want to buy when I am rich” was being renovated for some other dreamer. 

But alas, the Convent, site where my daughter played the stoutest little three year-old Virgin Mary that ever trod the boards in a dark blue sari,  was being torn down, the sacred heart of La Saggesse ripped out and its facade repurposed as a New Age spiritual healing center.  New Age Spirituality seems to have taken off in Romsey in a big way.  Soon it will look like Glastonbury, full of candle shops and spas and healing crystals – it must be the proximity of Stone Henge. 

We dallied in the Tenovus charity shop and bought a Panama hat for The Bloke, then walked along the salmon leap, and wound among the little shops.  There, in a cul-de-sac squeezed behind the Corn Market, we stumbled upon a gem:  Greenhill patchwork and quilting shop.  In my pre-career Romsey days, part of staying sane through the babies and isolation was to quilt a cover for my treasured Habitat floor cushion.  The same that was rescued from the attic of my divorce, the one that travelled with me over three countries and two continents and is now, though in irreparable tatters, stashed in a box where we “find a place to keep what we have lost”.  Oblivious to the fact that we had somehow also lost The Bloke in our meanderings, DDS and I dived in.  We emerged an hour later, purses emptied, with enough fabric to require a new suitcase or generate a large fine at the BA counter.  Only then, did we remember The Bloke, who will henceforth be referred to as “The Soul of Patience”. 

The Soul of Patience, accustomed to these things, and thinking to himself “we’ll have to feed the Old Bag at some point… and she’ll never go to bed when she gets over her jet lag” had gone off to the local supermarket to solve the problem of dinner.  We loaded up the provisions, but as we started to wend our way back, subliminally but acting in unison we subtlely diverted The Soul of Patience down a route that took in Hilliers.  DDS and I share the allele for “Love of Hilliers” -- the greatest garden center in the world.  We need to dig, just as the “Soul of Patience” needs the local pub, for our souls to be at peace.  Hilliers -- all those bike rides, all those years ago -- with two small children, a baby in the seat on the handlebars and a three year old perched on the carrier at the back, or standing on the cross bar displaced by the purchase of one too many plants.  All that twenty-three year-olds drive and energy -- that had to be dissipated peddling and digging -- where did it all go?

I asked “The Soul of Patience” what he thought about this need to dig in the most unlikely of places, to live in Manhattan yet subscribe to garden magazines, to construct ridiculously perilous gardens on the 53^rd floor of a New York City apartment.  And DDS -- the same -- her need to create floating vegetable patches on boats in the middle of rivers.  He was silent for a moment, kept his eyes on the road ahead, weighed his words, and then replied, “I blame the parents”.