Day Tripper

They say a change will do you good

“It’s not what I expected,” the widow Anne says. We met in the line at North Sea coffee and are sitting side by side along the seafront wall, looking out at the sea and the waves and a few hearty swimmers. It’s a cool day, the first of August, and Anne tells me she’s come from Suffolk by coach for a theatre performance at Cromer Pier because this fabled town on the North Norfolk coast has long been on her bucket list.

She apologizes for thinking the town’s a little bit shabby, with its brightly painted old buildings looking out towards the sea weathered and peeling in bits; day trippers in no nonsense outdoors wear mingling with the occasional glammed-up young woman. “I guess that’s why we like it,” I say. Those buildings and the old pitted flint walls and walkways a little woozy and worn look like I feel. Which makes it a comfortable place to be. Eric and I spend more and more time here, will probably move here eventually now that my dad has passed away. Eric has grandkids in England and - well, we’re adventurers but also feel at home in the UK. The sea air helps Eric breathe easier. As much as I love to drive, the ability to walk everywhere or easily take a train or bus without getting into a car feels wonderful.

The beach huts and sea and…Eric in Cromer

But back to Anne. I love these conversations that only seem to happen out in the world solo - vulnerable and open when it feels safe to be so. Anne brought her coffee over to sit next to me and within minutes we know the following about each other: she’s from Suffolk, lost her dad nine years ago, her husband five years after that and her son just last year. I’ve told her I live in New York, have a husband and a daughter, just lost my dad and love the California coastline. I also learn she likes classical music and doesn’t have high hopes for the show in the theatre on the end of the pier. I don’t offer any information about being a musician as it tends to derail a conversation. Anne is gentle in appearance and manner but opinionated, and as her husband was born in 1940, I put her age at somewhere around eighty years old.

It’s just over two weeks since my father passed away, and some days it feels fine and others I’m just deeply sad. I don’t miss him so much as miss knowing he’s there, even in the diminished state he was in towards the end. That lesser him contained the mighty dad who took care of us and also often infuriated me. I don’t have any big regrets, I feel like I came to really love him in the end in a way I could never get to when we were engaged in the lifelong battle I waged to prove myself to him. He didn’t really care about anything at the end and that was terribly hard but also freeing. Nothing really mattered except the minute to minute and I guess that’s what the mystics and zen masters are always trying to tell us. There are moments over the last few years when I really got that. Life as this series of scenes, some are hell and some are bliss. And all the gradations in between, but only as they happen.

I arrived in England on Friday, relieved to be out of the heat and back in motion. From a taxi to an Amtrak train from Hudson to Penn Station, a Long Island RR train to Jamaica Queens and the AirTrain to JFK Terminal 8, where I’d dropped Eric off only a few days before - I don’t even have to look for a sign anymore to know where the ladies room or British Airways check in desk is there: my feet seem to know the way. It wasn’t a bad flight to London Heathrow and the immigration process has been so sped up, and baggage came out so quickly, it does make me wonder why America can’t get its shit together (I know everywhere has problems but my last two arrivals at JFK have involved waits of an hour or even two to finally exit the airport). Heathrow looked clean and bright and then the new Elizabeth tube line took me directly to Liverpool Street Station for an easy change to a train bound to Norfolk - a real improvement over the old express to Paddington and change there for pretty much anywhere. I’m always struck by how far below the London streets the tube stations can be, the escalators so long and steep I have to focus on the theatre posters along the sides to keep from getting dizzy. I imagine the whole city huddled together way below, very much underground during the Blitz, and that imagining always fills me with love and admiration for the British.

I loved people watching and especially enjoyed the literary conversation of the two women across the aisle from me on the train to Norwich: one hip-looking older lady apparently going to a literary festival where she was presenting the music memoir section of the program - if my head hadn’t been laying on the table in front of me and drool trailing down my collar, I would’ve waved my hand “Music memoirs - I love them! I wrote one! And I’m working on a follow up…” but as I was looking at this point like a hobo I just kept my head down and took in every word they said about the festival, what they were reading, the town of Ipswich and life in general.

Still sweating on the train to JFK

My transfer at Norwich to the Cromer train was the point where culture shock started to grip me. To leave rural upstate New York and twenty four hours later be in rural England is not as big a leap as going to say, Guatemala or Katmandu (where exactly is Katmandu?), but it was a reminder I’m a stranger here. I put my case on the floor next to a dozing man on the crowded train and when he woke up he started grumbling about me hemming him in. I countered that the train was between stations and I’d be happy to move the case out of his way if he needed to get out. Then he said it didn’t matter: “You’re fine, you’re fine.” I felt like the whole train was listening and that I’d revealed myself to be the pushy American (“who does she think she is?” thought all around me in a lilting Norfolk accent). But it really was fine, these moments just catch you sometimes and you realize oh hell I’m a boorish tourist! Please don’t let me be that!

It was good to see Eric when I arrived in Cromer and I actually slept well for the first time in several weeks without an air conditioner roaring next to my head. We drove down to Southend for Eric’s gig at a church, and in the car filled our time with trivial matters like is a British mile the same as an American mile (it is) and is a British pint bigger than an American one (it is). In Southend we saw the Railway Hotel where Eric and I played together back in…2013 I think? I remember it being a freezing cold place filled with character and also loads of random trash in the dressing room, but we’d had fun. Now it’s empty and up for sale, time keeps moving on. It was Wilko Johnson’s local and he’s gone too - but the painted sign of his one of a kind visage hangs in there. It was a brilliant gig. Beforehand I chatted with some of Eric’s lovely fans who’ve also gotten to know my music too. During the show I had to stop myself from laughing first and loudest at everything Eric said, like I try not to always be the first to like his posts on Facebook. But it did feel good to laugh after the last few weeks.

The Railway Hotel in Southend is up for grabs

We arrived back to Cromer at about three am and took it easy the next day, visiting our pals for Sunday roast. The cool air and change of scene have been a balm. My daughter lost her oldest dearest best friend the other day, too young, too soon. Just so much loss and what can you do but take it moment by moment?

Anne is telling me a little about her son. He was only fifty. Like thinking of Londoners underground during the Blitz, I’m filled with admiration for this gentlewoman, taking a coach trip to a show she’s not interested in as a way to get out and see a place she’s heard about forever but not have to handle the travel completely alone. I offer some suggestions of where she could get nice fish and chips or a cup of tea in a decent spot after the show lets out, willing her to see the charm of Cromer and have a lovely time. I was feeling sad this morning, that’s how it is sometimes. I knew my dad was going to be gone, have been preparing for it and even wishing that kind of peace on him the last few years. But like Anne the widow said: “It’s not what I expected.”