Diversion

Our flight back to Los Angeles is scheduled to leave London on Saturday; theoretically, that could still happen, but it feels extremely unlikely. It seems to me that even if the volcano goes to sleep and the wind currents change and everything is suddenly ideal, there is still such a backlog of stranded travelers that the situation at the airports will not approach normalcy for quite some time. In fact, the TV news is on right now and the reporter just said, “As a new ash cloud moves toward the U.K., expect more travel chaos. It could go on for days, or even weeks." 

Not very encouraging. We’ve been brainstorming ideas for what we’ll do if indeed we cannot go home, and some of these schemes actually sound enticing, but we won’t know anything until the last minute, and our adventurous alternatives may not be as feasible as we’d like to imagine.

At times this strange situation has made me feel nervous, unsettled, and insecure. But today I began to get into the giddiness of it, an exhilarating sensation of being set free. It’s as though the universe has given us a blank canvas and said, “Here. Fill it in any way you like.”

Ours is a luxurious dilemma -- where will we go for the next few days, and what will we do if it’s longer? As Monte put it, this could not have happened to us at a better point in our lives. If we can’t get back home, there are some responsibilities and complexities that will have to be dealt with long distance, but we’re both technically retired, and it occurred to us today that the only people in California who actually count on us and will therefore miss us are his parents and my own wacky mother. We have at this point been mildly inconvenienced by the cancellation of one leg of our trip, and there's uncertainty ahead of us, but let’s face it – this is not exactly Haiti.

In fact, as we amble about the British countryside eating in village pubs, taking leisurely walks, and coming back to our hotel for a hot bath and tea, I have begun to think of us as a pair of decadent aristocrats.Well, not classy enough to be aristocrats, maybe more like the idle rich in an F. Scott Fitzgerald story, aimless and shallow. Where shall we wander this morning? What sort of chocolate might I try? Remind me to buy some conditioner for my hair, darling. We may not be deep, but we're having fun.

Since you are no doubt dying to know where we are, I’ll tell you: we’re staying for a few days at a place just outside of Ashford-in-Water in the Peak District National Park, the green heart of England. As a park, it isn’t as “wild” as the national parks we have in the U.S., but in addition to the natural beauty of the landscape, there’s a sense of human history here – ancient stone houses and markers and ramshackle barns, evidence of long ago lives. And evidence of current lives as well – we walked past newly ploughed stretches of earth, and grazing lands still in use, nodding to the sheep or friendly cows, unlatching gates and latching them behind us, or going through special stiles to walk on well-trodden footpaths through pastures that smell sweet with new grass.

I like the old dry stone enclosure walls that border properties here. I’ve done a bit of web searching about them. Apparently the earliest traces of such walls date back to Neolithic times, but wall building began in earnest in the Middle Ages, was at its height during the Elizabethan age, and continued into the 19th century. We walked by miles of such walls today, past an old mill, beneath abridge and a viaduct. We listened to water, wind, and birdsong, and glimpsed crowds of yellow daffodils dancing, Wordsworth-style, along the River Wye. We lingered in the village, strolled along the Sheepwash Bridge, and looked around at the Holy Trinity Church, which dates back to the 13th Century, and its churchyard, filled with stories. The bells were ringing, an ongoing concerto of clangs – I peeked inside and saw four strong women methodically pulling the ropes.

I won’t bore you with food reports or the curiosities of the grocery stores, but I do have to mention desserts, for it appears that they are viewed with some importance around here.Here is a partial listing of desserts from the menu of an old hotel-pub restaurant where we had lunch today: Chocolate profiteroles (which, in case you are wondering, are choux pastry balls encasing a fluffy cream smothered in a rich chocolate sauce), treacle sponge (steamed sponge topped with thick sticky toffee sauce), sticky toffee pudding (like your mum used to make it), lush lemon torte, and three other choices...but wait, that’s not all...every dessert is served with custard, cream, or ice cream. Clearly this is a place that appreciates rich as a food attribute. (And don’t even ask about clotted cream, which I finally tried at Jill and Peter’s a few days ago. It’s divine. Also, I think a small "pot" of it -- about 8 ounces --has enough fat and calories to sustain two adults for an entire day of vigorous exercise.)

Speaking of exercise, we saw some pretty racy looking cyclists breezing by this afternoon, but by and large, we are among the youngest tourists here. It's mostly gray-haired couples traversing these footpaths, and they may not be glamorous, but I have to admit they seem hardy. In the restaurant today the soundtrack was Johnny Mathis, Karen Carpenter, soothing music of the 1960s and 70s. I wondered about this. Maybe it was the soundtrack from when all the kids were little and the world seemed safe, when everything might still turn out all right. But what’s weird is that this place kind of makes you feel that way.

It could be we’re on the cutting edge, being here. It’s the beginning of the boomers being old, accepting it, going for nice slow walks in dowdy, practical get-ups in a place so un-cool, it actually feels cool. And at 11:11 this morning, Monte and I were standing in the middle of a green meadow by the river laughing at some silly pun like, What’s the name of this river? Wye do you ask?, and maybe on Saturday we’ll be flying back home and maybe we won’t and to tell you the truth, either’s fine.