A Long-Overdue Update, Part I

From England this time...

“Long overdue” is an understatement. C’est la vie. Things have been happening, as things are wont to do. All of which will take a while to explain. I’ll start with this:

At the moment, I’m sitting in Oxfordshire with a cat on my lap, listening to the Vince Guaraldi trio’s “A Charlie Brown Christmas” soundtrack. Life is pretty good. So is Vince Guaraldi. I looked up a transcription of his solo from “Oh Tannenbaum” and it’d be a challenge for me to play it, even with the music written out. That’s the swingingest Christmas album there is, I think. The tinges of nostalgia for the TV special don’t hurt, either.

So, here’s an early “Happy Christmas!” to you all.

Coming soon(ish) in the next series of “Letters from Wrocław” (we really need a new name for this thing):

1. A report, with lots of photos, on the 15-day walk across England (yes, all the way across) that Cathy and I managed with my sister Mary this past summer. Many thanks to Mary for the photos! She was the trip’s entirely unofficial photographer.

   Here’s a brief sampling of the route (the Wainwright Coast to Coast Path), which passes through three large national parks in the north of England—the Lake District:

The Yorkshire Dales:

And the North York Moors:

2. An eventual report of the somewhat-to-very rainy six-day rowing trip that Cathy and I enjoyed (one of us probably “enjoyed” it a bit more than the other) on the River Thames, from Abingdon (near Oxford) to Walton-on-Thames (outskirts of London). It was a lot like Wisconsin. With narrowboats. And castles.

   

3. And some kind of explanation for why it is we’re in England (with cats) over Christmas, at which point we’ll be returning to Wisconsin.

For now, though, we’re enjoying our time in England, and looking forward to seeing some of you in the new year. Cheers!

Tom