Category: Kristine Hughes

A Couple In England: Day 8 – Part Two

Exiting the train at Royal Windsor Station, one of the first things Hubby saw was a Caffe Nero.

“Caffe Nero, Hon! We can go tomorrow morning.”

“Absolutely.”

We entered the pedestrian only Peascod Street. “No cabs?”

“We don’t need one. We just need to get to the top of the street, make a right and the Castle Hotel is  a block away on the right.”

When we got to the top of the Street, I pointed at the statue. “Queen Victoria. It was erected for her Golden Jubilee in 1887.”

“What’s that? Is that a castle? It looks like that castle in London.”

“It’s Windsor Castle,” I told Hubby. “The castle in London is actually the Tower of London. It’s not a castle at all.”

“They look the same to me.”

Sigh.

A few more steps brought us to the Castle Hotel, which is just lovely. We were given a very large room overlooking the High Street. I’m sorry I didn’t think to take a photo of the room before Hubby and I disgorged our belongings over every flat surface, but you get the idea.

Both the Crooked House and Guildhall were right outside our window.

“Isn’t your friend at the Guildhall?” Hubby asked.

“Yes, Hester told me to come over and meet her there when we got to Windsor.”

“Well go on then, go see her.”

“You sure?” I gave Hubby a quick once over, trying to assess his condition. He looked much better than he had this morning. Not one hundred percent, mind you, but no longer at death’s door.

“Okay. But I’ll be literally right across the street.”

“Go. If I need you, I’ll hang a pair of my boxers out the window.”

Regular readers of this blog will know the name Hester Davenport. Not only has Hester contributed guest posts to this blog, she is also the author of The Prince’s Mistress: A Life of Mary Robinson, among other works, and has graciously acted as our Windsor guide whenever Vicky, Jo Manning or myself are there. In fact, a visit with Hester is typically the high point of our trips across the Pond. In addition, Hester was a driving force in getting the Windsor and Royal Borough Museum, housed in the Guildhall, up and running. In fact, Hester acted as hostess to the Queen, who paid a visit to the Museum. You can see photos and read all about Hester’s meeting with the Queen last year here. On a past visit, Hester arranged for the issues of the Windsor newspaper dealing with the Battle of Waterloo to be pulled from the archives so that Vicky and I could see them up close and personal. Now that’s what you call a pal . . . . .

When I got to the Museum, Hester was busy speaking to a few people, but she saw me, did a double take and then gave me the “be with you in a minute” high sign. I sat on a nearby bench and was shortly joined by Hester, who took a good look at me and said, “Oh, dear. I knew you were sick by your emails but I’d no idea you were this sick.”

“Do I look that bad?”

“Oh, yes.” Good old Hester. She pulls no punches. “And Hubby? Is he as bad as you?”

“Worse. Don’t forget, I’m in the recovery phase now. You should have seen me a few days ago.”

“Oh, you poor thing. I had no idea.”

“Really? The fact that I wrote you that I had cholera and was near death didn’t clue you in?”

“Well, I thought you were exaggerating somewhat,” she said, “but now I see you weren’t. Oh, dear. Are you sure you’re going to want to go to Oatlands and Hampton Court tomorrow?”

“Was Wellington at Waterloo? Yes, I’m sure. I’m going to Oatlands if I have to crawl there. I’ve longed to see Oatlands for ages now, haven’t I? I’m determined to see Freddy’s house and the pet cemetery.”

A co-worker of Hester’s came by then and Hester introduced us. “This is my friend Kristine I was telling you about.”

“Ah, the one who’s been ill?” She took a good look at me and said, “Oh, dear.”

You’ll understand that I’ve developed an aversion to the British `Oh, dear’ during this trip. Oh dear, indeed. Why don’t the English just say what they really mean, which in this case is `Holy crap, should you be out of your sick bed?’ I couldn’t wait to see what Hester would say when she caught sight of Hubby tomorrow. Oh dear would hardly cover it.

Hester and her friend then questioned me about my illness and I gave them every sorry detail, from my not being able to get out of the cab when we arrived at Duke’s Hotel in Bath, to our missing New Year’s Eve entirely, to my not having eaten anything to speak of for a week, to my plight in Milsom Street on the way to the Fashion Museum.

When I was done – and they had both wiped the tears from their eyes and gotten their laughter under control – Hester said, “Oh, I am sorry to laugh, but that’s the funniest story. Isn’t funny?” she asked her f
riend.

“Quite,” she agreed.

“And today the pair of you had to take the train here to Windsor, what with you both feeling poorly. Now you go right back to your hotel and get some rest. I’m so glad Hubby felt he was improving and didn’t need the doctor after all, but an early night and rest will do you both a world of good. We’ve got a big day planned for tomorrow, after all.”

What good advice. I could have kissed Hester for suggesting an early night, but restrained myself as I didn’t want to pass on the cholera to her. After all, I needed her healthy and able to drive us to Oatlands and Hampton Court tomorrow. Not to mention that her husband, Tony, would be none too pleased with me if I landed Hester in the hospital.

We stood and gave each other a somewhat sanitized version of an embrace and I headed across the street to the Castle Hotel whilst wondering in what condition I would find Hubby upon my return.

Part Three Coming Soon!

A Couple In England – Day 8

I woke up on our last day in Bath to a truly gruesome sight – Hubby. He was pale, clammy and looking for all the world as though he were on his last legs.
 
“How do you feel?” I asked in the hopes that I might have misread the signs.
 
“Doctor.”
 
“What?”
 
“I need a doctor. Or maybe an undertaker. I need something more than that crappy Bell’s cough stuff you gave me. No kidding, I want a doctor.”
 
This was serious. As a rule, Hubby runs from medical practitioners.
 
“Okay,” I said, my mind working. “Let’s go downstairs and see about getting you a doctor then. Can you get dressed?”
 
Together, we got us both dressed, and packed, and went downstairs to the reception room, where we found Michael on duty. Michael, it should be said, worked for a time as house steward to the premier land owner in the neighborhood. I don’t think I’m at liberty to tell you all I know about it, confidentiality and all, but think a stately home with the word “long” in it’s name and put that together with another word for “tub” and you might figure it out. Clue: the peer Michael worked for has a harem.
 
Michael took one look at us and said, “Oh, dear.”
 
“We’re supposed to take the train to Windsor today, to meet my friend Hester, but Hubby wants a doctor. Can you get us a doctor?”
 
Michael is the epitome of the word “dapper.” Dressed in a suit and tie, his hair and mustache immaculate, he exudes an air of calm and classy competence. Have I mentioned his pocket square? “I could, of course, call a doctor for you. However, if you’re going to be staying in Windsor, perhaps it would be more expedient for you to call your friend and have her arrange for Hubby to see her practitioner, who would be on the spot, so the speak.”
 
He slid the telephone towards me as Hubby collapsed on the couch by the fireplace. I called Hester, who said she’d call her doctor and see what she could do. She’d ring me back.
 
“Medicine,” Hubby croaked.
 
I explained to Michael that the shops had been closed yesterday and so I hadn’t been able to find any 21st century cold medicine for Hubby.
 
“The chemist down the street is open today,” Michael told me. And so off I went, down Great Pulteney Street to the chemist hard by the bridge.

 
 

A. H. Hale, dispensing chemists, have been in business since the 1800’s and the shop looks like something out of a Jane Austen novel.
 

  

Their window is filled with glass bottles containing variously coloured liquids and powders and, best of all, modern day cold medicine. I conversed with the clerk, who listened to Hubby’s symptoms and stocked me up with an assortment of remedies. Back at the hotel, I found Hubby on the couch, drinking a bottle of Schwepps ginger ale, provided by Michael. I handed over the cough syrup and decongestant pills and within minutes he proclaimed himself much improved. Hester, it turned out, had gotten Hubby an appointment with her doctor for this afternoon, but Hubby now proclaimed himself fit to travel and no longer in need of dire medical intervention. He swore that it was the Schwepps, rather than the medicines, that had cured him. Ingrate. I called Hester, cancelled the doctor and before much longer we were in a cab headed to the station.

You can tell that I was feeling a bit better  myself, as I actually took these photos myself from the platform. We had a few minutes to wait for the next train, so I got us a couple of coffees and brought them out to Hubby.

“No smoking,” he said, as he took the coffee from me.

“Huh?”

“The sign,” he said, pointing in its direction with his chin. “No smoking. We’re outside on the platform and we can’t smoke. You can’t smoke in England.”

“Well, let’s not worry about it until you can’t smoke in France. Or Greece. Or Turkey. Then we’ll worry about it.”

“How long is the train ride to Windsor?”

Uh, oh. Here we go. “It’s about two hours. We, uh, we have to change trains though.”

“Where?”

“At Reading. And Slough.”

“Two changes?”

I could feel his pain. It wasn’t that long ago that I was myself close to death on a train. Only we had been traveling in the opposite direction.

“Reading is close to Stratfield Saye,” I sighed. Stratfield Saye, whose opening times never seem to coincide with my trips to England.

“What’s that?”

“Artie’s house.”

“I thought Apsley House was Artie’s house.”

“It is. He bought Apsley House himself. The country bought Stratfield Saye as a sort of thank you gi
ft for his having defeated Napoleon at Waterloo.”

“What?”

“Yeah. Napoleon was seen as the Hitler of his day. A tyrant. He proclaimed himself as Emperor of France and then turned his eye on the rest of the world. He threatened democracies everywhere. And Wellington and his army and the allies defeated him at Waterloo. Napoleon’s army was notorious for looting and stealing whatever they needed, wherever the went. Napoleon’s troops were the ones who shot the nose off the Sphinx.”

“The Egyptian Sphinx?”

“Yes. Destruction wherever they went. On the other hand, Wellington went out of his way to make sure that people were compensated to some degree for whatever his troops requisitioned. Not that the British didn’t indulge in some looting and pillaging of their own, but still, Artie had a completely different mindset about it. Remember the story about the looted Spanish art I told you about at Apsley House?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“There was this guy called Congreve and he worked at the Royal Arsenal, trying to perfect rockets Wellington had first seen at Seringapatam.”

“Where?”

“In India. Congreve worked to perfect them, but it took several attempts. He demonstrated them to Wellington, hoping he’d use them during his campaigns. It turns out that the rockets were unreliable and their trajectory uncertain. And then they’d set things on fire instead of blowing them up. And the things set afire were not necessarily the things one was aiming at. Wellington said that when he entered a town it was most often in order to liberate it, rather than destroy it. Wellington refused to use them because of the wholesale damage they caused and the destruction they left behind. In his own words, he had a bad opinion of them.”

“So Congreve didn’t get the commission?”

“Not from Wellington, but Congreve had gotten in tight with Prinny, who was pushing for the use of the rockets.”

“Who?”

Sigh. “Prinny, the Prince Regent. King George the fourth. They kept pestering Wellington to use them. When Wellington was in Portugal in 1810, the matter was again raised in a letter from Vice Admiral Berkeley. Wellington said that they wouldn’t answer for his purposes on land, but he allowed that every thing deserved a fair chance. So it was that eventually the Royal Navy used them and fired them from the decks of their ships.”

“How’d that go?”

“You’ve heard of `the rockets red glare’?”

“The bombs bursting in air?”

“Exactly. Those were Congreve’s rockets. They put on a great show, but weren’t very effective.”

Our train arrived and I helped Hubby get ourselves and our luggage onboard. I must say that Hubby was a brick, changes and all, up until the last leg of the journey, when a guy got on the train with a pit bull.

Hubby elbowed me in the side. “He’s got a dog on the train. A pit bull.”

Now, as you know, I pride myself on reporting this trip exactly as it happened. There was a pit bull on the train. Which now allows me to segue neatly into this photo of our granddog, Coco, the pit bull. Who believes with all his heart that he’s a Yorkshire terrier and who is constantly trying to climb onto my lap. But I digress . . . . .

“You’re allowed to bring dogs on the train in England,” I told Hubby.

“You can’t smoke outside on the platform, but you can bring a dog into a crowded train?”

“Look!” I said as I pointed out the window.

“What? What is that? Is that a castle?”

 Part Two Coming Soon!

A Couple In England – Day 7 – Part Four

Leaving the Fashion Museum and Upper Assembly Rooms behind, I now took myself, high heeled boots and all, back down Milsom Street via the cobbled sidewalk. What in the world had I been thinking when I slipped into them this morning? When I got to Pulteney Bridge, I stopped in at the newsagents and bought two more bottles of juice to take back to the room.

Once back at Duke’s Hotel and in the Wellington Suite, I found Hubby pretty much as I’d left him – all loose limbs and pale skin and laying on the bed looking for all the world like Garbo in the death scene from Camille.

“I brought you juice,” I said. “You want some?”

“Unh.”

“Have you eaten anything?”

“Unh.”

“Did you take your medicine?”

“Unh.”

I sat on the bed and thought about the best way to broach the subject of the couples massage I’d booked for us in two hours time. Hubby is not a fan of massage at the best of times, but I had gone ahead and booked it months ago, thinking it would be the perfect way for us to recover from the revelry of New Year’s Eve the night before. Little did I know that we’d miss the New Year entirely or that what we’d be recovering from would be cholera, rather than your run-of-the-mill late night out.

“So . . . I had meant this as a surprise, but I, er, I booked us in for a couples massage at the Bath Priory Hotel and spa.”

Hubby turned a truly horrified gaze upon me. Think “aghast” and you’d only be getting half the picture.

“For when?” he croaked.

“In about two hours.”

“Are you crazy?”

“I booked it months ago. I didn’t know we’d be sick. You don’t want to go?”

“No! I’m dying here. The last thing I want right now is some stranger rubbing me!”

“Okay, okay.“

“You go.”

“I don’t want to leave you alone all afternoon,” I lied.

“I’ll be fine. I can’t get in too much trouble lying here in bed. Unless, of course, I do actually die.”

“Well, I’ll put the phone on the bed right next to you and if you die, or even feel like dying, you can call downstairs for help.”

“Thanks. Go and enjoy yourself. What are you going to do, sit here all afternoon and watch me sleep?”

“Well, if  you’re sure . . . . “

 “I’m sure. I know how much you love the spa. I just can’t believe you feel well enough to have some stranger rubbing you.”

I tried hard to think of a scenario in which I wouldn’t welcome a massage and couldn’t think of a single one. I’ve had massages in various U.S. cities, in England, at sea, in a tropical rain forest, in Paris, in Aruba and in Zurich and . . . .  well, you get the idea. I must have lived in ancient Egypt in another life, as there’s nothing I enjoy more than being anointed with fragrant oils and massaged into a state of semi-consciousness. Pedicures aren’t too shabby, either.

So it was that I hopped into a cab at the appointed hour and went to the Bath Priory Hotel and Spa, located about ten minutes outside of the Bath city centre.

Pulling up into the forecourt, I began to see why the country house hotel had won the Relais and Chateaux Garden of the Year Awards in 2013, the same year their chef was awarded a Michelin star.
From the hotel’s website: “The hotel, built in 1835 as a private residence on land once owned by The Priory of Bath Abbey, is steeped in history and gives more than a nod to its Gothic influences – with cheeky gargoyles and dramatic arches, tempered by soft furnishings inside – beautiful paintings adorning the walls, objects d’art, freshly cut flowers and French Belle Epoque chandeliers. Sit by the smoldering embers of the log fires, sink into the sofas and enjoy a good book or an afternoon tea at leisure. If you are yearning for a well earned spa break, then the Garden Spa, complete with indoor and outdoor pools and the full range of beauty treatments, will ensure you are blissfully content.”

I had definitely come to the right place. Now, if my bowels held firm and my nose didn’t run like a faucet, I’d be fine. I walked through the front door and into a world of posh English luxury. The Elemis spa is located downstairs and I was escorted there by the hotel receptionist and turned over to the spa receptionist, who brought me back to the dressing room so that I could change into my bathing suit.

The spa has an indoor pool, but the amenities I wanted to take advantage of were the sauna and steam room. I was determined to sweat the cholera from my body.

 

Back and forth I went, from sauna to steam and back again for forty minutes. When I was about the consistency of a wet noodle, my masseuse collected me and brought me back to the couple’s treatment room, complete with garden view.
 
 
 

Cocooned in the semi darkness, breathing in the aromatherapy oils, I gave myself over to the ministrations of a stranger and allowed myself to be rubbed. By the end of my massage, I was, indeed, `blissfully c
ontent.’

When I got back to our hotel Hubby asked, “All better now?”

I smiled dreamily. “Much better. Still not all better. But better. What do you want to do for dinner?”

“I’m not really hungry.”

“I know. Neither am I, but we haven’t eaten since yesterday, so I think it would be a good idea to get something. How about a pizza? They deliver. We don’t even have to be dressed.”

“Sold.”

“I’m going take a hot bath first, then we’ll order, okay? You should take a bath. It’ll make you feel better.”

“No, thanks,” Hubby said, emphatically shaking his head. “The way my luck is going, I’d probably slip and fall and end up in a full body cast for the rest of the trip.”

I laughed. I couldn’t help it. I laughed because the way the trip was panning out, a scenario like that wasn’t outside the realm of possibility.

So I bathed, we ordered pizza, which was delivered to our door by the hotel staff, and then we watched a little television, namely Bear’s Wild Weekend, the premise of which is that Bear Grylls – British adventurer, writer and television presenter – takes celebrities on exhilarating adventures well outside their comfort zones. In this episode the celebrity was Miranda Hart, of Call the Midwife fame.


Here’s a description of the show: “Bear Grylls takes comedy writer and actress Miranda Hart on a once-in-a-lifetime expedition to the spectacular Swiss Alps. Bear challenges novice Miranda to go far beyond her comfort zone with a series of exhilarating adventures during an intense two-day expedition. Miranda traverses a glacier, crosses crevasses roped to Bear, tackles deep snow in snow shoes and completes a huge boulder scramble. She also faces her greatest fears when she flies in a helicopter and abseils down a waterfall.”

It was a hoot and Hubby and I both enjoyed it immensely. Click the link to watch a clip of the show.

When the show was over, Hubby asked, “What’s on for tomorrow?”

“We take the train to Windsor.”

“Unh. What’s Windsor? Is it crazy like London or quiet like here?”

“Even quieter than here.” I refrained from elaborating and telling Hubby that our train journey tomorrow would require two changes. I didn’t think he’d be able to handle it just then. “I can’t believe we’re leaving Bath already and we didn’t get to do anything we’d planned.”

“You planned. I know how much you were looking forward to it and I’m sorry it was ruined for you. It seems like all we’ve done in Bath is lay in bed, take medicine, blow our noses and wait to die.”

Other than that Mrs. Lincoln, did you enjoy the play?

Day 8 Coming Soon!

A Couple In England – Day 7 – Part Three

After touring the Fashion Museum, I went upstairs to visit the Assembly Rooms, which were designed by John Wood the Younger in 1769 and completed in 1771.  The Rooms are primarily made up of three main, public rooms – the first being the Ball Room, where balls were held twice a week, on Mondays and Thursdays.

 
Here is a plan of the Rooms
 
 
 
 
The plan, as well as an excellent article on English Assembly Rooms can be found on that most excellent blog, Austenonly.
 
 
The yellow Octagon Room was used for card play until the Card Room was added in 1777.
And the Tea Room was, naturally, where the fashionable went to take tea. Here is Rowlandson’s print of the Room –
 

 
It is remarkable that the Assembly Rooms exist today at all. During WWII, the historically important English cities of Exeter, Bath, Norwich and York were targeted by the Germans in a series of targeted attacks known as the Baedeker raids.
 
From Wikipedia: The Baedeker raids were conducted by the German Luftwaffe’s Luftflotte 3 in two periods between April and June 1942. They targeted strategically relatively unimportant but picturesque cities in England. The cities were reputedly selected from the German Baedeker Tourist Guide to Britain, meeting the criterion of having been awarded three stars (for their historical significance), hence the English name for the raids.
 
“Over the weekend of 25-27 April 1942, Bath suffered three horrifying reprisal raids, from 80 Luftwaffe planes which took off from Nazi occupied northern France. As the city sirens wailed few people took cover, even when the first pathfinder flares fell the people of Bath still believed the attack was destined for nearby Bristol. During the previous four months Bristol had been hit almost every night, and so the people of Bath did not expect the bombs to fall on them.
 
“The first raid struck just before 11 pm on the Saturday night and lasted until 1 am. The enemy aircraft then returned to France; refuelled, rearmed and returned at 4.35 am. Bath was still ablaze from the first raid, making it easier for the German bombers to pick out their targets. The third raid, which only lasted two hours but caused extensive damage, arrived in the early hours of Monday morning. The bombers flew low to drop their high explosives and incendiaries and then returned to rain the streets with machine-gun fire. 417 people were killed, another 1,000 injured. Over 19,000 buildings were affected, of which 1,100 were seriously damaged or destroyed including 218 of architectural or historic interest.  Houses in the Royal Crescent, Circus and Paragon were destroyed and the Assembly Rooms burnt out.“
 
This is how the Tea Room looked after the Baedeker raids, or Bath Blitz, in April 1942.
 
 

 
 
And this what they look like today.
 
 
 
It is of interest to note that all of the rooms are today lit by their original 18th-century chandeliers, which had thankfully been taken down and placed in storage at the start of the war. For more on the history of the chandeliers and their preservation, visit author Lesley-Anne McLeod’s site here.

For further contemporary information about Regency Bath and the Assembly Rooms, read Pierce Egan’s Walks Through Bath: Describing Every Thing Worthy of Interest, published in 1819. It contains lots of detailed 1819 travel information.

And because so much of what we know and have seen of the Assembly Rooms and, indeed Bath itself, has come to us via films, especially those based upon the novels of Miss Jane Austen, you can download the Bath Movie Map here and use it as a guide to film locations throughout the City.
 

Part Four Coming Soon!

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A Couple In England – Day Six – Part Three

After our two bus tours of the City of Bath I insisted that Hubby and I visit the Roman Baths.
 
“So we’re going to see the Roman part of Bath?” Hubby asked as we walked the few yards from the Abbey to the Baths.
 
“Well, they are Roman, but they’re actually baths.”
 
“Like bath tubs?”
 
“Like huge bath tubs. They’re underground hot springs that come to the surface. Bath was a popular place for invalids and people who were sick to come to take the waters in the late 18th and 19th centuries. And, no, they didn’t actually take the waters away with them. To take the waters meant to drink them and to soak in them. They hadn’t any real medicine back then, so the only alternatives were what we would call holistic or herbal remedies.”
 
“Huh.”
 
“Originally, wheelchairs were called Bath chairs. They were invented here since the invalids needed to be able to get around the City.”
 
“And the Wellington connection is what? I know it’s coming.”
 
“There is no Wellington connection to Bath. As far as I can make out. He did go to Cheltenham Spa with Kitty and the boys when he had that ear thing,” I said, blowing my nose on some loo paper.
 
“What ear thing?”
 
“He came down with a bad fever while he was in India and it settled in his left ear. He had pain in that ear ever after and sought out various cures, none of which worked. Then, when he was in Verona, a cannon went off very close to him and the Duke suffered a temporary hearing loss in both ears. Finally, in 1822, he went to a doctor who poured hot vinegar into the left ear, which only served to make him deaf.”
 
“The doctor made Wellington deaf?”
 
I nodded. I would have said who? who? at this juncture had I been with Victoria, but as I wasn’t, I left it alone.
 

 

In we went to the Roman Baths and Museum and, once again, we each picked up an audio guide. Hubby was becoming a dab hand at using them by this point. I must say, the Baths were very atmospheric when we visited, the day being cold and dreary, they had the torches going, as you’ll see my pictures below.
 
 

 
You can see a video tour of the Baths here and another which shows even more of the museum and its antiquities here. Hubby thoroughly enjoyed the tour and seemed inordinately interested in the mechanics of the plumbing, cisterns, etc. Go figure. However, by the end of our tour, he had started to look a tad peaked himself.
 
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
 
“I hate to say it, Hon, but I think I’m getting sick.” Oh the irony – for centuries, people had come to Bath in order to get well. We, on the other hand, had apparently come to Bath in order to meet our deaths. And have I mentioned that today was New Year’s Eve? Dinner at the Cote Brasserie? Fireworks over the Abbey? Oh, the best laid plans . . . . . . for which I had waited for months. Sigh.
 
“Let’s get back to the hotel. We can walk from here.” Hubby gave me a skeptical look. “Really, we can.”
 
So home we strolled, passing by chance the take-out place Hubby had discovered the day before.
 
“Look, Hon, it’s the place where I got the chicken wraps. Let’s get some.” I really had no appetite, but it was now close to five o’clock and, honestly, it didn’t look good for our keeping our dinner reservation. And seeing as I hadn’t eaten a meal for more than twenty-four hours, I agreed to a wrap. It really was a take-out place, with nothing inside but a counter to place one’s order at and, behind it, a kitchen. When our food was ready, I grabbed a couple of Coke’s out of the cooler and added them to our order. Strictly for medicinal purposes, you’ll understand.
 
From there, it was a short stroll to Duke’s Hotel and we went in and climbed the stairs to our room. I began to understand what Hubby meant when he said it seemed as if they kept moving the Wellington Suite up a flight. Each time we arrived at a landing, I was certain it would be ours. But it wasn’t.
 
“I told you,” Hubby said, as if reading my mind. “Just when you think you’re there, you’re not.” Finally, we arrived at our room, where I found an envelope on our bed. Opening it, I saw that it was invitation from the owners of the hotel, asking us to j
oin them and our fellow guests for a New Year’s Eve drink in the lounge. Reader, I truly could have cried. Instead, I made myself a rum and Coke.
 
“Drinking?” Hubby asked as he bit into his chicken wrap.
 
I nodded. “Do you want one?”
 
“God, no. I feel awful.” Come to think of it, I still felt awful myself, but as I said earlier, the rum and Coke was strictly for medicinal purposes. And it was New Year’s Eve, after all. Besides, a little rum never hurt the Royal Navy. Hubby urged the chicken wrap on me and I took a few bites, but I had no appetite.
 
Done now with his meal, Hubby lay down on the bed. “Would you be really disappointed if we didn’t go to dinner?”
 
“Yes. Very disappointed, but to tell  you the truth, the last thing I want to do is get all dolled up or eat anything or stay up until midnight. I feel like crap.”
 
“I’m sorry, Hon. I know how much you were looking forward to tonight.”
 
“S’okay,” I said, gathering up what was left of my cold syrup, ibuprofen and tissues. “Here,” I handed everything across to Hubby. “You’d better start dosing yourself now.” I finished my drink and then made another and took it with me as I went for a long, hot soak in the bath. It really was a gorgeous bath. In Bath. In England. Then I thought about how much I’d looked forward to being in the Wellington Suite on New Year’s Eve. I just hadn’t counted on seeing quite so much of the Wellington Suite. Sigh. Have I mentioned that I could have cried?
 
 

 
By the time I returned to the bedroom, Hubby looked the worse for wear and was soon asleep. I climbed into bed and watched Miss Marple for a while before I, too, fell asleep. Sometime later, I woke to the sound of cannon fire. Had I been dreaming about Wellington going deaf at Verona? Boom! . . . . Boom! . . . .Boom! What the Hell? You’ll understand that it took me a few moments to get my wits about me and to realize that what I was hearing were fireworks. Going off over the Abbey. Without me.
 
And a Happy New Year to you, too. Sigh.
 
Part Seven Coming Soon!