Cumbria and Oxford. Though before, of course, comes Newark airport, where we are today.

At this point, our travel seems slightly pathological, though it all really has to do with scheduling and Lewis’s term teaching and when we can get away and what weekend works for who among our friends who kindly invite us over. Due to circumstances, including that the flights were staggered in such a way that our choices were a one-hour layover or a 7-hour layover, and since rushing through airports these days is very frustrating, we elected the 7-hour, since it meant we could sit in the lounge (thanks to his three million miles of flying) and have a nice working day. So I have made slides, reviewed integrated event management programs, read idle postings on the internet and played too much with Facebook.

We are off to Cumbria to do a workshop which will be in the Village Hall, Memberley. It’s the 3rd time I have been there and I believe the 4th or even 5th for Lewis. We have a wonderful time whenever we go there.  We are going to do another workshop in Oxford, after attending a conference called Medicine Outside the Box.  In the meantime, we hope for some family visiting, especially my cousin Andrew, who is one of my very favorite relatives, and also my legendary Aunt Jenny, who is an amazing woman, with an incredible history of adventure and a highly intelligent life.  She has a rather frighteningly absolute view of the world and behaviour, and I inevitably upset her to some degree either with my lack of good upbringing (thanks to her sister) or lack of intelligence or just plain contrariness. We will likely take her out to dinner, which tends to head off the intense, critical and sometimes devastating family reminiscing that happens if you are lured into a delicious roast beef dinner at her kitchen table.

We are just back from a conference in Denmark, called Doctor Days, where we spoke to 57 Family Care physicians about narrative practices.  We also did a workshop about one hour southwest of Copenhagen in Praesto.  We got to stay in a little cottage with a thatched roof, which we thought very romantic, but our hosts said was a total pain as the critters nest in it, and it gets soggy and moldy.  We went running along the beautiful Praesto Fjord coastline. We had to get up really early, and the air was crisp though not quite frosty, with millions of twinkling stars.We stayed there 3 days with some of our good friends, including Carson, our friend who has a circus and a farm and is a social justice circus worker. He likes storytelling and narrative ways to help understand people. He’s working a lot with refugees at the moment.

Then it was back to Vordingborg, where our friend Marianne lives.  They have a little tower there, and they are digging out the moat, and they have just discovered the remains of a boat from the middle ages, and another tower, that seems to have fallen right over in the moat.  Marianne is a storyteller and coach, and she is the one who arranged for us to come and stay.  Marianne turns up all over the US to visit us, which we just love.  We hope to see her in Arizona over New Year’s.  On the day we arrived she took us around the shops to find a few things to wear until our lost luggage arrived. We found lovely things!  Excellent weather jackets, boots, and Lewis found a really nice suit.  He is rocking the suit world these days.  Dead handsome, that lad.

We came back and went almost immediately to Kripalu, for a lovely floaty weekend of Narrative work. It was an intense group who really brought their desire for immense change.  A different group than we usually get. Very serious. We shall wait and see how they liked it!  We, meanwhile, got some nice sleep and ate lots of green stuff.

Our flight is scheduled to leave at 7:15pm, and we arrive tomorrow morning at more or less that time at London Heathrow. We are once again going to attempt driving ourselves, and will hope that there is less construction on the M25 so that we will not have to completely circumnavigate London like we did last time (too terrified to get off the road).  I have a suitcase of art supplies and clothes for many occasions, a notebook, some good pens, a good book and comfy shoes for the overnight flight.  More when we get to England.

I am going to continue this blog over the next few days. It’s very exciting!