A Sorta Fairytale

Michael and Miranda crisscrossed the interstates together in her small gray car, from mountain valley to plain, the wind always rushing through the open window, the bike rack rattling.

The open road seemed to go on forever, her hand resting on his neck, his gently brushing her leg.

Like the song, it was a sorta fairytale. They could stop and start and pick back up whenever they felt like it. They could love and fall out and love again. They were constantly in each other's thoughts. They endured the miles. They lived for the next meeting. They lived for a day that never came.

The silver lining was elastic but it never snapped. Then one day Michael crossed a line. The bubble broke. Shattered car parts clattered across the road. Her final words were flat and cold. Words like rusty old car parts on the grass verge that had lost their meaning.

When Michael looked back down the highway it was empty, the road trips were a distant memory. Then he thought of the lyrics of the song.

"And I'm so sad
Like a good book
I can't put this day back
A sorta fairytale with you.."

Passion in the Garden - Vita Sackville-West and Sissinghurst Castle

On my recent trip to England, I was glad to have made the trip to Sissinghurt Castle in Kent, because the notion of the place has always fired my half-realized imagination.

The idea of Sissinghurst provided a dimly-lit corridor to a half-forgotten but glamorous past. To the Roaring Twenties, the age of art deco and The Great Gatsy, when America was a place to aspire to and Britain saw a flowing of culture and art; albeit with one foot still stained with the blood of the trenches.

However, to experience Sissinghurst Castle is all about layering. To my parents, who had never heard of Vita Sackville-West, Sissinghurst was another garden owned by the National Trust and a tall tower. They had been before and declared themselves disappointed. However, they had forgotten about their previous visit by the time I suggested a day out.

To my kids and my nephews, Sissinghurst castle was a great place to play hide and seek and to turn their nose up at the strange food in the restaurant.

However, for me visiting Sissinghurst was about experiencing something else, although I was woefully ignorant about Vita and her husband Harold Nicholson, I was captivated by the idea of change and the way they conjured beauty from an abject ruin.

Sissinghurst was once a Saxon pig farm. In the 1700s, up to 3,000 French prisoners captured in the Seven Years War were imprisoned here. The conditions were vile and inhumane with poor food, stinking sanitation, and rife disease in the cells.

When the poet and novelist Vita Sackville-West and her husband Harold Nicholson purchased Sissinghurst in the 1930s, it was in a shabby condition and the fields around were used to grow cereal crops, the National Trust notes.

The garden they created at Sissinghurst became famous for its enclosures linked by vistas, and its harmony of color.

Sissinghurst contains the Cottage Garden, the Herb Garden, the Rose Garden and the White Garden, with its brick paths, geometric compartments, and foliage of abundant white and silver lilies, tulips, roses, lilacs, and dahlias.

Its iconic tower is stacked high with books and further down the garden, a small but alluring outbuilding contains a typewriter with a window opening up onto a sweep of the moat chocked with lily pads.

Vita the accomplished gardener is, of course, only half of the Sissinghurt story. Vita was the only daughter of the Hon. Lionel Sackville West and his illegitimate Spanish wife, Victoria and a Latin passion beat behind her fine English exterior.

Vita is remembered for her sexuality and many affairs, most famously with the novelist Virgina Woolf. Vita was the muse for Woolf's revolutionary novel Orlando which circumvented the censorship rules in early 20th Century Britain, a place where homosexuality was not just frowned on but criminalized.

Vita was more than an author and a gardener. She wrote to an American penfriend. "As dusk falls, I come in and write the book I am trying to write ... and then I really feel myself in my tower, shut away. I become an author again and I am happy. But that is not the whole story."

Vita wrote of her love for Virginia Woolf in letters to her husband, who was also homosexual.

In one letter she wrote: "Dined with Virginia at Richmond. She is as delicious as ever. How right she is when she says that love makes anyone a bore, but the excitement of life lies in "the little moves" nearer to people. But perhaps she feels this because she is an experimentalist in humanity, and has no grande passion in her life."

Sissinghurst was gifted to the National Trust in 1967, the year of my birth. Today it feels preserved in a cozy timewarp like many other National Trust places. The genteel elderly men and women who monitor the visitors to the tower would as likely talk about homosexual love as they would cannibalism on Easter Island in 1534.

The gardens are a model of geometrical perfection. To walk down the brick paths and to smell the blossoms is to walk a scented path back to childhood. I visited so many of these places and the sun always shines. There is nothing wrong and jarring with the world. When we get thirsty we go to the tea room, when we get confounded, we head into a maze. There were never prisoners here, just the long and lazy acres of the rolling Kent countryside on a sun-kissed afternoon in England.

Missing that British Service Culture - Not So Much

I was back in Britain earlier this month. I wasn't sure if I'd recognize Britain post-Brexit and all that. This time, I was happy to be able to travel there with the kids but was wondering how more Americanized me would cope.

I'm not saying I've got to the stage of referring to trainers as sneakers and wearing white ones. But nor do I say trainers much anymore because people Stateside give me a funny look and can't work out why I'd be wearing a personal trainer.

Although I still found some people here who were jealous about the notion of traveling to the Old Country, others shuddered at the thought of flying to London, imagining it to be in the grips of a Syrian-style Islamic war.

We flew on Virgin for the first time and it was a rather delightful experience. The hostesses smiled sweetly when they talked about tea. It was everything we Americans expect from Harry Potter land.

The immigration staff were jocular, unlike their American counterparts who are usually reaching for the plastic glove at the first hint of a shifty look.

Even the car rental place was easy to deal with this time. We are not going to mention my confusion at finding three pedals rather than two and having to ask a surly Croatian how to start my tiny rental car.

However, it started to unravel a bit on the M25. Not only was the traffic even worse than I remembered it, but those lost hours started to catch up with me and I found myself nodding off at the wheel.

In the end, I was forced to pull off at one of those hellish places called a Motorway Service Station. When it comes to motorway facilities, the United Kingdom seems to have stood still. There were no new facilities and the ones that remained were as grubby and unedifying as ever.

We stumbled half asleep into a Costa, which is like a pedestrian Brit version of Starbucks. I asked for an Americano. The acne-ridden guy behind the counter who looked like he's been on a youth training program since 1988, looked at me blankly and said "wot."

I repeated my request. He said "wot" again.

It was a shock to realize he couldn't understand my pseudo-American accident. After much pointing and grunting, I made myself understood.

Not that this was the end of the ordeal. A piece of paper went down the production line to a lady who was clearing out a coffee filter in slow motion. No amount of throat clearing was going to speed her up. She was enviably oblivious to all around her as she filled up the cups with an agonizing lethargy. At this point, the urge to become all American and start yelling came over me. I resisted.

I propped up the counter for about 15 minutes as she shunted to my order. Then she suddenly went off on a break and I was faced with acne boy.

"Wot do you order.?"

"Oh dear God."

We finally supped our insipid coffee and over sweet Bakewell tart as I realized how much I didn't miss the British service culture.

Up On the Blue Ridge of Virginia

For weeks the idea of losing myself in the wilderness had become more and more appealing. I'd disappear for a weekend of solitude away on the Blue Ridge. I'd set up camp and wake to the sweeping vistas, birdsong and meadows of wild flowers.

Of course, when you tell people you are going camping alone, you get strange looks. Folks inform you, you will almost certainly fall off the trail and your body will never be found. If you survive the fall you will get eaten by bears. Or you will sustain a deadly snake bite in a place where nobody can hear you scream.

Even if these fanciful notions don't come to pass, people will tell you lone camping is plain weird. Kids will see you emerging from your tent and tug at their parents' shirts to warn them of the weirdo who has just emerged to steal their Lego.

Anyhow, I defined the naysayers and headed off alone to the Shenandoah National Park, home of numerous bird species and the elusive black bear.

The plan was to get to Big Meadows camp ground by 12 to bag a camping spot. In the event, I became embroiled in a circular argument with Siri in Charlottesville and arrived an hour late. In the age of modern communications, you clearly don't need a partner to have a navigational argument.

By the time I drove to the camp ground there was a sign up saying it was full and a trail of scruffy Australian tourists waiting for the next spot to become available at midnight.

I thought 'screw it' and hit the trail. At the Pinnacles Picnic Ground, I loaded up with Cliff bars and water and hit the alluring Appalachian Trail. There are few things more fulfilling than starting off on an open trail with sweeping views east and west on a clear blue day when most of the summer heat has been left behind in Tidewater.

The first person I met was a girl in her 20s who had been walking the trail for months alone from Georgia. This put all those warnings about the dangers of one night in the wilderness into perspective.

However, for much of the day, I was alone with my thoughts. The blue ridge was as blue as ever and the views from Mary's Rock were dazzling in all directions. Even the slog back to the parking lot which was a much more consistent climb than I remembered put me in a pleasant late afternoon haze.

I found a motel in the Shenandoah Valley, an unthreatening place of floral bed spread and bear prints that might have been designed by one's Scottish aunt.

I drove through some of those places we had visited on family holidays years ago. When I saw the signs for the caves, I had fleeting thoughts that the kids might like it here. But all in all, I felt placid and wonderfully lost in the sweep of the mountains.

I went back for more the next day.

Disintegration of an Ordinary Ranch House

I hadn't realized how visceral and final it would feel,
The everyday items on the floor, the draws hanging loose,
The bicycle ornaments on their side, wrapped in wire.
In the last few days, I had stopped to breathe the morning
To feel the rain heavy and verdant on the luxuriant grass.
But the house felt solid - a reassuring barrier against the elements.
We had felt that way too, as if an embrace could stop the world moving around us
As if our skin on skin could halt the storm and protect us from the sky.

There were no storm clouds when I came apart
No horizontal rain or driving squalls
The sun beat down on a lazy Sunday
The chickens moved sluggishly across the coup
The cats twitched and stretched on the hot concrete.
And something dark and sickening slid below
A realization that this time it would never be the same.

This sudden disorder was a shock
But I asked myself why;
Picturing the many moves, the slow closing of doors, the day-to-day drift
Perhaps it was a mirage too - the train across the road a mere specter in the night
The low voices in the early hours already drifting out of memory
The sense of belonging, as flimsy as the dandelion clock that counts the degrading hours.

This house was nothing more than ordinary
Another ranch house on a suburban street
Where families come and go and nobody recalls,
And yet as I watched it being torn apart
Its entrails scattered to the west wind
A nagging thought wormed its way into my fevered brain
This ordinary ranch house was the closest thing to home.

At Fairy Stone Park - Alone By the Lake

It has been a long time since I last wrote a blog post. As the time between posts stretches out, it gets harder and harder to get back on track. You get to the point when you almost forget you have a blog.

Of course, there's no better day than April 1 to write a new post. You can fool yourself you've never been away. It's also the first day of the A-Z challenge. It's odd to think that just a year ago I could blog every day for 26 days. A year, later I feel I'd be lucky to write one post a month. Suddenly, I know how it must feel to be old and decrepit and to look through the thick glass and see kids riding their bicycles and to think 'one day many moons ago I could do that."

The comparison isn;t accurate. I could do it if I want to. It just seems a year later that I have too many things going on. There's too much stimulation and the brain flits around.

Sometimes when I'm out in nature with the kids and we're on our mobile devices I wonder how it came to this. The beauty around us is lost. A bull elephant could break out of the bushes and charge toward us and we would not notice.

Perhaps we don't realize who we've become until it's taken away. Last weekend I went to Fairy Stone State Park with my beloved. We stayed in one of the original cabins build during the New Deal which is becoming rather an old deal now. Our cabin was the only one with brightly striped vertical beams. The others had horizontal beams which led me to conclude they built ours first, an angry foreman showed up and yelled at the workers for putting the beams the wrong way, and they built the others properly.

The state park cabins are somewhat utilitarian. The furniture is not really made for sitting on, the kitchens are small and there's no TV or Internet connection. I'm not sure at what point the enormity of this set in; probably when I tried to go on Facebook two seconds after arriving.

Slowly it dawned on us that we were cut off from the outside world. We were alone by the lake with the high wooded hills. The White House could burn down and Russia could invade and we wouldn't know about it, although that seems to have happened anyway.

On the first day, we walked down the lakeside path to the dam. There was a verdant tranquility down by the edge of the lake punctuated only by the voices of thousands of frogs.

Later that night I watched the waters of the lake turn silver as the darkness crept over the hills. We took a walk later and gasped at the size of the stars and the brightness of the shimmering canopy over the trees.

The next day we hit the trail up the hills to a view over the Appalachians and a small waterfall in a glade. Back in the cabin, we leafed through the comments book. I'm used to such books in Britain that describe a lovely stay and make passing reference to the weather. At Fairy Stone, I was amazed at how many people spilled out their innards in the volumes, detailing dead relatives, fights against cancer, the loss of pets and how the mountains restored their faith in God. One entry described how a couple had been to our cabin on their honeymoon and returned on their anniversary 20 years later.. The account made me uneasy and I had to double check the bed sheets.

That afternoon the rain set in and we read for most of the afternoon, drank beer and prepared food. I didn't miss the relentless buzz of news feeds and emails, the likes on pictures, the texts and constant affronts to my sensibilities of Trumpism. A few hours later the lake was bathed in an evening mist. I walked the shore, breathed the air heavy with the fungus tipped aroma of mud and rain. It was a Sunday and all the other cottages were empty. The vastness settled on me.

We were alone by the lake. We were adrift in the shallows. I found myself liking the feeling.

Teenage Growing Pains and Llangorse Lake

Lately, I've been thinking rather a lot about my teen years. I have an (almost) teen so I should be in a good position to give her lots of advice. After all, I used to be one. The trouble is, it seems rather a long time ago.

It's not that I'm old and set in my ways, but often I think I'm set in something. My kid used to be the center of my world. We were constant companions, always going places and doing things and always in good spirits. Or maybe that's another example of memory lapse.

Llangorse Lake

Still, today out relations revolve around the custody arrangement. When we see each other, it's after large chunks of bewildering time have passed. We catch up but what happened in the interim is a mysterious land at a place I used to live but not really.

Then there's the many electronic devices and the long periods when she remains in her room. In some ways, her brother has now taken over, so it's good to have a second chance at being a dad now and again.

I'm not sure if I have much to impart. Being a teen entailed a lot of angst. But looking back there were some oddly fun times.

I think fondly now of the school trip to Llangorse Lake in Wales, even though it was an unmitigated disaster by most accounts. In retrospect, I realize, my school was somewhat daring with field trips. We went away and camped and sent kids up mountains. I'm sure trips like this would be banned by the risk management people today

By the time we went to Llangorse Lake at the foot of the Brecon Beacons, most of us were on the cusp of puberty. Some of us had slid down the other side. It didn't take long after setting up the tents to realize the cozy world we were familiar with was at an end.

I brought maggots for fishing. Many others had brought beer. RV, who we always assumed was not as bad as he really was, brought a crate of Newcastle Brown. We were 14. Trevor brought a four-pack of watery beer.

RV was later expelled from school and died when he jumped off a bridge drunk in Gloucester at the age of 18. Trevor died a couple of years ago when he had a fit. I still remember his long Mod parker and how we'd listen to The Specials' Ghost Town in his basement.

Pen Y Fan

His watery beer didn't do much for us. Elsewhere someone was drinking something stronger. Bev arrived in out tent and performed a partial strip tease. Her friend Deborah collapsed on the ground sheet in a coma. Even a tent full of horny teen boys saw the danger in this situation. Deb, who clearly was not going to strip, was ejected. She staggered into Mrs V's tent and promptly threw up all over her.

The episode had blown our cover and the witch hunt started Mrs. V, the elderly German teacher was unsuited for the Spanish inquisition role but was marginally more prepared than Mr. H, the music teachers, whose solution would be to drink ale with the teens until we fell over and he could hit on 15-year-old girls.

Mr H was later fired, only to be reincarnated as the President of the United States. I digress.


The next day Bev and Deb were captured and driven back home strapped to the child locks of Mrs. V's car. Before hitting the road, she stuck her head in my tent and attempted to sniff out the watery lager. I pled ignorance, having buried the last two cans by the lake. When she was away, I offloaded my maggots in her tent.

It was that sort of trip.

We also scaled Pen Y Fan in the mist. It was the closest I ever got to a teen high.

I have thought about how my experiences could be a 'teen learning' experience for my daughter. However; mostly I have decided not to go there.