As London sits atop thirty layered feet of its ancient past, Londoners are always digging up stuff—a handful of roman coins, a medieval dolmen, a Druid bog man. “Old” for the Brits is very different than old for us Yanks. So Jill and I were eager to do some serious London antiquing. On Friday, we made the pre-dawn flea market at Bermondsey, just south of the Thames, in the warehouse district—which includes the old leather-tanning district (where, yes, I found a street named “Tanner”). The market wasn’t large but it was interesting. I saw an indenture on sheepskin, dated 1656. I picked up a way-cool little book, published in 1821, titled “The Voyager’s Companion; or Shell Collector’s Pilot with Instructions and Directions where to find the finest Shells; also for preserving the skins of animals; and the Best Methods of Catching and Preserving Insects, &c, &c, &c.” It has a couple of hand-tinted illustrations.

The book seller asked me if I was going to Sunbury on Tuesday. Jill and I looked at each other in surprise. Sunbury? “Oh, yes,” he said. “You’ll have 700 antiques dealers there. Happens every fortnight.” I nearly swooned (not because he said “fortnight”). Jill had to prop me up. Where is this place? We made him repeat, then spell, the name three times. We were not going to miss out on London’s biggest antiques show. Tuesday morning we were up at 3:30 A.M. Now wary of British transit systems (see previous post), we did thorough research and learned that, a) at that hour, we could get to this distant suburb only by bus—actually 3 buses; b) the bus wouldn’t take us all the way; c) there would be some walking; and d) we should give ourselves at least two hours’ travel time. Jill drew a map and took copious notes.

At 6:30 A.M., as the gates of Kempton Race Track—the site of the show—opened, we were among the crowd, most of whom seemed to be antiques dealers themselves, which pleased us immeasurably because it meant we were in for the Real Thing. It was as large as any flea market we’ve been too—three buildings, three large parking lots. Mind you, this was exclusively antiques, not junk. So prices were mostly high. The Brit dealer shares a lot of similarities with the American dealer. They’re a scruffy, wily lot. Theirs is a world of chance and scramble. That makes them edgy. They are itinerant, traveling far and wide for the good find. More than a few look like they live in their vans. Some are charlatans, some are unfit for anything but self-employment. A lot of them are “characters,” like the near-toothless French woman selling jewelry, hoarsely calling her bargains to passersby. Generally, antique dealers give the impression that little stands between them and ruin.

The exception, of course, are dealers with chi-chi shops, those dark, low- ceilinged floor-creaky places that reek of furniture polish and pretension. Jill and I look at these like museums. We’d rather be in the fields and parking lots with the hard-scrabble gypsies. And so we were at Sunbury. Typical of an English summer, it was raining hard by 10:00, which made me pity the dealers but I figured they were used to it. An hour later, it was sunny. Jill and I showed remarkable restraint until I pointed out a way-cool impressionistic oil painting. She made me pull up AskArt.com on my smart phone for some quick research. Turns out the artist, a nineteenth-century Scot, is “listed.” So we brought home the painting swaddled in a towel, Jill carrying it onto the plane like a baby.

Before leaving London, we visited the Foundling Home museum, which was created in 1729 to take in London’s growing crowds of homeless children. Many single women gave up their children in order to work and, if lucky, get a new start on life. But these women left keepsakes with their children so that, years later, the children could locate their mothers. Or so the mothers hoped. Actually, the Foundling Home administrators collected all the keepsakes and the children never saw them. The museum exhibits several cases of these heartbreaking mementos.

Jill and I got in the habit of eating incredibly rich food for snacks and lunchtime sandwiches. A favorite was chicken liver pate and mushrooms, with some Irish cheddar on “brown bread,” followed by some raspberry-almond tarts. OMG! At our Baltimore Safeway, you can only buy raw chicken liver and it’s none too appetizing: purplish jelly-like organs in a plastic container. Jill became a fan of “cream tea,” which means you get not only the usual kettle of brain-stunning black tea but also a fist-sized heart-clogging scone with a double-rich butter spread called, ominously, “clotted cream.”

One afternoon, while strolling, we encountered a cat and took time to make his acquaintance. I said, “Too bad we don’t have anything to give him.” Jill said, “But we do!” She still had a pastry container with a leftover dollop of clotted cream. That’s how bad we were—there was always something in our bag, either a remnant of a heart-clutching goodie recently consumed or a sweet we’d soon consume with moans of eye-rolling pleasure and nods of confirmation that, my god, life is short and we should live like this every day.

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Wednesday, Jill and I took an excursion to Kelmscott Manor. That’s where William Morris—inventor of the Arts and Crafts movement–lived for a time with his gorgeous wife, Jane, and her sister, May, and painter Dante Gabriel Rosetti, who had an affair with Jane. She was Rosetti’s ideal model and appears in his most famous and sensual paintings. The Manor was built in 1570 by a prosperous sheep farmer. It’s not dark and low-ceilinged, as you might imagine. It’s actually quite bright and cheery inside, thanks to large windows on three sides of nearly every room. It sits only about an hour’s drive from London. But it took Jill and me seven hours to get there. That’s 1 X 7. Let me explain.

You can’t reach Kelmscott by public transportation. But you can get close. You have to take two trains and then a bus, which will drop you off three miles from the house. Then you’re supposed to call a taxi. All told, it should take about three hours. Jill and I started out at nine in the morning and were nearly out the door when she discovered that her Travel Card was missing. For half an hour we turned the apartment upside down. No luck. Never mind, I said, we’ll buy a new one. They’re not cheap—about $15 a day—but, hell, it’s only money.

We took the tube to Paddington Station but the lost-card delay made us too late for our express train. Which meant we had to wait an hour for the next. We were going to Swindon, west in Cotswolds country. The train express is great. We had a table between us. Jill read. I checked my email on my smart phone. The English countryside, looking as bright and bucolic as a Constable painting, passed under cotton-ball clouds and painter’s perfect blue. An hour and a half later, we were in Swindon, making great time. As the train stopped, we gathered our things. I saw someone leave the train through the rear door of our car. We walked to the nearer door. We were surprised–no, stunned–to discover there was no handle on the door. The green light above the door indicated that it was unlocked. But there was absolutely no way to open the door, except to break the glass and pull the emergency latch, which I wasn’t quite ready to do.

I pawed at the door, tried to pry it open, nearly ripping the nails from my fingers. Now I was panicked because this was an express train, which means they stop short and move fast. The door’s window was closed. But I could see the platform just one foot away. “Instructions!” I gasped to Jill. “There have to be instructions!” The door must be defective, I concluded. We bolted down the car for the other door. But it was the same: no handle. No way out. It was classic nightmare. There’s the platform, here’s your stop, but you can’t get out. Because the door has no handle.

Then, at last, we saw the instructions, in modest print to one side of the door, above some other information. To open the door on the express train, you have to pull down the window, reach outside, then yank on the door handle from the outside. I repeat: you have to reach OUTSIDE of the train and, like James Bond pulling a fast escape, grab the door handle and free yourself. There is no door handle on the INSIDE of an express train. Paranoia, anyone?

I opened the window, reached out, grabbed the handle, tried to push the door open. It wouldn’t budge. I saw a platform agent running toward me, shouting, “Hey!”. Oh, thank god, some help! I thought. Did the door slide open? Was I turning the handle the right way? At last the agent was at our door. She was a small woman with the flushed face of an over-exerted twelve-year-old. “No, no, no!” she scolded. “You can’t get out. It’s too late.”

“But this is our stop!” I protested through the open window.

“You’ve got to go to the next stop,” she commanded. “It’s too late.”

“The next stop?” I echoed, nearly woozy from surprise and dismay.

“The next stop!”

Then the train was off, the station agent waving her paddle in an official “You’re Off!” manner and looking relieved that I didn’t try to squeeze myself through the window.

I turned to Jill. She blinked at me and seemed unable to speak. I asked, “What’s the next stop?”

As if on cue, the conductor announced over the PA that the next stop would be Bristol—about 50 miles away, on the western shore of England. A few days previous we had been at Ramsgate, clear to the eastern shore. So we were getting a tour of southern England. What was wrong with that? The delay would add at least another hour to the trip, if we were lucky enough to catch a quick train back to Swindon.

When Jill and I took our seats again, I pulled out the passenger safety brochure. Not one word about the trick doors. Not one frigging word. I felt duped. I mean, when you get to a closed door, your first thought isn’t, Oh, well, I’ll just open the window and reach OUTSIDE and yank at the handle because that’s what makes the most sense in a situation like this!

By the time we arrived at Bristol, I still had not quite shaken off the nightmarish energy coursing through my veins. An hour and a half later, we arrived—again—at Swindon. And you’d better believe Jill and I were at the doors, arms cocked and ready for the tricky maneuver, which, actually we didn’t have to perform because this time, there were many people on the platform and somebody outside opened the door for us. And we bolted. We had only to catch a bus to a village called Lechlade. It would take 30 minutes. Supposedly.

After waiting fifteen minutes without luck at the station’s bus stop—which was where our instructions said we should be—one of the helpful locals told us that, actually, we had to be at the bus station, just a short walk away. Excellent. We exclaimed our thanks, then took off. Upon arriving at the station, I couldn’t get inside. Doors again. Did they slide? Really, there were no handles on them. Somebody butted one open and I followed. The lady at the ticket counter told us the bus we wanted was in bay 3. Right now. We rushed out but found it gone. Guess where it would stop before heading out? The train station.

Yes, while we had been walking to the bus station, the bus was making its way to the train station. Which meant that now we had an hour’s wait for the next bus. We could only be fatalistic at that point. Jill and I dubbed this our “adventure.” Could we get to Kelmscott? And, if so, could we get there before it closed at 4:30? It was now 1:00 and we wouldn’t get the bus until 2:00. We still had to find a taxi in Lechlade.

For much of the next hour, we guarded Bay Three. But at the appointed hour, the bus wasn’t there. Lots of buses pulled into Bay Three, disgorged their passengers, but then pulled out, “Out of Service” illuminated in their marquees. I nudged Jill, pointed to Bay Two, where a tiny, somewhat decrepit bus sat. I said, “What if THIS is our bus?” Jill shook her head. “They said Bay THREE.” Our bus—64 to Lechlade—was already five minutes overdue and a line of passengers was cued at Bay Two. Bay Three remained empty. I stepped over to Bay Two. It was Coach 64 to Lechlade.

Five minutes later, we were barreling through the single-lane country roads, hill and dale, gorgeous golden fields blurred in the window, green streaming hedgerows, those cotton ball clouds, trees swaying in the wind. It was the Cotswolds: stone cottages with thatched roofs. And sheep. And ancient quaintness that money can’t buy. Lechlade on the Thames is as quaint as they come. I asked the bus driver what time the return bus runs from Lechlade to Swindon. He said, “Every hour.” Wary now and mistrustful of any information, I asked: “On the hour?” “Oh,” he said, ”it might be five till or five after or fifteen past or ten till.” Okay, I nodded. Won’t get fooled again.

When he let us out in the incredibly quaint Lechlade, I pulled out my cell phone and called the cab company. There’s only one. And it was now 3:00 PM. The dispatcher said, most politely, that he wouldn’t be able to get us a cab until 4:00 or 4:30. I closed the phone and announced, “I guess we walk from here.” We stepped into the nearest pub and asked for directions. The owner, Nick, said he could arrange a ride to Kelmscott for ten pounds. That’s about twenty bucks for a three-mile trip. It was a sunny day and supposedly a normal human being could make the walk in an hour. So we decided to walk, but took Nick’s cell number just in case we got stranded.

“Just follow the Thames path,” Nick called as we left, “you want to go downstream.”

He might as well have said, “Follow the yellow brick road.” We found the Thames River path easily enough, but no one could tell us which way was downstream. One local said “I’ve never heard of Kelmscott Manor!” The river at this point is narrow—no wider than a modest highway—and coffee-au-lait brown. Where did all the swans come from? Picture book pretty swans were doing their swan thing every step of the way. Pasture extends from the river bank, the air rich with the loamy scent of fresh cow shit. Many houseboats—converted barges—were tied to the bank. The consensus of those we asked was that we were walking in the right direction.

With cows lowing and swans swanning and the stone spire of Lechlade church looming over the village trees behind us, and clouds skating quickly overhead, the sun swelling its chest for a good afternoon burn (nearly 80—a Brit heat wave), we set off into the grassy glade. We were surprised to find locks in the river. But that’s how they keep the river deep. Dam the water so it can’t drain too quickly. That necessitates locks to raise the boats into each dammed portion.

The big surprise was the World War II bunkers placed at the river’s bend every quarter mile. You’ll recall that England was bombed and besieged for much of World War II and the prospect of a Nazi invasion was very real. That’s why Churchill said, “We shall go on to the end. . . .we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.” Early British history is all about invaders tramping through England. But after they defeated the Normans in 1266, the Brits allowed no other intruders to take a single step onto their homeland. Hence, the bunkers way up on the Thames.

Jill and I were running out of time and wandered off the Thames path twice, only to be redirected by locals. We saw lots of cows and at least one manor house we wanted to take home with us. Dusty and sweaty, we came upon Kelmscott Manor at 4:00 PM sharp. We agreed that it was worth the trouble. Jill bought some pot holders and a pricey needlepoint pattern at the gift shop. I bought lots of cold drinks at the café. Then we started asking around for a ride back to Lechlade. Fiona, one of the volunteers at the house, offered to take us. We offered to pay for gas but, of course, she wouldn’t hear of it.

Fiona is a sixtyish woman with short-cropped silver hair, a wiry build, and a dry sense of humor. Of the bunkers, she said, “If the Germans had got this far, people hereabouts would’ve done no more than offered them tea.” She said visitors to the Manor sometimes asked the silliest questions, “Like how many doves are in the dovecote? How would I know? They are doves. They come and go! I said, We’ve got one dove, only one, and we watch him very carefully.” Fiona visited the U.S. last year. “You lose all sense of scale in America. We went to Wyoming. It’s as big as all of Wales.” She said she went many other places, most of whose names she can’t remember. But she had a good time.

Fiona dropped us at the Swindon hospital bus stop, saving us an hour’s commute. We wanted to take Fiona home with us too. Fiona and the manor house and Fiona’s chocolate lab, Kelly. When we stepped off the train at the London station, we realized we had left two things behind: my change purse in the Kelmscott café and Jill’s souvenirs on the bus. We gave up on the change purse but pursued the souvenirs the next morning on the phone and located them at the bus station’s lost and found. We arranged for Elaine at the bus depot to mail them to us. And then, that same morning, Jill found her lost Travel Card in the one pocket of the one shirt she overlooked in our frantic search the day before.

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Wednesday, Jill and I took an excursion to Kelmscott Manor. That’s where William Morris—inventor of the Arts and Crafts movement–lived for a time with his gorgeous wife, Jane, and her sister, May, and painter Dante Gabriel Rosetti, who had an affair with Jane. She was Rosetti’s ideal model and appears in his most famous and sensual paintings. The Manor was built in 1570 by a prosperous sheep farmer. It’s not dark and low-ceilinged, as you might imagine. It’s actually quite bright and cheery inside, thanks to large windows on three sides of nearly every room. It sits only about an hour’s drive from London. But it took Jill and me seven hours to get there. That’s 1 X 7. Let me explain.

You can’t reach Kelmscott by public transportation. But you can get close. You have to take two trains and then a bus, which will drop you off three miles from the house. Then you’re supposed to call a taxi. All told, it should take about three hours. Jill and I started out at nine in the morning and were nearly out the door when she discovered that her Travel Card was missing. For half an hour we turned the apartment upside down. No luck. Never mind, I said, we’ll buy a new one. They’re not cheap—about $15 a day—but, hell, it’s only money.

We took the tube to Paddington Station but the lost-card delay made us too late for our express train. Which meant we had to wait an hour for the next. We were going to Swindon, west in Cotswolds country. The  express train is great. We had a table between us. Jill read. I checked my email on my smart phone. The English countryside, looking as bright and bucolic as a Constable painting, passed under cotton-ball clouds and painter’s perfect blue. An hour and a half later, we were in Swindon, making great time. As the train stopped, we gathered our things. I saw someone leave the train through the rear door of our car. We walked to the nearer door. We were surprised—no, stunned—to discover there was no handle on the door. The green light above the door indicated that it was unlocked. But there was absolutely no way to open the door, except to break the glass and pull the emergency latch, which I wasn’t quite ready to do.

I pawed at the door, tried to pry it open, nearly ripping the nails from my fingers. Now I was panicked because this was an express train, which means it doesn’t stop long. The door’s window was closed. But I could see the platform just one foot away. “Instructions!” I gasped to Jill. “There have to be instructions!” The door must be defective, I concluded. We bolted down the car for the other door. But it was the same: no handle. No way out. It was classic nightmare. There’s the platform, here’s your stop, but you can’t get out. Because the door has no handle.

Then, at last, we saw the instructions, in modest print to one side of the door, above some other information. To open the door on the express train, you have to pull down the window, reach outside, then yank on the door handle from the outside. I repeat: you have to reach OUTSIDE of the train and, like James Bond pulling a fast escape, grab the door handle and free yourself. There is no door handle anywhere on the INSIDE of an express train. Paranoia, anyone?

I opened the window, reached out, grabbed the handle, tried to push the door open. It wouldn’t budge. I saw a platform agent running toward me, shouting, “Hey!”  Oh, thank god, some help! I thought. Did the door slide open? Was I turning the handle the right way? At last the agent was at our door. She was a small woman with the flushed face of an over-exerted twelve-year-old. “No, no, no!” she scolded. “You can’t get out. It’s too late.”

“But this is our stop!” I protested through the open window.

“You’ve got to go to the next stop,” she commanded. “It’s too late.”

“The next stop?” I echoed, nearly woozy from surprise and dismay.

“The next stop!”

Then the train was off, the station agent waving her paddle in an official “You’re Off!” manner and looking relieved that I didn’t try to squeeze myself through the window.

I turned to Jill. She blinked at me and seemed unable to speak. I asked, “What’s the next stop?”

As if on cue, the conductor announced over the PA that the next stop would be Bristol—about 50 miles farther,  on the western shore of England. A few days previous we had been to Ramsgate, clear to the eastern shore. So we were getting a tour of southern England. What was wrong with that? The delay would add at least another hour to the trip, if we were lucky enough to catch a quick train back to Swindon.

When Jill and I took our seats again, I pulled out the passenger safety brochure. Not one word about the trick doors. Not one frigging word. I felt duped. I mean, when you get to a closed door, your first thought isn’t, Oh, well, I’ll just open the window and reach OUTSIDE and yank at the handle because that’s what makes the most sense in a situation like this!

By the time we arrived at Bristol, I still had not quite shaken off the nightmarish energy coursing through my veins. An hour and a half later, we arrived—again—at Swindon. And you’d better believe Jill and I were at the doors, arms cocked and ready for the tricky maneuver, which, actually we didn’t have to perform because this time, there were many people on the platform and somebody outside opened the door for us. And we bolted. We had only to catch a bus to a village called Lechlade. It would take 30 minutes. Supposedly.

After waiting fifteen minutes without luck at the station’s bus stop—which was where our instructions said we should be—one of the helpful locals told us that, actually, we had to be at the bus station, just a short walk away. Excellent. We exclaimed our thanks, then took off. Upon arriving at the station, I couldn’t get inside. Doors again. Did they slide? Really, there were no handles on them. Somebody butted one open and I followed. The lady at the ticket counter told us the bus we wanted was in bay 3. Right now. We rushed out but found it gone. We learned that it had just taken off and was now . . .  at the train station.

Yes, while we had been walking to the bus station, the bus was making its way to the train station. Which meant that now we had an hour’s wait for the next bus. We could only be fatalistic at that point. Jill and I dubbed this our “adventure.” Could we get to Kelmscott? And, if so, could we get there before it closed at 4:30? It was now 1:00 and we wouldn’t get the bus until 2:00. We still had to find a taxi in Lechlade.

For much of the next hour, we guarded Bay Three. But at the appointed hour, the bus wasn’t there. Lots of buses pulled into Bay Three, disgorged their passengers, but then pulled out, with “Out of Service” illuminated in their marquees. I nudged Jill, pointed to Bay Two, where a tiny, somewhat decrepit bus sat. I said, “What if THIS is our bus?” Jill shook her head. “They said Bay THREE.” Our bus—64 to Lechlade—was already five minutes overdue and a line of passengers was queued at Bay Two. Bay Three remained empty. I stepped over to Bay Two. It was Coach 64 to Lechlade.

Five minutes later, we were barreling through the single-lane country roads, hill and dale, gorgeous golden fields blurred in the window, green streaming hedgerows, those cotton ball clouds, trees swaying in the wind. It was the Cotswolds: stone cottages with thatched roofs. And sheep. And ancient quaintness that money can’t buy. Lechlade on the Thames is as quaint as they come. I asked the bus driver what time the return bus runs from Lechlade to Swindon. He said, “Every hour.” Wary now and mistrustful of any information, I asked: “On the hour?” “Oh,” he said, ”it might be five till or five after or fifteen past or ten till.” Okay, I nodded. Won’t get fooled again.

When he let us out in the incredibly quaint Lechlade, I pulled out my cell phone and called the cab company. There’s only one. And it was now 3:00 PM. The dispatcher said, most politely, that he wouldn’t be able to get us a cab until 4:00 or 4:30. I closed the phone and announced, “I guess we walk from here.” We stepped into the nearest pub and asked for directions. The owner, Nick, said he could arrange a ride to Kelmscott for ten pounds. That’s about twenty bucks for a three-mile trip. It was a sunny day and supposedly a normal human being could make the walk in an hour. So we decided to walk, but took Nick’s cell number just in case we got stranded.

“Just follow the Thames path,” Nick called as we left, “you want to go downstream.”

He might as well have said, “Follow the yellow brick road.” We found the Thames River path easily enough, but no one could tell us which way was downstream. One local said “I’ve never heard of Kelmscott Manor!” The river at this point is narrow—no wider than a modest highway—and coffee-au-lait brown. Where did all the swans come from? Picture book pretty swans were doing their swan thing every step of the way. Pasture extends from the river bank, the air rich with the loamy scent of fresh cow shit. Many houseboats—converted barges—were tied to the bank. The consensus of those we asked was that we were walking in the right direction.

With cows lowing and swans swanning and the stone spire of Lechlade church looming over the village trees behind us, and clouds skating quickly overhead, the sun swelling its chest for a good afternoon burn (nearly 80—a Brit heat wave), we set off into the grassy glade. We were surprised to find locks in the river. But that’s how they keep the river deep. Dam the water so it can’t drain too quickly. That necessitates locks to raise the boats into each dammed portion.

The big surprise was the World War II bunkers placed at the river’s bend every quarter mile. You’ll recall that England was bombed and besieged for much of World War II and the prospect of a Nazi invasion was very real. That’s why Churchill said, “We shall go on to the end. . . .we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.” Early British history is all about invaders tramping through England. But after they defeated the Normans in 1266, the Brits allowed no other intruders to take a single step onto their homeland. Hence, the bunkers way up on the Thames.

Jill and I were running out of time and wandered off the Thames path twice, only to be redirected by locals. We saw lots of cows and at least one manor house we wanted to take home with us. Dusty and sweaty, we came upon Kelmscott Manor at 4:00 PM sharp. We agreed that it was worth the trouble. Jill bought some pot holders and a pricey needlepoint pattern at the gift shop. I bought lots of cold drinks at the café. Then we started asking around for a ride back to Lechlade. Fiona, one of the volunteers at the house, offered to take us. We offered to pay for gas but, of course, she wouldn’t hear of it.

Fiona is a sixtyish woman with short-cropped silver hair, a wiry build, and a dry sense of humor. Of the bunkers, she said, “If the Germans had got this far, people hereabouts would’ve done no more than offered them tea.” She said visitors to the Manor sometimes asked the silliest questions, “Like how many doves are in the dovecote? How would I know? They are doves. They come and go! I said, We’ve got one dove, only one, and we watch him very carefully.” Fiona visited the U.S. last year. “You lose all sense of scale in America. We went to Wyoming. It’s as big as all of Wales.” She said she went many other places, most of whose names she can’t remember. But she had a good time.

Fiona dropped us at the Swindon hospital bus stop, saving us an hour’s commute. We wanted to take Fiona home with us too. Fiona and the manor house and Fiona’s chocolate lab, Kelly. When we stepped off the train at the London station, we realized we had left two things behind: my change purse in the Kelmscott café and Jill’s souvenirs on the bus. We gave up on the change purse but pursued the souvenirs the next morning on the phone and located them at the bus station’s lost and found. We arranged for Elaine at the bus depot to mail them to us. And then, that same morning, Jill found her lost Travel Card in the one pocket of the one shirt she overlooked in our frantic search the day before.

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Yesterday, Jill and I got a personal tour of Ramsgate, the seaside town that was Captain Marshall’s home. It’s on the eastern shore and so close to the Continent, you can see the purple smudge of France thirty miles across the channel. It was the gateway to England for invading armies, which is why it was first called “Romansgate.” The marauding Danes and Anglo-Saxons stormed through here too.

Our host was Robert Holden, a tall, energetic retiree who sped us around in his red Ford Escort. “Goin’ on 97-K for the second time,” he chirped. “Never a bother.” We told him it wasn’t the kind of Ford Escort we’re familiar with in the States. When we got out to walk, we nearly had to jog to keep up with him. Ramsgate is as quaint as a seaside town gets. The harbor was commissioned by the crown in 1705 and completed by the time John Marshall was born in 1748. Most of the significant architecture is regency era, circa 1800. We made Robert show us his way-cool 1920 wood sail boat in the way-cute harbor. Robert rehabbed the boat all by himself. “When you grow up in a sea town,” he explained, with a shrug, “you get on the water early.”

I imagine John Marshall answered a similar call back in 1760 or so, when the harbor was England’s only eastern seaport. Compared to the rural doze of Ramsgate’s daily life, the arrival of tall ships must have been wondrous. Like Baltimore, Ramsgate has retained a lot of its architectural heritage because the city didn’t do well enough to encourage development when “urban renewal” was the rage. Robert’s concerns nowadays center on historic preservation. He’s the president of the Ramsgate Society. We were surprised and grateful that, at short notice, he could give us an afternoon of special attention.

Jill and I have found the English to be accommodating and thoroughly polite. Even in the tube, you’ll hear “sorry” “sorry” “sorry” instead of “excuse me” as commuters jostle and elbow. Every day is an apology fest. But I did have one encounter that wasn’t quite chummy, though it was hilarious in its way. But first some background: I was spending the day at the National Archives, which is an amazing place, crowded with paper and film and parchment and vellum, recording the history of this ancient nation through death duty records and muster rolls and ships’ registers and bills of lading and all manner of official minutia. I was looking for Captain John Marshall’s will. You should know that, back in the day, all legal documents were written by scriveners—professional scribes. They were the precursor to the office typist. You could not write out your own document. The scriveners’ highly stylized hand-writing is virtually unreadable to us nowadays. Nobody at the Archives could explain to me why the scriveners’ handwriting was so bad, “except that they were given bottles of watered-down ink, sat (sometimes stood) at an uncomfortable station, and made to write for fourteen hours a day.”

When I handed one of these wills to a professional at the Archive help desk and asked for some assistance deciphering, he glanced at it and smiled as if I were joking: “I can’t ever make sense of this rubbish.” Quickly, I learned that few of the archivist can read this stuff and some don’t even try. Which made me feel much better about my own failure. I’d been working on one will for days. It was as bad as working the Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle.

Fortunately, there are a handful of archivists who have taken up the deciphering challenge. Their translations enabled me to eliminate a number of false leads from among the many documents I was dredging up. I have discovered about 100 John Marshalls who lived at the same time as mine. These included muffin makers, cheese makers, collar makers, victuallers, fringe weavers, cabinet makers, upholsterers, innholders, shoe makers, tallow chandlers, glovers, carpenters, and yeomen. To learn this much, I had to scroll through miles of microfilm in dark viewing cubicles. I did so much scrolling, gazing at the glare of passing documents, one after the other in fast succession—thousands of wills in speeding window panes—I started getting motion sickness. Really, I was reeling like a drunk. Or a man just stepping on land after a long sea voyage.

When my microfilm reader broke, I found myself assisted by the Archive’s official microfilm reader technician, a small, silver-haired Indian lady who carried a cane, though she appeared in no need of it. She wore no-nonsense flats, a simple collared blouse, navy slacks and a cardigan. Her expression seemed one of perpetual skepticism. She narrowed her eyes at me and then the machine and said, with that beautiful accent the English Indians have, “What have you done?”

I wheeled my chair back, to show I meant no harm. “It won’t make photocopies,” I explained. “It just prints white paper.”

“Because you have done something wrong.” She shook her head in disapproval, then glowered at the machine.

I explained that I had followed the instructions.

“You see these buttons?” She started pressing them.

I explained that I had pressed those same buttons.

“But you did not get the results, did you?” This sounded almost like a taunt.

“No,” I repeated. “I just get white paper.”

“Then you are doing something wrong!” she concluded.

I felt like I was in seventh-grade math again, being scolded by Mrs. Rutledge, a woman who wore orthopedic shoes and bulky cardigans, no matter what the weather. We called her “sarge” behind her back.

But we also knew how to butter her up when it was to our advantage. So I said to the Copy Machine Lady: “I am so pleased that you are going to make it run right!”

She gave a decisive nod. “Right!

The Brits love to say “right.”

She pressed some more buttons, swiped her copy card, and the machine printed a page. It was as blank as the ones I’d been getting.

“See?” I said.

“Look what you’ve made me do!” she said with a grimace. .

“It’s the buttons,” I protested. “They must be off.”

She pushed the buttons again, swiped her card, and then, faster than you could say “Lord Nelson.” we got a copy that was almost readable.

“There, you see?” she said with satisfaction.

“Amazing,” I answered. I thanked her profusely. She nodded her acknowledgement, and then I was on my own again.

A while later, as I was spooling yet another roll of film, she appeared at my kiosk (I think she had her eye on me because I was trouble). “Here, let me show you,” she said. Leaning over my shoulder in a very teacherly way, she demonstrated how to spool the film more quickly than I had been doing. The right way, in other words. She was taking pity on me. And I was appreciative, but a little nervous whenever she came hiking back in my direction, jabbing the carpet with her cane as if walking through tall weeds.

Jill and I have become so accustomed to taking the tube, we have also taken up the Londoner’s habit of reading the tabloids, which are a great way to pass time on the noisy ride. They’re free too, shoved at commuters by hawkers at the entrances to the stations. Today we read about Amy Weinhouse, the troubled pop singer who has just returned from eight months in the Caribbean where, according to one tabloid, she was banned from every bar or, according to another tabloid, she quit drinking and got her life together. When asked if she was happy to return to London, she said, “I don’t give a fuck.”

Speaking of music idols, Iggy Pop is doing a car insurance commercial here—something we’d never see in the States, mainly because he’s a freak. I assume the pitch here is to young drivers, though I didn’t imagine the young would be that familiar with Iggy Pop. But the English have a quirky sense of humor. Think Monty Python. The Brits also appear to be franker than we Yanks. Consider medical warnings on cigarette packs. In England, warnings come on both sides and they don’t mince words: “Smoking seriously harms you and those around you.” Good luck finding that kind of honesty in the States. Add to that a color photo of open heart surgery. Really.

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You are probably aware that the late Michael Jackson was supposed to do a series of concerts in England this summer. Posters for that concert are gone, replaced now by posters for a MJ tribute with an MJ look-alike. Jackson’s popularity here seems part of a growing popularity for the 1980s, particularly eighties’ fashions. We see a lot of tight jeans and hi-top sneakers, black tights and big hair. If you live long enough, Jill observes, you see everything recycled. It’s been 30 years since the pinnacle of Jackson’s popularity.

As for age: we see a lot of young people in London and very few oldsters. Also: no dogs. Where are all the dogs? Manhattan has dog parks. We’ve seen none here. Jill, who insists on petting an animal a day (not including yours truly), imagines that the dogs and cats are in the suburbs. I tell her that London’s animal life can be found in the gardens (back yards), which we don’t have access to. Stray cats in London are called Moggies and are so interbred that most have evolved into singular black-and-white appearance. But we haven’t seen a one. By the way, it’s illegal to de-claw cats in England.

We’re staying at Shepherd’s Bush, adjacent to Kensington. “Shepherd’s Bush” sounds like something from a Monty Python skit. I picture—among other things—a wooly shepherd guarding a small bush in the middle of a meadow. From Shepherd’s Bush, we take the Tube into the city, about a 15-minute trip. The Tube is often packed and very hot, though air-conditioning is promised for late this summer. On both the underground and the overground, you hear the announcement, “Mind the gap!” The gap is the space between the train car and the platform. Jill and I keep saying to each other, “Mind the gap!” All day long. Americans wouldn’t tolerate having to step up or off—they’d trip and sue the transit authority. Nobody in London falls into the gap.

Jill was disappointed to discover that a heath is no more than an open field. She was thinking of the moors, perhaps, of something misty and boggy and hillocky. We hiked across the heath to get to Black Heath train station, which took us to the Red House, William Morris’s first home. BTW:if you’re coming to London, get the Travel Pass for all six travel regions. It pays for itself in short order.

Speaking of short order, food is great in London, thanks to the continental influence, which gives you tiny cafes, bistros, delis, and bakeries with a stunning array of delectables. American cuisine is more about quantity than quality. The only thing we do well in the States is barbecue, especially the Southern variety. The thing we do worst is pastry. When I first moved to Iowa from Berkeley (back in the 1980s), I made the mistake of ordering cinnamon roles at a coffee shop. I got two fist-sized mounds of dough slathered in white frosting. It could have been a practical joke. To get really good bread —that crusty wondrous bread you can get on nearly every block in London—we Yanks have to make a special trip to a special bakery. One of the things we should borrow from the Brits are the salad shops, where you can get a box of mixed salad—not handfuls of lettuce with toppings but, rather, finely shredded, pickled, bean, and mixed sprout salads that show a lot of middle-eastern influence. Falafel shops too. Really good falafel. As mutli-cultural as we are in the States, we don’t quite have the multi-cultural food thing down the way they do here. But nothing’s cheap in London. A slice of pizza, on average, goes for 3.50 – that’s about $5. I don’t know how young people (and poor folk) manage. I suspect that London is pricier than Manhattan. The houses Jill and I prefer in London start at 1.5 million (pounds).

My mission here is to locate the long-gone Capt. John Marshall—through the British Library and the National Maritime Museum and the National Archives. I have learned that Marshall’s legacy was eclipsed by four other John Marshalls of higher profile, all of them in the Royal Navy. I’ve also learned that he left his dog in Australia on his first journey to Botany Bay. Upon his return, two years later, his dog swam out to meet his boat and then would not leave his side. Apparently my Mr. Marshall was a nice guy, perhaps too lenient with his crew (lashings of ill-behaved crew were often “forgiven”) and given to much entertainment.

Jill and I have been asked for directions twice, which we take as a compliment. And, in fact, we have been able to help because we’re armed with maps. I’ve been scolded more than once for taking photos of the Queen’s possessions. The Queen is generous in loaning her stuff, like Prince’s Edward’s gilded barge (1732), but she will not tolerate infringement on the royal copyright. Tomorrow Jill and I go to an antiques flea market that starts before dawn. Which means it’s the real thing.

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