My last two days of this wonderful adventure. July 22-23.

July 22
Louise's garden party for her 70th birthday. She has one almost every year, and I have been able to get to several and meet her friends. It's a tremendous undertaking, but her friends love it and help out. The recent extension to the house has been a boon for extra space. This year with constant sunny days, it was a wonderful event.

Fresh salmon! One barbecue, one oven-cooked.

A proper fruitcake with royal icing for the birthday lady. 

The banana tree

Louise's friends are all very interesting people from all areas of the globe and careers. One person I met was a photographer who published a beautiful book on the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. We had a long conversation about music and musicians, and naturally having opera singers in my family, asked him if there were any photos  of my cousin, Stuart Burrows, who sang at Covent Garden for 22 years. His eyes popped out as of course he knew Stuart, but unfortunately, there were not any photos of him, as the book was a sort of "day in the life of an opera house" and Stuart was not singing there at that time. However several passages included him, together with a lovely paragraph in one of the chapters. See below. 

The Eurostar "Stuart Burrows" train

July 23 - My last hours in England.

With a taxi at 6 am, there was no time to grieve, even when Louise brought the cup of tea at 5:15am. Now that's friendship!

I gave myself the luxury of a taxi as it had been quite a weekend.  Louise lives in South London, which means crossing London to the northwest to get to Heathrow, and I couldn't face the train and underground at that time of day. It was an easy ride, with a very experienced driver weaving the car through the masses of trucks and cars, even at that time. 

All was very straightforward through check-in and security, although I was denuded of my shampoo and shower gel as the bottles were more than 3 ozs each. Oh well, it could have been worse. Good flight throughout in the comfortable economy section, thank you, Jennifer, it helped my swelling ankles immensely. 

Arriving at JFK immigration was a challenge. If anyone wants to know the details, I will tell you personally. Just one little item for string players, be aware of your fingerprints. It seems my left-hand fingerprints have worn away from playing and would not come up on the screen. 

There was quite a long layover to my next flight to RDU, so I had a light snack as I was still full from 2 meals on the first flight. I then went down to the gate. That's when problems started with the weather. Thunder and lightning was all over the eastern seaboard, especially in NC. Although there was plenty of time before my flight was due to depart, many flights were delayed or cancelled and eventually mine was too. I sat around for 6 hours, commiserating with a couple who had just arrived from Dublin, and really needed to get back to Buffalo. No luck, in the end, they had to rent a car and drive the 7 hours home. When our flight eventually was called, there was a request for people to give up their seat, as the flight was overbooked. Delta was offering $900 per seat, but I wasn't quick enough. 5 hours before a 7-hour flight and a further 6 hours waiting in the airport had addled my brain. I was just glad to have a seat and a flight back home. It was a long day - 18 hours door to door. I was very glad to get to my bed and so thankful for having had such a wonderful time. 

I can't thank those of you enough who gave me great hospitality and kindnesses (especially the loan of the cello and treble viols). You can see from this blog how fortunate I was. I am truly blessed.