Recollecting all this two days later.
1) This trip I brought my tarot cards, and Monday morning felt like a good time to look for some guidance. The elements were there: unhappy memories, a quest for spiritual wisdom, sorrow widely felt. But what’s coming in shows promise: renewed hope, and the need to apply kindness to raw emotion.
2) The rest of the morning got taken up with the business of daily life, which goes on whether you’re traveling or not.
Queen Victoria, who could be singing “Macarthur Park” as the cake.
3) Midafternoon I sallied forth in the direction of Stevenson Square, borrowed umbrella from the hotel keeping off most of the rain. There I found the recommendation of a local friend, a shop of books and magazines, Unitom. Wandering through its carefully arranged stacks of beautifully designed zines, magazines, and books of all kinds — just wow, brought me back to life before the internet, when print was our principal means of reading intake. The late 1980s, when publishing was the it career. Leslie, are you reading this? Do you remember our fledgling plans for The Leif Ericson Revue? LOL.
3a) I did buy a magazine of biographical stories, which should make good reading. But I bravely resisted other temptations. Just because I got Madame Campan’s memoir of Marie Antoinette in college is no reason to get a paperback reprint of Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun’s little memoir now, now matter how pretty it looks on the shelf.
3b) Biblioholism is a thing. #resist
4) Manchester certainly turned out to be wetter and chillier than expected.
I mean, really.
5) The big event of the day was afternoon tea at the Richmond Tea Rooms, a rainy hop and skip from my hotel. My local friend said it would be perfect for me, and . . . and considering that it was a café with an Alice in Wonderland theme, he was not wrong! (And he didn’t know that I’d played the Mad Hatter three times . . .) Garlands of silk flowers were everywhere, heavily wound with playing cards and other recognizable bits of the Alice stories (though I didn’t see a flamingo . . . )
5a) The room was fairly full with groups of women. I was shown to my little table promptly and ordered the Hatter’s Tea which included four sandwiches, a canapé, and an incredible scone with jam and clotted cream. It was all superb, including the Andrews Sisters on the soundtrack.
5b) I appeared to have been the only person who dressed for the occasion in full canonicals, but then all my laundry and dry cleaning was subject to the tender mercies of the hotel; all I could wear was a suit and tie.
6) I spent the evening writing and reading Queen James, which was just fine.