Shundo David Haye – Zen Priest

I have long maintained – certainly since my trip back to the UK in the winter of 2013, at a time when I thought I was feeling homesick and might move back there – that it is largely the weather that keeps me in California. Conversely there is nothing finer than a warm, long summer day in England.

Having a few years ago arrived in London for the one day that it reached 100° in the city, it was especially gratifying to track the ten-day forecast before our trip, and to see that we would have hot and sunny days for the duration of our visit. Thus far my base layers, warm clothes, and rain jackets have remained deep in the bottom of my bag.

Unusually, I was able to sleep, briefly, on the plane over. I had felt tired once we got on the plane and chose not to start my usual routine of watching one movie after another to pass the overnight hours of the flight. I closed my eyes, and a few times I was able to drift away from the constant noise of the cabin. However, about halfway through the flight, I woke up and my throat was sore.

For the first couple of days I was struggling between the sore throat and a runny nose to add to the jetlag; I also passed this on to Ruth, who has suffered with it as well. We managed to stay up until 11 pm for the first few days, and then I would sleep very deeply, but for the first four nights I would wake up around two and lie there for a couple of hours before, most times, getting back to sleep again.

We spent the first night with my friend in London. I had been saying to myself that this would be my last trip to England for a while, what with both my parents being dead, but a couple of months ago he announced that he would be marrying his lovely girlfriend in November, so we will be back before the year is out. We caught up with the plans over dinner.

The next day we traveled down to my home town.  We had planned to visit on our last trip 18 months ago, but the diversion to Newfoundland had put paid to that portion of the trip. This time around the weather could not have been more different than what it would’ve been in January of last year. With my sister and her husband, we walked around the centre of the town after we had arrived on Friday, noting the buildings we remembered, especially the historic ones which we did not fully appreciate when we were young, and tracking where more recent buildings had been replaced. 

The traffic in the centre of town was as bad as ever, but we discovered that there were actually improvements. Behind Broad Street, where there had been a field, a road and some particularly ugly council offices, the offices had been demolished, the road taken out, and the field expanded. On one side of this large open space were new townhouses, on the other side a row of shops and restaurants. For Friday dinner we ate – very well – at one of the restaurants; all around us parents enjoyed themselves at the restaurants and bars, while the kids ran freely in the fields, with no cars to be seen. There are not that many days in the year that this can be done in England, but the fact that it was possible at all seemed a great improvement – positively continental. We were also struck by the numbers of young families we saw everywhere around town, quite a contrast to San Francisco.

On Saturday, we were able to take a look inside the house that my family had owned for a long time; during my childhood one of my grandmothers had lived there, while other parts of it, and the adjoining buildings, had been used as my father’s law office. It has loomed large in my imagination ever since. We also drove by the house I grew up in; the front drive and garden were quite transformed, but it had been done in a way that nicely accentuated the rustic feel of the cottage.

My brother and his wife flew over from Belgium, and met us for a somewhat mediocre lunch at local pub outside of town, after which we drove to some nearby woods – named on the map, though not a name we had ever used –  and found the pond where we had gone often as a family to swim on warm days, just like the one we were having. It was for all of us a memory of a time when we were happy, and a rare time when my dad relaxed. My sister had kept half of my dad’s ashes after his death five years ago, and we scattered them at the little sandy area amid the trees where we used to sit between swims.

Not far away was a viewpoint that we had also loved, and there we scattered my mother’s ashes. 

For Saturday dinner we were all joined by my step-brother who lives neaby, and who I have known since I was seven, and his wife, I had not met before; we all had a very enjoyable evening at a old coaching inn in the middle of town that we had sometimes visited as kids, and which had burned down, in one of the biggest stories in the town during my choldhood. From the table by the courtyard I could watch the swifts flying overhead in the late evening light.

On Sunday we drove a couple of hours to my sister’s house in Somerset and watched the last day of the football season with its various dramas.

On Monday morning once again I woke in the early hours and lay sweltering in bed but this time when it started getting light at four, the dawn chorus tempted me to get up and sit in the conservatory, with the soft summer morning light, listening to the birds.

It was largely too hot to do anything, since we didn’t have anything we actually needed to do. We walked up to the ridge behind the house, and sat enjoying the views and the slightly cooling breeze. We also visited a neighbour who had helped getting my old London commuting bike ready to be shipped, which we might manage before we move on tomorrow.