Don’t Break a Leg!

Tags

A Christmas Carol, Applebbe's, Beechwood Hotel, Best Western, Byers'Choice, Charles Dickens, Courtyard by Marriott, Ebenezer Scrooge, Lenox, London, McDonalds, Pleasant Valley Nature Reserve, The Country Cupboard

Monday was all mine to do as I liked in. So, long as by the end of it I ended up in Lewisburg Pennsylvania, I had no timetable or agenda.

Throughout the tour so far, the weather has been clear, bright, cold and beautiful and when I pulled opened the curtains, I fully expected to be greeted by the same sight that Ebenezer Scrooge saw on Christmas day: ‘No fog. No mist, but clear, bright, shining, golden sunlight’, unfortunately, it was the opposite to that, for there was a low, misty cloud hanging low over the mountains and the ground glistened wet from a light, but steady rainfall. But I was not going to let a little rain upset my morning. I am from Britain – we ‘do’ rain there.

I went down to the lobby and once again ordered the yoghurt, granola and fruit bowl. Due to staffing issues all hotels are struggling to provide the full service and at The Courtyard in Lenox there was only a very limited breakfast menu. It is the same with housekeeping services, every hotel that I have stayed in has informed me on check-in that there is no housekeeping service available, and if there is anything specifically that I need, I should ask at the front desk.

I took my breakfast to a table and removed my mask as I ate, and as I sat another man arrived and went through the process of ordering his. Once he had made his selection, the lady behind the counter asked if he would like it on a tray or in a bag. He asked her to repeat what she had said, so she replied, ‘would you like it in a bag?’ ‘What?’ he barked back at her. ‘A BAG!’ she repeated. ‘Madam, if you insist on not removing your mask, I cannot hear what you say!’ At which he grabbed his breakfast items and stomped off to a table where he angrily consumed his morning feast. It all seemed a trifle unnecessary.

Back in my room I had a fair amount of admin to do, not only sorting out details for forthcoming shows, but also liaising with Bob Byers about booking the Covid test that I am going to need before flying home in a week’s time. He had managed to find a testing station that will tie in with my various events towards the end of the week and booked an appointment for me at a convenient time.

Work finished, I packed up my cases and at 10.00 left the room. It was still drizzling outside, but I wanted my morning of fresh air and exercise, so I followed the road signs that I had noticed the day before to the Pleasant Valley Nature Reserve. The narrow road took me through woodland, where there were wonderful remote houses hiding away, and then slowly rose uphill. The surface looked muddy, but soon I realised that it was quite hard-packed ice, and the wheels were slipping and spinning: AT LAST! I could engage the All-Wheel Drive system which had thus far been redundant.

I reached the entrance to the reserve and as the office was closed on a Monday, I just took myself in and began to explore. There was a large map displayed and it showed that there were various trails, of different lengths, winding through the woodland and up onto the mountain side, so I just followed the signs and plunged into the undergrowth. It was still damp and the mist hang low over the trees, creating some mysterious and menacing views.

Some of the trails were closed due to storm damage, so I simply followed where I could. Eventually I started to climb, over rocks and branches and streams, and as I got higher, so the ice and piles of hardened snow covered more of the ground. Although this was a nature reserve, I didn’t see any animals or birds, although there was an occasional screech from far away.

As I climbed higher, and began to slip on some of the rocks, I began to think that maybe I had pushed my luck too far, for if I slipped and fell, breaking a leg, I would be alone on the side of a mountain, with no help for miles around. It was time to return to the car, and I very cautiously clambered back down until I saw a gleam of deep red through the trees.

And now it was time to drive. The journey to Lewisburg would take 4 and a half hours, and it was now 12pm. I set the SatNav unit, and left Lenox for another year. The route took me along some beautiful roads, which skirted the mountain, giving me some incredible views, despite the low cloud. I was very surprised after not long driving to discover myself crossing the state line into New York, I had no idea that it was so close, and soon I was joining the New York Throughway, a road that runs straight down the middle of the state. There were signs to Albany, Buffalo (I thought of the lovely elderly couple in The Beechwood Hotel in Worcester), Syracuse and even, at one intersection, Montreal.

After a while I pulled into a rest center and feasted on a McDonalds, before filling my little rouge Rogue up with fuel and continuing southwards passed through The Catskills and later on, when I had made it to Pennsylvania, over The Poconos.

For company I was still listening to the various podcasts about the forthcoming Ashes series, but eventually my phone lost any signal and instead I started playing my Christmas playlist, which actually I haven’t listened to much on this trip. There were all my old friends, Nat King Cole, Johnny Mathis, Bing, Lucy Rose, The Beach Boys, The Peanuts (via Vince Guaraldi) and the rest, who accompanied me across The Susquehanna River and to the very familiar Best Western hotel at The Country Cupboard store.

I checked in (being told that there was no housekeeping service) and made my way through seemingly endless corridors to the room that they always give me here, a large room with a whirlpool bath! As soon as I was settled, I ran the taps and let it fill, which took a long time (in fact it took a very long time, because I hadn’t closed the plug properly, and when I came to check the water was barely covering the bottom of the bath). Eventually it filled and I luxuriated in a bubbling, frothing tub!

Later in the evening I took myself to a nearby Applebee’s restaurant and dined on a Cajun Salmon dish (although the ‘Cajun’ aspect seemed somewhat lacking) and finished off with a very rich chocolate pud. The restaurant was filled with lots of rowdy locals, and I sat quietly at my corner table, minding my own business, watching, observing. Three guys sat at the bar, two had baseball caps on back to front, whereas the other wore his the right way round, and I wondered if there were any hierarchy involved, or if the one guy didn’t want to conform the stereotype of the other two. Actually, of course, it was just three guys wearing hats, but the musings passed a little time!

When I returned to the hotel it was windy and there was a little rain whipping about in the air, but soon I was inside and and settled down for the night, ready to perform twice at The Country Cupboard store on Tuesday.

An afterthought: when I arrived at the hotel I was chatting to Liz online, and she asked me to tell her a joke. Not able to think of anything on the spur of the moment, I quickly searched online and, among a few others, I found this: Q: What did Charles Dickens keep in his spice rack? A: It was the best of thymes and it was tye worst of thymes!

Escalate or Elevate

Tags

A Christmas Carol, Beechwood Hotel, Boston, British Airways, Charles Dickens, Disney, Ebenezer Scrooge, Hertz Car Rental, Hetahrow Airport, Nissan, Vaillancourt Folk Art

After two shows at opposite ends of Great Britain, and less than a day at home, Friday saw me resume my United States tour as I prepared to fly from London to Boston.

My alarm was set for 6am, but I woke an hour earlier than that remembering that I hadn’t packed or updated my SatNav unit. Of course, such a trifling matter was completely unimportant – I could pack it before I was due to leave at 8, and even if I didn’t, I would have my phone to assist me along the way, but in those dark, early hours, everything takes on levels of global importance.  As soon as I got up I found the small, and rather old, unit in a drawer and packed it into my case, the updating would have to be done at the airport.

Goodbyes are always difficult and this one was no different albeit wrapped up and foreshortened by the complications of getting the children dressed and out of the door ready for school. My taxi arrived on the stroke of 8 and soon I was on the way to Heathrow airport, as I had been 3 weeks previously – this was almost turning into a commute. 

The journey was flawless which was perhaps surprising during a Friday morning rush hour, and I checked in and cleared security at Heathrow Airport with very little delay, leaving me with over an hour to check the navigation unit. I logged on and sure enough the American map needed updating. Having purchased the upgrade and set the download to begin I discovered that apparently the USA has grown in the last 2 years for the new map was too large to fit onto the little device. I was given the option to select a portion of the country, and as this trip is going to focus entirely on the North East corridor, that suited me just fine.  As the updated content downloaded so my flight flashed up on the screens confirming that it would departing from gate B36, and I should make my way there.  The B gates at Heathrow Terminal 5 are separated from the main building, and to get to them you have to descend the longest escalator you have ever seen, board a shuttle train and then rise to ground level once more.  The train was extremely busy and as the crowd was disgorged, we all made for the escalator that would take us up again. There were lifts available, but everyone avoided them, presumably not wanting to be squashed into such a confined space in these Covid days, meaning that instead we were all squashed together on the escalator whilst the elevators remained empty, and therefore much safer: the apparently more risky alternative had proved itself to be the sensible option: to escalate or elevate?

At the gate I took a seat and waited for the boarding to begin, and sure enough soon a recorded female voice informed us that she invited Group 1 to board. A few expensive suits with their brief cases ambled through the priority lane but the bulk of the crowd remain unmoved, until the same voice came over the PA for a second time and told us that Group 6 was now being invited.  This was a surprise but a large bunch of us stood, gathered our bags and made for the gate, until we realised that the same voice recording was being used for the Chicago flight at the next gate, in fact the flight that I had taken a few weeks before, so we all sat sheepishly down again.

While I was preparing to board I had a message from Liz at home that will appeal to all who laugh at Mrs Cratchit’s panic-stricken antics with her Christmas pudding. Last year Liz made two puddings, one of which we steamed and ate as part of our Chritsmas lunch whilst the other remained sealed in the cool dark cupboard, where it had been ever since Liz mad made the mixture sometime in the autumn of 2020. Yesterday Liz decided to investigate to see if we would be able to eat it on Christmas day this year and to her dismay found that the entire thing had grown an outer fur of blue mould – ‘Supposin’…..supposin’…..’

Back at the gate Groups 2, 3, 4 and 5 were called and at last when ‘our’ group 6 was called I could take my rightful seat on the starboard side of the plane. 

On the last flight from Heathrow I calculated that we flew pretty well over the top of my home town, but I had been in the wrong side to get a view, so this time I had selected seat K instead of A to see if my hunch was correct.  Although there had been heavy rain and low cloud through the morning, by the time we took off the sky had cleared and I tracked our progress with interest:  There was Windsor Castle (easy to spot), the M4 and Reading. The Thames meandered around beneath us: was that the bridge at Marlowe that was the subject of a painting that used to hang in my parents’ bedroom? And then I could see the Wittenham Clumps, a favourite walking spot for us, the site of the old Didcot Power Station and then yes, there was Abingdon with the river running through it.  I could clearly see the all-weather sports stadium where my daughter goes for her football training, and the ring road around the town. There was the new housing development, and the roundabout at which the ring road intersects The Oxford Road. From there it was easy to see my own neighbourhood and I waved to Liz and the girls, as I had promised that I would.

We soared ever higher into the sky, leaving Oxfordshire behind us, and headed towards Boston. To while away the time, as the British Airways flight attendants diligently served me with a lunch of Lemon Thyme Chicken, I watched Bohemian Rhapsody again and as on the previous two occasions a tear came to my eye during the Live Aid sequence.  Following that I selected Joker, the extremely bleak prequel to the Batman franchise, and after that the joyful Disney film Moana – just to cheer me up a bit, although in fact it sent me to sleep for a while.  When I woke we had just under two hours to go and were making ‘landfall’ over the Gulf of St Lawrence. We began our long slow descent into Boston and as the cloud was very low by the time I could see the land below us we were skimming over the many little islands that lie just off the Massachusetts coast. A little bump, a skip and we were taxiing to our gate, ready to set foot on American soil once more.

For once the lines in the immigration hall were minimal and apart from trying to explain how I alone do 30 different characters in my show, the interview with the agent was not difficult and in no time I was walking towards the carousel to await the arrival of my large blue case, and in one of those rare moments of triumph as I arrived so did my case – perfect timing!

To collect a rental car at Boston airport you have to get on a shuttle bus so before I braved the cold windy and wet weather, I popped into a rest room, before dragging my cases to the curb side and waiting for a bus on route 33. Eventually once arrived and a large group piled in, loading our luggage onto the various racks, and just as we pulled away I discovered that I didn’t have my phone with me – in a horrible moment of clarity I realised that I had left it in the rest room, on a small shelf.

There was nothing to do than to stay on the bus and do the whole lap of the airport again, until I was back at Terminal E, with no great hope of being united with my phone. However the arrivals lounge was very empty, obviously with no other flights having landed since mine, and I hurried back to the rest room, looked at the metal shelf and had my faith in human nature restored, for there lay my phone.

I once more waited for bus 33 and once more was taken to the rental car center, where I was due to pick up a vehicle from Hertz. At the desk I asked for a four wheel drive car, as I will be using this vehicle throughout the trip and there maybe snow and ice along the way. After a little while of computer tapping, the Hertz agent said that she had an All Wheel Drive car, if that was ok? She said it rather apologetically as if she was truly sorry that she didn’t have a 4-wheel drive, only an all wheel drive one, and I confirmed that it would be fine, mentally chastising myself for the lapse in my conversational American language skills.

The paperwork completed I made my way into the garage to discover who would be my friend, protector and companion for the next three weeks and found a rather smart deep metallic red Nissan Rogue. I loaded my cases, set the satnav unit which came to life instantly and informed me that the journey to Worcester would take just under an hour. I sped through the subterranean road system of Boston and then passed Fenway Park on my left before leaving the city behind me. The drive seemed reassuringly familiar and certainly not as if it had been two years before I last made it. The newly downloaded map still requested that I turn the wrong way at the intersection where the hotel sat, and as I have done for so many years, I ignored it and drove to the car park of the Beechwood Hotel.

Having checked in I had a little time to unpack and hang my costumes so that the worst of the travelling wrinkles would be gone by Saturday’s performances, and then had a short rest before meeting up with Gary and Judi Vaillancourt for a ‘welcome home’ dinner. It was lovely to be with my old friends again, and once more it hardly seemed as if it had been two years since last we gathered.

Outside the windows snow began to fall, and it really seemed as if Christmas was coming back to life.