The History of Alcohol

well, in my life!

My parents were tea-totallers (what is the origin of that term, anyway?!), so I didn't have a liquor cabinet to raid (my mom had some cheap cooking sherry that she kept up on a very tall shelf and used every 18 months or so - I knew because, being 3-4" taller, she'd ask me to retrieve it for her).

High school (in the late 60s) there was the crowd that drank a lot of beer and puked at parties (the appeal of which has always mystified me) and the crowd that smoked dope, of which I was a part. So I never even tried alcohol until I was out of high school and jamming w/friends and offered a beer on a hot day (yuck, then; now I probably drink a couple of beers a year - certain foods are very nice with beer) and somebody else was drinking some truly disgusting wine like Boone's Farm Apple and I found that tolerable - so I drank cheap, flavored wine in very small quantities.

I think it was probably at a carbo-loading dinner w/my competitive cyclist boyfriend that I discovered chianti is very nice with pasta, and so I began my explorations of red wine, a voyage I am still enjoying.

I rarely drink when I go out, unless a group of us decide to get a bottle of wine with dinner, because I find a decent red wine is excessively expensive by the glass. I used to go to a lot of clubs to hear bands (and friends) perform and the standard was a cover charge with a two-drink minimum. I would either drink Kahlua-and-cream or Tequila Sunrise; I once had a gin-and-tonic that I really enjoyed at a party, but I've discovered since that gins vary a lot and most of them I don't like. Sometimes I'll have a margarita on the rocks at a Mexican restaurant but I had a bad experience w/tequila that greatly diminished its appeal: one night at The Troubadour (seeing Leo Kottke, as I recall) I had my two Tequila Sunrises, came home, went to bed, woke up with the stomach flu - and the taste associated with it was tequila (as close to a "drunk" experience as I've had). Not good.

Don't misunderstand me, I enjoy that warm glow that a certain amount of alcohol provides, but I don't like where it goes shortly thereafter, which is kind of choppy and sloppy and disoriented. I've had many a long, slow dinner w/friends where we drank a couple of bottles of wine over the course the evening, but it just sort of prolonged the glow (and as long as you keep yourself hydrated, the body processes the alcohol quite well); traveling in Europe I would typically order half a carafe of the local red wine (and cheaper than the Coke my ex- drank continually!) and in English pubs it's usually dry cider (scrumpy, if it's available). I love the way Guinness looks, drawn on tap, like rich chocolate milk, and then it separates into that beautiful dark dark brown with creamy head - but I can't stand the way it tastes (such a disappointment to me--).

At home I'll often have a glass of red wine with dinner, because I like it and because it's good for you (well, me), in reasonable quantities, the whole cholesterol-cutting aspect of it, heart-supporting, etc. I think of red wine as a wonderful accompaniment to food (give me a really big mature red with a medium rare steak and I'm one happy puppy).

When recording, I found a little Southern Comfort was good for keeping the vocal cords relaxed and smooth - but it needs to be a VERY little or you end up with one loose singer, by the end of the session. Pitch gone to hell in a handbasket and timing, what timing?

And, to bring the whole thing full circle, a wealthy German industrialist with a wine-cellar par excellence introduced me to ice wine (botrytis), so while I shudder at the thought of cheap flavored white wine, I delight in a very good dessert wine (with fruit and cheese - yum) - but that's an exceedingly rare indulgence.

General Updatedness

I came down to San Diego for ConDor (this year was ConDor 13, I think - I've done concerts at nearly every one) and for the first time stayed with my Mom in her new location up in Poway, so that put me about half an hour away instead of 8 minutes away. The only alarming thing about this is a particular piece of pavement on the 163, just before the 805 junction, when the finish of the road sounds like a brake squeal - every time it would give me an adrenaline hit until the very last time when I kept repeating, like a mantra, "it's only the road, it's only the road" - so that made me notice where it happens and hopefully I won't continue to react so strongly in the future!

The concert was good fun. The last few concerts I've done I haven't been very pleased with because I really hadn't done any prep and was selecting songs on the fly and perhaps hadn't performed that song for months, and while I was well-received, I knew that I could do better.

There are excuses for all that, of course (--aren't there always?!--) but I knew and it's ultimately me that has to be okay with what I'm doing.

So this time I did better and I'm much more satisfied and the concert was received very enthusiastically. Ah! good.

One of the fun things was debuting a couple of brand new songs: Left Turn Love, which is something of an attempt at a modern Childe Ballad (the last verse even starts, "Come all you tender maidens and heed the words I sing..."); and There Are Three Things, a love song built off Proverbs 30:18-19.

There are three things which are too wonderful for me,

Four which I do not understand:

The way of an eagle in the sky,

The way of a serpent on a rock,

The way of a ship in the middle of the sea,

And the way of a man with a maid.

England Six, Lynn Slow...

So... I left you with the threat of Stonehenge. Our last day at the timeshare we loaded into the car and then wrestled with heavy traffic to Exeter where Michael was picking up his rental car. He'd been grumbling about the size of our rental car, although we needed the room when it was loaded full of us AND our bags, and had reserved something smaller to pick up at Exeter and drop at Birmingham - but when we got to the rental location they offered him a station wagon (!!) - a much BIGGER car than the one we'd been in all week - and he took it (the fool!). Ellie and I shook heads, helped him load his stuff from one car into the other, and then we all drove off with Michael following us.

I kept him in my rear view mirror for at least an hour, through the heavy traffic (school holidays, remember - *sigh*) and then lost him while overtaking some slow vehicles (families towing trailers, or caravans, as the Brits would say). I thought I saw him draw near but that car eventually passed us and it wasn't him (rats!). We'd all planned to go to Stonehenge that day, and his little photographer's heart would have leapt for joy because the sky was wonderful - big dramatic clouds. If you can't be there for magic hour (sunrise, sunset) then dramatic clouds are as good as it gets - but we never saw him there and learned afterwards, when we met up in Birmingham 5 days later, that he was attacked by a bout of good sense and chose to drive on up to the Lake District (a loooonnng haul in one day, especially by British standards, which are smaller, more winding roads than he's used to in California).

But Ellie and I had a grand time slowly walking around the henge and taking a ton of photos (that's what really made me apprciate my digital camera - I must have taken more than 50 shots of Stonehenge and I never had to reload! yay!!!). Here is the official English Heritage site, which has lots of links (they have the management of the location).

We finally hit the road and drove on in to London environs, having finally eluded most of the holiday traffic, and by hit-or-miss (MapQuest leaving a bit to be desired in this instance... quite a large bit, actually) made it to Pat & Trevor's and fed their hungry kitties and schlepped stuff into the house. Pat and Trevor were at the World Science Fiction Convention (up in Glasgow, which I'd planned to go to and then decided I'd prefer to spend that time seeing friends in England and seeing ENGLAND, as opposed to seeing a convention center and a hotel which could be about anywhere, as interesting as Worldcons are) but they kindly lent us use of their home, which freed up a friend who was driving over to feed the cats (Broggy and Kiwi - large brother and smaller sister, both gorgeous black animals).

I think we drove out to an Indian take-away in a nearby community, and crashed pretty early. Next day, Sunday, we slept in, used the computer, started doing laundry, fed cats repeatedly (rather complex directions as they each have special diets!), found a shop where we could buy a little food (having cleverly forgotten it's SUNDAY and even this close to London, the shops don't stay open late - spoiled Americans, I tell you!).

Monday we drove 15 minutes down to Farnham, a charming small city (town?!) full of Georgian architecture, some lovely churches, and a castle which was, sadly, closed that day (*sigh*). We nonetheless had a grand time wandering through the town and eating a pub lunch in a rather "foody" pub - they had a 2 course prix fixe meal that was EXCELLENT plus a special on a bottle of wine - we thoroughly enjoyed that! I learned there is a well-known guitar shop and I walked off in search of it while Ellie went in search of a particular publication and came back to find me tucked into a timbered corner of this great old building, happily playing a VERY nice inexpensive guitar (!!) to maintain my callouses (I hate losing them and having to rebuild them - it hurts!). We walked back and wandered through the Lion and Lamb Yard which was charming - I do like the sculpture!

Tuesday we drove all the way out to Whitstable on the east coast (so we walked beaches on both the utter west and utter east of England, right across it's broadest portion!) - we particularly liked the beach huts - funny little houses. My friend Joan told me that these have sold for some ridiculous figures, especially considering that you can't SLEEP in them! But it was lovely for me to see Joan again (who fed us a scrumptious luncheon) and her now-grown daughter and two grandkids (yay! for grandkids) and then we started the drive back, stopping in nearby
Canterbury (check out more Canterbury shots at this site) and just missing the Cathedral (they closed EARLY, the rats!) but enjoying the grounds for several hours.

When we finally hit the road for home we had a great experience as we topped the rise of a hill and found a hot-air balloon rising majestically (and ENORMOUSLY!) before us - there was an annual ballooning meet the next day - here are some nice shots from a different meet. A rich, full day!

Wednesday we took the train up to London and spent the day riding the Underground, walking through assorted galleries and museums, hanging out in Covent Garden and of course a yummy lunch with wine and finally an evening at the theatre, seeing The Philadelphia Story with Kevin Spacey and Jennifer Ehle at The Old Vic. Lovely, rich day and despite terrorist activity within the previous month, neither of us were fearful (remember how my trip started with a diverted flight, after all!).

Thursday will find us loading out of Pat & Trevor's home and driving up to Birmingham, stopping at Kenilworth Castle on the way. The story of parking and schlepping and returning the car isn't particularly interesting - except that we drove 1,500 miles in less than 10 days, from Rochester to Heathrow, out to Cornwall and Land's End, back by way of Stonehenge and east to Whitstable, and finally north a little ways to Birmingham! Whew!!!

An Obituary for my Father--

Lloyd Z. Maudlin - February 20, 1924 - January 20, 2005
Noted physicist, beloved husband, father, and friend.

"He had a very, very great soul and he made the world bigger everywhere he went." Mike Glyer, Hugo Award winner, upon hearing of Lloyd Maudlin's unexpected death.


Lloyd was born in Miles City, Montana. His mother homesteaded in northern Montana and Lloyd was raised in a log cabin near Rosebud, not far from Maudlin, Montana, which was named after his father Loyd. Every winter the Yellowstone River would freeze and the spring thaw brought massive ice floes that burst up onto the land, flattening everything -even buildings- in their path; the family would retreat to higher ground across the railway embankment and Lloyd had a vivid memory of riding the back of the buckboard, horses racing, while a block of ice ten feet tall gained on them.

The family moved to a farm in Iowa in 1932 but three years later Lloyd's father died and, as the oldest son, Lloyd became the farmer at the age of 11. Despite the hard demands of running a farm through the Depression years, he graduated valedictorian of Ladora High School and then served 30 months in the U.S. Army Air Corps from 1943-46, primarily as the Lead Crew radio operator on a B-24 bomber ("the Liberator") flying missions out of Norwich, England.

In 1946, in fulfillment of his ardent hopes and dreams since first dating her in 1941, Lloyd married his beloved Lauralee Rose and they moved to Los Angeles where Lloyd earned his Bachelor's degree in physics from UCLA in 1949 and his MS in physics from USC in 1952, often studying with his young son on his lap. His thesis on the absorption of thin plastic film in the vacuum ultraviolet resulted in a new discovery and was presented before the American Physical Society in 1955. Lloyd did additional graduate work in physics and engineering at MIT in 1954.

Lloyd's career roughly paralleled the development of the computer: his professional life started in 1951 as a civilian working for the Navy at the Pasadena Annex of the U.S. Naval Ordinance Test Station, China Lake, California, and for the next 30 years he worked for the Navy through various iterations of the name (Naval Oceans System Center, Naval Undersea Center, Naval Undersea Warfare Center, etc.). Lloyd was a pioneer in the use of computers, working with such early computing luminaries as Grace Hopper (co-inventor of COBOL). When he started, "automatic computers" (to differentiate the machines from the men and women whose job title was "computer") filled huge rooms, used vacuum tubes, and were in constant danger of overheating - but a day before his death Lloyd was editing on a PC some of the World War II era love letters he had exchanged with Lauralee.

Lloyd shepherded the development of real-time torpedo simulation (the hydrodynamic simulator), which began as a flight table made from a surplus gun mount controlled by an early analog computer but thirty years later was a highly complex system utilizing a UNIVAC 1110, numerous array processors, ancillary support computers, and versatile graphics terminals. Their expertise in real-time simulation enabled his team to accurately predict outcomes of underwater torpedo performance tests and solve many problems in advance, at a tremendous cost savings to tax payers. He was instrumental in the development of the Polaris missile.

Lloyd was passionate about protecting America and influenced the development of anti-submarine warfare technologies, regularly traveling to Washington D.C. for meetings with elected officials, Naval personnel, and the President's Scientific Advisory Council.

When his meetings with other Navy labs were scheduled in the summer, Lloyd would load up the whole family, now numbering six, and drive cross-country for a month at a time, pulling a 21-foot travel-trailer, stopping to visit relatives still in Iowa. For all his brilliance as a physicist, Lloyd always laughed about his errant sense of direction and on the long road trips he taught all his children to read maps and navigate.

He was awarded a patent in 1964 for a three-dimensional means of describing underwater acoustics. In 1973 the Pasadena lab moved to Point Loma and Lloyd and Lauralee moved to San Diego. In 1979 he led a team of physicists in conducting a study of the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant accident (March, 1979); the committee's recommendations were included in the last Congressional Act signed by President Jimmy Carter.

After retiring from the Navy Lab, Lloyd worked for several small technology companies and his work covered such diverse areas as: the Arctic, including studies of Arctic ice and survival in Arctic weather conditions; the ability of oil platform rescue boats to withstand a drop from the platform into Arctic waters, which might be at zero degrees Fahrenheit; undersea surveillance systems using advanced acoustic techniques; and utilization of desk-top computers on board ships for various command and control problems. He performed systems analysis to predict damage areas associated with explosive/radiation hazards and was responsible for the design of a computer based system to predict surf conditions in selected coastal regions; anti-submarine warfare (ASW) aspects of homeland security; and later conducted a study for the Department of Energy on the practicality of using methane gas recovered from pig farms.

In 2000 the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) awarded him a Millennium Award and in 1984 Lloyd was one of 1,984 recipients of the Centennial Award out of 300,000 members. The morning after September 11, 2001, he received a phone call from Washington D.C. asking what he knew about al-Qaeda.

In the last decade, although Lloyd's professional focus was on counter-terrorism and global warming, he was most proud of his 58 year marriage to Lauralee, his "beautiful redhead," and within the last few years spent much of his time writing his memoirs and transcribing hundreds of pages of their World War II love letters. He delighted greatly in his four children, eight grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren, as well as his church family. He continued to have reunions with his WWII flight crew.

Lloyd always generously served his community, both Los Angeles and San Diego, through involvement with the Boy Scouts of America, the YMCA, and as a founding member and president of the Gifted Children's Association, to name a few. He was a particularly gifted grandfather and, though he could not carry a tune, he could nonetheless sing any fussy grandchild to sleep. His commitment to the United Methodist Church was steadfast, serving the church at the local and District levels, both in Los Angeles and San Diego, in dozens of different ways over his lifetime. He found no conflict between his orthodox Christian beliefs and his observations as a scientist. He noted, "At the high school physics level we understand things and have laws - at the graduate and post-graduate levels there is a real understanding that we really don't know anything; there really are no ultimate 'laws' that we know or understand." One of his favorite quotes came from Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727): "I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me."

England Sank (Cinq - Part the Fifth)

Being the Fifth Part in Lord Only Knows how many parts!

I'd better hurry up before I forget!!!

Another day of excessive driving through Cornwall - we drove out to the Chysauster Roman Village, another English Heritage site, this one dating from pre-Christian times, and spent several hours wandering the hillside, speculating how the buildings were used, enjoying the view, and taking lots of photos (these aren't the ones we took, but there's quite a good selection here). We eventually left and drove to down to Penzance, getting a fabulous view of St. Michael's Mount along the way, where we inadvertently turned right instead of left and drove through Mousehole (but after Fowey, it wasn't nearly so bad as most people would lead you to believe! yes the streets are narrow, but now THAT narrow!!!). After we worked our way back to Penzance we had lovely fish'n'chips on the seashore and pondered - what next?

We decided we were close enough to go to Land's End but when we got there we were horrified by the presence of a monolithic, garish hotel and "Land's End Experience" structure - Ellie was terribly disappointed, having really enjoyed Land's End before the appearance of this "improvement." We refused to be dismayed - we simply eschewed the modern atrocity and drove a few miles up the road to Sennen Cove where we spent several idyllic hours climbing the hill (view in the photo is very like ours from the hill - including the flowers!), watching the sun set, and eventually wandering up the little road to a lovely pub for one of our favorite pub meals in the whole trip; the place was a well-populated, half-timbered building, with good music on the soundsystem, a good selection of real ales, and some very fine homemade soups as starters. YUM! Long drive home after a long day of driving, but very satisfied we were.

One day we stopped and took a picture of me and "my village" and when I figure out how to post the photo to this blog, I will.



We stayed pretty close to "home" the next day, heading in to Bodmin, (here's a traffic circle I remember well!) having a pub lunch at "The Weavers" - heavy on the atmosphere but not such a great lunch (or perhaps it was merely the crab salad which disappointed me)and then we tried to use computers in the library but Bodmin was offline for bizarre reason. We were nonetheless able to drive to nearly Wadebridge and use their library computers - it's such a different travel experience to throw internet access into the mix! But Ellie was still getting details for the Mythopoeic Awards that she would present the following week in Birmingham, so she needed it. I don't remember if it was Monday or Thursday but one of those days, in wandering close to our digs, we drove through Lostwithiel and here you see the great juxtapositions of architecture and culture! (and, boy, do I remember those road signs!).

Friday we drove back out to the Penwith peninsula and St. Ives and saw a number of mine engines spotted along the coast and drove back in daylight, back to Trernython Manor where I'd booked a massage (!!! yes !!!) while Michael took pictures in a nearby woods. Ellie and I went for dinner in the hotel's "bistro" (as the restaurant proper was booked for a wedding) - but the bistro was fabulous - the best meal yet, and very possibly of the whole trip - yum!). I was such a happy soooooothed soul, between an hour-long massage, a bottle of vino rosso, and excellent food. Michael eventually joined us and they scared him up a sandwich (which was also great - we kinda kicked ourselves for not eating there until the night before we left!).

And in the morning we ate up the rest of our breakfast foods, packed our bags, cleared our bill, and hit the road. We drove together to Exeter where we dropped Michael at the local Hertz (he got a great deal on a 4 day one-way car rental up to Birmingham) and then we continued along the very busy road back toward town. Cornwall is a glorious place to visit, but in the summer school holidays the roads are all VERY crowded and the traffic abominable - and I speak as a regular L.A. driver, so I know from abominable traffic!

Next installment: STONEHENGE!!!

England, Part the Fourth (Cornwall)

A continuation of the very gradual reportage of the English trip this summer... incorporating Mythcon XXXVI at the Tolkien Conference in Birmingham.

So August 1st we made ourselves yummy breakfast of eggs and English bacon and toast (with lime shred - yum!) and tomatoes - we basically planned to have one meal out per day, and if we ate a big breakfast at the time share (nicely equipped kitchen, btw - they aren't always) we were good until early dinner time; on the days when we ate smaller breakfast (say, scones & clotted cream! - no protein) we'd have a pub lunch and then make supper back home. And off we went to Castle Restormel, a ruin of a Norman motte and bailey castle in a beautiful setting;

check it out here or here for some cool pictures and more info, if you're interested. Spent hours there while Michael took photographs from nearly every conceivable angle but, to be fair, it was a glorious day and a gorgeous setting and I took plenty of photos m'self!

Stopped in Liskeard to check email at the local library (we were EACH able to sign on to a computer for 30 minutes free service - cool, eh?!) because Ellie, as administrator of the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award (etc. - there are actually 4 different annual awards) was looking for emailed acceptance speeches from the winners.

We eventually wandered up to Bodmin Moor to see The Hurlers, a series of 3 stone circles, estimated ca. 1500 BC. It's a long hike up to the top of the hill and the "Cheesewring" (a hike I didn't do, in its entirety, so I didn't see the Cheesewring up close...!) but I did take some fun photographs; I particularly like one of two sheep grazing by one of the standing stones. Cornwall is just full of ancient megaliths, like the Trethevy Quoit (more pics here) which we accidently blazed by in the course of driving up to the Hurlers - it's perhaps the one thing I regret: I saw it out of the corner of my eye and I could have parked in one of 2 or 3 little spaces right by it, but I asked Ellie and Michael if we should stop and they said, "no," and then we were gone, opportunity past, continuing the elaborate drive (thanks to the ordinance maps Michael bought the day before in the Daphne Du Maurier bookshop in Fowey--!), heading up roads too small to even be numbered, coping with a bizarre detour, and a rather large car, for the size of the lanes.

In fact, we'd just weathered the most horrific bit of driving I had to do during the whole trip (I didn't know it at the time, of course - until you turn in the car and DON'T have another more hair-raising experience, you don't know that was it! surprisingly stressful, and I'm a good driver. Ellie and Michael both begged off driving in such circumstances - cowards!!!) - we had to go down a country lane, hedgerow-lined as per usual, and THIS one even had a little sign before entering advising that vehicles longer than 35 feet (if I recall correctly - it wasn't terribly long, in other words) shouldn't drive the lane. Well, it was the MOST narrow of lanes! Technically it's a two-way lane (nearly all of them are) but our wing-mirrors are slapping the hedge on both sides of the car, simultaneously - NO IDEA how I would have managed if we met a car coming up. It's also quite a winding lane and we're going downhill. I am beseeching God to have mercy on us, especially me,

as the driver, and delay any oncoming traffic until we're in a more commodious spot (silently, because Ellie is not a fan of religion and I push that envelope with her enough as it is; no point in stiffening her resolve against all things Christian) - it was quite a long lane, too, well more than a mile - which you really feel in that kind of stressful driving environment, especially when you've already noticed that the locals drive through the lanes at a great rate of speed - they have lots of accidents and you see many cars with NO wing mirrors on them because they were sacrificed in some motoring mishap. In any case, we got to the bottom and just as it widened out for us to turn (a T-junction) a car came from the left, turning into the narrow lane - I did say all my, "Thank you, God!" acknowledgements outloud (!!!) and this was certainly one of many occasions when I saw His mercy (pity, even!) at work on our trip. So, to go BACK and see the Trevethy Quoit up close would require driving that lane again and nobody was up for it - so on we went, up to the Hurlers. I can tell you, however, that even from the little glimpse I got, it is one LARGE quoit!!!

My camera was running low on batteries and we were now not far from Bodmin itself (largest town of size in our proximity) so we stopped by the ASDA again and bought dinner foods and new batteries for my camera (and more WINE, of course!) before driving back down toward the coast, noticing once again that there is a tiny community between Lanhydrock (a very serious "stately home" Naitonal Trust property) and Tywardreath called "Maudlin" - once again we drove past, saying we really must stop and take a picture of that...

More yummy food and Michael attempting fruitlessly to phone his wife (cell phones which were promised to work in the UK weren't, there was confusion about the phone in our lodge, etc.) and we pondered maps and activities for the morrow.

Tuesday we drove out to Tintagel (check out the additional "click here"photos on this BBC site), the purported site of King Arthur's birth, and spent hours hiking that impressive coastal ruin. I visited Tintagel before, with my friend Wendy and her 18-month old daughter (now nearly seven years!) and Madelyn walked ALL the stairs ALL by herself (here's a glimpse of what I mean!). Having learned from Michael's shooting habits the day before, Ellie and I simply told him to meet us back at the car at 4 pm (it was now 10 a.m.). In fact, we all wandered the ruin in our own way and our own timing. Ellie re-connected with me in the early afternoon and we had an ice cream cone, visited the gift shop, and eventually walked the long uphill track back to the town of Tintagel where we shopped and meandered (saw some amazing hand-sawn wooden puzzles in a shop called "The Silver Tree") and eventually strolled back to Pengenna Pasties for a supper of Cornish pasties and salad (cider for me, beer for Ellie) - serious YUM! My friend Jason has made an intense study of *where* one can acquire the best pasties and he swears by Pengenna - I quite thoroughly agree (a pastie is the Cornish equivalent to a lunchbox - basically a meat and potatoe pie whose crust has been folded over and sealed, so it's a hand packet of a meal - a bad pastie is quite stodgy but a good one is a true delight). These guys do vegetarian AND vegan pasties as well - amazing!

We reconnected with Michael and then drove a little ways out of town to visit Rocky Valley to check out the labyrinth which, it turns out, is quite a hike down toward the coast and required navigating some narrow, damp, and slippery terrain which I decided it would be *wiser* to avoid. So they continued on and I went back, enjoyed a book I was reading, took a little stroll myself, and eventually they came out and reported in detail the stone labyrinth carvings and the beautiful view up the coast from that particular inlet - and then we drove back to our lodge for another good night's sleep.

                        -- Understated British signage at Castle Restormel --

England, Part Trwah (trois!)

I know, I know - I'm slow. But a lot has been happening and NOBODY has been beating down the door saying, "what next, Lynn?!~ what happened next?!!!"

Weelllll - since you ask (!!), I got up early Saturday morning, check the computer for flight arrivals and learn Ellie's flight is about 20 minutes early but Michael's is more than an hour late, creating about a hundred minute spread. The clear blue sky has clouded over and started pouring down - I wait for a little break in the weather and load up the car w/Colin's help, clutching his directions to motorway to my chest and then hug and kiss C&M goodbye and drive down their little lane, still reminding myself with some frequency on WHICH side of the road I'm driving, in case I meet anybody in the lane (I do, in fact, and it's fine).

I couldn't have driven in England the first few times I visited - I had a hard enough time sitting in the front passenger seat, feeling around for non-existent pedals and wishing for a steering wheel. But I started driving over there 15 years ago or so - there are times when having a car just gets you to places you can't otherwise go and, if there are two or more of you, it may not be any more expensive than public transport (which I am a fan of, at least much of the time). Still, I couldn't POSSIBLY drive in the UK (or any left-side-of-the-road nation, e.g. Australia or Japan) in a left-hand-drive car - so the fact that my friend Trevor actually drives his British automobile over to Europe just impresses me no end (of course, makes it VERY exciting to try to pass that slow lorry up ahead on a two-lane road!!!). Thus most of the work is done for me, sitting down in the right hand side of the car and finding myself behind the steering wheel. THIS trip I even got the mirrors down within the first day - amazing! There was one trip, 6 yeras ago or so, when I didn't EVER get used to the mirror placement and I'd be looking in the middle of the car down on the dashboard and out the right hand window up at roof level - NOT helpful!

But this Saturday the only problem is not yet being familiar with the operation of the Vauxhall Vectra - like, where the heck are the windscreen wipers?! Little things like that. I had to almost continually trigger the "intermittent double swipe" to get me through the heavy rain on the hour-plus drive up to Gatwick (and that's the CLOSER airport!). And, of course, getting used to the size of the car versus the size of the parking spaces... gulp! There's a moment, as I'm driving through the parking garage, when I wonder if I'll be able to park what suddenly seems like a behemoth. But I drive up to the 4th level and park as far from the elevators as possible, where I've got a little extra room simply because I'm not crowding into a single vacant space but have room to park a little more easily (yeah, American parking spaces are a lot bigger - even the "compact car" spaces!).

So I wander in and find Ellie waiting (her flight was early, after all) and she's doing great - nothing like a self-sufficient traveler! She's bought a coffee and discovered Michael's late-arriving flight, has been checking its progress, etc., knew full well I'd show up SOME time (!!). She goes off in search of a "Time Out" (London activities weekly magazine) but it's the wrong time of week & they're all gone (besides, we're about to drive to Cornwall, not London) and I stay at the arrivals gate. Eventually his plane lands and eventually he makes it through passport control and customs and comes wandering out, looking about as funky as I've ever seen him (Michael is a very attractive man-- nice of his wife Sue to loan him to us for the week! Actually, we love Sue and her presence would've added greatly to the trip, but she was teaching a college class that wouldn't end until the day before the Birmingham conference began). I buy us both a cup of decent coffee and we head off to the pay machines to buy an exit token to get out of the garage. We stop by a car rental satellite and add both Ellie and Michael to the contract so they can legally drive and then load up the car.

NOW is the time we appreciate the size of the Vectra - we need every bit of that trunk and we've still got stuff loaded on the unoccupied portion of the back seat. A smaller car while in Cornwall would have been great - but a smaller car GETTING to Cornwall would have been a pain...

Nearly all of Saturday is spent driving... driving... stopping for traffic... driving... slowing down... gawking at the accident along with everybody else... driving some more... Yeah, you get the picture. We wave at Stonehenge and Michael (the photographer as well as University English Professor!) drools at the thought of shooting there in a week when we return. I'm learning how these guys are as navigators (Ellie's better than Michael but neither are as good as I am... not to brag, but I am a VERY good navigator - give me a map and we're there. I've navigated Paris on the fly with an aggressive driver, and that takes some doing - it was fun!). Pity was that neither of them were as comfortable driving as I was, so I did 90% of that, too. I did force Michael to take the wheel for awhile that day, just to give my poor cramping foot and leg a rest (I hadn't yet figured out all the 97 different things I could do to adjust the seat better to the steering wheel, etc. - it was better, later). Stopped for some nondescript sandwiches in a pub (just missed their open kitchen) and continued the long drive. I've never had to drive during school holidays before - something I will continue to avoid, in future! Roads get busy...

Eventually we got to Bodmin and left the motorway, stopping at the ASDA for assorted stuff (food for supper, breakfast, WINE, etc.) and then meandered our way down toward the coast, ending up with about 3 miles of hedgerow-lined lane just before the manor (right by Castle Dore! An old mound from an earlier castle - don't know if that falls into the "barrow" definition or not... hmmm). By the end of the week, I'd recognize that THIS was a nice wide lane and that you could pass another car just about anywhere along that 3-mile stretch - but for NOW, it was harrowing!

We pulled in to find the manor proper quite busy (a wedding - they had loads of weddings scheduled that week) but we waited at reception and they gave us our lodge keys and a map telling us where to go and where to park. It was a nice timeshare in many ways but it was considerably smaller than I'd been led to anticipate (they said they could sleep SIX!!! yikes! felt plenty crowded with the 3 of us). Having paid 3/4 of the fee, I took the master bedroom, Ellie took the smaller bedroom, and Michael encamped in the living room (which worked out fine - it meant that only I walked through the living room on the way to the loo, as Ellie's room was across the hall.

I made a nice chicken curry and rice dinner, we drank a bottle of wine (just right for 3 people), and we crashed pretty early - it had been a long day of driving, especially for me.

Michael is hairy-chested and gets warm at night and I was continually amused to see that he sleeps like an effigy of a dead king - flat on his back, straight as a board, hands clasped upon his chest - I really did want a fake sword so I could take a "King Arthur in Repose" photograph! I should've taken one anyway, but somehow at the time it felt *intrusive* ("Look, Sue! It's your husband sleeping!!!").

Sunday we went through 2 carafes of coffee before leaving the lodge (!! - Michael and Ellie both drink a lot of coffee; I think I only had 2 cups) and then we wandered down to Fowey (pronounced "Foy"), a lovely small harbor town not far away. As we drove through, I could see that parking was up a steep hill and the town was down, down, down - and, not liking the thought of walking back UP the hill after roaming through the town for hours, I decided to go in search of closer parking. The signs indicated there was limited parking down in the town, but we decided to risk it.

Within moments I knew I'd made a terrible mistake - we were in a one-way system winding down extremely narrow streets, fighting for room with meandering tourists and I was not yet confident about the dimensions of the car (should've driven up on the edges of the hedgerows to *hear* where that left side really is!). We didn't move any faster than 5 miles per hour, I'm sure, and it took a good 15 minutes to wind our way down to the bottom, often stopping for an especially narrow bit of road to clear before navigating it. There was one point, thankfully didn't last more than 20 yards or so, when I had Ellie and Michael keeping an eye on their side of the car while I drove by keeping my wing mirror about 3 inches from my side of the car (!!) - they were saying, "You're close! close!" but it wasn't until later that I asked, "Just how close was I?" and they both agreed it was less than an inch on that side - yikes! Probably best that I didn't know it, at the time! (actually, I could've folded in both wing mirrors and gained about 6 inches total). There was no parking in the town proper but as we drove out there was a small lot with a few spaces in it, down at sea level, so we gratefully grabbed one of those (I was already much more confident parking The Behemoth) and walked into town.

Lovely quaint place with a rich Daphne Du Maurier history (in fact, a lovely little museum shop in her honor - I never realized she was such a hottie as a young woman! wow!) - we all took lots of photos and eventually stopped for a cream tea as Michael had never had clotted cream before (well! We must break you in!) - I found a charming hotel with a restaurant and two balconies overlooking the water offering a reasonable cream tea and in we went. Michael was hooked, of course, and we had a good time sitting in the sun and scarfing down scones and clotted cream and strawberry preserves. I had coffee and they both had tea, but there you go - they'd had a lot more coffee earlier in the day!

We eventually wandered back to the car before the "pay and display" ticket expired (and the gate would be locked and closed), wandered back out another way and stopped again at another lot on the other side of town, much closer to the harbor mouth. Now the sky was threatening a bit (it had been sunny and glorious all the midday) but we took some fun pictures at a castle outpost and considered hiking up the ruined trail to the castle proper (decided against it and I'm glad - probably would've been risky for me, large with wonky ankles, and it started raining shortly). On the drive home we passed the Tristan Stone and got out to take pictures (yes! we are tourists! that's why we're here, bringing you our money and investing in your economy! appreciate us!!!) and then went off looking for a pub meal, forgetting it's SUNDAY and they close up earlier than usual.

We finally found someplace with an open kitchen and had a wonderful dinner; Ellie and Michael were tickled it was a free pub and they had a wonderful array of ales and beers and they tasted their was through several pints respectively while I stuck with cider (I love English hard cider, especially the more primitive stuff - scrumpy, even! But I'll settle for Strongbow). Ellie and I split an order of pate (sorry, missing the accent circonflex and grave - or is it aigue?) for a starter and hardly touched it, so we asked if we could take it home. Much to our surprise, they wrapped the whole thing, little stoneware ramekin and all, in aluminum foil and we happily carted it away to enjoy another day. We managed to find our way back to our digs (yay! Lynn starting to build the map in her head) and crashed shortly after getting in.

Michael snores. I turn up my white-noise surf-sound generator and am a happy camper myself.