Ramble

Change is in the air, along with a certain amount of snow, which descends over eastern Gloucestershire nightly. The stuff begins melting around midday, gets replenished in the wee hours, and the white beat goes on. As for the change, that involves me. I am no longer convinced of my imminent death by freezing and reasonably certain that if I do finally skid out of control on the black ice that covers every road in the village of Todenham, well someone would find me. It's not that I am a stranger here. Which is gratifying. Every few months of this year I have dipped my quadriplegic toe in village life and am a better man for it. In fact, I feel positively rural.

As for the change, well watch me slalom down the icy drive that leads from my cousin's front door to the road. I am actually steering for the ice. There's plenty of gravel on either side of it, and if I shoot out of control, the rocks will stop me. Besides, I am descending with Caroline and her daughter Alexandra, and the presence of one doctor and one strapping youth gives me reassurance. I slip right down the middle of the ice sheet and proudly lead us on our village mission.

Caroline is dropping off Christmas cards. It's a personal touch, and I don't even question why she hasn't handed these cards over to Her Majesty's Post. But she hasn't. And, one by one, we approach the front doors, gates, and walkways of the good people of Todenham. My cousin is without doubt the most naturally extroverted person I know. By her own account she has 'no inner world' -- hers is the outer one. And this is certainly part of it, for after less than a decade in this village, she literally knows everyone, or at least, knows about everyone. Providing an endless and utterly fascinating store of anecdotes about locals, which add up to a portrait of rural and enclosed life in 21st-century Britain.

What encloses Todenham involves geography, economics, history and other forces invisible to an American. The place is in a small valley, which naturally conveys a certain coziness. It is just far enough from the market town of Moreton in Marsh to make the town stand on its own. And according to Caroline, one should not be fooled by the absence of businesses. The village's lone retail establishment is a pub, of course. Behind the scenes, and behind the back of the Inland Revenue, there is a brisk bartering of goods, particularly food. This is a farm village, and something is being harvested or planted year-round. One of the locals bakes bread and sells it out of the back of her car. Pushing 80, she lives with her eccentric and unmarried son who spends most of his time driving a tractor. Kneading dough, she says, keeps her fingernails clean. Always good to know, when you're eyeing her wheaty brown loaves.

As for history, to an American it's a powerful unseen force. On the surface, the village has the look of utter authenticity. Things are old, mossy, and occasionally decayed. There is no access to the village church for anyone in a wheelchair, EU regulations be damned. But just under the surface, things are implausibly modern. The IT director for Lufthansa Airlines lives in the village. At the other end of the socioeconomic spectrum, some of the homes in Cotswold yellow stone are actually Council, that is to say, public, housing.

Caroline climbs a snowy bank to deposit a Christmas card in the mail slot built into the stone wall of an impressive home. She doesn't like these people and mutters under her breath as we continue on the road. The owner, it seems, is in earshot, standing in his tractor pen. He wears rubber boots and easily passes for a farmer. Which, Caroline assures me, he isn't, having purchased his stone house for £4.5 million, roughly $7.5 million...what you get for being a corporate attorney these days in the City of London...and the man is buying houses for his offspring. All harmless expressions of wealth, it seems to me, but Caroline says he's ostentatious, and her judgment seems much more amusing.

A car pulls up and Rupert emerges. He has the look of someone who is internally disheveled. Perhaps he has been brushed on one side of his body, the other half forgotten. Clutching a package, he manages a wan smile. It emerges that Rupert, a towering figure in a winter coat, has had leukemia for three years. He is sloughing off the latest round of chemotherapy, in his account, and feeling better daily. Caroline wishes him well, and we leave him with a Christmas card, another day of life and whatever invisible wins and losses come to any man. Rolling up the hill, it seems to me that everyone has cancer. Todenham is leveling off now, the road widening, a terrace of houses on one side, the village church, manor house and pub on the other.

The Farrier's Arms has been much on my mind, and after sticking cards in a couple of additional mail slots, Caroline is easily persuaded to enter. Her daughter, Alexandra, has caught up with us, arriving in time to help me maneuver my wheelchair up an icy stone ramp and into the pub. Inside, the fire crackles, mulled wine beckons and the menu on the blackboard seems worthy of hours of study. The place is empty. I stare out the window. A horde of kids is approaching. They head right up Todenham's main street, only street, toward the pub.

'Ramblers,' says the barmaid. She opens the door as though for a dog, eyes downcast, and mutters a familiar sounding order that kids must be accompanied by one adult for every five, sit in the back room and wait for their food. Sure enough, the parents follow. Who knows where they have been rambling from or are rambling to, but the whole thing is clearly prearranged. In a country that is no longer wild, walking from village to village provides a marked contrast to crowded city life. I hope the kids have a good lunch. I'm going for the vegetarian cannelloni.

So this is Christmas, and what have you done? The song comes to me late at night. Tomorrow promises to be a wholly secular, Jewish Christmas. All fun, no obligations. I have ordered books, pre-wrapped from Amazon UK.com. No sweat. What is missing? Only that at 63 years of age, I am a visitor at someone else's ritual. Which is fine. But I am an elder now. It is time to preside, and that is the word, at my own rituals. In my own home.

Travel, writes a columnist in The Guardian, is the new opiate of the masses. Surely this is true. And I am quite an opiate consumer. Scurrying about the globe, The Guardian guide points out, undermines community and a sense of place. But both things have been shaken to the core this year. I have needed the travel opiate. And there is nothing drug-like in the time I spend with UK friends and family. Still, I long to return to a stable life in one place. Grounded, as they say. At last coming to a rest in one place where the downward force of life won't obliterate me. Lying down beside death. And ready for action.