These 40 essays, lists, recipes, poems, and songs cover my eleven trips to the United Kingdom and Ireland over 43 years. Perhaps I’ll go again, perhaps not, but I wanted to record what I could remember and while I had a quieter, less-traveled few years to write.
My first trip as a recent college graduate was in the summer of 1971 with my draft-dodging college boyfriend. The most recent trip was in 2014, with my writing buddy Kathy Herbert. Some trips were short, some were longer, the longest being a four-week visit as part of a teachers’ workshop in 1978. Sometimes a trip centered on a conference, such as the 1978 Infant School workshop in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, or the 2012 La Leche League of Great Britain Conference in Coventry, Warwickshire.
When relevant, I mention dates, seasons, or companions, but otherwise many trips run together in memory; thus, I simply alphabetized the essays, mixing chronologies and subjects. You’ll find an index in the Appendices.
Some UK visits were stand-alone, some were followed by trips to the continent. On some trips I hitchhiked, on some I traveled on buses and trains, on some I rode in a rental car. I’ve stayed in hostels, small hotels, bed and breakfasts, and private homes. Some were guided, some self-guided. Each trip had its own signature, its own financial constrictions, its own joys, its own special disasters. Why go to one area of the world so often? I am a recovering English major, plus language is everything to me, and English is that language.
Both my grandmothers loved to travel. Cora Pell Fruend sometimes traveled with her British lecturer friend Ada Ward who was part of the Redpath Chautauqua Circuit. Cora hosted Ms. Ward when tours came to Cleveland, Ohio. My grandmother Helen Burket Grossman urged me early on to see the capitals of Europe. She is also my only ancestor with English, Irish, and Scottish roots: ancestral Baileys, Burkets, Glenns, and Borlands are sprinkled throughout the British Isles and Ireland.
My weekly writing group—through Zoom and the Moab library’s meeting room—was a guiding star. Thank you, Diana, Heidi, Judy, Marcy, Susan, and Tory!
Many stories remain to be told, but binders can easily accommodate more memories, all appearing after the essays here are published, on my blog at kathygrossman.com
Future essays might reflect 2022 subjects such as the movie Emily, starring Emma Mackey as Emily Brontë, and how my consumption of scones is now limited to gluten-free recipes. Queen Elizabeth II died in September after reigning over the UK for all of my trips. Her son, now King Charles III, ten months younger than me, will now start appearing on banknotes. We’ll have to see how Wales and England do in the World Cup. Plus, three UK Prime Ministers have been in charge this year so far. Things change, but these essays and daily cups of PG Tips tea can still remind me of my own time in the English, Scottish, Welsh, and Irish motherlands.
I have cherished these quiet, soul-filling hours of researching, finding photographs, and capturing memories. May my sons and grandchildren someday write their own histories, and I hope they enjoy and somehow benefit from the essays here. And perhaps I have made my grandmothers proud.
Kathy Grossman
Moab, Utah, December 2022
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