a quick spin around england
One wing of the British Museum, in a crowd in a heatwave while jetlagged, but I did get to see Lindow Man (an ancestor), the Sutton Hoo ship burial and the Lewis chessmen. One wing of the V&A on a cooler day and lunch with a friend in the spectacular cafe, the first museum cafe ever, what a good innovation. A bookshop in Notting Hill; no, not that one, the other one. Bike rides to Westminster and Chelsea. The Chelsea Physic Garden with a glass of Pimm’s and another friend: you are my medicine.
Our rental car: an electric blue Mini Cooper. Avebury henge, even more beautiful than I imagined it, with a gratuitous game of cricket off to one side. The warm surface of the stones, so large, so lichen-y: more ancestors. Oak trees in golden grasslands like it’s freakin’ West Sonoma county out here. Cheshire at golden hour, with hares grazing among the sheep and cattle in the hayfields. Reading Elizabeth Gaskell, Barbara Pym, Elizabeth Taylor (not that one, the other one), Virginia Woolf. A Hendricks and tonic under a tree at the Cholmondeley Arms. A walk around the Roman walls of Chester. Jodrell Bank, peering out at the cosmic microwave radiation: another ancestor.