oh what a lovely seaside holiday

I forgot to post this picture when I wrote about mowing the lawn...

On Sunday, Jan and Jack and I went to Hillsong. It was big and loud. But I don’t mind big and loud. I like it when I can feel the music vibrating inside me. The message was excellent, although I still don’t think I approve of women preaching to men. I got a lot out of it, though.

After church, we drove for a long time and I fell asleep and then we stopped at a service plaza for lunch and went to Pizza Hut. They sold french fries with the pizza, and called them french fries, which I thought was strange. Jack’s theory is that chips are thicker than fries, which seems reasonable, although he said that he just made it up on the spot.

We were all dead tired when we got home, especially since Jan and I had both gone from a week of non-stop activity into the conference. So when we got home we pretty much crashed.

I spent pretty much all of Monday and most of Tuesday blogging.

On Monday night, Jack went to a meeting, and Jan and I watched three episodes of Doctor Who in a row – all the ones I’d missed while I was gone. We were only going to watch two, but the second one ended with a cliff-hanger…

I could never watch actual scary movies. After Doctor Who I had to work really really hard to not think about it so that I wouldn’t be too terrified to sleep. I just barely succeeded.

On Tuesday I endeavored to help Jack with the ironing, but upon finding that if the iron was too hot it melted Jan’s blouses and if it was too cold it dripped mineral deposits, I surrendered after doing the pillow cases and Jack’s shirts and left the delicate task of ironing Jan’s blouses to Jack. I was bound to ruin at least one of them if I tried it.

That afternoon, I went for a very nice bicycle ride up to Sutton St. James. It was nice and sunny and a good temperature for cycling. Everything felt odd and dreamy and unreal, probably because I had spent most of two days on the computer after spending a week going non-stop and never getting enough sleep, but the world was very pretty. There was one little road that forked off from the main road and went between two pink-blossomed trees and then off into blue sky and greenness, and sort of seemed as though it wandered off into dreamland, so I went that way. And I came back via Tydd St. Giles which was very nice because there is a little bit of woods there, and I love cycling under the greenness of trees.

I went by the daffodil field but it is all done now, which is too bad.

When I got back Jack was just finishing up making supper, so it worked out very well. It was chicken and noodles and vegetables all mixed up together. I like shallots very much, but I can’t decide if my siblings would like them or not.

Wednesday was a nice peaceful sort of day. In the morning Jack sent me up to buy a pork pie for lunch, and that was a nice walk to the butcher’s as it was bright and sunny. On the way back the primary school children were out for recess, and I said hello to a couple of them who were near the fence. After that they followed me all along the fence, saying “Hello! Hello!” every time they appeared from behind the bushes.

“Let us out of he’e! We’re in jail!” pleaded one mischievous boy dramatically. I just grinned at him.

That afternoon I cycled to Wisbech to buy postcards and presents.

I didn’t have much luck. They didn’t have any London postcards, and the Wisbech ones were all black and white and old pictures and not of what I see here now. I did manage to buy stamps, though, after I convinced the post office lady to swipe my credit card in her machine. UK credit cards have this little chip that makes it so you insert one end in the machine to make it work, but of course mine doesn’t have that and has to be swiped, but there wasn’t a swiping spot on the machine that faces the customer.

I wandered about the shops looking for presents, and found two, so that was good. I talked myself out of buying shoes. They didn’t quite fit me properly anyhow.

On the way back I took some pictures. There's a place where the path branches off from the road and goes along the river for a little while, so I went down there. It's pretty.

And this place was soooo pretty...

This is the "rabbit roundabout" in Wisbech.

That night they talked incessantly on the news about the election, and we figured out how to send me to the seaside.

On Thursday I went to the seaside. Jan gave me money for a coast-hopper ticket from King’s Lynn, and Jack took me to Wisbech to catch the bus to King’s Lynn.

When I got there, there was a bus with a bunch of 9^th-grade-ish girls standing about outside it, and everyone was saying the bus was broken and there wouldn’t be another one until “half nine” (nine-thirty). It was about 8:15 at the time.

“Is this the bus for King’s Lynn?” I asked the driver. He said yes it was. Rats. I texted Jack and Jan to tell them, and then suddenly there was Jack, come to get me to take me to King’s Lynn. (We realized today that the bus that was broken wasn’t actually the King’s Lynn bus that I was supposed to take… but oh well.)

As we were driving, we could see a line far off where the cloud cover ended, with sunshine beyond it.

I arrived at King’s Lynn a good while before the coasthopper bus was due to arrive, so I went into the Sainsbury’s that was right there and wandered around so that I wouldn’t be cold. I also bought a little container of yogurt to have with the cereal I’d packed, since I’d woken up late and didn’t have time for breakfast.

I was glad when the bus came and I could settle in. I ate my yogurt and cereal and looked at the schedule of stops to figure out where I should go. Jack had mentioned a place that had a good trail to walk along the coast, so I texted him to ask where that was, which was Holkam, about a third of the way through the route.

The land was just lovely, and it was so exciting to watch the edge of the could get closer and closer until we finally shot out into the brilliant sunshine. About that time my camera suddenly decided to stop working again, which was very unfortunate, because I don’t have any pictures of the rest of the lovely day.

When we got there to Holkam, I got off and figured out how to walk to the beach. It was down a sunny dirt road with a row of trees on either side, and past the trees on the right was a field, and past the trees on the left was marsh. It was windy, and I was almost too cold but not quite.

At the end of the road it turned to a sandy path that went up a hill and through a wood. It reminded me very much of Hoffmaster.

The path came out on a perfectly enormous stretch of sand, with the ocean a long way off. My shoes were long since off, but I put them on again – sockless – for part of the beach where the sand was gicky.

The beach was huge and wild-ish and almost empty. There were about five other people there, but I could never see more than two or three at a time, and they were mostly a long way off. The sand was perfectly lovely, and the tide was coming in and washing up pretty shells. I waded into the water and it felt so, so wonderful. Every year I forget how much I love the feeling of cool water around my feet and ankles. I walked up and down a little stretch of beach, looking for nice shells. At one point the waves came up and got my stuff wet because I didn’t realize how fast the tide was coming in… no damage done, though.

I stayed until time to catch the hour later bus (the coasthoppers run every half-hour) and then continued on, because although that beach was very nice, I wanted a beach with some place to eat. I made it back to the stop just in time.

I looked around at every place, but nothing seemed quite right – Wells-next-the-sea sounded pretty, but the beach was a very long way from the bus stop. I asked a man about a good place that had a nice beach with a place to eat near it, and he seemed a bit cranky about answering but recommended Sherringham. Another lady told me that if I went on to Cromer, there was a restaurant right on the beach. Jack had said that Cromer was a pretty typical English seaside resort town, so I decided to continue on to there. When we went through Sherringham, it did look very pretty – very seaside-like, and it had a railway station which made me think of the Thomas episode where an engine takes people to the seaside.

I got off at Cromer, and walked down to the pier. But the beach didn’t look very nice – the sand looked gicky and there was lots of washed up stuff. So I went back to the bus stop to take it the other way to Sherringham.

I had a while to wait, but not really long enough to bother going around the town. There was a little café at that stop, but the food seemed to cost more than it was worth, and I wanted to eat at the beach. So I just sat at a picnic table. The road was on a steep slant, but where the café was it was built up to be level, so that the sidewalk by the bus stop was right below the table where I sat.

A lady was wondering about the coasthopper bus, and I startled several people by suddenly saying from above,

“The next one comes at 2:08, in about fifteen minutes.”

A man asked if I was the tour guide and said I’d forgotten my hat. I didn’t have any reply to that. I never do have replies to that sort of thing. I wish I could be cleverer on the spot. But it was nice to be the knowledgeable voice from the sky.

I was greatly encouraged in my resolution to go to Sherringham, because a lady waiting for the bus was from there, and told me about how nice it was. She said the beach was very nice when it was low tide but when it was high tide it was all rocks.

So I took the bus back the other way to Sherringham.

Sherringham is, indeed, a nice little town. Loads of little shops selling anything and everything, and cafes and ice cream places. I walked down to the shore, and found that it was high tide, but there were some nice big boulders with flat tops that would make a nice place to sit and eat. So I walked along until I found a café with suitably cheap prices, and bought a pork and applesauce sandwich – all the sandwiches were labeled “baps”, which was awkward because I didn’t know how to say it or if people really call it that, so I just pointed to the sign that told about the special...

I took my sandwich down to the edge of the water and found a good rock to sit on, and got out little women, and had a very pleasant lunch. I was cold until I remembered my leg warmers and took them out and put them on. They are a little too big on me and fall down when I walk, but they work when I am sitting still. They’re currently in the dryer and I am hoping they will have shrunk. Which reminds me, I need to get my clothes out of the dryer… be right back.

Okay, they’re fluffing. Remind me to get them in fifteen minutes, okay?

Now, then, where was I? Ah yes, lunch. As soon as I took out my sandwich, birds surrounded me. There were several gulls flying about, which was just annoying, but there was also an adorable sandpiper who hopped up quite close to me, cocking his head and jumping about interestedly. I would have liked to have given him something, but as the seagulls would certainly attack if the slightest morsel of food left my possession, I had to forbear. Much to my relief, by the time I was halfway through my sandwich all the birds but two or three had given up, and the ones that remained just sat on the rocks a little way away and didn’t keep flying over my head.

After I finished my sandwich, I sat there for along time and talked aloud and got my thoughts unmuddled. Sitting by water is good for that for me, I find.

Then I waded in the water, which was really cold, and the rocks kept eating my feet because they were so round and marble-sized and smooth and they slide over each other and my feet go into them. Despite this, however, I enjoyed the water – all the more because I suddenly noticed that a young couple who were about thirty yards from me, and had been standing by the edge for some time, now also had their shoes and socks off and were wading in the water with shrieks at the cold.

After a little bit of wading, I put my shoes and socks back on – as much nicer as sand is, marble-sized rocks do have an advantage in that they don’t stick to your feet – and walked back up into the town. I was on a quest for ice cream. There were ice cream shops with many types of ice cream cones, but for some reason I was in the mood for boughten ice cream – probably because I’d been planning on getting one at some point since I first arrived in England. So I bought myself a Magnum ice cream bar, and enjoyed it thoroughly as I made my way back to the bus stop.

I had caught the 5:40 bus, which would get me back to King’s Lynn at 7:55. But when I looked at the schedule, it turned out that the bus to Wisbech left at 7:50 and 8:50! Well, there was no point in waiting around King’s Lynn for an hour when I could spend the time at one of the seaside stops, since getting off and then getting the next bus would put me back at King’s Lynn at 8:42.

I decided to get off at Wells-next-the-sea, since it was a pretty name for a place. I wanted to find a shore with sand because I had a shovel I bought at Sherringham that I couldn’t use in the rocks.

Unfortunately, the beach at Wells-next-the-sea was a very long walk from the bus stop. And it was really cold, and my phone was out of batteries so I didn’t know the time. So I played a bit at a playground that was there. They had a cool boat play structure with lots of ropes to climb, and an obstacle course sort of thing. There were other people on the swings the whole time.

After a while when I asked a boy passing by who had a watch what time it was – it was about fifteen minutes before the bus was supposed to come, so I went to the picnic tables that were next to the bus stop and sat and read until the bus came.

There was one disappointment, which was that when the bus passed Hunstanton, I saw a lovely beach laid out, sand and beauty and a little food stand – just like I pictured when I first imagined the seaside. So I wished that I’d gotten off there instead of at Wells. But I didn’t know because when we went by the first time, it was high tide and it just looked like a pier and water and no beach.

I hate things where I have to make decisions because I never make them right… ah well.

I arrived back in Wisbech and re-turned on the phone and fortunately it stayed alive long enough to text Jack that I was there, so he came and got me. And I was glad when he came because I was freezing and exhausted and starving.

And he brought me home, and we were going to stop for fish and chips, but then the place was closing, and I didn’t really want fish and chips because I had gotten a little car sick on the bus. So when we got home he made me toast and fried eggs and it was just exactly the thing, and we watched the election results happening very slowly and all the politicians saying the same things and nobody answering the questions that anyone else asked, and eventually we gave up and went to bed.

city fog and brave dialogue converge on the frontier

The first day of the Colour conference (Hillsong’s women’s conference) began with me meeting Jan and Jack in the hallway of the hotel at a quarter to eight to go down to breakfast. It was a cooked breakfast, so that was nice, although the sausages weren’t as nice as other sausages I’d had in England. But the bacon was quite nice and so was the toast.

When we got to the Royal Albert Hall where the conference was, we had to wait outside the doors in the cold for a long time, but I got to meet several of Eleanor’s friends.

We finally got inside, and went up to where we were sitting, in the upper balcony. The view was grand – the place is huge and very ornate. They were playing big triumphant music, which added to the feeling of grandeur.

I am not going to narrate the conference event by event, because it would be rather dull, but I’m going to give some general impressions and then whatever specific memories come to mind – rather like I do when I tell about an event in person.

The conference was amazing. Every speaker had something wise and real and life-applicable to say. I filled pages of my notebook with notes.

The greatest thing I took away from the conference, I think, is that light is greater than darkness, hope is greater than despair, God is greater than the world and the flesh and the devil. There were women who had seen the reality of the most horrible things that happen in this world – yet they were overflowing with joy and absolute faith in the power of God and a passion to do whatever they could to make a difference, and believed without a shadow of doubt that God would work to make a real difference.

Always, before, when someone presented a cause or a need, I would not have the combination of “can”, “should”, and “want to”, that is needed to actually do something. I would hear about various causes, but simply become overwhelmed by how many different issues had real needs – I couldn’t possibly give enough money to make a difference to them all – I could hardly give enough money to make a difference to one. I felt inadequate to do anything that needed doing. If I couldn’t make a real difference, I had no drive to do anything. The few times that I’d given money to something, I never saw anything come from it… and I just felt like my money was going off into space. I didn’t regret the giving, but I didn’t have much desire to give to other things, especially when I had so little to start out with. And I felt that whatever I did, and really, whatever anyone else did, the world was so full of awfulness that we were never really going to get anywhere. Even if I was pulled by a certain cause, the “what can I do” never seemed to amount to anything more than “send money”, and I had no confidence that my sending money was actually going to make any difference. And I had heard people so often devalue “throwing money at a cause” and “praying without really doing anything” that my desire to do either of those things was very low. I felt powerless to do anything, and at the same time guilty for not doing anything.

This time was different. This was real people talking about real differences. There were things offered that we could do that didn’t require money. And, best of all, these were women who had seen the power of prayer and believed in it with their whole hearts. The theme was sisterhood – all women everywhere, focusing on our commonalities and not our differences; Christ’s daughters united to reach out to all the hurting women in the world, from our lonely neighbors to the women in Africa.

And because they believed it, believed with their whole hearts that we could and would make a real difference – because they were not some idealistic college students but women who had spent years among horrors – because they were lit up with fire and passion and joy – I believed it too. And am believing it now. So watch out, world…

The evening of the first day, Eleanor gave us grand news – a friend of hers had reserved a box, but the friends who were supposed to share it with her hadn’t been able to come, and she was inviting us to sit in it! So we got to sit in the box for the rest of the conference, quite close to the stage, and not crowded, and not having to worry about finding seats, and not being climbed over or climbing over other people… it was extremely nice. I felt like rich people – our own box in the Royal Albert Hall!

For lunch we ate sandwiches from the café, sitting on the steps of the Albert Monument. It was rather nice – all the other women all around on the steps and in the grass, like a giant picnic.

The first day I really wanted to go to the extra session that Dr. Robi was doing on anxiety and depression, so we didn’t have as much time for supper and had to have sandwiches again. But the session was really really good and I was very glad that I went as it gave me some good tools for dealing with panic attacks.

The next night the extra session was on parenting, so we didn’t go to it, so we got to walk to Wagamama, which is a Japanese restaurant. It’s on the second floor of a building up a lot of steps. Jan said we’d have taken the elevator if she’d realized how many steps there were.

Wagamama was bright, and the seating was rows of tables and benches, like a school cafeteria. It was full of Colour people and very loud, but cheerful. The food was very excellent. I had noodles with chicken and mushrooms and peppers and shrimp and shallots. I like shallots a lot. I wonder if my siblings would like them.

What else shall I say about my days at Colour? Well, the morning of the second day, the hotel called to say that I had to move out of my room because a double room had been booked and the room I was in was a family room and they needed it for someone else, in reply to which Jan told them that they had put us in that room knowing we needed three nights, we were at a conference and wouldn’t be back until nine at night, and they would have to solve their problem themselves. Fortunately Jack didn’t have any trouble getting the keys re-activated and I didn’t have to move, which was a great relief because my stuff was all over the room and I really didn’t want Jack to have to pack it up and move it.

Did you know that all UK hotel rooms are equipped with a tea kettle and stuff for making tea and instant coffee? It’s very nice.

clearly i am a passerby, but i'll find a place to stay

The plan Thursday morning was to go to the British Museum. I could leave my luggage in the breakfast room at the hotel until 2pm, and after that there was a £5 charge. The breakfast room wasn’t very secure, so I brought my laptop with me.

Oh, I do like riding London busses! Especially on the top, in the front row. By this time I felt like an old hand at it, especially with my oyster card.

At the British Museum I saw the mummies and the rosetta stone and lots and lots of really ancient things.

One of the coolest things was a table where they had several objects that you were allowed to touch. The greatest difficulty was in getting the museum lady to tell you about all of the objects and not talk for twenty minutes about one of them, while not letting you look at the papers that told about the others. But I got to hold a piece of stone that was inscribed in Nebuchadnezzar’s time! Just think! Daniel might have touched it!

Toward of the end of my time at the museum, I saw a couple that I had seen at the Tower of London because they were on the same Yeoman tour – a tiny little woman in a wheelchair, all wrapped up in brightly colored clothing, and her tall, grey-bearded, kind-eyed husband, wheeling her about. (He’s so strong that when they were at the tower, he would just carry her wheelchair right up the steps!)

“Hey!” I exclaimed, “I know you! Hello!” They turned around in surprise.

“I saw you at the Tower of London! You probably don’t remember me, but I was on the same Yeoman of the Guard tour. I was almost always standing at the front.”

“Oh!” she said. “I remember. Nice to see you!” And we talked about where we were from and what we were doing, and they are just the loveliest people in the world. They’re from Arizona, and they met at the Grand Canyon, and she’d never kissed anyone else, and told me that was the way to go, and was very pleased when I told her that I’d never kissed anyone and didn’t plan to until I knew they were who I was going to marry. For some reason we got on to the topic of writing, and I told them that they’d be in my blog. She asked for the address, and I gave it to her.

“Ransomed – ransomed what?”

“Handmaiden.”

“Oh, okay. Ransomed handmaiden.”

“Ransomed?” questioned her husband, with half a smile. “Who ransomed you?”

“My Savior,” I said, my face echoing his half smile.

Well, they both lit up like lightbulbs at that.

“That settles it; I’m giving you my last card,” she said, and dug through her purse to find it, so I would have her contact information. If I ever go to Arizona, I’m to look them up, and stay, and bring friends. And she tells me – without me having brought the subject up – that the right boy is waiting for me, and to wait for him, and that true love is the greatest thing in the world. And looking at the two of them, I well believe it. It was such a beautifully encouraging encounter – not just regarding relationships, but knowing that there are such wonderful people in the world, so full of joy, so full of God, so full of love. Just talking to them made me feel so loved and special. I want to be like that. I want people who randomly encounter me to feel loved and special.

I got back to the hotel just in time to get my stuff – but I wasn’t going to be able to meet up with Jan and Jack until about six o’clock, and the thought of carting all my things around for four hours was really dreadful. After some agonized pondering sitting on the floor of the breakfast room, I finally decided that it was worth the £5 to be able to wander the Kensington Gardens for four hours without my stuff. I almost left my laptop there, but ended up turning around and coming back for it. It was just too much of a risk – not so much for the laptop itself, as it’s fairly decrepit in laptop years, but for all the writing and pictures on it.

I walked into the park, and found a little ice cream stand, and bought the most lovely ice lolly I think I’ve ever had. It was strawberry ice, with vanilla creamy ice over two-thirds of it, and then chocolate coating with sprinkles over the top third. And it was really, really good.

I walked the whole length of the park to get to the Princess Diana Memorial Playground, which I had read was Peter Pan themed, and so of course I had to see it.

There was a gate there that was locked, and you had to push the button to go in, but then someone was coming out, not an official person but just a lady who was there, and then as I went in I looked at her and she looked at me, and she asked if I was meeting a child, and I shook my head. And my blood sugar was seriously low because it was nearly three o’clock and I hadn’t eaten lunch and I’d been walking around all morning, and she kept asking me questions and saying things, about how you weren’t supposed to go in without a child, and was I there for research, and why was I there then, and etc. And when my blood sugar is low I have a very hard time forming clear thoughts and then getting them into coherent sentences – I can do it, but it takes a long time. And it’s even harder when the answers to the questions involve things that aren’t easy to put into words at the best of times. And every time that I would get an answer formed to what she had just said, and start to open my mouth to say it – sometimes I’d get part of the first word out – she would say something else or ask another question, and I’d have to reprocess that and make an answer to it, and then the same thing would happen. This happened about six or even seven times before she finally went out of the gate and I walked away into the playground.

I just wandered all through the playground, and saw the pirate ship and the teepees and things. It was nice, though it would have been nicer if I’d had a little kid to play with.

I bought a sandwich at the little café outside the playground, and then stuck it in my bag and went to find a loo. There was one at the Kensington Palace, so I went there, and I looked around the shop, too. Someday I’d like to go visit the Palace because it looks really cool – they’ve got it all set up to be like a storybook. It was more money than I was willing to spend that day, though.

After that, I finally got to do what I’d been planning to do all day: sit under a tree and eat my lunch and read Little Women. It was exceedingly pleasant, although interrupted once by a young man who wanted to sit by me. I shrugged and told him I was just reading, implying that I wouldn’t be talking to him. He tried to make small talk, but since his English was very limited and he’d never heard of Michigan, it didn’t go very well. And the drop of womanizer in his personality was too much for me to really be enthused about making an effort.

Why can’t a boy I’m actually interested in come up to me in the Kensington Gardens and ask me if he can sit by me?

Anyway, after I’d finished my sandwich, I went and walked along the Flower Walk, and to the Serpentine, and sent another note to Peter Pan. I also found a fairy ring, so I left a purple shell from John O’Groats there for the fairies.

Then I went back to the hotel, and found Jack there, and got my stuff out of the breakfast room and went to the car. It was so nice to see Jan.

We drove to our hotel, and had tea there. My room is kitty-korner from Jan and Jack’s, and quite nice, with a double bed and a sofa. No free wireless, though.

The restaurant food was quite good – I had a Chinese dish with noodles and peanut sauce. I told about London, and Jan told about Greece, and we commented on the election news playing on the television.

Then we went up and went to bed, all very tired.

late nights and early parades, still photos and noisy arcades

The next morning, I woke a bit later than I had meant to, but since I had been up late the night before I wasn’t too concerned. Then I had to try to figure out the Stonehenge tour, which was giving me trouble because the number that it gave me didn’t work. I called Jack and he tried to make it work but it didn’t work for him either. Fortunately, I searched the web for the company and found a different number, and that worked without any problems and I got all signed up for the tour, and arranged to be picked up at the pick-up place that was closest to Buckingham Palace. And then I set off to go see the changing of the guard.

I had a rather difficult time getting on the correct bus, because it was one that ended at Paddington so I was first trying to get on from the wrong side of the road where you couldn’t get on because the bus wasn’t going any farther, but eventually I got it figured out.

The result of all the morning’s muddling was that I didn’t have a very good view of the changing of the guard. But I got to see them ride in and out of the gate, so that was all right.

another handsome British man in uniform who's photo doesn't do him justice:

Afterward I walked around the front of the palace and admired it and recited more A.A. Milne poetry.

And then I walked to the hotel where the bus was – after having to stop for directions because I couldn’t find it. I asked the man if I had time to go into the hotel to buy a snack and he said that we’d be going to Victoria Station to pick up more people next and that I’d have time there. So I took a seat and waited.

He was true to his word, and I got a pasty at the station and ate it while we drove. I was so sleepy that I twice fell asleep for a solid half-hour with my chin fallen on my chest as though I were three.

The weather for Stonehenge was my idea of completely ideal Stonehenge weather. It was just chilly enough that I almost needed a jacket but not quite, with an ever-changing wind. The sky was full of high, fleecy clouds that made a constant alteration between sunshine and shade. We had over an hour there, which meant I could first walk once around listening to the audio tour, and then again on my own.

Toward the end, I was just sitting on the ground on the path looking at the stones, when I heard a man wondering where it was that the sunrise came in on Midsummer day. I knew, from listening to the audio tour, so I got up and told him about it. I felt like a proper wandering denizen of Stonehenge.

I got back to the bus just in time. For this ride I turned myself with my back to the window and my feet up on the other seat, so I could sleep without giving myself a neck ache.

On the way back, I also pulled out my maps and lists of things I wanted to do, so I could figure out what I wanted to do that evening. My original plan had been to do the London Eye that night, but since my camera had run out of batteries, I thought I had better save that for a different time. It wouldn’t really be worth the money if I couldn’t take pictures.

So I looked through my lists and booklets, to find what I could do that would still be open and didn’t demand having a working camera. I concluded that I would walk to Liberty, a department store known for beautiful wood architecture and selling artsy stuff. So I got off at the closest place the bus was stopping, and, after using my map to give a woman directions to Harrod’s (a famous department store), I set off.

This is Harrods.

It wasn’t long before I found myself in a ridiculously posh shopping district. Everyone everywhere was dressed in fancy clothes. I was glad that I was dressed in the nicest of my London outfits – my black Alice in Wonderland shirt, black tights, jean skirt – but really, I didn’t mind not fitting in. It was so fun to look at the shop window displays, because lots of them were very pretty.

There was a restaurant in a little lane that had a walkway over it, and I stepped into the lane to both see if the restaurant had any food that didn’t cost an arm and a leg because I was really hungry, and to look at my map and make sure that I was still going in the right direction.

A man came up to me and asked where I needed to get to.

“Oh, I’m going to Liberty, but I’m just weaving through the streets in that general direction,” I explained.

“Liberty? You’re not in the right place,” he said, pointing to my map. “It’s here and you’re here.”

“Oh, I know,” I said cheerfully. “This is where I started from,” indicating Hyde Park Corner. “I’m just cutting through the side streets, and I wanted to make sure I was still going the right way.”

“Oh, I see, so you know where you’re going. Okay.”

“Thanks!” And he walked off, leaving me feeling rather pleased with my tendency to confuse other people by walking places.

I was still going in the right direction, and the restaurant was expensive, so I continued on. I found a pretty park, and walked through it.

One interesting thing was that I walked past a short doorway between buildings through which I could see the next street – and did a double-take, because it was actually a mirror! I don’t know if I have ever seen a mirror so clear and perfect – certainly not a mirror that size and outside. The illusion of it being an opening was almost perfect. It was so strange to stand there and see another girl, looking just like me. It is strange, but I liked her, that other girl, and I was sorry to walk away.

As I walked on, I suddenly stopped short, and just stared in wonder. It was a shop that was absolutely full of the most rich goldenness, richness like you imagine in an enchanted palace – none of the ugly modern expensiveness, or even of the pretty colorful modern expensiveness, but the old kind of wealth – exquisite wood and an abundance of gold.

I eventually made it to Liberty. I was quite hungry, but the café was closed, so I just wandered around the store, as though it were a museum. There were lots and lots of lovely things, all ridiculously expensive.

When I was walking through the upholstery fabrics section, the lady asked if I was looking for anything particular.

“No,” I said, smiling. “It’s like a museum to me. I couldn’t afford most of what’s here in a million years. But I love to look at all the pretty things.”

She smiled and seemed to understand, and wasn’t at all patronizing. She told me a bit about the fabrics and things, and then I went on.

Eventually I went on down and out into the street. I wanted to get something to eat, but everywhere around there was expensive. It would have been convenient if I could have gotten on the bus, rode it until I saw someplace I wanted to eat, got off at the next stop, and then gotten back on after eating and continued to the hotel, but that would mean paying two bus fares instead of one. So I decided to just get off near my hotel and walk around there to find food.

Having got off, I was at first excited when I found a very classic-seeming pub with reasonable prices. Unfortunately, there was clearly some kind of important football game going on, because the entire place was so packed that you could hardly walk through it. So after trying to find the additional upstairs seating, and finding it reserved for an event, I managed to worm my way back out into the street.

Happily, just down the road I found a Garfunkle’s, which was a restaurant that I had seen before and wanted to try. So I went in, and ordered soup and bread. I did wish that I had a book to read, but I got out my London booklet and made plans for the next day instead.

Then it was back to the hotel, and sleep. The next day would be Thursday, the day that I would meet up with Jan and Jack.