Early Saturday morning, December 19, Richard and I packed up the Prius and drove down to the San Francisco airport to catch our flight to England. We’d heard something about some weather in Great Britain, but since our plane was scheduled to depart, we didn’t think a whole lot about it. When we checked in, we found out that our flight was due to leave 45 minutes late, but in terms of travel hassle, that ranks about a 1. We went through security where they had those new body scanners, but at the time, we didn’t realize what they were, which is probably just as well. All we knew is that we couldn’t have a single thing in our pockets, not even a piece of paper. It’s funny to think that the cheesy old mainstay of fake ads in the backs of 1960s comic books—x-ray glasses that would allow adolescent boys to see through girls’ and women’s clothing—has now become an official reality.  

 

At any rate, since we didn’t realize what was happening, it didn’t bother us, and we went to our gate and settled in with our novels. When our flight boarded, I was somewhat dismayed to realize that a very large, smelly Russian was booked in the seat next to mine. I actually felt sorry for him, since I myself felt utterly cramped in my seat and I’m a fairly petite person, and to his credit, he tried to contain his bulk to his seat while he was awake. But my sympathy was mitigated by the fact that when he fell asleep, he sprawled out, taking up half of my seat, and he slept practically the entire ten-hour flight. Which meant that I didn’t sleep at all.

 

Okay, well, on the scale of travel hassle, since I was starting out reasonably rested from the night before, that only ranked about a 3. And I did have a good novel, so I read the whole time (the headsets for movies in coach were too big for me even when adjusted as short as possible, so the earpieces clamped down on the top of my neck, barely grazing the bottoms of my earlobes) while Richard, who was exhausted from work responsibilities, managed to catch a few winks. When we arrived in London, immigration was light, customs practically nonexistent, and my sister Cathy and her husband Rob showed up soon after we debarked to whisk us away to The Shire. As we drove and chatted, we realized that we had been very lucky in terms of the weather and our flight. Snow had caused quite a few flights to be cancelled before we took off, and evidently, more were cancelled after we arrived. So we had snuck in right in between storms. And since we didn’t have any plans to go anywhere for the next week, we felt it could snow all it wanted while we stayed snug and cozy in Cathy and Rob’s lovely, comfy home.

By the time we got there, however, our lack of sleep had caught up with us, so we staggered upstairs and collapsed into our bed where we took a delicious nap. We awoke just in time for the cocktail hour, where we celebrated our arrival with two scrumptious bottles of champagne, Cathy and I exchanged birthday presents (two Sag’s born five days apart in the month of December), and we snacked on nibblies, one of the culinary specialties in which the British excel, such as super crunchy rice crackers thoroughly impregnated with black pepper. Living so far apart, we don’t get to see Cathy and Rob nearly enough, so we were smiling and laughing and giggling with happiness, which carried over to dinner, a killer curried fish and rice dish that Cathy had made.

 

After dinner, we watched a movie on Rob’s giant, high-definition television, one of the Harry Potter films, which we found delightfully enhanced by viewing in its country of origin. The world of Harry Potter has been made infinitely more vivid for us, actually, from the time we visited Rob’s boarding school, which he attended from the age of ten to eighteen. The enormous eating hall there could easily have served as the setting for the one in the Hogwarts School. While we were there, Rob told us the story of one of the massive wooden beams that served as a structural member holding up the vaulted cathedral ceiling. After several hundred years, it had finally started to rot and needed replacing. The administration was distraught, wondering where on earth they would be able to find a replacement this day and age. But the groundskeeper, descended from generations upon generations of groundskeepers at this school, told them not to worry. His great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather had designated an oak tree for expressly this purpose, and he took the headmaster to a grove with trees that were several hundred years old. “One of these should do quite nicely,” he told them.

 

Every time we visit England, in fact, we’re reminded of just what a rich cultural history exists there and how much of it resides in the genetic memory of those of us with English heritage. It’s one of the aspects of our time there that we cherish the most.

 

At any rate, for the next couple of days, we slept in, ate Cathy’s delicious, healthy meals, read novels, took naps, toasted our feet by the fire, and watched movies. Given the frenetic pace that we had been subjected to before we left, nothing could have felt better.

 

But this was just the beginning.

 

Next post: Let the partying begin!