Beth Kaplan's Blog, page 16

severing ties

It’s done. I have renounced my American citizenship. It was an ordeal, in the penitentiary-like US Consulate in Ottawa, with foot-thick doors; you cannot bring in cellphones — or guns or fire starters, unfortunately, as I was going to bring both. Had to wait, then show all my documents, go through the rigamarole — “You do realize this step is irrevocable?” as if they can’t believe I’m giving up something so precious. Then another wait, twenty minutes, sitting there with the others in the bland room, without my purse or cellphone, staring at the wall and twitching, until finally called to talk to a consul and explain my reasons for this devastatingly stupid decision. I gave them the letter I’ll copy here, below. And then paid my king’s ransom and got out, feeling light and free.

I wish I’d done it many years ago. They warned me it’s not official until cleared by some official who’ll send me the final paperwork. I said, “You mean, they might refuse to let me go?” He laughed and said it hasn’t happened so far. They were in fact very nice. But it was sheer joy to walk out of the claustrophobic bunker into the Ottawa sunshine, to meet Janet and go to the National Gallery across the street for lunch and wander amongst the Canadian paintings. I was exhausted and drained, and still am. And extremely relieved.

You mean, now you’re 100% Canadian? wrote Anna. Yes, that’s what it means. I always have been, in fact, but for this lingering bureaucratic confusion. I’ve spent my life as partly American, partly Canadian, partly Jewish, partly not. Beth Partly Kaplan.

The gallery is stunning, with its towering ceilings. There’s a courtyard inside filled with plants and piped-in choir singing sacred music – lovely.

And in a bit I’m going to take my hostess out for dinner, to a place called Gin et Chips, nearby, where the batter for the fish and chips is infused with gin. Sounds good to me. Janet’s house is one of the loveliest I’ve ever visited, filled with light and interesting things, collections just like mine: thrifted or scavenged baskets, boxes, books, children’s toys, beautiful fabrics – and the thickest, most luxurious cotton sheets ever. I feel like royalty.

Pix: 1. Last night, the full moon was low over Ottawa – almost over my mum’s and her sister’s former apartment buildings, in fact. Magical.

2. Janet has books everywhere – thrilled to see my own Loose Woman on one shelf.

3. Selfie by an 100% Canadian, in front of two paintings by dear friend Tom Campbell.

My letter to the American government, which I know they’ll throw away:

In August 1950, a few weeks after my birth in New York City, my American father J. Gordin Kaplan took his first job as a cell biologist in Canada. A left-wing idealist, he was forced to emigrate by the intolerance for his viewpoints — in favour of nuclear disarmament and world peace — in America at that time. He was happy to live the rest of his life in Canada, grateful to the tolerant country that had sheltered him and his family, and made enormous contributions to his adopted country.

My mother and I lived briefly with my grandparents in New York before flying to Canada. I was 3 months old when I left the United States for good. After becoming a Canadian citizen, I kept my American passport because I saw no need to get rid of it.

Until a few years ago, when I learned that for some incomprehensible reason, I was expected to file American tax returns. That is, to file returns for a country in which I had lived for three months as an infant and where I’d never worked or had any financial dealings.

I’m a writer; my income is low. In order to free myself from this onerous, indeed absurd responsibility, I had to file years of back taxes, which cost me thousands of dollars in accountancy fees. And now, to renounce will cost me a ransom of more than $3200 CAD. The injustice of this burns in me.

I approve 100% of chasing wealthy tax cheats. But to punish low income expat citizens with absurd tax rules and giant exit fees reflects very badly on the country of my birth.

Like my father, I am deeply grateful to be Canadian.

Yours,

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health report

Just to let you know: my doctor said there’s a lot of “recurrent respiratory virus” around, not much to be done since my lungs sound okay – take Tylenol, rest, lots of Vitamin D. Will have a blood test next week but am feeling a bit better. It’s a tough bug. My daughter’s pediatrician said it’s the worst respiratory illness season he’s ever seen. Hooray! Love to be part of a popular demographic.

The last thing I want to do this morning is get on a train. But off I go. What’s lovely is that it doesn’t really matter what I pack for two days. I just threw stuff in.

It’s a cool grey day, perfect to be on the road. Sandwich packed, New Yorkers, and a Dorothy Sayers mystery someone left in the Little Free Library.

Onward. Literally. A bientôt.

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Justice done, for once

Yesterday I started writing a post, got distracted, and it vanished. So here we are again. I’ve lost steam, am still clogged, hacking, feeble. A friend sent word about a “flu-like virus called the 100 day cough.” Sounds about right. We’ll see what my doctor, the aptly named Dr. Smiley, says today.

Ruth came yesterday, on a gorgeous sunny morning, to drive me to Pet Valu to get heavy bags of birdseed, and we went for a walk in the ‘hood, radiant with springness. The animals were springy too — at the farm, the brown-and-white spotted calf and mother cow were leaping and nuzzling, and two geese were awkwardly trying, as they floated, to mate. Two bristly red piglets asleep in the mud. All’s well with the world.

Especially because of the good news: Trump in a courtroom looking like a surly toddler denied his Cheerios, and Umar Zameer, falsely accused of killing a policeman, acquitted and apologized to for an egregious three-year-long miscarriage of justice, drummed up to satisfy our often-corrupt police. Three of whom colluded with each other and lied in court about what happened, although the truth had been captured on video. Shocking.

Speaking of justice, I watched Episode 3 of Mr. Bates vs. the Post Office on Sunday night. What a fabulous David and Goliath story, one man’s twenty-year-long ordeal challenging an impenetrable and, it becomes increasingly apparent, criminally mendacious organization. What’s so marvellous is that it’s happening in real time: the actual Mr. Bates  testified in London last week to an enquiry into how these injustices continued for decades, hounding innocent people to ruin and in several cases to jail or suicide. Snobbish, negligent British civil servants and the Japanese computer company Fujitsu are responsible. People should go to jail.

By chance, on Sunday, two pieces of mine appeared simultaneously: a piece on my own Substack Touchpoints: A Writer’s Truth, about the writing life, and on my former student Alice Goldbloom’s A Considerable Age, an essay from Midlife Solo called Sisterhood. Good response to both, I’m happy to say. I think the eulogy I wrote and spoke for my uncle Edgar Kaplan, reprinted in Touchpoints, is perhaps the best thing I’ve ever written. He deserved no less.

https://touchpointsawriterstruth.substack.com/p/eulogies

https://aconsiderableage.substack.com/p/sisterhood?utm_campaign=email-half-post&r=3d8wo&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

And though I’ve not written about Midlife Solo for some time in the flurry of travel, the vehemence of the reviews I receive continue to surprise and gratify. Greg, a retired teacher, wrote: “How brave you are to expose such tender moments of your life … I allowed myself two of your stories each night, to expand the pleasure over several weeks. Sometimes I was reading your memoir at 4:00 am. and woke grumpy John up because I was laughing so hard. But, there were tears too. In short, your book touched my heart.

I will reread Mid Life Solo. One reading is not enough. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.”

You are most welcome. My enormous pleasure. FYI, more great news: at long last, the book is now available wherever books are sold.

Hard to believe, but I need to pack my very small suitcase again tonight, to leave tomorrow morning by train for Ottawa. On Thursday, I go to the American consulate to renounce my U.S. citizenship, give up a passport I’ve carried all my life by the accident of being born in New York and living there for two and a half months. I should have renounced many years ago but never got around to it, saw no need to. There’s a huge need now, as they demand yearly tax returns. Today I go to the bank and take out a money order for $2350 USD, which will cost me over $3200 CAD. That is what they’re charging to release me. It makes me sick. And I’m already sick.

I’m doing this for my kids, so there are no surprises from the U.S. government at my death. Who knows what new penalties they’ll come up with by 2060, when I kick off at 110? (LOL.)

Below: spring at the Farm and the Necropolis – unfortunately you can’t really see, but the island in the middle of the pond is covered with flowers; those are the amorous geese. And a very apt New Yorker cartoon. Sad.

Onward.

 

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you can come home again

At 7.15 this morning – which was actually 12.15 for me – I went downstairs and opened my front door, and there, lying on the sill, were the Saturday Star and Globe and the TV Times. I went into my kitchen, made coffee and oatmeal, and ate breakfast reading the paper. Now I’m full and warm, sitting in my favourite chair under a blankie, looking out at the daffodils with the cat beside me. If that’s not heaven, I don’t know what is.

The flight was delayed nearly 3 hours – how I felt for the travellers whose 8.30 a.m. Air Canada flight was delayed 8 hours! – but once we were on, it was seamless, if long. I’d snagged a few of the free magazines United Airlines had on display at the departure gate, including The Critic, which I adored and may even subscribe to, witty, sardonic, lefty British voices opining about the arts and life in general. I listened to “Calm Baroque,” a lot of Bach, hooray, and watched Oppenheimer, which I know should not be watched on a small airplane screen, but which made a big impact nonetheless. Extraordinarily thoughtful and intelligent, with of course superlative performances from Cillian Murphy – haunting, unforgettable – and Robert Downey Jr. and the others.

My father told me he was ashamed of the fact that he, an American G.I., cheered when the bombs were dropped on Japan, because it meant the war was over, and his brother Edgar, a radio operator on B-23’s in the Pacific, could come home. Dad  became a pacifist and spent decades fighting against nuclear proliferation and for peace. The way the film clearly yet dramatically outlined the complexities of that time was brilliant. Deserved the Oscar.

After landing, I sprinted through Canadian immigration and made the UP Express to downtown, about to leave, with a minute to spare; outside, the sun was shining and Toronto looked great. I barely recognized parts of it, the growth has been so fast. As people strolled on a late Friday afternoon in the sunshine, it looked like the prosperous, multicultural, vibrant city it is. I was proud of it. I’ll be hit with its many, many problems soon enough.

As I got out of the taxi from Union, a young woman was checking out the Little Free Library. In front of my house, the forsythia is radiant, though very early. Tiggy greeted me. The house has had two tenants, one a rental and the other my friend Alanna, and it looked fine. The garden is reviving; my daffodils are out. The bird-feeder is empty, the fridge is empty, there’s a great deal to be done. The reality of coming home hit me: it’s joy, but it’s also responsibility. The kitty litter, groceries, cleaning, bills. In my mail was a Vacant Tax Assessment for $12,000; I thought I’d filled out the form saying my house is never vacant but must have done something wrong, so immediately sent in a complaint to challenge it. The pile of laundry, mine from the trip and the tenants’ bedding and towels, is enormous. Anna wrote, “Welcome home, but I just received a friend request from you on Facebook.”

My mother-in-law liked to say that it was good “to get the stink blown off you.” I had a long hot shower and got the stink blown off me. Put on my pyjamas and ate the tuna sandwich I’d bought at Heathrow for supper, with a bit of the white wine Alanna left in the fridge. Stinkless, at last.

I’m still chesty, coughing, clogged, but it’s so different to be sick at home. I know where things are, how to get what I need. There’s homemade chicken soup in the freezer. My kids are nearby, as are my friendly neighbours. I CAN CHANGE CLOTHES! I wore the same thing, grey jeans and orange wool turtleneck with several layers underneath, for nearly the entire trip. It was bewildering to look in my closet – so many clothes! Why do I need all that?

You can’t go home again? Nonsense, Thomas Wolfe, you certainly can. Look, there’s a robin on my grass. The cardinals just flew by. The paper is full of Canadian political wrangling, unchanged. The world is dire, we know that, but there’s enormous comfort in the familiarity here, in the yellow tulips both Alanna and Sam left for me. Blessings.

I’ll have more thoughts about the trip, but for now, my cat and I will be sitting here.

1. Final view of London – the Piccadilly line to Heathrow. Much as I extoll London transit, the tube can also be very crowded and hot and noisy. 2. My first view of Toronto through the UP window – that morning it said 90% chance of rain in TO. The weather people’s dire predictions have been entirely wrong for this whole trip. I was showered with rain exactly once, in Towcester, for ten seconds, running from the Tesco grocery store to Penny’s car. 3. Greeting me, kind of, before turning and stalking off. 4. Forsythia, bicycle, Little Free Library, and next door, Monique’s yellow house. Bliss.

Thank you again for coming with me. When you travel alone, it really helps to make sure that someone, somewhere, knows where and how you are.

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Last post from London? Hope so.

Thank you for following me on my journey and putting up with this relentless stream of commentary. I cannot help myself. And it continues; my trip ain’t over yet. News this morning from Air Canada: my first email said the flight might be cancelled because of a strike – I gather airline food producers are on strike in Toronto – and the second, the flight is delayed an hour and a half. I am not looking forward to today.

But the delay has given me time to do a little writing about my trip, a bit of what I noticed, liked, and didn’t.

Transit: as I’ve raved before, the metro in Paris and the tube in London – phenomenal. I know French transit is often on strike, and the London tube is in places very old and extremely noisy. But these systems go all over the city, reliably carrying millions daily. They’re well-signed and very clear, showing exactly when the next train is coming, with voice notifications regularly. The bus systems are similarly widespread and functional. There are separated bike lanes, a huge number all over Paris.

We live in a culture that has relied on cars for far too long. Insane. Someone please drag Doug Ford out of his hidey-hole and show him how the planet functions.

History and beauty: cultures that celebrate both and have so much to celebrate. It made me sad, yesterday, to read in Brunswick Square that the lovely old terraced houses around, including one once occupied by Virginia Woolf and her gang, had been torn down for a concrete monstrosity. But that happens rarely here, whereas we happily slaughter old buildings with no regard for their history. At least, we used to. Maybe there’s an awareness now of the importance of heritage, relatively recent as it may be.

Small: Much is on a smaller scale here, small cars and especially small apartments and houses. We have no concept of how much space we take for granted in Canada; we think kids need their own room and backyard. They don’t. As I wrote in a Star op-ed, kids grow up fine in apartments, especially in a city like London with scores of great parks, large and little.

We need to scale down.

Litter: Both Paris and London are astonishingly clean for vast tourist-filled cities, especially Paris. What’s wrong with us in T.O., streets littered with garbage?

Big exhibitions: The special Impressionist exhibition at the Musée d’Orsay was a zoo, so crowded it was nearly impossible to see the paintings. We had timed tickets, but they seemed to be letting everyone in simultaneously, plus tours. It was unforgivable. I assume maybe they lost so much money during the pandemic that this was an attempt to cram people in and earn some back.

The uniform: Everyone, even French fashionistas and British grannies, wears sneakers now. Comfortable footwear for all, what a great concept. And also – in England – the value of school uniforms for children.

Community gardens: in both London and Paris, local people have done their best to greenify their public spaces. We need to do more of that in Toronto.

The cancer of cellphones: shockingly pervasive though of course not surprising. Everywhere, all ages, mesmerized. Yesterday, on the train from Liverpool to London, I sat opposite a girl of about 18. The second she sat down, she began to scroll on her phone and did not look up until we arrived. Her face was blank, closed, as her thumb slid along the surface of her phone. What does it mean to produce generations who don’t look up, who are unaware of their surroundings, who know only what is fed them on the screen by their own particular algorithm? It’s terrifying.

The joy of British place names: I wrote down only a few as Penny drove: Biggleswade. Wrestlingworth. Chipping Sodbury. Pucklechurch. Sheepy Magma. Wibtoft. Hundreds more, equally delightful.

Birds: in the chaos, noise, and stink of the cities, there they are, nesting now, and singing. Perhaps many fewer then before, but they’re there. As are, in England, hedgehogs, badgers, foxes, and deer. I know because we saw dead ones by the highway.

For me, how much Britishness I feel in myself when here, through my mother Sylvia, her sisters Do and Margaret, my grandparents Marion and Percy, from visits and my own times living here, 1956-58 and 1971-72. This culture is in my bones, as are, also, the Jews of New York. A rich brew. As my geneticist dad would say, I’m blessed with hybrid vigour. So far, it has got me through.

The view from here, a drizzly grey day on the tennis courts:

That’s all for today. Please, keep your fingers crossed for me. I want to go home.

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done and done (nearly)

That’s a wrap, my friends. Wait, I shouldn’t speak too soon – I still have to get to Heathrow early tomorrow, and home. Rain predicted tomorrow in Toronto – it’ll be ironic if the first real rain I encounter is there!

But this is the last night of the Kaplan Hack and Wheeze Tour of 2024.

What’s amazing is that despite being sick, I saw everyone I wanted to see and spent good time with them. What I didn’t do was sightsee much, especially here in London, which is as always exploding with interesting things to do. This trip was about reconnecting with old friends and new family: Pam in Amsterdam, Lynn, Denis, Michèle, and my fourth cousin Lesley and her husband Duncan in Paris, Christopher and Tony and his wife Blossom in London, Penny in Liverpool, John in Shrewsbury. I did manage a few museums and walks and events.

But whatever this is has not let me go. My first week, April 1 to 6, was fine, but by Sunday April 7 I was sick and have been sick ever since. Perhaps something caught in the train from Amsterdam to Paris, who knows. Tedious.

I will think about what I saw and heard and felt and learned in these European countries. But for now, all I want to say is: get me out of here.

I’m in the world’s smallest hotel room in Bloomsbury, with the toilet down the hall. If I stretch out my arms I can just about touch both walls, and that’s fine with me. The park outside the window, Cartwright Gardens, has tennis courts, so I was greeted with the familiar London noise of tennis balls; my grandparents’ flat in Barons Court backed onto the Queen’s Tennis Club, so that’s the sound of London for me.

The train from Liverpool to London was seamless, with a nice fat sandwich made by Penny, and my planning this time, if I say so myself, was impeccable; the hotel is a ten minute walk from Euston Station, where I arrived, and is a ten minute walk from Russel Square, where I’ll get the tube to Heathrow tomorrow. I went for a stroll, sat in Russel Square and walked around Brunswick Square, breathing in the Bloomsbury vibes and admiring the magnificent old plane trees, some well over a hundred years old. London parks are the best. At least, those open to the public. How I resent the ones that require a key to get in and are always empty.

Tonight I was invited to visit Tony and Blossom again in Hampstead. They kindly fed me without dining themselves, because they eat late and I didn’t want to be out late, and we talked about Blossom’s work as a sexual health educator, cheery topics like the spike in syphilis cases in North America and of course, about the complex trans issues she deals with regularly; she and Tony, like me, are glad a recent report vindicated one of J. K. Rowling’s basic premises — that a great deal of caution should go into medical decisions about teens who want to transition.

I hope Tony and Blossom visit me in Canada. I like them both a great deal — kindred spirits. As is Penny, with her many interesting projects and fantastic library of books, as is cousin Lesley with her keen interest in the past, as is John, with his big heart and literary studies, as are the others. Kindred spirits on the other side of the ocean. A blessing.

1 and 2. Penny showed me pix I’d never seen from my last trip to Liverpool, in about 2009, and to the countryside. 3. I was impressed with the bookstand in the shop in the Liverpool train station – a big selection of classics and good new novels. 4. My very narrow room. 5. Tony and Blossom in Hampstead.

I am one lucky camper. And I’m going home. Over and out. For now.

 

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If this is Wednesday, I’m still in Liverpool

A great day in this fine city. It was cold and windy; despite many layers, I’ve been freezing outside since we arrived, though that’s also simply my bug making me vulnerable. And yet Brits walk around in almost no clothes. Miraculous.

Penny and I did Beatles this morning. Went to the famous statues, which are bigger than I’d realized and in front of which every Beatles fan must be photographed; it’s our hajj, our pilgrimage to Mecca. There was a lineup, waiting for their turn. We went to the lively, fun Liverpool museum, where I wandered into the gift store and fell into conversation with Michael from Colorado, a fanatical Beatlemaniac who makes me look like a cold amateur. He showed me photographs of his home: Beatles everywhere, every book and record and everything. He’s here on his once-in-a-lifetime dream tour, staying at the Hard Day’s Night Hotel, about to take, tomorrow, a nine-hour Beatle tour, including GOING INSIDE John’s and Paul’s houses. What occupies the rest of the nine hours, I cannot imagine. He was poring over t-shirts as we left. And in the background, a group of schoolchildren were singing Yellow Submarine.

Later, we went to Penny’s daughter’s house, to meet her children just home from school and to drive her boy and a friend to soccer practice. The schools here are mostly fiercely denominational, Catholic or Protestant, and if you want to get into a school of one or the other, you need to clock in a number of hours in that church. On the drive, we asked the boys about Liverpool soccer teams and received detailed, intense answers. We went on to Penny’s The Reader Group, held in a back room at the John Lewis department store. It’s something I’d never heard of, an organization all over Europe now, apparently — people simply gather to read aloud from a book and discuss it. This group are reading The Shipping News by Annie Proulx, which I’d read many years ago but rediscovered today with delight, as Penny and the others read several chapters aloud and we talked about the multiple viewpoints, the rich language, the very quirky names, and what was happening on the page and in the story – was the child simply sensitive or did she have supernatural vision? I informed them about the prevalence of moose in Newfoundland. At the end, Penny read a beautiful poem by Thomas Hardy; one of the men in the group had just seen a documentary, Martin Clunes in Dorset, and knew a great deal about Hardy. Another fascinating discussion.

My last night here. We are going to watch a bit more of the post office drama, and tomorrow I get the train to London. Penny and I have endless things to talk about, and it has been a joy to share a slice of her life. But soon I’ll be on my own again. On The Road. 1. The boys. 2. Beth and her boy. 3. The famous suits in the museum. Scream. 4. The house where Ringo grew up, the same size and design – two up, two down – as Penny’s.

road.

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Shrewsbury

Well, that was weird – I got an email warning me that multiple attempted hacks had been made on my website, so the server was shutting it down. Readers wrote to ask me what was going on. But it got fixed. Somehow. The mysteries of the ‘net.

I am sick. This is my second last full day, and I have to say, wonderful as it has been to see people and do things, I am desperate to get home.

To back up a bit, this is what I would have posted yesterday if I’d been able:

Our night in the farm palace was wonderful, complete silence, vast warm rooms. We made a huge breakfast with fresh eggs, back bacon, raspberries, even croissants. Penny has already booked to return there in August.

I have almost no contacts in Britain now, with few friends left here and no known family — my mother was not good at keeping in touch even with relatives. But happily, looking at the map before the trip, I realized Shrewsbury, where my old friend John lives, is on the way from Towcester to Liverpool. So we headed there for lunch.

John was the British boyfriend of a friend of mine; we lived in the same communal house in Toronto in 1973-74, until I moved to Vancouver and he and my friend broke up. John is simply one of the good souls of the earth, generous, open, kind. He married a Canadian, had two sons, divorced, and now has a son and grandchildren in Canada and a second son with children nearby in England. I hope to host him in August, when he comes to visit.

He lives in a very small old house where he has made maximum use of every inch, all of it designed and built himself; he has a long thin garden with a pergola grape arbor and a glass summerhouse at the end, where his tomato seedlings were already inches tall. He’d baked us an apple pie. Need I say more? And on top of everything else, it was a stunning day.

He and Penny had never met but have a great deal in common; both have been teachers and in theatre and worked for various social justice projects. Penny took a literature degree, and John is taking one now. Much to talk about.

We went on to central Shrewsbury to see the art exhibition of Penny’s niece at a local gallery and to walk around the ancient town filled with Tudor mansions with their wooden facades and beams. Drowning in history, this country. I took a picture of a 13th century arblaster – a giant wooden crossbow – to show the boys.

The rest of the day in the car, making our way along the A5 – the old Roman road – to Penny’s home in Liverpool. She too lives in a very small house; how spoiled we are for space, in Canada; we have no idea how much we take for granted. Hers has a view of the Mersey, with fresh winds blowing. We watched the first hour of Mr. Bates versus the Post Office, the shocking story of computer malfunction and bureaucratic malfeasance, targeting innocent postmasters across the country. As almost always with film and TV from this country, beautifully made and acted.

Pix: We stopped here outside our farmhouse to buy fresh eggs for John. Our eggs for breakfast had deep yellow yolks, and John wrote later that his were the same.

2. John at his green front door, and 3. he and Penny in his garden.

3. A typical Tudor building in Shrewsbury – there were many

Up next: the fairytale city of Liverpool!

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Hampstead, Northampton, Towcester: a British tour

Too much to tell – yesterday and today! I’m getting behind.

Yesterday I took the tube north to visit my old friend Tony Bingham in Hampstead. Tony was my boyfriend, briefly, during my year at theatre school in 1971-72. He’s 11 years older and was the first man I knew to wear platform boots – white platform boots. So cool. From humble beginnings, he was then becoming, and did become, one of the world’s premier dealers in antique musical instruments and metronomes. His flat then was littered with crumhorns.

After a long walk on the Heath, he took me to a mansion at its centre, Kenwood House. I didn’t even know this place existed, let alone that it was full of masterpieces, including a stunning Rembrandt and a Vermeer, just there, on the wall, no one paying attention. Vermeer! Tony was more interested in how the antique clocks worked and of course knew the kind of guitar Vermeer’s lady was holding. His house is stuffed with paintings of people playing or holding instruments, piles of ancient bassoons, and a harp made for Marie Antoinette. He drives a Jaguar station wagon — that’s a thing? He’s very interesting, and so is his partner, an Australian sexual health educator. It’s good to have interesting friends.

Speaking of which, this morning I was to take the train to Northampton to meet my interesting friend Penny. The provenance of our friendship is explained in the story “Correspondence” on this website under Articles, if you’re interested; her older sister was my penpal from 1962 until her death in 1966. As I waited at Euston Station, I learned that because of some unexplained issue, my train would no longer stop at Northampton. Get the later train, I was advised. But then, 3 minutes before departure, I asked again and was told, get the train after all, it might actually get there, and if not there’ll be a shuttle bus at an earlier stop. So I flew down and climbed on as the doors were closing. And sure enough, eventually, it did stop at Northampton and I arrived on time. A bit of tension to enliven the day.

Penny and I drove around the city to three addresses, the homes of my two great-grandmothers and a great-uncle, whom Mum and her sisters visited regularly from their village, Potterspury. Then to that village, to see, once again, the cottage where Mum was born, on the high street. But also unfortunately, it was an extraordinarily unsettled day, one moment hot sun, the next torrential rain, then sun, then hail, then sun, then cloud and darkness and fierce cold wind. It was freezing at that point, so we did not linger. We did stop in a very old, low-ceilinged place for a cup of tea. Oh yes, how I grew up to treasure a nice cup of tea.

We went on to nearby Towcester; I wanted to see the grammar school where the three Leadbeater girls went to school, and Penny had rented us a farmhouse b&b nearby. We drove deep into the countryside, until it looked like there were no homes at all, until the GPS turned us onto a driveway with a locked gate. We found out way in and to our home for the night, a palatial cottage, probably formerly a stable building, at the centre of a huge farm. We have a fully stocked kitchen, a living room, our own bedrooms with ensuite bathrooms, central heating (YES!) and fast internet. We both loved it so much, we decided to find a shop to buy pre-cooked food and to eat dinner at home. We drove back into Towcester – in a rainstorm – found the school, much smaller than I’d imagined, as is almost everything in Britain, and then a Tesco where we bought a delicious ready-made dinner and a bottle of wine. Sublime.

So here we are, vivid green fields on all sides. There has been so much rain, the animals have to be kept in the barns. All we can hear is the wind. There’s a telly, if we want distraction But we have lots to talk about, Penny and I. I am still coughing and quivery, but I’m here, where my 42% British roots are planted. It’s utterly beautiful country, soft fields, tiny winding roads, ancient trees. Roots.

Love the sign: “Humps for 300 yards.” Off Kensington Church Street.Kenwood House – in the middle of Hampstead Heath!The Vermeer and Rembrandt room – the little Vermeer on the far wall, all alonethe Heath. Another brilliant London park17 Sandringham Road, Northampton, where the terrifying Nana, my grandmother’s stern mother Charlotte, lived and where Marion Edith Alice Bates was bornSchool House in Potterspur where my mother Sylvia Mary Leadbeater was born, though the thatch has been replacedthrough the windshield of Penny’s car – the landscape my mother grew up in. And then she married a Jew from Manhattan, whose early life could not have been more different. They were an interesting pair.

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London Sunday

A quiet Sunday morning, yours truly a bit better, definitely, though shaky.  I’ve just been out to look for the Sunday papers, which I couldn’t find – no news-stand in the tube stop, no newspaper shop open. A sign of the times. Shops here open at noon on Sunday; I’ll try again later.

It’s another lovely day, cooler than yesterday, which was 22 degrees, the hottest day of the year so far. Christopher rode his bike over to get my theatre ticket and we spent the afternoon together. I’ve known him since he was an infant, born in northern France where his parents were running a L’Arche community. From my theatre school in London, I came across to visit. Here was my best friend, married with a baby, and I, about to set off on my life as an actress. Christopher eventually was blessed with four, count them, four younger sisters.

I strolled once more through  Kensington Gardens with him, the park even more marvellously crowded, and invited him to sit in my hotel’s garden and have a glass of wine. Utterly delightful. One of the first babies I’d ever held is now over fifty, a banker with a Spanish partner and a ten-year-old daughter. And of course, he has read Loose Woman, where his family, and even he, figure heavily. He said he enjoyed it very much. I hope it’s true.

A quiet day ahead. If I have the energy, I’m heading for a Marks&Spenser to stock up on underwear, mine getting worn out after my last trip to M&S some years ago. This afternoon a walk on Hampstead Heath with Tony, my London boyfriend in 1972, the year I met Christopher. Usually when I travel my schedule is jam-packed; this is showing me another way. I am certainly getting my money’s worth out of this hotel room. Tomorrow, a new phase of the trip, my ancestral tour – meeting Penny in Northampton. And a guarantee of rain.

By the way, my friend Kathy the nurse confirmed I gave myself a black eye by blowing my nose. Broke blood vessels. Phooey.

Here’s what I wrote on the Eurostar:

So – France and the French. As Lynn says, a people who live in heaven and think they live in hell. The level of attentive care given to its populace is surely unparalleled anywhere, except maybe in Scandinavia. Lynn told me that after Denis had heart surgery, the government paid for a taxi to pick him up every morning to take him to rehab. I’ve long marvelled that after they give birth, French women get free physical therapy to get their bodies back in shape. On top of that, the transit, the medical systems, and of course the food – oh, the food – mostly fabulous.

Yes, there are huge problems. Lynn feels the education system is going to the dogs; the universities are free and anyone can get in, lowering standards. At the same time, French standards at the top end are rigid and critical, leading, she says, to a lack of courage, confidence, and creativity.

BUT – the validation of beauty is everywhere – buildings, people, streetscapes, shops. Not to mention a culture that honours writers, artists, and history. A program called Apostrophes, featuring lengthy in-depth interviews with writers, was one of the most popular programs on French TV – can you imagine? Elle magazine, which I used to love and have finally given up on – the latest shows the new fashion of wearing your underpants as if they’re clothing – always features pages on writers and their books.

But – that rigidity, stuck on tradition – and the fact that the French complain about everything, it’s their default mode. Even when they’re chatting amiably, they sound like they’re complaining. But – careful attention to and great appreciation of the fine things in life.

Lynn gave up Canada, with its openness and casual self-deprecating friendliness, over fifty years ago. She is more comfortable with the formality of France. I am glad to be a Canadian who visits.

It was not an easy week for us with me so sick. And yet our only real disagreement was the usual one: fiction versus nonfiction. She has no time for memoir, and thinks my intention to read my parents’ letters and write about them is invasive and disrespectful. She thinks my work, helping people tell their most important stories, is valuable, but that the subsequent writings should probably not be shared with the wider world. “I don’t want to read them,” she says. She prefers the filter of fiction. I prefer true stories in which a writer is not pretending to be someone else. We are very different in that.

But otherwise, a gem of a friendship. We’ve been laughing together for fifty-seven years. (Photo from twelve years ago or so. I am wearing the same coat today.)

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