[/caption]Thursday, August 10, 1989
Disley, Cheshire, England
I'm beginning to shake off the last of my jetlag (finally!). I could have slept for another two hours this morning, but Frances woke me bright and early for tea. She wants to feed me more, but in the summer my appetite isn't good, plus we Americans seldom eat a hearty breakfast like our English cousins do!
It was a bright morning, and we generally had a sunny day with huge, billowy clouds drifting across the sky, their shadows trailing on the hillsides. Frances and I took a morning walk around the neighborhood; we were able to view an "aspect" of Lyme Park. [Lyme Park was used in the BBC's adaption of Pride and Prejudice as Darcy's family seat. I can just see Colin Firth stripping off his jacket now ...] I noticed an ancient fortress on a distant hillside. Frances thought it was a place where ancient warriors locked up prisoners.
We returned to the house. At 11:30, William and Margaret arrived to take us to a pub lunch. We drove through some of the Peak District in Derbyshire. Margaret pointed out the heather for me ... huge amounts covered whole hillsides -- pretty! The countryside is covered with dry stone walls ... some of the roads we drove on were lined with them. We stopped at the Lantern Pike Inn, a pub in Hayfield that William and Margaret had picked out the day before. It was a typical English pub, dark with a few sour-faced Englishmen sitting in a corner downing pints. I had fish & chips with a half pint of Guinness.
Before we went into the pub, William had some fun parking his car. The man who lives behind the pub was shouting out to him, "Are you parking a bus?" Margaret, Frances, and I thought it was funny, but I think William was offended. On our way back to Disley, William got lost, which furthered his bad mood. I wanted to pick some heather, but didn't press it. Back at Frances's place, I wrote up some postcards, then we watched tv (or the "telly" as they call it here). Frances brought out some old family pictures. She had a lot of Margaret and William's children: Ruth*, Catherine, and Jared. Frances told me of her holidays abroad, trips to beaches in Spain.
*Ruth tracked me down a couple years ago, and knock wood, this fall I hope to meet up with her when I'm in England!
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