Looking back on the last ten days, it does of course all seem like a blur, mainly as we have both been struggling since we got back…
We left on a drizzly day; our pet-sitter arrived early enough so we could be very early for our flight. I took melatonin on the plane, and managed to approximate sleep for several hours, something I never used to be able to do.
We were staying a slow tube ride along from Heathrow – no Elizabeth line this time, and the difference was very noticeable. The place we had chosen was really lovely; I had gone for it mainly due to its proximity to the wedding venue. It was very well-rated, and not much more expensive than a nearby Premier Inn. Unusually for my trips to England, we were only staying in the one place for the whole visit, and were very happy with the choice. There was even a restaurant in the converted old stable building in front of the guest house, and we had a tasty first dinner there, having walked along the river front in the early dark evening to see where the venue was.
We both slept really solidly the first night – melatonin again – and were up and about early. The breakfast room had a wonderfully hushed Englishness about it.
We spent the whole day out and about: a Filipino pastry place, lunch, shopping, then over to the British Museum for the Bayeux Tapestry, having waited many online hours for tickets the day they were released. Even from our timed entry slot, it was an hour before we were in front of the tapestry itself; it was completely enthralling to follow the narrative along, even without understanding all the Latin inscriptions, or being able to linger for too long over the ancillary details.
Afterwards in the cold evening we took the tube to a pub to meet the friends who were getting married, plus a couple of dozen of their most significant people, in a very noisy back room. We stayed long enough to say hello, chat with people, and have something to eat and drink, but made our jetlag excuses and took a short bus ride back to the guest house.
Friday was also grey and chilly – though the forecast rain really didn’t show up at all. We took it easy during the morning as the main event was going to Dulwich, my old stomping grounds that I am always happy to revisit, to see the Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji at the Picture Gallery. We got there in time to eat lunch and have coffee before seeing the prints. Again, it was hard to take in all the details as we went around, but there were some beautiful ones I had never seen before – I remembered I collected photos for Thirty-Six views of Flag Rock during my time at Tassajara, and wonder if I still have that collection saved somewhere.
Again, we were meeting the couple and assorted friends in a pub in the evening, this time close to the guest house, so we had a little rest before heading over, and again didn’t make a full evening of it. The couple had decided, based on my sharing where we were going to be staying, to book themselves in as well for a couple of nights either side of the wedding, and we had to get them there before check-in closed for the night.
On Saturday we rested all morning, with the jetlag making the mornings a bit of a struggle. I went out for coffee nearby, and picked up some lunch such as we usually get when we are whizzing around the country. It ended up being the nicest weather of our whole week, with some sun peaking through. We got to the venue around 2:30, enough to chat to folks before the main event.
There were drinks, photographs before it got dark, speeches. I had to follow my friend’s long-time LandRover wrangler, who was quite a character. Nobody knew he was going to give a speech. He rambled at length about car adventures from many years ago, some of them only tangentially related to my friend, and people were starting to chat amongst themselves. I had a pretty short speech prepared, so I made it snappy, and people liked it.
We missed the canapes because we went outside to cool off; I was also chatting with a few friends from BBC days in the 90s. Which meant that we were very hungry by the time the main food came around. There were ‘unauthorised’ fireworks, then we were determined to stick around for the cake, which got cut before the first dance, but served much later. All in all a long but joyful day.
I was surprised to see the couple – and a couple of other folks who had also booked in for the Saturday night – at breakfast. They all went off to help clear up the venue; we had a very slow day which involved a clear-the-head walk, lunch and a bit of shopping.
And the next morning we were back off to the airport. It looked like we were getting off on time when someone across the aisle from us was struck on the head by something falling out of the overhead bin while it was being filled up. It took an hour to get that all sorted, as the crew wanted to get paramedics in (who knew that there wasn’t a team on standby at the airport at all times?) But the rest of it was smooth; I watched some moveis and TV, and felt okay once we were back in SF for a bright sunset.
But I only slept four hours after that twenty-four hour day, and jumped right back into my regular schedule. The next night I didn’t sleep much better. Ruth was knocked out by some bug and coughing a lot. I got out to enjoy the warm sunny day on Wednesday by officiating a wedding at the beach in the afternoon – but I didn’t have enough energy to go and retrieve the car from the East Bay in the morning, so I got there by bus and bike.
I slept late on Thursday, finally catching up a bit, but also with a bit of a sore throat and cough. I didn’t have time to drop the license back at City Hall as I had intended – I had to whizz down there on Friday morning before the rain set in – but I didn’t feel sick enough to skip what I knew was going to be a busy day of work. I just wanted to get through everything so I could mostly relax for the weekend, having called off Friday’s roam due to the rain, perhaps the first of many weather disruptions this year.
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