I Am Free to Roam: Time to Travel

The Body in the Blueberry Barrens, a second chapter in the life of my sleuth Simone Thibodeau, has gone to Maine Authors Publishing to be primped by their editors and designers, and I am free of its demands and can go to England and family for a few weeks. This means facing airports, which places huge demands on my ability to cope with alien environments. Things got off to a rocky start.

The TSA folks in Bangor relieved me of a particularly ugly knife which, in my haste to

pack, I had overlooked to remove a from my pocket book.. This makes me sad, as it is a memory from my friend Kim Morris. For several years I had joined her on rambles around trails in the woods of Alton and Lagrange on her two excellent ponies - Squeak, an elderly but still fizzy little Morgan, and Nikka, a phlegmatic Fjord pony who wore an air of perpetual skepticism.

Initially, Kim rode Squeak and I followed on Nikka, but as Kim’s advancing MS demanded a

more stable ride, we traded, eventually moving to a buggy drawn by Nikka. It was on one of

these trips that I picked up the knife. It was a nasty thing , painted green with splashes of fake red blood and a flip blade that had a serrated back and channel for blood from your victim to escape. It was a versatile and useful tool but it has gone, as have Kim and the ponies. Bummer.

TSA was also interested in my knee brace, a clumsy thing with unmanageable Velcro

straps. They scan it with a wand and then take a swab that reveals traces of a drug. Interesting, as I bought it very recently at Target. They return it to me after careful scrutiny.

Released from the TSA, I gathered with my fellow travelers at the departure gate. We

are without question the worst dressed bunch of people to board a plane. Carhartts and

checkered wool jackets paired with boots and battered back packs. I always know I am at the

right gate when traveling back to Maine by the practical but fashion-free dress of the people

waiting there. We avoid all contact until a K9 handler with his dog walks by, and suddenly we

are all dog lovers with stories to tell. This ends up in mutual agreement that pitbulls are

massively misrepresented, and two ladies promise to buy copies of Murder in the Maple Woods after I show them the book’s dedication to pits and their rescuers. Now that we are all close friends, we take turn watching each other’s bags so we can take trips to the impossibly distant loos.

And so on to Newark and a five hour layover. Newark airport is okay - way less of the

dystopian stress-generator than JFK, but the one thing that stands out is that everyone working there is a recent immigrant, evidenced by the fact that English is not their first language. A pleasant Latino guy serves me an overpriced Bloody Mary. He politely takes my phone so he can use the wretched QR-code driven payment system. Two very short ladies, burka-ed to the eyeballs, sell me snacks, and a large, very dark, delightful host welcomes me at a Korean food joint. I must have been looking weary, or old, or both, as he fusses over me and tells me can sit at the bar as long as I want. He is obviously African and speaks French to his colleague. I am running through my scant knowledge of Francophone African countries (Mali? Cameroon?) and am tempted to ask where they were from, but I know from personal experience that this is the most annoying question you can be asked by a stranger. What is clear is that this place would grind to a sudden halt if immigration was stopped. I wonder how the anti-DEI-ers would feel if requirements had to be modified to allow the hiring of white Americans to fill these thankless service jobs.

Then a restful transatlantic flight in a less than half full plane - and into the gates of hell

which is Heathrow. Forty minutes of trailing through desolate corridors with dirty ceilings and

malfunctioning ‘travellators’ before I get to the Central Bus Station, and another glimpse of

purgatory. A friendly coach driver lets me onto an earlier bus to Gatwick than the one I had on my ticket. A message on my WhatsApp from my cousin Diana, who farms near Gatwick, says I must get a taxi as she is busy having a horse put down. Finally, I am back in a familiar world. My taxi driver deftly follows the Sat Nav directions to the farm. His impressive profile that would get him a part in a production of The Arabian Nights, and he has a prayer mat rolled up on his dashboard. He says he is a local boy, born and raised very near where I grew up in Kent.

At my cousins’ house, where I stay for a few days, a Daphne odora is in full bloom. You

can smell it a mile away. There are dogs, horses and lambs - and mud. Perhaps it just the

fragrance of the Daphne, but England feels a little further back from the brink than America did when I left. I sleep off jet lag in a room shared with old stuffed animals I played with over

seventy years ago.

Fly and her lambs

Daphne