Oh, to be in England, now that April's there (or May in this case)

Those were the wishful words of Robert Browning 150 years ago in "Home Thoughts From Abroad". We missed being in England in April, but only by a few hours as it turned out.

We landed at London's Heathrow airport shortly after 11:00 AM on May 1st, having spent the night of April 30th trying to fall asleep with nearly 250 of our closest friends aboard a Delta airlines 767-400ER. After taking off from Detroit at 10:30 PM and climbing to 35,000 feet, the crew felt obligated to serve dinner. Why I'm not sure, but shortly after midnight they rolled out the carts of chicken and pasta until all 246 passengers had been duly and properly fed. Around 1:00 AM they turned down the cabin lights for some much needed sleep but by now we were well over the Atlantic hurtling eastward traversing more than 500 miles each hour and sometime shortly after 3:00 AM (still on our body's Michigan time clock) the sun rose over the Atlantic and it was officially morning. Dutiful Delta then felt obligated to turn on the cabin lights once more and serve breakfast, so out shuttled the food carts yet again until everyone had been awakened and served a second time in little more three hours.

Now it strikes me as odd that Delta felt the need to serve both a midnight dinner and a 4:00 AM breakfast when I've often flown for five or six hours in the US and never been served anything more than a bag of peanuts- but such are the necessities of catering to the international travel crowd I presume.

Food carts properly stowed once more we prepared for landing shortly before 6:00 AM (Michigan time) 11:00 AM in London. After a pleasant pass through customs we were shuttled to Avis, where an enterprising employee generously offered to upgrade us from a $20 per day manual transmission, to a $70 per day automatic transmission. We declined and offered a silent prayer of thanksgiving that we knew how to operate a clutch- even if we were forced to shift with our left hand!

Now a word about British roads and driving. Getting out of Heathrow and onto the M40 was a simple enough matter of listening to the voice instructions of the TomTom "satnav" (as the British call them) and following the bus or lorrie ahead. But getting off the highway and onto the smaller English roads was an eye-opening (and heart-stopping) experience.

Cartography sounds like a British word as I turn it over on my tongue; something every English schoolboy should study. "I got a B on my cartography test today, mummy." But the word "maps" would suggest an intentional grid of horizontal and vertical lines, intersecting at regularly spaced intervals- at least in the modern world. Not so in the UK where road maps look like a bowl of overcooked spaghetti spilled willy nilly onto a warm, well-oiled platter. One has absolutely no idea whether they're traveling east or south at any given moment as the road follows the terrain, aimlessly wandering about the countryside. And as an added benefit, the pathway offers absolutely no shoulder on either side- just May mud.

Did I mention the British frugality? There's no sense in paving two full lanes of roadway when one can only drive a single vehicle at a time- which makes passing oncoming vehicles rather like jousting on horseback with each motorist charging pell mell down the narrow lane and daring the other to give way or be knocked from his horse's back and onto his rump in a nearby sheep pasture.

I find driving from the right seat on the left side of the "road" to be a bit like trying to write upside down while looking in a mirror after several glasses of wine. It was simply never meant to be done. Not at all.

I was shocked to discover how nearly fifty years of driving experience gives one an innate sense of where the perimeter of the car is located. Somehow all that changes completely when you sit on the right and drive on the left. Suddenly I had no more idea where the left edge of my vehicle was located than a locomotive engineer can see his caboose more than a mile behind him. After repeatedly scraping the left tires on curbs I settled on a plan to continuously scan both side mirrors watching the roadway's edge behind me to make sure I was somewhere near the middle of my lane- a tireless, thankless task but an essential one nonetheless.

So here you are driving randomly around continuously curving single lane cart paths with no shoulder to pull onto as oncoming jousters shuttle toward you at 70 kilometers per hour, their car well centered in the roadway as they dare you to give way or be dismounted from your diesel-fueled steed. Jane alternately shrieked with laughter at my profanity-laced monologue, and screamed in terror at the trees and dry-stack stone walls hurtling past within inches of her left-side passenger window.

Arriving at our cottage was like returning from 2 years aboard the international space station and one was tempted to spill from the vehicle jelly-kneed and kiss the ground. But of course this wasn't a good idea as one would be run over by an assortment of lorries and dodgy old Land Rover's jousting on the very path one contemplated kissing! I didn't travel more than 4000 miles to become English roadkill-- a hapless hare run over by a petrol truck on a 10-foot wide village lane.

For what it's worth, here's the view out our bedroom window this morning.

I'll post photos soon and share more of our story but it's morning here in the UK, though my body's a bit confused by it all still. It's down to the hob for some tea and buttered eggs in the conservatory and then off for a day of sightseeing and motorized jousting with the locals.