An English Wedding 5: Yet More Postcards

It rained during the night. Boughs bow in the colorless light, the flagstones and rock walls are damp and the lawn glows that brilliant, peculiarly English, green. It is our last day at New Cottage and this is a lovely morning. There is, as usual, too much left in the...

An English Wedding 4: Days of Wine and Romance

Nüvi: “In 0.6 miles turn right on road.” Nüvi: “In 1.3 miles turn left on road.” Left to our own devices, we would never have headed down an unnamed macadam track even if we thought that Kelmscott Manor was somewhere in that general direction. Left to a GPS device, we...

An English Wedding 3: Attar of Roses

Blenheim Castle is a much slicker operation than the last time I was there, and  much more costly. It would be.  I haven’t been there since 1975. From New Cottage, Blenheim is a hop, skip and jump down Woodstock Road. My Dear One had never been; this was my...

An English Wedding 2: Settling In

It takes a day or two to settle in. Saturday afternoon, jet-lagged and disoriented, we set out in search of food. A map kindly provided by our host located essential resources in the area and Sainsbury’s seemed like the best choice for basic shopping. We fed the...

An English Wedding 1: Toast and Tea

Outside the little flagstoned-floor solarium in this thatched cottage, one of three surviving buildings of the catastrophic fire of 1793, the last of the freesias and dahlias and hollyhocks sway under soft clouds and glimpses of pale blue sky. It is quiet. I hear to...

I Got to See the Ponies

I love horses. I always have. I was a typically horse-crazy girl, collecting china figurines, assembling the stable of my dreams on note cards (drawing on one side, statistics on the other), reading everything published by Walter Farley and Marguerite Henry as well as...