Albion

Zelda's desire for an apple at four-thirty in the morning got me out of bed. We had an apple and string cheese and by the time I got her back in bed her jet-lag had been requited and mine had kicked in. I made coffee, and shuffled around the small table in the kitchen, running lines and remembering moves.

The script evolves. I wonder if it would. There's bits that never worked, of course, those were usually "jokes." A lot of those came out when it was necessary to cut down the length of the radio drama. Some of those are going back in - I think when I say the punchline to "The Closiers" I should snap my fingers the way Drew Carey does in "The Aristocrats."

No? Hello? Am I too hip for the room?

Later Henrik and I will play with the PowerPoint projector and then check out St. Vincent's.

The rest of yesterday was very nice. After a nap we put Orson in the stroller and we all went to get Lydia from school. She and Z. stayed home to play while Henrik, Toni, Orson and I ran errands - and got some much needed exercise. It is a crowded city, even out here, away from the very center of London the streets bustle with people. I should ask the specific ethnic make-up of the neighborhood, a very large number of them appear to be Afro-Carribbean.

Maybe it's because I have been here a number of times in my adult life (this is visit number 4 since 1990) but there's more familiarity and less "exotic-ness" about being here. I don't know who has changed more, me or Britian. There's a Subway (that's new) a MacDonald's, of course - and Asna's, the supermarket chain, is now owned by Walmart.

Lydia (now 11) is a big fan of the radio drama. I don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing, she's apparently listened to it a lot. My brother says she cries every time. She told me yesterday she wishes she could reach through the radio and shout "It doesn't end like this! Soon you will have two beautiful living children!" Which is, of course, a sweet thing for a young girl to say.

She mentioned this over dinner, and I had to put on my tact guard. We have a tendency to be didactic (not the royal we, I mean my brother and I) and I tried to be as casual as possible (with everyone at the table listening) as I explained that that's true, things are very good for us, and we're happy, but and that the show exists as a reminder that we can't forget or ignore those who are in grief in the hopes that someday things will eventually be better for them.

Then she said she someday wants to make an extended family tree out of paper and photographs ... but that she doesn't know what's the right thing to do for Calvin. I said in the old days, and not very long ago, people would get cemetery plots (some still do, not as many, it seems) for their deceased children, some didn't even have names, but they had a stone that say, "Son" or "Baby."

She thought she could put Calvin's name there, maybe with a black square for a picture. I said that would be just fine.