Jane says it is a Northumberland day.  I know what she means.  We are in the small park across from Peet's.  All of us.  Two dogs, two recently transported cappuccinos, one scone, one bran muffin.  In short, life is good.  And the breeze from Northumbria?  It is warm enough to be pleasant, cool enough to be stimulating, and above all, moving.  Like the maritime weather churning off the North Sea, the Peninsula air is restless.  We are planning our day. Read more [...]

It is the mystery of the stones.  Like all mysteries, it has several layers and fuzzy boundaries.  And right at this moment the boundary, fuzzy or not, is everything.  For that was the purpose of these stones.  For the Romans, this was it, their northern boundary.  From here on out, abandon hope.  Give up on sub-floor heating, olive oil or mosaics.  Expect to rub shoulders with Picts who were still dressing in skins and hadn't even heard of the Kilt Factory.  Read more [...]

Did I see him in the airport lounge?  Going through security?  Or did we bump into each other in the boarding queue?  Whatever the encounter, he must have offered to help me in some way...and doubtless I declined...and now here we were, Jane and I, in the final moments before the 12 sedentary hours separating Heathrow from San Francisco, waiting outside the aircraft door for whichever ground crew was going to stash my wheelchair in the hold.  And this man walked by.  Tall, Read more [...]

Where was I headed on that particular day?  A government office?  A medical appointment?  Or even one of my rare job interviews?  I could not have been anticipating much reward at the end of my schlep through Soho.  Yet in 1971, I was still walking everywhere, the wheelchair two decades away.  London's maze of narrow streets and theaters and pubs and restaurants was not the ultra-pricey place it is today.  In fact, the district had some authentically seedy and risqué Read more [...]