A LONG WAY FROM MANY PLACES

Places I’ll Remember

Time and circumstances have increased our propensity to travel. Ann and I take trips more frequently and they are of longer duration. While my experience as an itinerant is still limited, I’ve learned that our most rewarding visits to somewhere, anywhere, are when we’re able to stay in a neighbourhood and live day to day much like a local.

The London flat we shared with my sister and her husband, two small bedrooms, two small baths, was central. Our Bloomsbury address was at the corner of Alfred Garden and Store Street. Tottenham Court Road was half a block away and we were proximate to three Tube stations, a myriad of Underground lines. Walking was our preferred touring method as there’s not a whole lot of visual stimulation in tunnels.

The windows of our living area were above a pub called the College Arms and a Co-op grocery store. The shop was a lifeline. It sold cigarettes, beer, wine, hot coffee, sandwiches cut into triangles, newspapers and staples. Nor were we far from a Tesco Metro and a bakery; no bagged load was too unwieldy to manage on the litter-strewn sidewalks teeming with the vaping digital denizens of modern times, those curiously clueless as to how and why they and their devices occupy actual physical space in time.

The one constant, the anchor in the madding flow of garbage trucks, vans, motorcycle couriers, taxis, busses, officially discouraged private vehicles, scooters and electronic bikes, was a woman about my age who sat atop an old suitcase outside the door of the Co-op six days a week, eight to six. Swaddled in saris and shawls, she sold a street newspaper. She also had a cell phone. For one week we were nodding, smiling and waving acquaintances. I took to giving her my pocket change because I feel like a moron holding out a palmful of foreign coinage to a shopkeeper or publican, trusting them to take what they need and leave the rest. I wondered what her story was and wondered about this strange and temporary trans-Atlantic connection near the University of London in the borough of Camden. We never spoke.

If our Bloomsbury flat was a pedestrian pied-a-terre, functional shelter hard by amenities, our accommodations in the northerly city of York were something out of a Dark Ages legend or a fairy tale.

The construction of Lendal Tower commenced at the turn of a century, about 1300. At its base, its walls are about three feet thick, maybe closer to four. The Tower grew through the ages, some 58 feet of height has been added through the ages. The newer and higher stone walls taper to a thickness of some 18 inches. The windows don’t open; they’re narrow rectangles plugged with leaded panes of smaller, narrower rectangles. The Tower is soundproof; unlike the darkened city soundscape surrounding our London flat we cannot hear the night angrily collapsing into chaos at last orders, yelling and breaking glass.

Lendal Tower has a dwarf companion on the opposite bank of the river Ouse, Barker Tower. Together they constituted an integral part of the walled city’s defences. A connecting chain served as the medieval version of a submarine net so to speak and of course as a toll gate in more placid times. Burgeoning public utilities co-opted Lendal Tower in 1677 when it became crucial to York’s civic waterworks. The busy Lendal Bridge, the view from our dim window and uncomfortably eye-level with our bathroom and which spans the Ouse, was inaugurated in 1863 and declared toll-free in 1894.

The main floor of the Tower is rock solid, flagstone. The old fireplace houses a flat-screen television. The rough walls are whitewashed. The exposed timber beams which support the mezzanine and upper storeys and prop up the walls are immense, tougher than nails after so many hundreds of years. The rectangular dining room table seats six, squeezes eight; my imagination tells me it should be round. The kitchen is rife with 21^st century mod cons, metallic or red or red metallic. The sole kitchen appliance the Tower shared with our Bloomsbury digs was an utterly useless compact washer-dryer unit which incorporates the same spinning drum for both functions.

The narrow winding stairs creak upward toward the night. The bedrooms, one per floor as the diameter of the stone cylinder constricts, are surprisingly spacious, refined and elegant, and Hammersmith horror. The furniture is brown leather, heavy and studded, the bedspreads are crimson. The dark wood paneling suggests secret doors and passages, priest holes perhaps. The moody lighting casts dark shadows. Rooms like these are exactly where I’d confine a beloved, insane, homicidal relative; suites decorated by Messrs. Cushing and Lee, and torn, terrified figures screaming into the sleet and the wind on the Yorkshire Moors.

The Cross of St. George flutters and flaps atop the Tower, signaling from the rooftop terrace accessed by a stepladder contrivance, no railings or risers to the summit. It commands a view of the river and an old city inside its ancient walls; the train station is visible, a mass of brick, glass and iron a little less than 600 yards away. Our tragedy is that after living six nights out of time in Lendal Tower we will have to walk back that way to board a swaying, high-speed steel wheel ride to London and then eventually make our way to a Hilton Garden Inn cell by Heathrow’s Terminal 2.

     

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