Ten days...

"Journeys end in lovers meeting.” - Twelfth Night

“I can’t wait to put that ring on your finger,” the D.E.B. said, waking me with a kiss in the soft light of morning. After days and days of rain, the sun has finally deemed to shine in these parts, and the birds outside our bedroom window twittered joyously in their dawn chorus.

Ten days from today I will be Mrs. D.E.B., and what an amazing journey it has been. I have surprised myself with the level of calm I seem to have found in these past few days. I have no doubt that all of that will change drastically next week, but at least for now, there is peace of mind.

Things are coming together beautifully. I had a very successful meeting with the Vicar (He is lovely.) about the flowergirls, and he has even taken on board the possibility of me entering last during the bridal procession.

Monday of last week, I turned up at the rectory with flower girl baskets in hand, to show the Vicar what we intended. Just the Vicar and I made our way across the churchyard for our trial run with the flower petals – PLOP! I got splattered by a low flying pigeon. “Well, that’s good luck!” the Vicar laughed. He has a great sense of humo(u)r.

Good omen it was indeed. Our meeting went very well. The Vicar himself sprinkled bits of lavender and rosebuds from the baskets during the test run. Most importantly, he tested how easily the bits could be swept up.  Looking up at me, as he knelt down with broom and dustpan in hand, he declared: “Yes, I think we can manage this.” Without restraint, I threw my arms about him in a shower of thanks.

I left that meeting with a very strong sense that all would indeed be well, that everything would be fine. And so it seems. The “Jam Making Maven of Barford” stepped in and saved my sanity and the wedding favour project (Blueberry and Lavender Jam); and all in less time that it would take me to make a cup of tea.

The quilt saga has yet to be fully addressed, but will receive my full attention this weekend. (I’m learning to focus on what I can control, and on one thing at a time.)

There is a turn of phrase I hear a great deal around here: “Well, you’ve got to laugh, haven’t you?” This bit of British truism is advice to which I am trying to adhere. I had a true test of this last Friday.

Last Friday was my “Day of  Reckoning” – my final fitting at Eternal Bride in Warwick. This was the moment for which I have been running, swimming and sweating for nearly five months.

Of course, I arrived late. I wanted to achieve the “full effect,” so I booked a last-minute appointment beforehand at my wonderful, newly discovered hairdressers (Pardeep at Toni & Guy in Leamington Spa) and got a haircut. Dashing back to the car, I grabbed some flowers from a street vendor on The Parade, a spur of the moment “thank you” gesture for Morag, the alterations/seamstress at Eternal Bride.

Little did I know, these flowers would be so well deserved. I zipped carefully from Leamington to Warwick (becoming ever so confident driving the Tank these days!), and sprinted into the shop.

Poor Karima had been sat waiting for me for twenty minutes (I should have got flowers for her, too!). Morag’s next client had already arrived so I took Karima for a coffee until Morag was free again.

I envied the lemon cheesecake Karima had ordered with her coffee, but I was good and resisted. “Think of the dress,” I thought to myself. Finally, we went back to Eternal Bride and climbed the stairs to Morag’s loft. I was ready for my Cinderella moment.

I skipped behind the curtain, and slipped into the bottom half of the dress with ease. Then leapt out of the changing area, giddy with expectation, holding my ivory, silk bodice in front me. All smiles, I stood before the mirror awaiting further assistance.

Morag moved swiftly and came to stand behind me, taking the ends of the bodice in her hands. I watched in the mirror as Morag and Karima’s smiling faces slowly turned from gleeful delight to shock and dismay.

“What have you done?” Morag said softly to my perplexed reflection in the mirror. I looked to Karima. “It won’t close,” Karima said with tears in her voice. “That’s impossible,” I squealed. “There is no way I have put on weight,” I said, trying not to cry.

“No, my dear. You haven’t put on weight. You’re not fatter. You’re bigger. Broader.” Morag said, completely confounded. She grabbed her measuring tape to confirm the fact. “Well,” she sighed, “You’ve taken two inches off your hips, one off your waist, and you’ve added inch to your torso. In short, my dear, you have reshaped your body type.”

I was stunned. “I told you you were working too hard!” Karima insisted. “What have you been doing?” Morag demanded.

“Running, lifting weights and swimming. Two and a half hours a day. Five days a week, plus Pilates on Tuesday afternoons...” I said meekly.

Morag needed to sit down.

With the wedding roughly two weeks away, I stood before her, a bride in an altered dress that did not fit. A dress, once several sizes too big, now a size too small. A bride who had come to her as a pudgy, but shapely petite, who had rebuilt herself unwittingly in a blind fitness frenzy. 

I stood before her now, looking like Michael Phelps in a dress.

 “What are we going to do!!?” Karima panicked. 

Morag stayed silent and thought. I could see the designing wheels turning in her head. This woman has designed her way around the world, costume dramas for the BBC and countless other stage and screen productions. This was surely, hopefully, just a minor blip on her landscape.

“It’s going to be a long weekend.” Morag said finally.

She then shared her strategy for rescuing and essentially re-designing the dress. She’s a genius. I am so sorry that she will need to go to so much trouble, but I think her interventions will not only save the dress, but will even improve upon it.

This was an utterly harrowing experience, but I think even this, too, will be one of those “It worked out even better than I expected” moments, when all is said and done. 

Well, you’ve got to laugh, haven’t you?

 

Driving ambition

Ugh.

Driving in England. I agonize over this one activity like nothing else in my life.

Here was my plan. The D.E.B. and I had planned to do our big Easter shop yesterday evening. Then, a thought flickered through my mind: it was a bright sunny day, I was feeling frisky and chirper, why not do the Sainsbury’s run by myself?

You see, The D.E.B. has been being a very good lad, and has been cycling to work, so the car (a.k.a.,"The Tank”) has been sitting on our drive, taunting me, teasing and tempting me.

What am I so afraid of? I don’t really know exactly. The stupid thing is that I actually learned to drive here in Britain. Years and years ago, while I was a graduate student the opportunity to learn to drive presented itself, and I took it. Took the test, two or three times, and eventually passed. I know how to drive, and am licensed to do so.

But that was many, many years ago, and in the interim, living in the States—my fellow Americans will have to forgive me, but I must say this—I have become a very lazy driver. Driving in America is a doddle. You could do it in your sleep, in fact, I am sure that I have driven in my sleep!

To me, it seems that driving is quite a casual affair in the States, where else in the world would one find “Drive-Thru Liquor Stores”? I remember one time, when I was in high school, some friends and I were out on the town; we went to the “Drive Thru” liquor store/off-license for some Bartles & Jaymes wine coolers (Egad, I’m showing my age here.)

And, I kid you not, as the man behind the counter, leaned out of the window to hand us our package, he said to the driver: “You want me to open those for ya?”  I wanted to shout from the back seat: “She’s driving!”

More than casualness, there is just the matter of skill sets. In many ways, at least for me, it seems that driving in Britain requires a different set of skills. And that’s what worries me. It will just take a bit of time for my brain to re-re-adjust to driving here.

I did make it to Sainsbury’s yesterday, though. And proudly did the big Easter shop all on my own. Felt very empowered and liberated. (And got a super deal on whole salmon!) My victory was bittersweet, however...a minor boo-boo that resulted in a cracked, passenger wing mirror.

Ugh.

Big pearls and cashmere

I think job interviews are possibly the only experience worse than the British Driver’s Test (which I failed twice). Notably, I failed my first Driver’s Test before we even left the Testing Centre. I will never forget it. My Driving instructor, “The Saint,” drove me to the Testing Centre, gave me a hug and said, “You’ll be fine.” I failed that test so quickly, he hadn’t even sat down properly with his cup of coffee, before the Examiner, “Satan,” and I had returned into the Testing Centre. At best, I had failed that test in under 5 minutes. I stalled the car in the Testing Centre parking area. We didn’t even make it to the road. I was crestfallen. But, my instructor assured me I would have my day.

On Attempt No. 2, I actually made it out of the Testing Centre Parking Lot, a miracle, and felt that the only way was up. Up and down, all around the traffic nightmare that is Stratford-upon-Avon. I managed the “Up hill start,” the “Down hill start” and (my personal favourites) the Three-point turn and the Reverse parking between two vehicles. (I can do these maneuvers now, blindfolded in my sleep!) Just when I thought “Success!” I panicked during my “Emergency Stop” maneuver on the Clopton Bridge. I had failed the test at the painful, bitter end.

My friend, Catherine, will be taking her Driver’s Test Attempt No. 3 in two weeks time, and she is sure of success. I have assured her, too. There is something to the “Third Time Lucky” phenomenon when it comes to the British Driving Test, and even romance, but job interviews? No, you only get one shot at those to Pass or Fail.

Wouldn’t it be helpful if job interviews were more like the Driver’s Test? You have a go, have a chance to get some critical feedback from your examiners, then you go away, have a think and a cry, practice, practice, practice, and then come and try again. And again, until you get it right. To be sure, this would hardly be the most cost-effective or time sensitive way of screening applicants, but how much more humane then the “Act now!” shot-in-the-dark approach we all have come to accept and endure.

To their credit, the English are at least very efficient in their interviewing processes.  I recall an interview I had for a Drama Lecturer post in Chichester several years ago. I was still a lowly Ph.D. student, and considered myself quite lucky to even get the interview. The letter I received informing me of my selection, also informed me that I was one of three candidates being invited along to interview. I was even informed of their names. (!!!!) Imagine that, I thought. (Alas, that this happened in those heady days before Google, so I was unable to ‘google’ my competition, as one could now.) What I could never have imagined was the shock I encountered when I arrived in Chichester at my designated interview time, only to find the other two candidates arriving as well. Yes, the three of us were in fact being interviewed together. And believe me, it was as much the nightmare scenario as you imagine. A situation I would not wish upon anyone. Any-one.

The significance of three keen seekers being forced to cat-fight for the golden egg was not lost on me, Shakespearean that I am, I knew immediately that I had been woefully miscast as "Cordelia" in a low-budget production of King Lear. And like the ill-fated Cordelia, I had hoped that my grace, charm, (and my big pearls and cashmere) would see me through, and win the day, whilst my competitors “Goneril” and “Regan” clawed out each other’s eyes. 

Chichester is 102 miles/165 kilometres from Stratford-upon-Avon.  That’s over 5 hours, 37 minutes, and four changes/transfers via train on British Rail. Anyone who has taken British Rail anywhere in this country will agree that train journeys, however enjoyable, are quite often a saga in themselves. One finds one’s self waiting (and waiting and waiting…) on cold, windy platforms, for trains that are inevitably and often indefinitely delayed, and then endlessly transferring from one train to the next, and the next, because getting wherever it is you want to be can’t be accomplished by traveling in a straight line.

Eventually, bone tired, battle-weary, and emotionally drained, I ambled home from the Stratford-upon-Avon train station. As I walked through the door, I noticed my answering machine’s angry red light blinking in the darkness. With my last ounce of energy, I dashed across the room and pressed the button. From the machine came the sonorous tones of the Chichester Department Head who had (gleefully) enjoyed the role of King Lear all day. Efficient to the last, his message was short and direct. No “Hello,” “Thank you,” or any other customary niceties, just simply: “We’ve given the job to Jessica.” Keys and Gucci briefcase still in my hand, wet raincoat still hanging about me, I just sank and wilted onto my settee (couch), and didn’t bother to turn on the lights.

By contrast, my experience of American academic job interviews has been the opposite extreme. Once, I interviewed for a post in a small town in Michigan, and I was there on site for nearly a week! And it was five days too long. I mean, of course after five days you would indeed have a “real sense” of a place, and its people, but really, oy vey! I mean, five days? That’s long enough to meet people, get to know them, fall out with them, and draw battle lines.

Of course, that’s an extreme example, but it does seem to me that American academic job interviews go on (and on, and on, and on…) in a tiresome parade of meetings, handshaking, and endless meals wherein the job candidate is the beggar at the banquet, or the fool at the feast, forced to talk and entertain, whilst everyone else digs in and chows down. It’s almost as if American academic interviewing committees have developed some strange strategy wherein, the thinking goes, that the longer they keep you smiling and tap-dancing in one place, depriving you of food and sleep, the more likely you are to reveal yourself to be a raving lunatic, homicidal maniac, or both.  Given the choice, I think might prefer the more brutal, English “King Lear” approach. Sure, it’s lacerating, but at least it’s swift.

Thankfully, my interview yesterday at The Shakespeare Institute, another big pearls and cashmere day, was neither a “King Lear experience,” nor a “Five Day Sojourn.” I would say it was more like facing a friendly Firing Squad. It was an utterly surreal experience for me, having been a graduate student there years ago. I kept hearing that Janis Joplin quote in my head: “You can never go home.”  And a homecoming it was in many ways, but I tried not to focus on the metaphysical, full circle-ness of the moment, but rather deal with the task at hand as best I could.  The Institute has changed significantly since my days there as a student. And perhaps, for all my youthful exuberance, I may indeed to be too much of a harbinger of the past, too “old guard” to meet their present and future needs. The Shakespeare game has changed a lot since I was a grad student, and The Shakespeare Institute now has far more competition than ever before. Notably up the road in Warwick. Everyone is striving to have “the edge,” the upper-hand. 

The other “sticky wicket” in all this is my own indifference. On one hand it is everything I have ever hoped for, trained for, prayed for, dreamt of; while at the same time, I am terrified of losing the new found and hard-won freedom I now possess. I fear that I am only erecting yet another obstacle to fulfilling my dreams of writing. Perhaps, I don’t even believe I can cut it as a writer. So, I faced yesterday very torn. I wanted to do well, of course. But I’m not sure this is something I really want. I mean, of course it is! But, it also isn’t... Not the best state of mind to be in when one is trying to make a good showing at an interview. The way I see it, let the fates decide. It will be a “win, win” for me either way.

The D.E.B. is as loving and supportive as ever. He just wants me to be happy, and wants me to do whatever will, in his words, “fulfill” me. I just don’t know what that is anymore.  Some days, I relish the idea of being just another “country wife,” as it were, here in Barford: doing laundry, quilting, gardening, etc. I went to my first Barford “Coffee Morning” at the Machado Gallery last Friday. And there I met two lovely women from the village, and we started hatching a plan to create a Barford writers group. I don’t want to miss these organic, spontaneous life opportunities, opportunities that may in fact lead nowhere, professionally, but offer moments of connection. Moments that don’t require big pearls and cashmere, but would be all the more enjoyable in them.

 

Patience and fortitude, or "This is how I roll"

My Warwickshire Stagecoach Bus Pass. I'm a "Mega Rider," apparently.

As a New Yorker, I am no stranger to public transport. Contrary to what you see on "Sex & the City," public transport is the most reliable and often the quickest way of getting round the City. Like most New Yorkers I know, I happily sold my car, and lived on the subway. 

Public transport in England is another matter altogether.

The 2:07 PM bus to Warwick whizzed through Barford early today. I knew it would.  Even though the bus schedule (timetable), pinned up near the Joseph Arch pub states clearly and distinctly "Every hour on the hour at 7 minutes past," it really anybody's guess what time the bus will actually arrive! My routine journeys to Stratford-upon-Avon or Warwick (in the opposite direction) are life lessons in patience and fortitude.

The trip to Stratford, an easy, mindless 10 minute journey by car, becomes a half hour expedition, a daily act of faith, and a test of patience. Patience with the buses that arrive late, and depart early, if they come at all. I comfort myself with the thought that I am somehow being more 'green' and helping the environment...

What I should confess is that this sorry state of affairs is completely and utterly my choice.

In an effort to make this new life easier and more accessible for me, the D.E.B. traded in his sexy Subaru for a sensible, automatic Saab. Without having a stick-shift (gear-box) to contend with, went his line of thinking, I would feel more at ease behind the wheel. Not so. I am terrified. The Saab seems as big as a tank when I look at it. That, and the thought of taking to the road (and roundabouts) with the hordes of fierce English drivers, all going far too fast on the opposite of the road is more than my mind and bravery can take!

 

Of course, this should not be, given that I actually learned to drive in England in the first place! I know, it makes no sense at all. While I was living in England as a grad student, I learned to drive. I needed to. I was a temp after all. And a temp without wheels is, well, pretty useless. And unemployable. So I learned to drive. I paid a dear amount of my non-existent money to not one, but two, different driving instructors. I screwed my courage to the sticking place, bit the bullet and took the British Driving Test. And I failed it, three times. One the first attempt I did not even make it out of the parking lot, but failed instantly, before the test even started by stalling the car, twice, before we could even get going. Needless to say, by the time I did pass the test, I was an immensely proficient and confident driver. Even now, I know in my heart I could do a three-point turn on a dime! And I can reverse park into a parking space, blindfolded. I had a British drivers license years before I ever bothered to even think of driving in America. (By contrast the American driving test is a joke! It is so ridiculously simple, a toddler could pass it.) Why then, am I paralyzed with fear thought of driving here again. Why then, am I relegating myself to the mercy and whim of Warwickshire's finest bus drivers? I don't know.

The excuse I give to the D.E.B. is that he needs the car more than I do, and that I'm used to public transport. We'll see how long that holds up once the weather takes a turn toward winter. 

The excuse I give myself is that I'd drive, if we had a smaller car. I'd feel more in control, and less overwhelmed. And less afraid. Well, there is it finally. I'm afraid. Maybe now that I've got that out, I can face that fear and do something about it.