1) I slept very well, until just after 5 AM. I accepted this with complaceny, and then decided to start the day just before 6. Morning pages written on the windowsill and my knees, shower, and downstairs for a large latte and a small sausage roll. Savory.
1a) The day began with many harsh words to myself —it happens — and I had to give myself a little pep talk in the bathroom mirror.
2) The night before I brought my large suitcase to the front desk to be stored. It feels like every cubic inch of every bag is full this trip. Organization is helped somewhat by a handy Christmas gift of luggage cubes, but it’s quite a squash. The Coventry boys told me not to bring dress clothes — “The days of trying to impress us two are long gone” — but I had to wear my navy blazer because a) there was just no room for it in my big suitcase, and b) it turns out it’s the only jacket I have and it was quite chilly and gray outside.
3) I checked out early — helpful to the housekeepers, I’m sure, to get started on some rooms early — and wrote in the lobby until it was time to go to Euston Station to catch my train. The time passed more quickly than expected.
4) Dragging my bags along, my train was called earlier than I imagined at Euston. My QR code ticket worked, and I boarded the correct train. Delays had been forecast via the app, so that I was prepared for. I was not, after the train pulled out quite early, expecting to hear I would need to move forward a couple cars, as the back four were being decoupled after Northampton. And then, writing, and the announcement that, because of the delays, the train would no longer be calling at my stop, and I would need to disembark at Coventry and wait 20 minutes for another train.
4a) Stepping onto the platform in Coventry, I’d forgotten that I remembered it exactly.
5) Before long I was on the platform at Tile Hill, a true country station, but with two exits. I went to the side with the waiting room. After ten minutes or so I saw Paul through the fence pickets on the other platform and called to him. “Stay there!” he responded with Biblical Authority, and before long I was greeting a dear friend unseen for two years. We hopped on the 14 bus to stow my bags at home.
5a) When I was here two years ago, they hadn’t moved into their snug new house. Paul was eager to show me everything, and he has really made it a colorful jewel of a home, from his choice of colors to the design of the garden.
5b) Paul then pointed out the sights as we made our way to another bus stop to join Christian on campus for a late lunch. Delay seems to have been in the air for all British transportation this day, but we made good conversation.
6) I knew Christian had written law books, but I didn’t fully realize the scope of his eminence until I saw the shelf of books he’d authored in his office.
6a) We then repaired to the campus arts centre for a late lunch in a restaurant hung with many plants and tubes of lighting, which gave off a 1970s bookstore vibe (without the books). Chicken caesar salad and white wine for me.
6b) And then a turn through the art galleries, including the sometimes disturbing photographs of Okinawa photographer Mao Ishikawa. Sometimes you don’t know what you don’t know until it’s put right in your face.
7) While Christian finished up at his office, Paul took me on a ramble through the campus forest (!) which was filled with bluebells. Inevitably I was reminded of a) the bit in Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca in which the Second Mrs. De Winter describes seeing bluebells, already withering, strapped on to the bicycles of picnickers, and b) bluebonnet time in Texas and its attendant photography industry. There were a few, but not many, people about. Paul would occasionally stop and investigate plant and birdsong on an app he has on his phone.
8) We had just missed a bus when we rejoined Christian, and made the vigorous decision to walk the 55 minutes home. Which is how I made my first foray into one of the surviving bits of the honest-to-God made-famous-by-Shakespeare-to-Americans Forest of Arden.
9) After dinner I was introduced to Who Do You Think You Are? Since I know nothing of 21st-century television, this was quite an eye-opener, particularly the Judi Dench episode.
