this is a world of dreams and reverie

I missed a picture from the last post. Here is the simnel cake cut.

On Monday, Jack and Jan and I all went to the Garden Center in Crowland. It was great fun. It was like how I remember Fruitbasket Flowerland being when I was little when it was a magical land instead of a ghost town.

There was a café there, where we had elevensies. I had hot chocolate and an éclair.

The hot chocolate mug was so perfect.

There was a fish store attached to the garden center. I watched a couple sweet brown-haired children get fish.

And they had a miniature railway! I was a bit distressed because I didn’t have a measuring tape. I followed the train from the other side of the fence around the outdoor plant and garden structures part but it went around the other side of the building so Jack and I went through the building, and we asked someone where it was and he told us out the front. He was cute but he didn’t look at me.

So we went out, and we found it, and the man asked me if we wanted to ride, and I said,

“Excuse me, do you know what the gauge is on this railway?”

“Seven-and-a-quarter,” he replied instantly.

“Thank you for knowing,” I said.

“Are you a railway woman?” he asked me.

“Not too much, though I like them, but my brother is a very enthusiastic railway man, and whenever he finds any size railway he always measures the tracks to find out the gauge.”

And so he told me lots of other things about the train – it’s a scale model of a British Railways class 50 – number 50031. They made 50 of them around the late 1960s-early 1970s, and the full size one is at Severn Valley Railway in Shropshire.

It was a pound to ride the train, so Jack and I both did. And I took a movie of the whole thing for Bram.

On the way out there was a box of doors. It made me happy and I went in and out of it every way except one because that door wouldn't open.

Jan and I know that the door that wouldn't open leads to somewhere else.

After we left the garden center, we went to see a really cool three-way bridge, called Trinity bridge. And I had to go over it three different ways to make it come out even.

Afterward I had to work out the correct route to go over and under it all different ways and come back to where you started. Except there was a fence in the way so you can’t do it actually. (Pout.)

Then we went to Crowland Abbey. It was everything that “Crowland Abbey” should be. I have endeavored to capture it in pictures.

The longest bell-pulls in all of England:

The picture does not capture how bright this window was:

Then when we came back, we had a very late lunch of toast-and-whatever (I had peanut butter and hummus). And I read The Horizontal Epistles of Andromeda Veal (which was hilarious) and took a nap (and so did Jan).

After I woke up it was about six o’clock but we weren’t hungry at all yet, and I wanted to go for a cycle so Jan said that I could since we’d have tea late.

I went off along Allan’s Drove. It was just starting to get dark. There was a line of tall, thin trees along one side of the road and a field on the other.

After I stopped to take a picture, I realized that it was the same road that I’d taken on one of my first trips, the one with the pond and Bleak House.

I was in a very picture-taking mood, so I stopped often.

About a mile down, I came to Chalk Road and turned right.

And found daffodils.

(This picture did not work out how I wanted to. I was struck by the way the bright daffodils looked against the brown wild sort of emptiness of the field, but I was unable to capture it in a photo.)

A little while after that, there was a large wrought-iron gate with a sign on it that said, “Loose Dog”. I assumed that this meant the same thing as other similar signs I had seen – that there was a dog loose within the confines of the gate, so watch out if you open it. However, just as I went past, a small-medium white dog squeezed underneath the gate and came rocketing out after me, barking madly. My first instinct was to pedal away as fast as ever I could, but I am not an especially fast biker and the dog was a fast runner (as dogs generally are when chasing something) so it gained on me quickly. (I also had the split second thought that I should be going back to let the people know that their dog had escaped, but that idea was rejected before I had finished thinking it.)

My next expedient was to shout behind me at it, in as ferocious and loud a voice as I could manage (which, given my current level of adrenaline, was quite ferocious and loud),

“GET away!”

Upon which, to my surprise, it promptly stopped and went back the other way.

I expect that there is some segment of the population which, upon meeting with a similar situation, would have hopped off the bike, bent down to greet the dog, exclaimed, “Oh, what a cute doggie!” and made friends with it.

I, however, am not in that segment of the population.

It was getting darker after that, so I turned right, back toward home, on the next road I came to, even though it was one I’d been on before. (I like taking as many new roads as I can.)

Having been shaken by the dog incident (yes, I know, I’m a complete fraidy-cat. I don’t typically like dogs anyhow, and I especially don’t like dogs that are barking at me, and I extra-especially don’t like dogs that are barking at me and chasing me) added just a bit of – what shall I call it? – bigness, or uncertainty, or a sense of danger, to the night. It woke up my scaredness, but in a good way. For me being afraid is either on or off - well, not all types of afraid. Not afraid like about-to-audition afraid, or my-friend-is-in-the-hospital afraid, or I-don’t-want-to-jump-off-into-the-water afraid. The imagination kind: the woods-in-the-dark kind, the home-alone-and-just-read-a-ghost-story, the House-MD-was-creepy kind, the in-the-Haunted-Mansion-alone kind. Nothing can scare me like my own imagination. And, at just the right level, it’s an extremely pleasant feeling. And once something sets it off, it stays on until circumstances completely change. But if it gets to too high a pitch, it’s very unpleasant and I get ridiculously frightened even if there’s nothing logically to be frightened of. (I am not very brave. Once I am scared, I am scared, and I am not good at fighting it. Especially if I feel like something might suddenly startle me.)

In this case, though, it was just right. Being scared by the dog had turned my spooky-mystery switch to “on,” and the night was alive with things-about-to-happen.

As I pedaled down the road and it got darker, I felt as though I heard a voice, a sort of combination of when Rothbart talks to Prince Derek (when Odette is dying) and when Ursala talks to Ariel (when she’s watching her in the bubble after she leaves the sunken ship)…

“Hurry back, little girl, hurry back…”

I saw things sometimes that I thought of taking pictures of, but I did not stop. There is a house along that road, a white one, with brightly-painted plows in the front as an odd sort of yard decoration, and I don’t like the house and I don’t know why. And I especially didn’t like it tonight. I thought of taking a picture to try to capture the eeriness of it. I started to brake, and then there was the man who lives there, in the side garden, with his big brown dog, and he said hello, and I nodded at him and pedaled on away. If it was a movie then the camera would swoosh by him with that effect where only the face is in focus.

hurry back, little girl, hurry back…

I didn’t stop until I was just inside the Gorefield sign, where the shire horses are. The black horse looked at me, so I stopped.

And he came over to the fence, and I stroked his nose, and fed him long grass from my side of the fence, and the two other horses came over and I fed them, too.

And then I went on into town.

hurry home, little girl, hurry home…

Just before I turned down St. Mark’s Road, I stopped.

“I don’t want to hurry home,” I said crossly. “I want things to happen, and it always seems like they’re going to, but nothing ever does.”

And nothing did happen, except me staring around and at the sky and someone driving by and giving me a weird look.

And I walked my bike down the road and went home. The house looked nearly as mysterious and full of significance as everything else did that night, which was satisfying. Inside, it was all golden and Jack was ironing and I sat on the floor and stretched and told them about my adventures.

Then we had dinner, which was cold lamb and mashed potatoes. And we watched an episode of Sherlock Holmes and I chatted with my mother on skype.

And then I read Pride and Prejudice and went to bed. And hugged Lumpy and watched the gap I had left in my curtains, unable to decide whether I was wishing for something to happen or dreading it.

there's a bright light up ahead

On Friday night, we watched a two-hour episode of Agatha Christie’s Poirot, which I enjoyed thoroughly. I do love mysteries, and that show is the perfect level of suspense/scariness.

On Saturday, Jack and I went grocery shopping. On the way to Asda, we stopped at the butcher shop, which was very nice and old-fashioned. And there are shelves of bread loaves and the loaves look so perfect that at first I thought they were fake! Jack bought a pork pie for tea, and when we got it in the car, duly stuffed it in the glove compartment, much to my amusement. (I also realized that I can really put gloves in my car’s glove compartment when I am home, because I bought summer driving gloves because my steering wheel gets really hot. /tangent)

After we came home, and I sort of helped put away groceries (I only knew where about a third of the things went…) I checked my e-mail and such and then read Great Expectations in the garden because it was sunny. And that was nice. And I had tea (the drink not the meal) out there, too, and that was also nice, and a great big fuzzy bumble bee bumbled all around the garden.

When I came inside, we watched the Oxford vs. Cambridge rowing race on the Thames. It’s been held every year for over a hundred and fifty years. Cambridge won, but it was a very close race.

Oh and sometime in there I watched Jack make a simnel cake (it is an English Easter tradition).

And then we had our pork pie for tea. And we had baked apples, stuffed with cinnamon and sultanas (which are just extra-nice raisins, in case you didn’t know that) and drowning in custard.

And watched Doctor Who. Which I liked very much.

Easter morning we went to church, of course, and I had the inspiration to wear my green long-sleeved shirt under my daffodil dress and it looked just stunning and I wore my gold necklace with the big butterflies and my gold leaf earrings and one man called me a daffodil and a lady called me a fairy princess and I was happy.

We didn’t sing any of the Easter hymns that we sing at Blythefield, but I did like the ones that we sang. And we sang In Christ Alone, and they had flags for waving at on a table at the back, and I went and got a yellow one and I waved it and I cried and I love Resurrection Sunday.

Here are pictures of the church, afterward, when everyone is walking around or standing and talking and chairs are being put away.

View from the back:

View from the front:

And then we went home and had simnel cake for “lunch” because Jan and Jack do Easter dinner like we do Thanksgiving dinner, at 2 or 3 in the afternoon.

This is simnel cake. Can you guess the significance of the number of marzipan balls on top?

Jan gave me this for Easter:

During the afternoon I took a few pictures of the house for you to see.

This is the view down the hallway, to the right when you come in the front door:

This is what you see, coming in the door to the living room:

That is the couch where I sit. Here is my little corner of the world:

(That sort of triangle box on the floor is the giant chocolate egg that Jack got me for Easter. He got Jan one too. And Jan got him a chocolate bird. And I got them caramel eggs. So we all got each other things. Oh, and next to it is Great Expectations.)

This is the couch where Jan and Jack sit:

And here is the other side of the living room:

After that I stopped taking pictures because it was time for dinner. (We always eat in the living room because the dining room table is covered with papers that are being sorted through, because of Jan and Jack moving to Greece.)

And we had lamb and roast potatoes and brussel sprouts (I think even you would like them the way we have them, Mommy, or at least not hate them) and carrots and mini Yorkshirepuddings.

And after dinner I finished reading Great Expectations, and I don't remember what else we did. Well, besides seeing a rat in the garden.

And then somehow we got off on a discussion of sacraments and ordinances, and then from there to the seven sacraments and had to look up what they were, and then the thirty-nine articles of the Church of England…

And we stayed up until a quarter to midnight reading and discussing all thirty-nine of them.

Yeah. It was pretty much awesome.

Then I wanted to read a couple chapters of something before going to sleep, so I perused the shelves above my bed and found The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, which I had heard was good but didn’t know anything about. And it turned out to be from the perspective of a fifteen-year-old boy with autism, and I read it straight through until 2:30am. (Which, combined with having finished Great Expectations that day, made me feel like a proper cutting-edge intellectual student. Now all I need is an in-progress masters degree, ramen noodles, a glancing interest in Buddhism, and an independent coffeehouse to frequent regularly for free-range coffee. (Although I think that last bit might be contradictory with the ramen noodles...))

please don't let me go, i desperately need you

Firstly, a couple pictures I somehow missed uploading yesterday:

Now, on to the actual post.

Wednesday was a fairly uneventful day. Jan had an appointment at the hospital to talk to her doctor about the results of the chest x-ray, so Jack drove and I went along, too. Since the x-ray was clear, the appointment took almost no time. Also, the doctor said that the complete exhaustion is very likely a side-effect of the general anesthetic, and that some people do get it when their body breaks down the chemicals. And she’s been feeling better over the past couple days, so it seems things are on the right track now.

On the way back we stopped at Boots in Wisbech because they were having a mix-and-match buy-two-get-one-free sale on a ton of things that Jan wanted to take advantage of. I needed to buy contact solution and q-tips anyway, so that was handy. And also, I’m such a girl – I like wandering around beauty supplies and looking at everything even if I’m not actually going to buy it.

Back at home, we had toad in a hole (that’s sausages in Yorkshire pudding, in case you don’t remember) for tea, and watched Larkrise to Candleford (a TV show that Jan describes as the English version of the Waltons). And then after that had a nice long good conversation about life and self and God and such things.

Thursday was a good day. In the morning I went out for a bike ride, and although it was bright and sunny it was very windy.

I stopped along one road with no trees or buildings and lay down to look at the big sky.

I found the place where they grow a field of daffodils. They aren’t all out yet, so I’ll be going again.

I sat for a long time there. It isn’t something that I can write about, but it was good.

After that I continued on – I love just going down whatever road seems right at the time, and my sense of direction has gotten fairly good – and eventually ended up in Newton, at an old church.

And I wandered around there for a long time.

By that time I was getting a little tired and a little hungry, so I started back. I came to the A1101, and since that’s a road about like Alpine where it goes into Sparta, but with no shoulder, I decided that I’d rather take a different way back. I made good use of my map, and got back with no trouble.

It was about 1:30 when I returned, and as Jack was still out running errands, I had the bit of toad-in-the-hole I’d had left over from tea the night before as a pre-lunch snack. (Perhaps you might call it a very late elevensies.)

When Jack returned we had toast with whatever we wanted on it for lunch. I had marmite on one piece and peanut butter and honey on another.

During the afternoon, I helped Jan finish the work project we’d been doing, and read Great Expectations. (I have been doing a lot of reading Great Expectations. It’s a good book, and it makes me laugh all the time. And worry about the characters.)

Late in the afternoon, the middle section of my middle and ring fingers on my right hand started itching badly, which continued during the night, and this morning had a rash which seems to be poison ivy – well, not poison ivy, because they don’t have that in England, but poison something. Fortunately, it’s a very mild case and isolated to those fingers, and Jan has some mild steroid cream that cures the itching. It’s kind of interesting since I’ve never had poison anything before. Also, how I got it on those two fingers and nowhere else, I have no idea, though I’m certainly thankful.

On Thursday night, we had a very good tea of gammon and pineapple and mushrooms and chips. Jan describes gammon as very thick bacon. I think I would describe it as very nice ham.

After dinner we had biscuits that I convinced Jack to buy (they were only 44p) when we went out shopping last week. They’re so adorable.

Jack and I went to a Maundy Thursday service at Wisbech Baptist Church. It was a pleasant experience except for the old man next to me who was rather obnoxious before the service began. He began by running down Americans, then he kept touching me when he talked to me. When he grabbed my upper arm, I pulled away from him slightly and did my best to show that I didn’t appreciate it, but without being rude.

“Do you find me annoying?” he asked.

“Mildly,” I replied.

I’ve never been good at polite falsehoods.

But he didn’t seem to take offense, and I think we parted on good terms.

I also met a older man named Peter afterward, who is interested in steam trains. He was pleasant looking with white hair that came down over his forehead all in a straight piece, giving him a slightly boyish look. His daughter works for railway tours and he says that when she visits today he’ll ask her if there are any steam train tours between now and the second week in May and send me the details if there are.

I told Jack about me and my runaway honesty afterward, and he approved.

“Well, he asked,” he said. “And what would he have done if you’d said no?” It turned out that this man was someone who Jack knew because he used to go to King’s Church.

When we got home, Jack told Jan,

“L---- was there, from King’s Church.”

“Oh, that’s nice,” she said pleasantly. And then stared at us with a look of calm inquiry as we both went into peals of laughter.

Then I explained.

“Oh, hasn’t changed much, has he?” she said to Jack.

This morning was the Walk of Witness in downtown Wisbech. A bunch of Wisbech churches gather together for a sort of traveling service, that begins at St. Peter’s church (a big stone one) and then stops in several places throughout downtown for a reading and a song. People take turns carrying a cross at the front of the procession, which is then stood up at each of the places during the reading and singing.

We went through the marketplace, a narrow road where cars are not allowed. I cannot think of the right word to describe how it was to follow behind the cross there. But it made it a little better that I wasn’t there for the Easter drama.

At the last place we sang In Christ Alone. I could see a lady across from me, in her late fifties or early sixties I would guess, the slim long-haired gardener type, who loved it the same as I did. I talked to her afterward and she said that she wants it at her funeral.

Then we came home and Jan was making hot cross buns and Jack made hot chocolate for me and when the buns were done we had them for lunch and we ate them all up even though there were eight of them. They never even had time to cool.

And now Jack is gardening and Jan is napping and I am writing. And I will probably be napping and/or reading Great Expectations pretty soon. And maybe having a snack, since despite their incredible deliciousness, hot cross buns are not the most sustaining things to have for lunch.