supplicium post mortem

Kids!  Writing from a public pc at the Shepperton Public Library. Gives new appreciation for NSFW, ha ha. I don’t really dare to twitter lest I scare off the OAPs hunt-and-pecking next to me. I apparently have 45 minutes left. There are many good things about Englandland, but first gripes:

1. The internets are locked up over here. I found one cafe near Covent Garden with free wifi, but nothing else. Here in the suburbs, they look at you like you’re speaking Greek when you ask about it. When you open up your laptop somewhere to see if you can mooch off anyone’s wifi, you find that everyone has wireless, but it’s all locked up. This would surely be so that your neighbor in Surrey doesn’t…hack into your pc? It’s just not like this where I come from, even in rural US. So I’ve had interwebs withdrawal.
2. This keyboard has a foreign layout, starting with the @ key which is not above the 3. Slows typing down, reducing efficiency of 60 minutes pre-booked (yesterday) free library time.

OK, some good things about Englandland:

1. Gardens. Everyone has beautiful front gardens, even on the most unprepossessing street. It smells like roses here.
2. Footpaths. We just don’t have this in the US, the ability to walk freely through countryside. Like UK internets, a lot of land in the US is locked up under private ownership. Here you can be right by a motorway, even hearing it, and still be walking down a tree-covered footpath, smelling nature. I miss my dogs!
3. Jam donuts. Even gourmet expat places in the US don’t do them like Englandland, and certainly not as simply, ubiquitously, and economically.
4. LUSH. Less expensive than home, and newer products we don’t have.
5. Roundabouts. Why don’t we have more of these at home instead of the awful blight of stop signs and unnecessary traffic lights? Traffic just flows better with them.
6. M&S sandwich container design – you zip it open and it lies flat like a little tray.
7. Theater ticket prices. I saw Oliver with Rowan Atkinson on Wednesday. Cast of hundreds. Fun. I’m glad I saw him do the role, but to be honest, I was slightly bored by his shtick in places.

the local pub

In other news, I’m driving on the left & shifting with my left hand, successfully so far. Yesterday I had a terrific time walking around Windsor & Eton with @adelehaze. Tonight, off to Somerset for a family weekend, which will hopefully not be too suffocating & hopefully include some walking in Dartmoor.

Because I managed to get this library slot, I posted wildcards for Flash Fiction Friday. Sorry I didn’t get to take words from other people this week – not possible logistically. I’m going to try to post my entry from my mother-in-law’s dialup, if it still works.

I’m trying to find things to enjoy here, and I did enjoy my afternoon in Windsor yesterday. Otherwise, though, I have been disappointed to discover that the world over here is just as empty as the world at home. And, amazingly, M is not here. He wasn’t waiting for me at the airport. He wasn’t that guy who looked like him from behind on the Hungerford Footbridge. And I don’t think he’s going to be waiting for me at his mother’s house.

Seeing Oliver was the kind of thing he would have taken casey to do. During other trips (and sometimes for other trips), he took casey to the revival of Another Country, His Dark Materials (all one day), and The Secret Garden. So, even though we had no appetite for anything (including breakfast, which literally was like dust – those psalm writers knew what they were saying), TL went and bought tickets (in the center, row E) so casey could see everything up close like she likes to. Also, this was a nostalgic experience since I’ve been in the show four times in my life, plus my first novel featured it heavily. To me it represents the joy of children’s theater, pure playing, and (since my first boyfriend played Oliver) the pure niceness & excitement of first romantic affections. So when the overture started, I teared up. However, I got over this and enjoyed the first half.

At the interval in England, people come into the auditorium and sell you little ice-creams. So we queued up and bought casey an ice-cream because that is what you do in England, and it’s what RP always did. She didn’t feel like it, but we got it anyway, not even begrudging the £3.20 price, because RP always bought it for her, and we thought she should have it.

So there we were, in the middle of a crowded, lit matinee auditorium, eating vanilla ice-cream with the little plastic spoon, and casey was so in (where are the quotation marks on this keyboard?), meaning so fully present in me, and it was like RP really had bought her the ice-cream, except he hadn’t, or had he, from the grave? We’d bought it with the £5 note that was in his wallet when he died. And then she/I/we… my hands were trembling like they did the day he died, and I felt nauseous, and tears were streaming down my face though I was trying as hard as possible not to break into full-scale sobbing in public. Casey couldn’t finish the ice-cream. We threw half of it away. People sort of understand grief, I think, but I’m not sure how many people can grasp having an attack of grief through different parts of your personality.

After the show, we roamed around London for a long time, and eventually made it back to the footbridge by the Embankment. Walking down that big street that leads to it, mostly empty, we had to sit down on a bench and sob – because the world here, the world everywhere, was empty without him. Other people seemed perfectly able to enjoy it, but I just couldn’t. Can’t. In Wuthering Heights, Cathy says (melodramatically) that without Heathcliff, the universe would be a mighty stranger. With me, it’s the other way around: I’m the one who has become the mighty stranger.

Still – unfortunately – we breathe in and out.

And still – fortunately – England is beautiful and full of roses in June, daylight lasts until past 10pm, there are good and nice people into tgi here and elsewhere, and jam donuts can be bought in the shops. So…