2 Apr 26

My mother was visiting a few weeks ago and requested that we take a mudlarking tour. That had also been on my radar via the Instagram of Lara Maiklem, who explores the foreshore of the Thames at low tide looking for objects hundreds of years old or more. You need a permit or be on a tour with a permitted guide, which my mom found via the Thames Explorer Trust.

Mudlarking used to be a way for the most desperately poor Londoners, often children, were able to scratch out a living. In 2026, if our group of 20 or so was representative, it draws people with nice hiking gear led by an American volunteer with a park ranger vibe. We met in Wapping, which all my murder books led me to believe would be seedy, but it is seedy no longer. The guide passed around samples of pottery, some of it from as far back as the Roman era, so we would know what to look for. She said we could only pick up what was visible from the surface, even scrapping sand aside with a boot was not permitted in that area, and under no circumstances were we to take anything we found with us. Here my mother's mouth took on a defiant set, and her adherence to this instruction is between her and her conscience.

We sheathed ourselves in several pairs of disposable gloves and proceeded down an extremely steep, slippery, and uneven set of stairs so I did get a little hit of peril after all. I thought we'd be lucky if we found anything other than litter, but the bits of blue and white china and clay pipe bowls started popping up quickly and soon the newfound archeology experts were murmuring "Hmm, maybe Georgian?". It did take some time to calibrate the eye. "You'll start to get a lot more choosier about what you pick up," the guide said gently after telling me that a large chunk I thought might be some kind of medieval jug was just a piece of a Victorian storm drain.

It was a cold and dreary day. A quivering Australian woman in just a sweatshirt had to give up after 45 minutes. But there was less obviously gross flotsam than I had expected, and you came across things often enough to stay encouraged. As the guide predicted, after the first hour a two hundred year old shard of porcelain had to be very attractive to be worth stooping for. Most unsettling find was a blackened bone from some kind of limb, human or not I don't know. We each filled a TSA-sized plastic bag with bits. I showed it to the guide and then dutifully emptied back on the shore. Lunch at the historic Prospect of Whitby pub nearby, where the food was fine and they will get you served and on your way as soon as they possibly can.

Highlights

31 Mar. 2026

B's preschool class visited the Manchester Airport Runway Visitor Park, and in my newfound state of leisure I went with them. I was assigned two girls to mind in addition to B. The children kept up an uninterrupted stream of high volume chatter throughout the twenty minute ride. "We're going to the Airport! Hi car! There's Tesco! Ahhhhh! That's where I take swimming lessons! Sheep sheep sheep! Ahhhhhh! I can open the front door by myself! I can pour a glass of milk! We're on the bus!". All caps could not begin to convey the cacaphony.

On arrival there was the lengthy process of getting everyone in and out of the bathroom. We had been warned of wet weather, so one of my charges was decked out in a waterproof jumpsuit over her uniform. I let the teachers handle that when it was her turn. We ate our lunches at picnic tables under tents by the runway. There had been a lot of discussion in the WhatsApp group about what to pack for lunch, and some of the kids had enough snacks to get them through a nonstop flight to Sydney. Repeated communications from the school have said that candy, chocolate, cookies, and chips (our chips) are not allowed. My kids insist that I am the only parent who actually follows this rule. Mixed bag based on my observation. None of the other mothers seemed to be eating. I'd given half my sandwich to B because his water bottle had leaked and made his into a soggy mush, which I'd thought quite heroic of me, but there was no way I was going to get through the day without some nourishment even if I had to push aside thoughts of all the sneezing and worse going on. Playground time! Each kid ran in a different direction. The mothers chatted as best we could while squinting over each other's shoulders counting our charges.

After play time, we were met by the retired flight attendant and engineer who would be our guides. They showed us an RAF plane, but I was taking a kid to the bathroom for most of that so all I heard about was the black box which isn't actually black. There was also the front section of a passenger plane used by Royal Zambian and then Monarch airlines. The flight attendant asked if the children knew various things about airplanes. Sidebar. In every classroom in the school, there is a laminated picture of a candle with cutouts of the childrens' photos stuck to it. If you are very good, the teacher moves your picture "up the candle" or maybe even "on the shining light" around the flame. If you are naughty you are moved "down the candle" in shame. I thought this kind of motivational tool was unique to their school. But when one of the kids gave a good answer the flight attendant said "Do you do house points or anything like that? Because he should get one," and the teacher explained about On the Shining Light, which is how I learned that JKR did not make up the ten points for Gryffindor thing. See, we don't need her!

The flight attendant took the kids in groups to sit in the cockpit while everyone else listened to the engineer explaining all the different jobs at the airport. Some kids were put in firefighter helmets, others had police bowlers with checkered bands, or jaunty cabin crew hats. The girl with the Emirates hat did not care for the drapey bit at all. "Now repeat after me, the nearest exit may be behind you! We will now serve tea and coffee!", said the guide. He brought out a megaphone and kids took turns blasting recordings of distressed birds that are played to dissauade the actual birds from approaching the aircraft. A student teacher in her early twenties examined the metal door on the armrest of a seat. "Oh I think it's...an ashtray? But why would there be an ashtray on an airplane?". I said that I could remember when planes had smoking sections. My grandfather grumbled about having to switch to cigarettes on flights because his preferred pipe and cigars were a bridge too far. "That's mental," she said. I have not mentioned all of the wee breaks. Imagine them extending into infinity.

Last stop was to peer through the windows of the indoor exhibit where some kind of convention was underway. The booths with their keychains and pamphlets were set up under a decommissioned Concorde. Thinking of what a stir the armrest ashtrays had caused, I told the guide I remembered the Concorde regularly making its noisy way overhead when I was a kid on Long Island. No stir. Bus ride home, more subdued this time as all the kids were pretty beat.

27 Mar. 2026

Holiday news.

I'm very behind here, but I wanted to share the Christmas card we got from our local Lib Dem committee. As far as I can see, they are a centrist party of the type many Americans say they want, and to those people I'm sorry to say they don't seem to be taking Britain by storm. But you have to respect a political party for having the courage to take their Christmas card in this direction. For comparison, the Labor party mailing was a list of phone numbers for community and emergency services, more useful perhaps but less memorable. There's a blog I check in on occasionally, "Liberal Democrat Blog of the Year 2014," that has a running bit called Lord Bonkers' Diary where the author writes in the voice of an Edwardian aristocrat. In other recent political news, a special election in a neighboring constituency was handily won by the Green Party, specifically a plumber named Hannah who looks like Judy Greer and also finished her plasterer certification while she was campaigning.

I was assuming that St. Patrick's Day wouldn't really be a thing here, certainly by Boston standards. But Manchester is Irish enough to have a St. Patrick's parade on the nearest weekend that I was told starts out more family oriented and then becomes increasingly raucous. On the seventeenth, there was a Mass at the kids' school followed by tea and soda bread in the parish hall. After the service, some of the girls who take Irish step dancing classes performed in the church. One of the girls just won a big competition and is going to finals in Chicago. I was standing behind a pillar (packed to the rafters) so my vision was sometimes limited to the wild bounce of hair ribbons and startled movements from people sitting near the aisles when the feet of girls dancing past them were flung upward. "Maybe we'll see a few of the lads up here next year?" said Father J.