May 19 2006
Travels With Dad: Paris to England, May 1984
May 12, 1984
The weather was horrible, so we decided to go to England a day early. I am even more in love with Paris than ever. I was sorry to leave.
We had a pretty awful trip. We thought the train went on a ferry to get to Dover, but discovered that we & all our luggage had to get off the train at Boulogne and wait 1 & 1/2 hours for the hovercraft. The hovercraft was very strange – it came right up onto the sand and then the “cushion” it rides on deflated! It was like a “monster from the sea” movie.
It was a very rough crossing – the waves were three meters high at times – and it took twice as long as it was supposed to. There was a great jolt in the middle of the trip, and Dad turned pea green. In spite of gin and gravol, he had mal de mer. So much so that he hired a car to take us from Dover to Northiam. The driver didn’t mind the luggage at all (unlike the horrible cab driver in Milan).
We were warmly greeted by Great-Aunt Barbara [my grandmother’s sister], Great-Uncle George [her husband], and Richard [their son, who has Down Syndrome and lived with them until their deaths]. It’s good to be in England again. As any English person will tell you, there’s nowhere like it. If someone dropped me down here without telling me where I was, I’d know right away. I can tell that Dad is happy to be on home ground again, looking forward to cricket and seeing old friends.
Northiam is a tiny, Agatha Christie sort of village. Sheep, cows, horses, lovely old houses – some thatched, some half-timbered, and also the famous old Smugglers Cottage, the smallest house in Sussex, is just down the street.
Great-Uncle G. took us to Hastings, where Dad spent many of his childhood holidays, and showed us Great-Grandmother Smith’s house. There we saw a motorcycle accident. Two teenage boys wiped out going around a corner just as we got out of the car. Although other people were around, it was me who ran for an ambulance and Mom who took care of the boys. The younger one had his leg torn open to the bone from the knee down, but he had guts: he didn’t cry at all. The ambulance came soon and we stowed the bike on a side street. It was barely damaged at all, unlike its riders.
One Response to “Travels With Dad: Paris to England, May 1984”
You make the small villages sound so charming and inviting, but I now I’d go stir crazy if I lived there.