I had the most wonderful time in Europe/England for almost three weeks. I stayed in Devon with photographer/musician friends and visited the extraordinary gentleman Norman Scott in his 15th century farmhouse, down such narrow, twisting roads, overgrown with centuries of entangled trees, past houses which have not been renovated in hundreds of years. Hobbit land!
And then I went on to friend in the French Alps and took extraordinary walks, and ate in this tiny homespun restauants where they served peche, one sort of tiny fish caught in Lake Geneva and breaded, served with lightly sweet white wine and our waitress being the husband of the owner, and far from young. Enchanting. Many adventures. Then a drive through Switzerland to reach the Italian canton the Ticino where my stepmother lives. And back through France where I saw 13,407 cows in fields and finally we reached the HUGE port of Calais and took the boat to Dover...
...whereupon I took a fast train to London where I was entirely haunted by Robbie, the young artist in BOY IN THE RAIN, as I felt him walking beside bepast so many sites he would have known in 1904 when he was studying art there and unhappy. He would have heard the tolling of Big Ben. I had not been back to London since I sold the novel (not for years) and it is haunted with his life for me.
And now I am back in New York City where I have always lived.
Until next time.... Stephanie