19 Nov. 25

A theme of our family's life is going somewhere to visit women who had taken care of me or my children. Last week we went to York to see a woman who babysat me when I was about 9 and she was about to start college. In the intervening years she came here for work and settled in. These days there are only so many people who I could go thirty years without seeing and yet be up on all the major events of their lives because our moms are friendly, and I think we were both curious to compare the reports with reality. It was wonderful but also very disorienting to meet her as enough of a peer that my younger son asked how she could have been my babysitter when I'm the one with more gray hair. Love to see those critical thinking skills at work!

There was some track work between Manchester and York which required transfer to a shuttle for part of the trip. We were not quite aggressive enough in our crowd work to make it onto the waiting coach bus for which I felt a sense of personal failure. No worries, the windbreakered rail employee said, that double decker over there is ready for overflow. Is it really overflow if you know how many people are transferring from Wakefield to York, and that it's too many people for one bus, so maybe you could have just had them both ready? Never mind, the second bus is just over there, she'll get the driver.

The driver's been found but they've been talking for a while. The lady in the windbreaker is frowning at her clipboard. The bus makes a strangled sound. The battery is dead. There's another bus sitting there tantalizingly, but that's needed for all the people who will be getting off the next train which will be in by the time a new bus can be sent from either of the nearest depots (mini geography lesson!). There's another train to York leaving from the other train station in Wakefield, but sadly, Windbreaker Lady says, she's remembered this other train five minutes too late for any of us to make it there in time. She wishes she had remembered earlier! Everyone smiles resignedly at that. Eventually it gets to the point where the quickest way for any of us to get to York is to get on the bus due to take the people from the next train. There is some deliberation about whether we can get on early before that train arrives so there's no chance that any of us misses out on a seat and would be at the mercy of the replacement bus allegedly en route. It breaks our way so we settle in, and once the train arrives we leave, an hour late. The lesson is that it's always worth it to be pushy, or at least always make sure you're on the first bus. Plus side: we drove past a pub called the Hark to Mopsey. If you and your partner read that out loud in unison when you see it, then you know you're married to the right person.

When I studied abroad in Sussex I met a friend from York and we went to her parents' house over a break. I remember a train museum, the post-event bliss of her friend we bumped into who had just got back from Glastonbury, and I want to say we popped into the gallery of the court house and saw part of a trial for some kind of assault? Sadly, the branch of the Gap where I'd had to get replacements for forgotten pajamas is lost to the sands of time.

What is not lost to the sands of time is quite a bit of York's ancient infrastructure. York is very pretty in a way that reminded me of Salem. There was a dungeon "museum" that N tried to convince us to go, to just like he has tried to convince us to go to many witchy pseudo-educational things. The former babysitter (FB) suggested we go to the York Castle Museum, which confusingly is not the actual castle next door. My kids are getting to be extremely museumed out but this place was a WIN.

No way I was schlepping up there. When T waved to us I heard him say "There's Mama!" to my younger son, and the FB and I simultaneously yelled "Don't hold him up!!!!!".

There were a lot of exhibits about homes and everyday objects from various bygone eras, which I always enjoy. There was a jail cell, a school room, and a recreation of a whole Victorian street where you can go into stores and buy candy that your mom might later say is a choking hazard. We spent most of our time in a room of old animatronic machines that had puppet monkeys playing the maracas or told fortunes like the one in "Big". If it had been up to my kids we would have spent the whole day and their college fund in there.

We were a week too early for Christmas markets, and like Salem I could imagine the crowds getting to be kind of a lot if you were there at a peak time. We didn't to to The Shambles, a neighborhood of very picturesque narrow streets that are now awash with Harry Potter stuff, but I did pass a bachelorette party where the bride was in full Fleur de la Coeur cosplay. There is still a ton to do in York and I'm sure we will be back to see FB so I can hear the soothing tones of home. Meanwhile, as I find continually baffling, tourists are sleeping on Manchester! Watch 24 Hour Party People and tell me you don't want to go see the place where a plaque on an apartment building by the canal commemorates the site of a former warehouse/club/temple of early nineties rave culture!

13 Nov. 2025

Remembrance Day was a big deal. The Didsbury Village Women's Institute had been knitting and crocheting red poppies for weeks to make a wreath, and I'm sorry to say I contributed zero. They were on lapels and lampshades, the kids both made them in school. An 11am meeting on Tuesday started late so everyone could do their two minutes of silence.

As with Bonfire Night, the date falling midweek caused events to spread. I went to the Elizabeth Gaskell House on Sunday and they attributed lower than normal attendance to Remembrance Day events. Given that the EGH passed through a few hands, briefly serving as an international student dorm, before becoming a museum, it is in pretty good shape. You can even leaf through her books, although I was afraid to touch anything because my hand was covered with ointment after I burned myself trying to invert the Aeropress (why? It doesn't matter why, just don't do it). I took a picture of exactly one thing in the home of this literary icon, and it was of her closet. Specifically, her shawls.

I'll spare you the specifics but these shawls, particularly the white one on the left, brought out some deep textile geekery. My grandmother had acres of shawls accumulated over many trips to India, and as much as she was drawn to them she had zero occasion to use them. If she had been a pharoah we could have mummified her in them. When we were cleaning out her closet, my mom or I would shove one into my grandfather's hands so he could tell us the fiber content and he would say "Cotton silk blend" or "There's rayon in that, give away" or "Handwoven, can't get this today at any price!". Anyway, EG had a good eye. The black and white striped thing above the shawls was a bonnet, can you imagine the figure you would cut!

When I got to the house, I made it about six minutes into the welcoming spiel before asking if the monthly used book sale was still happening. Sadly canceled due to Christmas prep, but the baseline selection in their gift shop was pretty good. In the tea shop where I was eating my Bakewell tart there were two other patrons, apparently strangers. One of them was knitting and they were talking about yarn stores that have good parking. There were actually three if you count the knitter's teenaged daughter, who looked like her mom getting into conversations about looms with random people was a routine occurance to be tolerated. I think the museum should be exploiting the likelihood that the Venn diagram between Gaskellheads and yarnheads is basically a circle. My £9 ticket was good for a year so when that used book blowout happens I will be back.

11 Nov. 2025

Bonfire Night was last Wednesday. I did not hear anyone refer to it as Guy Fawes day, although N came home from school knowing the first few lines of the poem. The mid-week occurence seemed to have lead to spread, with lots of events scheduled for the weekend before or after in addition to day of, and we have heard or seen fireworks pretty much every night for the past ten days. The city-sponsored events have been canceled every year since COVID, although it seemed like this year the announcement came fairly late and there were still listings on various city websites which led to a lot of confused traffic in various Whatsapp groups.

It took some digging to find a private event that wasn't either sold out or required buying tickets in person from a bar that was closed for three days before their event was held. There was one at a rugby club. The kids saw their friends from school and immediately vanished into the muddy darkness once it became clear that we were not going to buy them popcorn or some kind of LED mini-pool-noodle. Anticipating a long walk home, including a quarter mile or so down an unlit road with a fair amount of car traffic, we did not partake of the club's bar. Luckily the rugby club bathrooms were, let's say, athletic, but at least they were indoors.

There was an hour or so of milling around outside before things kicked off. The kids were busy chasing each other with the light-up thingys. It had been a while since I saw a bonfire. The last I remember was the annual July 4th party held by friends of my parents where all the kids tossed in the notebooks from the previous year. The lighting was a bit of an anticlimax because the pile of pallets took a while to get going, but within 15 minutes or so I was thinking "It looks awfully close to those trees full of dead leaves." No one else seemed worried so I guess not having to take drought precautions is one consolation of English weather. Then the fireworks started. There were a line of setups in a row on far end of the field, which was roped off from the party. For each launch a team of men in neon safety vests scurried over to a rocket, set it off, and scurried to safety which added an element of drama.

Update on the school children who were in costume to learn about the Great London Fire. They also baked biscuits, did a traditional dance, and used a quill to write a diary entry in the manner of Samuel Pepys!!!! This is in the equivalent of US first grade. Meanwhile, N has had to teach himself cursive because those schools in Massachusetts that haven't given it up entirely don't get to it until third grade and the English kids started learning it in kindergarten.