Arrived in Milton on Mother's Day '78, taking the evening Go Bus. Danny came downstairs, and we watched Get Smart on TV. I took wacky home movies of him outside. Terry dropped by 49 Mary with some porcelain squirrels, his Mother's Day gift. Danny, Terry and I played Water Ring Toss, a cheap toy with push buttons; then watched Spencer Tracy in Fly Boy. It was almost dawn when I got to sleep after reading some Sherlock Homes.
On the day of the flight I woke at three; Rick had been downstairs, but I didn't get down in time to see him. My father made a quick dinner, has-beans, ham from yesterday and two eggs; then loaded the car and took us to the airport. Danny lent me his Ovation guitar; we insured it for seven bucks. Bought some stuff at the duty free shop. We all ran back to where Sue, Shelly and Kelly, my father and Ma were waiting. Danny waved in mock frenzy as ma and I boarded the plane.
At thirty six thousand feet above sea level, cruising at five hundred and fifty miles per hour over the Straits of Belle Aisle, ma opened the after dinner mints. I did a lot of writing at our window seat of the 747 with mother beside me, writing an Aerogramme. I was feeling kind of tired. Hadn't kept a journal since last August when Miriam flew off to Spain. From September until December 30th I wrote Maxwell's Wind-up Monkey Dance, and flew up to Ottawa to visit Carol when it was finished. Carol had been in and out of the apartment the whole time. We survived the crossing on after dinner mints.
Before going to Milton I had spent the morning packing and finishing cleaning up the apartment for Bud Rose, who would sublet it while I spent three weeks in England. Bud moved in Saturday while Carol was leaving. Ironically, when I first met Carol in July of '77 at a poetry reading, Bud brought her over. Late Saturday night and into Sunday Bud Rose was in and out as he unpacked his clothes and books. He suggested we indulge with some Jasmine tea. I told him that a lot of people knew him as "the shaggy poet who does mime." I opened a passage of the Dharma Bums, about how they climbed mountains and drank tea. The book opened to the place I had envisioned.
Friday evening I had the going away party. It was a time when any excuse was good for a party. Apart from the usual characters there was Carol, offering After Dinner Mints as a peace offering. Donna M who arrived to cook, Julie M, who helped in the kitchen, Robert P, Tony H, Godfrey, Sarah S, Michael and Gay, Phil Onius, Dean C, Lawrence M, Glen H, Mike R, Neil T, Sam Larkin, Danny my brother, Shawn W with her boyfriend, and Helen H. Helen wasted no time in telling Robert that he looked "Like puke.”
A number of people said the apartment looked very neat, probably because the last roommate was extremely messy. I played Dust on Your Dulcimer with Michael backing me up on bass. Then So Close To Being for Dawn, who leafed through my stack of antique song sheets. When the party was in its last throws Danny was in the kitchen playing backgammon with Pam G, and Donna M, who had just returned from her high school reunion. We finally went to Magic Donuts with Carol and Danny, and I hammed it up.
We went home, stopping to pick up a discarded industrial size plastic bag full plastic flowers and some transparent material. We dumped it all on the living room floor and Carol started wearing and flailing it gracefully in euphoric abandon. By this time it was dawn, Danny had swept up the last remnants.
I helped Carol move her stuff onto the back porch so that Irving, her boyfriend, wouldn't have to come in. For some reason Irving had taken a sudden aversion to me, possibly because it took so long for us to get around to opening the door for him. Carol informed me that the van had broken down and they had to move her belongings by the carload to Downsview. She ended up in tears saying that she had made a mess of everything. "I feel like the favorite pony on the merry go round..."
My mother and I put the headphones on and watched Orca, the in-flight movie. We went up to the front lounge behind the pilot's cockpit. The steward took us to meet Captain Ross in the cockpit; the sun was quite bright. It was five-thirty English time, with two hours before touch down. Below, the clouds above the Atlantic were scattered in little clumps, each with a pink glow on the side towards the sunrise. Ma told me about the first time that she went back to England in 1968 as we continued eating the After Dinner Mints. We flew over Ireland, Liverpool and then finally London where we saw the Post Office Tower and had a perfect view of the Houses of Parliament.
Going through customs was a breeze; we loaded the several pieces of luggage on a cart and hopped unto a double-decker bus. We sat in the very front seat of the upper echelon going from Heathrow to Victoria Station. Then we took a cab to Liverpool Station passing by Buckingham Palace along the Mall. We met Uncle Albert and Aunt Else at Walthemstow Central; and Uncle Jack picked up Ma and swung her around. When Ma told them we went up to the flight deck Jack said, "Did you ask him to do loop de loop" They took us to Aunt Lal and Uncle Albert's place on Clivedon Road; a quaint street.
They told me about granddad; how he was stationed in India and about his dancing boys. Looking at the photo albums Uncle Jack said that Albert almost joined the troop. After tea with sugared jelly donuts I walked with Jack and Albert to the corner pub. We had to walk slowly and stop a couple times for Jack to catch his breath. It was sunny for the first time in two weeks Jack said, pointing to a black bird, up in a tree. The mock cherries and the apple trees were in full blossom, with the wind lifting the occasional petal. We drank about three beer each. Jack complained about the foam on his Guiness.
Towards the evening I took a short walk into Epping Forest but it was muddy and I was too tired to explore. Before sleeping I looked into the dusky back yard and saw a white rabbit scampering around. Out the back window of my tiny bedroom at Clivedon Road, in London I woke to see the trees outlining Epping Forest. The birds were chirping wildly; it was not quite dawn. Beyond the garden, which had a bird house and a little green house, there was only one row of houses before the forest.
From Clivedon Road I would take the bus and the train to the sights; it was not unusual for me to see two musicals in a day. Got out at Picadilly Circus, and bought a music sheet of Matchstalk Men and Matchstalk Cats and Dogs which I had seen in a music store window. The cover and title had impressed me. Walked by the Houses of Parliament, to Hyde Park and saw Shut Your Eyes and Think of England.
The following day I saw Annie at the Victoria Palace Theater and then Kismet. I went with mom and Else to High Street Market and had a long walk after seeing where mother used to live at 10 Mattlock Lane. This was not far from the library where Ma had rocked the pram wildly. That was the first entry in her memoirs, which she had dedicated to me.
Finally, I made contact with Miriam and met her a few times at Trafalgar Square. She had been living in England and Spain since the previous September, when she left Toronto. I had met her at a party at Donna M's place and kept in touch with her over the winter. At Hyde Park we sat in a gazebo and I played a few songs, songs I had written in her absence. We walked to South Kensington, stopping to look in the windows of Harrad's. Wrote out postcards sitting in the bar overlooking the Serpentine River. On the next table a clean-cut kid was writing a letter with blue ink and flowing cursive. Miriam and I went to Portabello Market; and lost track of each other, when she disappeared for about an hour in one place.
Miriam and I went to Barcelona and Sitges taking a 25-hour ride on the Magic Bus. The last leg of the trip was a train full of boisterous children with noise topped off with Jackhammers echoed in Barcelona's underground station yard. Completed several postcards after the Picasso Museum. Miriam shopped in the market for the picnic lunch in the park by the zoo. I bought a black beret and a bag, a pan flute and looked at the guitars and the parrots on the Ramblas. At the zoo we saw the Albino Orangutan and Miriam took my picture by the Griffin fountain. We then viewed the black Madonna, and the Barcelona Cathedral. In the Cathedral courtyard Miriam reached into the pocket of my Jacket and pulled out a "deep dark secret.”
Went to a few discos In Sitges; in every disco there was someone dressed like John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever. Then we returned to the hostel. The optometrist who shared the room went out to watch a few trains go by. I treated Miriam to a paella dinner then we walked by the beach with her talking about her father visiting her at camp too often. Then we took the long bus back to London.
After seeing a pheasant run across the clearing by the Chinese pagoda in Kew Garden we saw Brown Sugar at the Royal Theater. While eating Cornish pastry with her at afternoon tea the idea struck me for a musical set in Kew Gardens. On a double decker bus I thought of a crystal carousel of haunted glass horses: Her Majesties' Magical Merry Go Round. After leaving Liverpool Street on the train I worked out parts of the melody. It was to become The Favorite Pony. At Walthemstow Central I whistled It's a Hard Luck Life, from the musical Annie. We went to Tower Hill and the Tate Gallery. Had a transportation nightmare taking the wrong train from South End, where I spent the day on the beach with Miriam. My mother and I met Miriam at Green Park and went to the Mall to see the parade of the Trooping of the Colors. We had breakfast, went to Oxford Street shopping; took a taxi to see a matinee of Chorus Line, then the Waldorf for afternoon tea. We finished off the day by seeing Madam Butterfly at the Royal Opera House. Ma took home movies of it all.
Uncle Jack, Aunt Else, Ma and I went to Waltham Abbey. Just outside a pub where we sat out the rain somebody's donkey dropped dead. Went to a folk club at Springfield Tavern, it was in a bare room upstairs, I sang Favorite Pony and Masterpiece of Heart. On my last day with Miriam we went shopping at Oxford Street where she bought a burgundy velvet dress suit and I bought a Harris Tweed three piece suit for 57.85 pounds. Then we had dinner and went to Vaudeville Theater to see Agatha Christie's Murder is Announced. Her flight back to Toronto was a few days after mine.
During my last couple days I made it up to the very top of Saint Paul's Cathedral carrying my guitar and bag. I was up there at the stroke of noon. Went to the British Museum and then to Regent's Park, where I bought a tiger poster for Katrina. That evening I took a bus to Oxford from Victoria Station and roamed around in the evening looking for a bed and breakfast, but couldn't find one so I slept in the woods on the outskirts of town, sans sleeping bag. I saw the apparition of a young woman dressed in a white peasant dress, straight out of a Shakespearean play.
Woke up and took the bus to Reading. Took the train to Paddington and on to the National Gallery. I met someone at Waterloo station who went with me to see Plenty at the National Theater. At last I went to Saint James Park, sat in a deck chair and listened to a marching band play in a gazebo. In the evening I went to the Palladium and saw the Two Ronnies. Bought souvenirs for my friends; then finally I walked over the Thames in my two-piece suit thinking up a song: Last Night in London.
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