Willing

I've been talking a lot lately about writing a will. It's one of those topics that used to seem off-limits in polite conversation. Why? Birds don't do it, bees don't do it, not even educated fleas do it, but the rest of us really should. 

Husband and I wrote wills many years ago in England when all we had inheritance-wise was debt, but the kids were small and what we cared deeply about was who would raise them in the tragic event of their being orphaned. Those wills were drenched in tears. 

Since then we've moved to Canada and acquired the odd asset or two to accompany the debt. We've been meaning to write new wills ever since our eldest child turned 18, and he celebrated his 26th birthday this year. In fact all the kids are now above the age of majority so we no longer need to describe in mournful detail where they should live and what schooling they ought to have. How hard could the rest be? Let's get on it, I urged husband. Sometime soon, he said. We engaged in procrastination and denial until we absolutely couldn't any more. Life is precious and precarious. We always knew it was so, but with age, experience, and various hard knocks of our own and of others, we began to believe it. Soon became now.

We already had a lawyer here in Toronto; he had done the legal stuff when we bought our house. We couldn't be sure, however, whether he also advised on wills. It's not a given. A character in my favourite radio soap opera, The Archers, is a solicitor named Usha who is forever telling prospective clients that whatever their problem, it's not her area of the law. Fortunately, our Toronto lawyer proved perfectly willing (sorry) to act for us in this matter. 

He asked to see our previous UK wills. Reasonable. The only thing was that we had no idea where we had put them (those tear-stained pages). Our email accounts from back then have expired or exploded or are otherwise inaccessible to us, so no electronic copies lurked in our inboxes. How to find them? I tried to think where Miss Marple would go to locate documents: perhaps the Prerogative Court of Canterbury or the Public Records Office in Chancery Lane? Would they be filed by date or alphabetized? I imagined riffling past the Magna Carta to reach Leslie Carlin. Surely there was a more modern way.

The lawyer in England ought still to have hold of them, we reasoned. But which lawyer might that be? I remembered the office being near the train station in Brighton, and conducted an online search for it. Too many possibles. Finally I asked the friend who had referred us there all those years ago if she recalled who it was. She hazarded a guess based on our description ("big windows looking onto Queens Road") and I sent off an enquiry by email: "To Whom It May Concern: Do you have our wills?" They replied promptly. Yes they did. Would they send them to us? Yes they would. Did they ask for any identification or have any security or confidentiality measures in place? No they did not. Here you go, have some wills. Maybe they're yours. And they were. Huzzah.

I'd like to say it was smooth sailing from there and that within days we had new documents signed and sealed. But no. We dithered, we dallied. Not until mere days before leaving for Cambridge in March did we get our ducks in a row and our derrières downtown to the lawyer's. And then, at last, it was done. We have written new wills and we know where they are. What a relief.

This Toronto lawyer is savvier than the Brighton one and has advised us in great detail about content and process, including--this time--keeping track of our work (and his). We've shared the existence and the location of the wills and the lawyer's contact info with our kids and our sisters. I may as well share further: he's called Harvey Mandel, 55 Queen St. E., Toronto. (Miss Marple, take note.)  

Go see him. Or go to the guy near the train station in Brighton. Or do it yourself online as our neighbor did. But do it.  

The PSA here endeth. Live long and prosper. Nanoo, nanoo. 

Queue Cambridge

Note: some names have been changed to protect the innocent. (Actually just one name, to protect me.)

Toward the end of May, husband completed his series of Wilde Lectures in Oxford. A big celebration in the big city seemed in order so I booked us tickets to Ronnie Scott's, the iconic Soho jazz venue, followed by dinner at a restaurant in Lexington Street that a friend recommended: Andrew Edmunds. (Now I can recommend it highly myself.) The jazz was melodious, the cocktails jazzy, and the food absolutely excellent. All in all a delightful--and delightfully late--evening. Scraping up pudding crumbs we hustled to the station to catch the last train from London back to Cambridge.

 

Trains however were delayed that night, due, sadly to two fatalities on the tracks. The disgruntlement of stranded passengers when informed of a signal failure or leaves on the lines did not appear; no one could really complain. Eventually a train did arrive, and we all crammed in. We travelled slowly to let the rail congestion untangle, stopping at one station long enough that people in day-glo jackets handed round bottles of water. In general good humor and stiff upper lips prevailed: people in our very full carriage commiserated with one another and made wry jokes rather than moaning. The spirit of the Blitz maybe. 

But it all evaporated when we finally reached Cambridge, spilled from the train, and everyone dashed for the nearly-barren taxi stand.  The few waiting cars filled and departed and a queue formed. But no. Somehow two queues formed. Separate and distinct. Both grew.  

Queue One eyed Queue Two askance and vice versa. All traces of goodwill and camaraderie vanished. Queue etiquette is sacrosanct; what to do in the case of two? A debate began about where exactly the "Queue Here" sign pointed. This situation was no joking matter. 

'Why don't we just take it in turns?' suggested a woman around my age in a quiet, sensible tone. She was ignored. A young woman near the front of our queue and an older man in the other one became spokespeople, each arguing the legitimacy of their own interpretation of the "Queue Here" arrow.

"It always starts here," said the young woman.

"The sign says to queue here," said the man, pointing at his feet.

I walked to the other side of the station to see whether there was a bus at the stop. None. I returned to Simon who had remained in the first queue. "No buses," I told him. 

'Excuse me, this is a queue,' someone said. I looked around: a small man with a small beard who was speaking to me.

'Yes, I know, ' I said. 'And I'm in it.'

'Well, you have joined it,' he said tartly. 

Simon and I exchanged a puzzled glance. It seemed fairly clear that the two of us were together. Simon said with unwonted annoyance, 'She joined me.' Even he was discomposed by the queue kerfuffle.

'Oh, I do beg your pardon,' said the man, sounding more accusatory than sorry. He turned away, pulled out his phone, pressed a few buttons and spoke loudly into it. "This is Donald Duckworth. I want a taxi to Gonville and Caius. Yes, now. Cambridge station." Then he marched away to the far side of the car park to await his ride. 

Meanwhile a taxi arrived at the 'Queue Here' sign, a seven-seater. A man from Queue Two nabbed it, but then turned round to call out, "Anyone else going to Waterbeach?" Several people shuffled and murmured and then joined him. 

A sedan pulled up and this time the young woman representing our queue in the debate laid hands on it. "I'm going to the Barton Road," she announced. "Anyone else?" Near enough, we thought, and accepted the invitation. We sped through dark and quiet streets, and soon found ourselves home in our cosy flat at Clare Hall, cups of tea brewing. 

*****

And that was that, we thought. But no. This is Cambridge! The next day we had lunch in college with husband's old friend Mick Brown, a physicist. Mick, I learned, had once belonged to Gonville and Caius College but left it  many years ago in protest over its refusal to admit women. 

"We had a brief encounter with someone from Gonville and Caius last night," I told him, telling the little story about Professor Duckworth.

"Oh-- Don Duckworth!" said Mick. "He's in English. Goes on about Shakespeare, I believe. Quite witty. He of course opposed women." 

Mick told us a bit more about the contretemps at Caius ("keys"). Stephen Hawking, also famously a member of the college, attended the meeting to cast his own vote-- on the side of equality, of course. The opposition managed to stack votes for their side by recruiting various ancient fellows who had not been seen in college for ages. Everyone noticed. Then, said Mick, "You could hear Hawking's comment, in his very identifiable mechanical voice, 'Ah. The graves are opening." 

The motion to admit women failed, and Mick left along with others to found Robinson College, a lovely college across the street from our own Clare Hall. 

Caius did finally admit women starting in1979-- almost a decade before Magdalene College, which held out until 1988. 

Wilde Times

We are again in Cambridge, at Clare Hall, and so very happy to be here. Our flat is small but perfectly formed, and right next door to last year's. The college feels like a kind of home. A few days after we arrived I ran into a friend in the common room who enquired whether I had enjoyed my vacation. I blinked, uncertain how to respond. Then a friend in Toronto sent an email asking if we were 'back in the UK now'. 

Where is 'back'? What is 'away'? Also, when will it stop raining?

Meanwhile, husband is busy delivering the 2024 Wilde Lectures at Oriel College in 'the other place', as Oxford is (sometimes) known. Last Wednesday he gave the first in a series of four talks he has called 'Religion Refracted and in Motion: On Pilgrimage in Present Times. I accompanied him on the three-train journey from Cambridge to Oxford in order to cheer him on, to see various friends, and to dream among the spires. 

Simon spoke brilliantly, as ever. Three more lectures in the next three weeks. Highly recommended if you're in the neighborhood! (Wednesdays May 8, 15, 22 at 5:15 :) 

At Oriel College

The Newman Oratory in Oriel's chapel

Lecture Number 1

A postscript: his first talk was entitled 'Trivial Religion? From Liminal to Lateral'. I don't know about religion, but it was certainly not trivial to arrange our absence from Toronto, and we owe deep gratitude to the lovely people staying in our house and looking after our pets.

Road Trip with Ma and Pa

Dam, we did it

Most people go to Las Vegas for the gambling and the high life. They go to win money. They go for a lost weekend with a lover or with friends for fun and frolic. 

I went with my mom and dad on a road trip to see art. Specifically, the Rita Deanin Abbey Art Museum.

We set off from LA. I had arrived from Toronto the day before and over dinner we discussed what time was reasonable to get going. My map app told me the journey would take just over four hours. 

"Let's start early," my mother said. 

"What's early?" I asked.

"Nine," she said with decision. 

My mother typically does not get out of bed much before noon; my father shook his head dubiously. We began a weird sort of backward bargaining. 

"How about let's be happy if we leave by noon," I suggested.

"No, we can leave by ten," Mom said.

"Eleven?" I offered. 

My father went upstairs to pack.

Miracles happen. We were all in the car at 10:50 a.m. A good omen.

"Oh no," my mom said as I buckled up.

"What?" 

"I left my coffee inside."

So close. I sighed and undid my seatbelt. "Where is it?"

"Never mind. It's fine. I don't need it." My mother is like this, endlessly self-abnegating. (The opposite of me.) 

"I'll get it," I said. "Just give me the housekey."

"You have it," she said. "It's attached to the car key."

"No, it's not." I demonstrated, waving the keyless fob. "Dad, do you have your key?" 

"No," he said, grimly. Dismay pervaded the atmosphere, less about being totally locked out--several people have spares-- but at the shadow cast by error and the consequent reduction of the goodness of the omen. 

Then came redemption. By sheer chance I had brought along my own key from Toronto and zipped it into a small pocketbook. And again by chance, I had brought this little bag along for the road trip and shoved it in my suitcase. Whew! I burrowed through the boot, found the key, and retrieved the still-hot coffee. We were ready to ride... at exactly eleven o' clock. 

We plowed our way along the Ventura Freeway, the 101 becoming the 134, then climbed out of the LA basin. Snowcapped peaks to the left overlooked our progress past Hesperia and then Victorville, into the desolate terrain of the Mojave desert. My mother, age 92, sighed happily. "I just love traveling by car."

Worth it, the whole trip, for that alone. 

I do love my mom 💖

*****

We stopped in Barstow, the "Hub of the West", for lunch at Roy's Café, on Main Street, a fragment of old Route 66 and the southern Mormon trail. A series of murals commemorate the town's history (caveat: some a tad dicey IMHO). 

The Barstow story

Get your kicks...

...or not

In Las Vegas the GPS pointed us to our hotel just off the Strip though it insisted we get there via the (gated) employee car park. Friendly locals directed us to the guest entrance and soon thereafter, our rooms. Very Vegas views: flashing neon lights in the foreground, desert and mountains beyond, and directly below, a tempting swimming pool. 

But my dad had eyes only for one thing: his mobility scooter. Walking has become painful for him due to a spinal condition so he has been using a rollator (we named her Stella) for the past few months, which helps. My sisters and I have encouraged him to explore scooters but he hesitated. However, he took to this one like a duck to the proverbial. He mastered forward and reverse and hardly ran into anything. (He didn't really come close to that woman with a baby buggy-- honest.) 

After a delicious dinner at a Japanese restaurant my parents wanted to hit the Strip so we set off for a post-prandial tour. ("Here," said my mom as we traversed a casino at the MGM Grand. "Bet on something." She handed me $20. I handed it back, betting that we'd have more fun getting out of the place. Plus, the casinos seem entirely electronic and incompatible with paper money.)  I found myself jogging to keep up as my father disappeared into the middle distance on his electric steed. We strayed further than I intended, and my mother gradually wore down. Las Vegas is, however, set up for hospitality. A kind parking valet at a random nearby hotel called a cab for my mom, while I jog-walked alongside my speed-demon dad back to our own hotel. (Luddite's confession: no ride-hailing apps on my phone.)

Speed demon Dad

The native New Yorker

Quick casino transit

The next night we visited The Sphere, a new installation / venue shaped like--yes--a globe. Inside they display audiovisual magic aka technology with robots and other AI. The staff at The Sphere made the experience magical for us too; I called their accessibility office about two hours before our show to ask whether we would be better off with my dad's walker or (somehow) his scooter. "No worries!" said the friendly young man on the end of the phone. "We'll provide you a wheelchair and an escort!" And they did, a big gray-bearded man, Mark, who it seems attended the high school down the road from me. Mark told us quite a lot about himself (too much, according to my mother), including that his father used to play drums for Bob Hope's band and that as a child, he would tag along. Now by his accounting he's some sort of property mogul, one who apparently likes to serve as a wheelchair escort on the side. I have no idea whether any of it was true but then again, what is truth? He got us to the front of several queues, which is more important than truth. 

My 94-year-old Dad conversed with Lia the robot and proved to be the absolute star of the show. Hilarious and smart. If I could figure out how to add a video to this blog I would show him off but you'll have to take my word. I do love my dad.

Inside the sphere...

It's a sphere

But the main event, the one that drew us to Las Vegas in the first place, was a visit to the Ruth Deanin Abbey Museum, a work of love jointly created by Rita and her husband (now widower) Robert Belliveau.

Rita died in 2021. She was one of my mother's numerous (as in, one of over 35) first cousins in and around Brooklyn in the second quarter of the twentieth century. Like my mother, Rita moved west and settled there: my parents to California, Rita to New Mexico and also to California and eventually to Nevada. She became a multi-media artist and a poet, and for a time the only woman professor of art at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. 

Rita married Edward Abbey, a writer and environmental activist who wrote novels and essays including The Monkey Wrench Gang (about a ragtag band of people determined to destroy the Glen Canyon Dam) and The Brave Cowboy, on which the classic western film Lonely Are the Brave, starring Kirk Douglas, was based  [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Abbey]. Rita and Edward had two sons, Joshua and Aaron, who were my occasional playmates when both my father and theirs were at Stanford University--my father as a graduate student and theirs as a creative-writing fellow. My parents told me that we used to visit the Abbeys when they lived in Half Moon Bay, on the coast between Palo Alto and San Francisco. Once Rita offered to lend my parents one of her paintings to cheer up their dowdy married-student Stanford University apartment. "Which way up does it go?" my father asked her, looking at it.

"Oh, it doesn't matter," Rita said airily. At least, that's what my parents remember Rita saying. I have it on good authority that her saying such a thing was extremely unlikely.

Indeed, some time later when the Abbeys paid a return visit to our family in Stanford Village, Rita spotted her painting in pride of place over the sofa and chastised my father. "You've hung it upside down!" He has told this story a few times now and I still can't work out whether he is joking or she was or if both were in complete earnest, or some combination. Memory is tricky. History is hard.

Rita's painting

Sculpture garden

In the museum in Las Vegas my father told the story again, this time also to my cousin Aaron (the good authority mentioned above), Rita's younger son, who joined us there. Laura Sanders, the amazing director, arranged everything and gave us a personal tour. We all swapped stories about Rita. I shared a childhood memory of Rita after she had divorced Edward and brought her boyfriend to visit us with  in Los Angeles. My family lived then in UCLA's family housing complex on Sawtelle Boulevard. I was about six or seven. Rita and Mirek had gone scuba diving in Santa Monica Bay and returned to our apartment with a bucket of live lobsters. My mother duly boiled a pot of water. Soon I heard her scream; I ran into the kitchen. A lobster had escaped from captivity and had caught her bare toe in its claw. The boyfriend ("that would be Mirek," says Aaron at the museum) pried it off and I accompanied my mother to the bathroom where she applied a bandaid. (As I reread this bit I think they must have been crabs. But my parents insist they were lobsters. Again. Memory. History. Tricky.)

We loved looking at Rita's amazing art and visiting her studio and talking family history. My mother gave names to the sepia-tinted faces in a long-ago group photograph. "That's my mother," she said, pointing out my grandmother as a youngster.

Glowing stained glass 

More about the museum and about Rita's husband Robert Rock Belliveau, who died this year: The Doctor Who Finished His Late Wife's Art Museum.

On our last day my father had to bid farewell to his new best friend, the mobility scooter, and return to the plodding effort of walking with Stella. We detoured on the way home to Hoover Dam, which I had never seen. Lake Mead shone in the brilliant blue sunshine, an actual body of water rather than the sea of solar tiles that had fooled me a few days earlier. The dam is a tremendous and breathtaking construction but I could not help wondering about the view back when the Colorado River flowed through, before the dam amputated its course. Would we build it today? 

Lake Mead 

Oops?

Not the Colorado River...

After a lunch stop at the Dam Cafe we headed west into the sunset, back to Los Angeles. A few days later I returned to Toronto. Next stop, England. "Globetrotter," my cousin Laura called me. I don't feel it. I'm just a gal looking for her homes. 

Lonely Are the Brave

Travels with Myself

A classic advertisement said, "You're not getting older, you're getting better." I don't recall what it was selling-- face cream? Hair dye? But I am here to attest that it is true, in some ways at least. 

In September I clicked along the railroad tracks of Europe, most definitely doing it better than I did back in  my youth.

It all started with a wedding: our nephew married his beloved, and the extended family gathered in the heart of Tuscany to celebrate with the couple and their friends. A joyous occasion indeed. The icing on the cake for us was getting to spend three precious days with our children, plus girlfriend, in an 'agriturismo' villa perched on a hillside overlooking acres of vines and distant olive trees, only a 30-minute dusty, bumpy, scenic drive from villa to wedding venue (the rental car guy told us that in Tuscany people are too busy making wine to pave their roads). Eldest son found and organized the accommodation; those parenting tables are turning. We arrived from three corners of the globe-- Toronto, Vancouver, and Utrecht--to converge on Rome. It had seemed too precarious a plan to work but it did.

All together now (Castelnuovo dell'Abate, Tuscany)

After we dispersed I found myself on my own with no obligations and the continent beckoning. The last time such a thing happened was decades ago in my student days.

I had Europe at my feet and chose to keep it there, staying on the ground: my ticket to ride then as now was a train pass. Then, I had a student Interrail card in the shape of a small paper booklet good for nearly unlimited travel for a month, a laden backpack, a small stack of travelers checks, and no one to answer to. 

Traveller's cheque on display at the British Museum

Back in the student era, my idea was to spend as little money as possible. Competitive thrift seemed to be the order of the day. We undergrads reconvened after our holiday travels and told tales of touring Roman ruins and Notre Dame and bragged about the cheapest places to stay and sneaking an extra--usually stale-- roll from the continental breakfast service to save for lunch along with an apple or tomato from a greengrocer. I don't know why I was so miserly. I was not poor; my parents were not mean. I set out from the University of Sussex for a three-week backpacking trip across Western Europe in December and January of my year abroad with three hundred pounds in traveller's cheques and my rail card. I came home with much of the money untouched, having gone hungry some of the time and sleeping in a few appalling hostels. I remember I skipped a visit Versailles because it was too expensive. Once I nearly found myself marooned for a night in the Milan train station and was rescued through the unutterable kindness of strangers. I really was supremely lucky. Some of the time I traveled with friends, other times on my own, partly by choice and partly by misadventure. I look back on various terrible decisions I made and shudder in shock and awe that I did not suffer any worse fate than occasional cold, hunger, and discomposure. 

This journey could not have been more different. I purchased a senior Eurail pass rather than a student one--and first-class at that (not much more expensive)--in digital rather than paper form, good for 5 days of travel in a month, requiring more thought and planning. I carried a credit card instead of cash. Add a mobile phone with travel plan, and voilà, I was ready to ride, armed and far less endangered than last time.

I still found occasion to chat with kind strangers. And I still was not extravagant-- my tastes are not extravagant, I guess--but nor did I go hungry and or inhabit grimy hostels. I lived well and had fun. I ate wonderful food and imbibed delightful drinks both caffeinated and alcoholic. I sampled the ice cream at every destination. I visited castles and markets and towers and museums and took boat rides and though I travelled solo, I also spent time with friends. I loved every single city on my itinerary: Rome, Venice, Salzburg, Prague, Berlin, Utrecht/ Amersfoort/ Amsterdam/ Den Haag (the Netherlands is small).

 

As easy as ABCDE

Rome's Forum where a seagull stole my ice cream cone

Ice cream, ice cream, everywhere. Luckily.

My suitcase and I traversing Venice

Friendship in Venice 💝

Train life

Salzburg from on high

🔎 Mysterious: Prague public library

Prague: Kafka's head. It moves, but I can't get the video to upload.

Berlin Wall with friends from Clare Hall 💕💕

My final destination was the Netherlands, where I visited middle child in his new habitat in the charming city of Utrecht. Although I had seen him only two weeks earlier at the Italian wedding, it was such a pleasure to see him again and in situ in his new faraway (I hope temporarily) home. He guided me with grace and confidence and a startling ability to navigate both Utrecht and Amsterdam. I was granted excellent hospitality with a long-time (these days I find myself careful about saying 'old') and very precious friend in nearby Amersfoort. 

Utrecht. The Dom and the son.

Kattenkabinet in Amsterdam

Amsterdam by night

The Hague, outside the Mauritshuis, with sweet friends and son 💜💛💚💙

Then too few days later, on the first of October, I flew across the ocean back to Canada. As a last hurrah, my flight involved a long-enough layover in Montréal to enjoy a sunny afternoon in the old city by the St. Lawrence River. A perfect ending. 

Last stop: Vieux Montréal

Getting older (sometimes) is getting better. 

Salzburg. What would Mozart order? At a guess: 'ein skinny triple shot oat milk latte, bitte'

Venice, last vaporetto ride. Arrivederci, Europe.

"This is Canada!"

Returning home to Toronto after a year in Cambridge has been both a delight and a shock. Delightful: kids, pets, friends, garden, lake. Shocking: bright lights, big city, traffic, road rage. I find myself squinting in the glare of speeding cars and reckless drivers. The anti-cyclist (and anti-pedestrian) mentality and movement have grown even as--perhaps because--the city itself takes gradual steps toward bike and pedestrian-friendliness...ie to get to where Cambridge already is.   

When our family first landed in Toronto 13 years ago the friendliness and kindliness of the denizens impressed us. People stopped to offer help when we looked confused, they chatted pleasantly in shops. "They're so nice!" we marveled. Then we discovered the exception: Torontonians on wheels. Any wheels: riders as well as drivers ("Beware Canucks on Wheels" (2015)). Just yesterday, walking with husband and daughter, I had to dodge a cyclist on the sidewalk heading toward us, at night, no lights. "What are you doing? There's a bike lane right there," I pointed.

"Kiss my ass," said the man as he shot past.

"No, thank you," husband responded.

The aggro amongst street users has definitely ratcheted up. I read the odd snippet of Toronto transit news while in England. Now evidence of my own eyes confirms these reports. Toronto has, bless it, laid on more bike lanes (still not enough), installed more cycling and pedestrian infrastructure (still not enough), and funded more enforcement against bike-lane blockage (never enough). There's a new mayor in office, Olivia Chow, who rides her bike to City Hall. Things are trending in the right direction for cycling...at the mild expense of driver convenience and speed.

Good, say I. And yes I say that even when I am a driver. City driving should NOT be convenient or speedy. It should not be fun. It should be a thing one does as a last resort.

Others disagree and disagree strongly. People in Toronto (and in its suburbs) really like their cars.  They like them large and bulky and prominent and they want to use them to go fast. They're furious. I found this out twice last week.

Son injured his ankle and needed medical advice so, our doctor being away, I drove him to a walk-in clinic. I nosed most of the way in to a tight space right in front of the building and put on my flashers. Husband helped son hop into the building while I stayed with the car until we knew whether he could be seen. A minute later, behind me, a driver honked, her front bumper near my rear one. I wasn't sure why, as there was plenty of room to maneuver around me in the road. Eventually the driver pulled up next to me, blocking traffic, and rolled down the passenger window of her SUV. 

"I want to park there," she informed me. 

"Well, I'm waiting for someone."

"But I want to park. You haven't paid yet."

I stared at her. This young woman was ordering me to move so she could put her car where mine was.

"I'll be another few minutes," I repeated. 

"Then you should pay," she snapped, as though expecting me to drop coins directly into her palm.

"There's a grace period," I told her. "Ten minutes."

"I never heard that."

"Check the website," I said. (I am pretty sure I'm right. In any case, with luck the annoying woman will waste at least ten minutes googling it.)

"And you're idling," she accused.

"You're right." I turned off the motor and switched on the radio. "There you go." She drove away. I could practically see the huff in her exhaust.

Honestly. I cannot imagine a Canadian not in a car marching up to me and saying "I want your place in line. Move." But put them on wheels, and you get a different story. 

A little later the same day I met a friend for lunch at a nearby café. As we walked along a small street in my neighborhood, she and I watched an enormous blood-red pick-up truck reverse from the road into a driveway. As my friend and I edged along the strip of sidewalk left us by the driver, he started pulling forward, toward us. I lifted my hand to make us visible-- the truck's hood was about as high as my head--and craned my neck to make eye contact. The man rolled down his window to shout at me as we crossed to safety. "Hey! You don't always have the right of way! This is Canada!"

'This is Canada'? What? My friend and I looked at each other and laughed in disbelief.

The driver of the scarlet truck was of course right. It is true; this is Canada. Also it is true that I personally do not always have the right of way. But right then, right there, walking north on the sidewalk of Major Street, I, along with my friend--plus another woman walking south-- most certainly did have both the right of way and extreme vulnerability. What the driver had was a bloody big pick-up and a Y chromosome. 

Again, he might be a perfectly nice man when parted from his vehicle.

Or possibly not. Several months ago I read about a group of people deliberately blocking a bike lane newly installed on an iconic north-south Toronto thoroughfare, Yonge Street. Grown men and women had actually taken time out of their day to stand in an active bike lane in a city, forcing cyclists into traffic, in an effort to make cycling less safe and thus less popular. 

This is Canada?

Scotty, beam me up. Or perhaps just beam me back to Cambridge.

Who knows what comes next. My belief is that bike-riding will help save the world and that personally-owned cars will soon go the way of the dodo. The fact that the luddites amongst us are reacting so strongly against this change is perhaps an indicator of its eventual success. But the divisiveness in the meantime is scary and unpleasant and, I believe, profoundly un-Canadian. 

There are also signs of hope (the new cycling mayor of Toronto for instance) and, even more powerful, signs of humor:

Toronto's 'Crosswalk Referee' 

This too is Canada. 

Maybe it will help. 

And maybe the dodo will come back.

Laundry lore

We are back in Toronto, busy unpacking and setting our house to rights, a project that I fear may take us forever. We have too much stuff, a situation made clearer by our year of living sparely at Clare Hall. 

We managed perfectly well without the detritus that fills our space here at home. Clutter, I guess it could be called, or memorabilia. As we unpack and organize, I find myself tossing things out left, right, and center. Flip-flops bought in Tanzania now chewed by the dog? Cozy sweater from Edinburgh's Greenmarket pocked with intransigent stains? Harris Ranch mug with a chipped rim? Begone. 

The kids and the pets have made the cut. We're keeping them. It is very lovely having most of them close, and all of them nearer time-zone-wise (for the moment). And there are certainly some inanimate possessions with which we have had a happy reunion (books, art, coffee grinder, sofa). 

The  laundry room is one part of the house I am especially happy to return to-- in spite of the Everest-like pile of towels and linens. When I first learned that husband and I would be using a communal laundry facility for our year at Clare Hall, I quaked and hunted for laundry services in Cambridge that offered pick up and delivery. Impossible otherwise, I said to husband. I am way too old to put on shoes and coat and traipse through corridors in the cold and wet to wait my turn for a machine. 

Barefoot laundering

The reality, as so often, proved less daunting than I feared. Getting to the laundry room in Clare Hall did  not demand rain gear; the route was covered. We rarely waited for a machine. Even when we did, the experience was convivial; sharing facilities with people you know and like has its pleasures. Nonetheless, washing clothes involved planning and time management and being dressed. One delight of returning home is the ability to do laundry unshod and unclad at any time of day or night. 

But home laundry was not always so easy. When I first moved to England, way back when, I was shocked to discover that most washing machines lived in kitchens, under the counter, next to the tiny fridge, in exactly the spot where the (nonexistent) dishwasher should have lived. 

"Why is the washing machine in the kitchen?" I asked my friend and housemate, Kate. She was bemused by my question. 

"Where else would it go?" she shrugged.

Certainly not next to the dryer, which, like the dishwasher, did not exist in most houses (back then more so, but still even now). In Britain, I discovered, laundry is sent to try you. Convenience is less valued, to the extent that a desire for it is regarded with some suspicion. Laundry remains (in my experience) very much the province of the woman in the household, and cynically I cannot help but sense oppression. I may be wrong. (But I may not.) I also detect some brainwashing. My female friends often seemed to argue against their own best interests. 

'Clothes that dry in sunshine smell so much fresher,' I would hear other mums say. Sunshine? What sunshine, I wondered, as friends abandoned trolleys full of groceries at Sainsbury's in order to race home and remove bedsheets from the clothesline ahead of a downpour. Reliable sun is a rare commodity in that green land. And what about the excrement of passing birds? Plus it takes forever to peg clothes, linens, and towels to a washing-line, where they dry hard as boards, requiring aggressive ironing -- another favourite time-consuming British (women's) pastime in which I declined to partake.

The first household appliance my husband and I jointly purchased was a dryer, at my behest. However I consented to a condenser-dryer, a device I have only ever encountered in the UK, which rather than being vented to the outdoors, collects moisture in a plastic tank that needs to be removed and emptied every couple of cycles. Yes, yet more work. We kept ours in a tiny upstairs room while the washing machine (of course) lived in the kitchen, necessitating an awkward upward trek clutching a basket of heavy wet laundry. 

These condenser drying contraptions are only slightly less evil than the combination washer-dryers that satanic manufacturers foist on hopeful, unsuspecting consumers. Kate and I briefly shared one. It worked fine as long as you only washed one item at a time. I exaggerate, but not a lot.

My mother-in-law had a large house with plenty of unused space-- in fact there were whole rooms kept locked and untouched-- but still her washing machine (a washer-dryer) resided in the kitchen. She did own a separate full-sized dryer but it crouched at the farthest, darkest end of the detached and unheated garage. This placement necessitated toting a heavy basket of wet clothes from house to garage and then either slithering between the garage wall and the parked car, or first moving the car out to the driveway. It seemed to me that she had said yes to that dryer only grudgingly, while ensuring that doing laundry still constituted hard labour. The British way. Stiff upper lip and mustn't grumble-- which means there must be something about which not to grumble. 

I recalled this little laundry history because of a piece I read recently by Kirsten Bell, an American who has turned an ethnographic eye on UK laundry culture. Kudos to Kirsten. When I read her article I laughed until I cried. Yes, I thought. She has nailed it (or perhaps clothes-pinned it). After I closed the tab I stood and walked, unshod and pajama-clad, to my laundry room where I moved the wet towels from the washer into the dryer and filled the washing machine with sheets. 

Now to unpack one more box before bedtime...

They're multiplying

Getting there

 PS My research on laundry services in Cambridge did not go to waste; I shared it with a friend living in a different college, one with apparently very inferior laundry facilities. He was grateful.

Winding down and packing up: 'Farewell to England!'

Our Year of Living Academically is coming to an end. Next week we say goodbye to Cambridge and hello to Toronto (at least if our tickets are valid. We have doubts. But that's another story).

The boxes have arrived and the suitcases have been pulled from storage. Their mouths gape open, hungry for our possessions, which seem to have increased in orders of magnitude from the four pieces of checked luggage we brought from Canada. Books, boots, bits and bobs; it all adds up. Now we need to organize, pack, ship, and cry. I'm not quite as overwrought as Byron in his poem ("Heart-broken and lorn, I resign/ The joys and the hopes that thou gavest") but I certainly have emotional moments.

Byron in the Wren Library, Trinity College

As I pack, I run through a litany of memories and think of what I'll miss about living in Cambridge.

Clare Hall

Well, everything. 

• Our home from home, flat 17, Clare Hall
• Casual conversations daily in the dining hall on subjects ranging from Bach's obsession with numbers, to advances in material science around hip replacement, to views on brotherhood from the perspectives of anthropology and of classics, and so on--- all before dessert and coffee. 

• The dining hall. Being cooked for by creative chefs. Mushroom stroganoff for lunch! Thai curry for dinner! Soup every day!
• So many people at Clare Hall and beyond who have become friends and inspirations.
• Proximity to old friends who knew me back when, who knew my children as babies, whose life histories are part of my own.
• Weird though it may sound, the NHS, which served us very well when we needed it most.
• Weird though it may sound, the climate. 
• The dozens or hundreds of concerts and lectures and seminars (who knew historiography could be so intriguing?) advertised on laminated posters affixed to railings and posts: Cambridge's local internet is the inter-fence

• The River Cam.

• Riding bikes in a city where cycling infrastructure works. 

• The people who stay here. 

Neighbours 

• The people who visit.

• The swimming pool.

• Springtime in college gardens.

• Location, location, location: an hour to London, two to Brighton, three to Durham (well, four with the ever-present roadworks)
• East Anglia: north Norfolk--Walsingham! Cley!--and rural Suffolk, their coasts, pockets of Essex and Cambridgeshire. Sky and more sky.

Lavenham, Suffolk

Cley-next-the-Sea, Norfolk

• Trains
• Walks and runs along fields and paths, from right outside our door

• Not living in a big city. Turns out I'm not a big-city person. It's taken me a while to realise.
• Europe on the doorstep.
• The timezone advantage that has let me write in the mornings and work in the afternoons.
• The people. Again.
• This year-long adventure à deux  ♡

On the other side of goodbyes, of course, will be the hellos. What I am looking forward to in Toronto:

• Reunion with our kids (until they dissipate, leaving us in the empty nest--unlike this past year, when we left them)
• Reunion with the dog and two cats (a very close second to seeing the kids. In fact... no, I won't go there)
• Reading the paper in bed surrounded by the dog and two cats
• Settling back into our galumphing old house 
• Reclaiming my houseplants (thank you to everyone who kept them going)
• Wrestling with the scraggly neglected garden (hint to husband: how about a new garden bench for our anniversary?)
• Connecting with friends and neighbors and colleagues in real life (hey folks, please can we go for a coffee? An ice cream? A cocktail? Soon?)
• Greater proximity to my North American family; seeing many of them next week for...
• ...middle child's graduation ceremony!
• Cooking meals (though not the associated washing up). So many new Nigel Slater recipes to try, plus the Alice B. Toklas cookbook.
• Dining and drinking on restaurant patios unassailed by cigarette smoke.
• Living on a continent with a Pacific coast. 

Bridge over the River Cam 
July 2022

This week the farewell gatherings come thick and fast, punctuating the packing up. There will be tears before leaving for sure, but also bright hope for return. In the meantime, I believe I've ordered enough Sainsbury's own-brand tea to see us through the transition to Toronto. 

Thank you, Clare Hall, for everything. À bientôt. 

Full moon from Flat 17