13 May: Rain, Rain, Go Away
Waiting in the Welcome Break motorstop somewhere along the M4 to Bristol for either the rain to stop or for me to get less sleepy. I only have another 20 miles left to get to Rudloe Hall, but it’s a real mess out there, and the warmth of the car was making me groggy. So a cup of tea and a pain au chocolat would not come amiss. (Funny thing about pain au chocolat. Being Nature’s perfect food – it’s bread, and it’s chocolate, ‘nuff said? – it’s an essential part of my traveling diet. But I hardly ever have it at home. I guess because it’s not as easy to find fresh pain au chocolat in the States, and there’s a huge difference between eating stale pain au chocolat because you were an idiot and left it in the car all night and eating stale pain au chocolat because nobody cares to make it fresh every day.)
Left the Abbot’s Fireside at about a quarter to nine and decided to blow off Mottisfont Abbey (not much point in a lengthy side trip to a rose garden when the roses aren’t blooming yet). Made good time until coming into this blasted hurricane – scratch off Heale and Stourhead today, not garden-visiting weather at all. My plan was to get to Rudloe safely, have a nap and regroup.
Which is exactly what I did – at Rudloe, Madame steered me into the resident’s lounge, and I plunked my weary self down in front of a roaring fire and made a terrific and substantial tea, watching the garden get blown around in the rain. Every once in a while, smoke stole out of the fireplace, creeping up and over the surface of the great mirror like mist. There was a smell of relentless damp and decay. My room was pretty plain – for fifty pounds, I’d have been delighted, but for eighty-five, it was a bit tatty. The lower rooms – study, library and dining room – were clinging onto their grandeur through thick and thin.
My intention was to nap after tea, but got wrapped up in “Captain Scarlet and the Mysterions” on telly – a disquieting blend of Matt Helm, Space 1999 and Clutch Cargo, done by Ken Dolls with Gumby-style animation. Was it camp? Was it contemporary? I couldn’t keep my eyes off it.
And Snap, Crackle and Pop with English accents – that’s just plain wrong.