Tell Me Where the Rose Is Sown
A 4 pm flight means there's time for a lil sidetrip
or two before going to Heathrow
25 July 2000: Tell
Me Where the Rose Is
SownI
got up early enough to finish my packing and then sit around and read the paper.
The Telegraph is a right-wing paper that made my blood boil. Arrrrrgh! I
composed an angry letter that I never wound up sending, where once again
pensioners equate gay rights and age of consent laws with paedophila. Why not
dust off the old chestnut that Jews are making matzoh from christian
blood?B and B took me to the Garden of
the Rose, in Chiswell Green in Watford. It has quite a variety of roses. Big,
small, many colors; some roses were bichromatic. B and I commented on many of
them, and she said, "You like the small ones, don't you?" I guess I was
commenting on them because I'd never seen small roses
before.We sat down for a beverage before
going to the airport bus. While I was in the loo, B&B wondered whether to
two women dressed almost identically near us were twins or mother-daughter. I
thought the latter. They had very gaudy hair and nails, a la Lawn Guylanders.
Greedy fat finches landed right on the tables where we sat, hoping for some
vital pastry crumbs. The gift shop was perfect. It provided me with a good gift
for my catsitter, U--a statuette of a black cat. U lost her own cat, Tara, last
year.B
and B waited with me for the 724 Green Bus to Heathrow. It showed up on schedule
and off I was. The driver was clearly inexperienced. Every curve and red light
he ran made me wonder if I'd survive the trip to the airport. I almost lost the
cheese and pickle sandwich B made me when he lurched the bus into a residential
area during a construction-mandated
diversion.But I made it to Heathrow. I
ran into WH Smith for a bottle of water, and I got postcards of Prince William
(one for me, one for J at work; she has a weakness for "boys" that I don't). I
also got my Dad a postcard of the Concorde, not knowing that at about that time
one had just crashed outside Paris.There
was a really long queue at the check-in counter at Virgin. A pushy American
couple were in my airspace the entire time. I really wanted to ask them if they
were considering dating me, since they seemed to be halfway into my
hindquarters, but I held my tongue. Five days in Britain and I get a lot more
polite. I did what all good travellers do at Heathrow--I bought chocolate for
the folks back home. The flight was uneventful, and because Virgin provides
personalized in-seat video monitors, it went
quickly.Meanwhile, New York provided the
usual bad welcome home, in the form of a very long bus ride, three times longer
than it should have been. The driver didn't discover the on switch for the air
conditioning until halfway through the trip. But all told I got home okay. U was
with the cats, Nero and Diana, when I got home. They missed me. They acted like
velcro once we were alone.
Posted: Tue - July 25, 2000 at 01:53 AM