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June 16 Friday Overcast 15º C Bicycle touring England Saw a sign reading "Top Quality Horse Manure." Must be from thoroughbreds. I didn't know there was a difference. Those must be golden nuggets. Our maze of bicycle touring along country roads and lanes continued alongside bright green hedges and areas lined by overhanging tree branches. The terrain was mostly rolling. Not too tough for fully loaded touring bicycle touring. We pull our bikes up to a house to ask for water. A boy of high school age comes to the door in his tie and jacket. Very professional looking. He tells us he has one exam left. We ask if this is the direction to Jockey's End and show him our route. "That's quite a good route you've picked out," he says. He's says he's ridden some of it on his mountain bike. Great. I hope it's not too onerous on a fully loaded touring bicycle. The sun comes out -- enough to actually cast a shadow. We pull our bikes to a stop in Jockey's End for a picnic lunch of salad beside a brick wall. It's in the shade, but it's out of the cool breeze. A row of tall yellow buttercups adorn the wall's perimeter. We cycle into Tring Station and phone Tina's parents (we met Tina during a freak snowstorm in Sienna), but we get an answering machine. I leave a message. It is 4:30 PM. Maybe they're not home from work yet. We sit and read for a while. At 6 we decide to leave. I was going to call back again, but I have no more change. Tring Station is not a very big place. On a whim, I say to Sharon, "Let's see if we can find their house. We can leave this bicycle magazine for Tina and a note." Tina had given us her parents' address. I try and guess where it is. I cycle down a lane, Sharon following me -- probably shaking her head. I've never met Tina's parents before, nor have I ever been to Tring Station in my life. But I think their house is that one over there. There are no street signs. We pedal back again to the main road. I see a woman in a window of a house across the road. I lean my bike against a post and say to Sharon, "Nothing ventured, nothing gained." I remove my bicycling helmet as I go to ask for directions. The woman says the address I am looking for is indeed the house across the street. We pedal over to the Tina's parent's house. I am just about to leave the bicycling magazine and our note by the door, but, since there are cars outside the house, I decide to ring the buzzer. Tina's mom, Bruni, answers the door. She had been expecting the piano tuner. Seeing me, she says, "You don't look like the piano tuner ... unless you've changed an awful lot since I last saw you." "I can tuna fish," I say, "but I can't tune a piano." I explain who I am and how we met Tina and her boyfriend Marcus in Sienna. Bruni opens the garage so we can stow our touring bicycles for the night and invites us in. Bruni's husband, Alastair, was not home from work yet. But he arrived shortly after we did. He wasn't the piano tuner, either. He works in London, in management for an architectural firm. (The train costs him £3,000 a year to commute from Tring Station to London.) It sounds like he holds a prestigious position. He even met the Queen one time when she came to open one of the buildings he designed. The Queen asked him, "Did you design this building?" "Yes," was Alastair's single word reply. "I would have liked to have said something more," he said, "like, 'Your dress is lovely,' but I couldn't, as it was that hideous shade of blue she wears, and it was repulsive. She must be the world's worst dressed lady." "Yep," I agreed. "Goes to show you that money can't buy taste. Just look at Bill Gates's haircut." Bruni is a psychiatrist. She was born in Germany. She has an office in their home. Alastair and Bruni lived in South Africa for a time. That is where their son, Duncan, was born. (Alastair was born in India. I guess globe-trotting runs in his family. Although, he says his grandfather was born in Edinburgh, Scotland.) They travelled around the world for a year with their children in 1974, when the kids were aged 5 and 2. Alastair is changing gears at this stage in his life. He gave his notice to finish at the architectural firm in August. He is 58; Bruni is 51. He says he doesn't want to call it early retirement. He just says he wants to do something different. He is teaching one day a week, starting in October, but he hasn't looked too hard for other things so far. He would like to get involved in some Third World project. Alastair is a sensitive man. For example, snails are eating the plants in their garden. Rather than squish the poor slimy creatures, he has put slug pellets out. We are sitting at a table enjoying a drink in the courtyard with their cats. Two snails are climbing plants in nearby. Alastair picks one up, looks at it, sets it down, and says, "They should be dying." Then adds, "The snails, not the cats." The snails (and the cats) look quite healthy to me. Bruni tells us later (when Alastair is out of earshot) that their neighbour came over one day. She saw three slugs slithering along the sidewalk as slugs are wont to do. "Do you mind if I kill them?" she asked. Without waiting for a reply, she gallantly stepped on each one in turn like some gleeful sadistic school boy. Alastair, having watched in horror at the unfolding spectacle, turned to Bruni and said, "I think I'm going to be ill." The monastery down the road is not likely to approve of either method. But, personally, I think stepping on the wee terrestrial mollusks is more humane than slow-working pellets ... and to anything else that has the misfortune to ingest a slug that has been dining on slug killer. One time, another friend teased Alastair (with a devilish smile I suspect), "Don't you know those pellets cause them to explode?" Alastair and Bruni have a mousetrap that catches the mouse live and then they transport the critter to the other side of the canal and let it go. I told them it's probably the same mouse they keep catching over and over. The mouse just takes the bridge and comes back to their place. Bruni says the next time they catch one, she's going to paint its toenails, so she'll know if it's the same mouse coming back each time. Alastair is creative and artistic, as well as architecturally talented. He designed the new part of their house. Their address refers to their home as a cottage, but even without the addition it is quite huge. The addition attaches to the main house in an upside down and backwards capital L shape. It has a kitchen, dining room, living room, office, bathroom, and bedroom. Quite the addition. The ceiling is open beam in an A shape. The wall looking out onto the lawn is entirely in glass. It is a picture window top to bottom and side to side. The lawn is an open expanse with trees and shrubs lining the perimeter. Through the front door, one can continue straight out the hall and into a sheltered courtyard which has a picnic table, lounge chairs, and more shrubs. It is very private and secluded. Bruni was actually out there reading when I tried calling earlier and didn't hear the phone. A one car attached garage is on the front of the house. It is stuffed with boxes and their two bikes. There is no room for a car. Even to cram our two bikes in, we had to do some rearranging. From the front door, to the right, leads to the amazing addition. To the left, one goes down a hall to another washroom and various other rooms, including more bedrooms, an office for Bruni, a room with a freezer, washer, and dryer, and stairs that lead to three upper bedrooms. When they gave us the grand tour, and Alastair opened a door onto yet another bedroom, I half expected him to say, "Hmmm. I don't think I've ever been in this room before." Alastair and Bruni are on a diet. They both look reasonably fit and trim, but they want to shed some pounds before summer to fit into their summer clothes. For supper, we have baked salmon. Alastair insists on opening a bottle of wine just for Sharon and I ... they can't indulge on account of their diet. I chose red, since I like the taste of red wine better than white, even though Sharon tells me it is a faux pas with fish. I don't know, the salmon looks reddy-orange. This is bicycle touring in high fashion. |
