Day Seven: Tuesday 7th May 2013As had now become my routine, I breakfasted on left-overs from the day before, and as expected my carnitas made a fine start to the day. What also made a fine start to the day was the walk I took through the neighbourhood with Andy. We climbed a hill on the opposite side of the valley that gave a good view across the whole area, talking all the way about its development. It was a pleasant, soothing way to pass the time after a full-on weekend with lots of people.
My flight back to the UK was at 6.55pm, which meant I had to be at the airport by around 4pm. Carrie had to work but the plan for the day for Andy and me was that Glenn Hackney and Kate Schaefer would pick us up around 11.30am and that we would then visit Stu Shiffman in the facility where he was being treated for the stroke he suffered last year. This would be followed by a visit to Linda Deneroff's office for the views, before I was driven to the airport. It was a good plan, and several Brits had already done both visits prior to CORFLU. Unfortunately, Glenn's longer than expected wait at a doctor's appointment combined with a broken swing-bridge meant they were already running an hour late when they finally arrived at the house. Something would have to go. Sadly, it was the visit to Linda's office. According to a sign on the wall, the hospital where Stu was being treated was wholly owned by its staff, an alien concept to someone who has spent his life in the bosom of the National Health Service. Stu shared his room with another patient, the two separated by a curtain. When we arrived his partner Andi Schecter was already there. Despite being wheelchair-bound herself, Andi visits Stu every day and has been his rock. Stu had a tube connected to his throat helping him breathe. This prevented normal speech but he could, with great effort, get a word or two out via the tube. When he couldn't do this he was reduced to gurning. That's when I discovered he has surprisingly expressive eyebrows, but I can only imagine how frustrating it must be when you want to communicate something but can't. Stu's main neurological impairment was on his right side. Where his left arm was as strong as ever - as confirmed with a handshake when we were leaving - his right was enfeebled with no fine motor control. Since Stu is right-handed he was understandably worried that he might never draw again. The others with me hadn't seen Stu in a few months and expressed surprise and satisfaction at how much he had improved in that time, while Andi said the doctors had assured her that Stu would eventually walk out of the hospital. All very encouraging and I hope it comes to pass. (Sadly, it didn't. Stu died there the following year.) Andy Hooper thanked me for giving up a morning I could've spent sight-seeing in order to visit Stu, but he needn't have. It really wasn't any sort of sacrifice on my part. I like seeing a place when I find myself there, but that's never my primary reason for visiting somewhere - people are. London and Paris are only 214 miles apart, closer than DC and New York, yet despite the great travel links and having lived in London for a third of a century I've never visited Paris and may never do so. Since I know no one there I've never had any reason to visit. I've seen Paris often enough in films and on TV; I don't need to see it with my own eyes. This is how I feel about most places. Yes, I would like to have gone up the Space Needle if I'd had more time, but I didn't so c'est la vie. Later, Glenn and Kate drove me to the airport, taking a route that enabled Andy to leap out of the car when we were in reasonable reach of his home. My last sight of Andy was of him jogging across the traffic lane adjacent to ours then scrambling over a low concrete barrier to get to the sidewalk. At the airport I met up with my Gallic friends John and Eve Harvey, and we stayed in the departure lounge, quietly drinking until it was time to board our plane.
My flight to the US had been delight. My return flight was anything but. Firstly, I had the middle seat between a married couple. They'd obviously figured that since middle seats are the least popular they might end up with that seat to spread into. This is a reasonable assumption so long as the plane isn't full. So they struck out, and when they wanted to communicate with each other they had to do so across me. It also turned out the guy was left-handed. I'm right-handed. Had we been sitting on the opposite side of the plane this would not have been a problem but as it was our arms were touching when we ate. This made meal-time...interesting. Then there was the guy in front of me. No sooner were were airborne than he put his seat in maximum recline, thus stealing a chunk of my limited space and making it impossible to use my laptop. The recline option is there to help when you want to sleep; you're not supposed to leave it in that position the entire flight. This was about naked theft of space, of putting his comfort above any consideration of mine. I'm a pretty easy-going person, but I wanted to punch him in the head. I sat there fuming and radiating hatred at him, all to no effect. If there's one change I'd make to planes it would be to disable the recline control, which I've come to hate with a passion over the years. I was beginning to get the sniffles before we boarded. By the time were were over the Atlantic it was full-blown coughing and sneezing. Tough luck married couple. I'm not sure whether it was the plane's a/c or if it was down to me developing a fever but I also started to get very hot. I kicked off my shoes and loosened my shirt but this barely helped. My breathing got very shallow, the effort required for more vigorous respiration now beyond me. Everything ends eventually, even a flight as hellish as this had been, and after what seemed an eternity we finally touched down at Heathrow. As we were deplaning I saw John & Eve. "Bonjour, Frenchies!" I said, never one to leave a joke be when I could hammer it into the ground. We talked for a couple of minutes on our way to Arrivals, then they peeled off to seek out their connection to Paris. I made my way to the Underground and spent the ninety minutes or so to Upton Park in a semi-comatose stupor. A nutter started fiddling with my bag on the final leg of the journey but I was too out of it to care.
With great effort I climbed the stairs at Upton Park tube station and trudged across to the rolling acres of Plashet Grove, and on to Gross Manor. The temperature was a bit of a shock to the system. It had been in the 80s in Portland, the 70s in Seattle, but was barely 60 in London. When I got in Avedon came over and gave me a big hug. "I missed you," she said, "but not as much as I thought I would." "Hah!" "With you gone I was able to get the kitchen just the way I wanted it." It's an article of faith with both of us that all the clutter and untidiness in our house is entirely the fault of the other. I am correct in this assessment. Avedon is delusional. I checked out the kitchen and it was indeed tidier than usual, but her deception did not fool me. This was a Potemkin kitchen, one gussied up to score points and not a real reflection of how it would look in my absence. Hugging over, I told Avedon I needed to fall into bed Right Now. The combination of jetlag and hacking, bone-rattling cough meant I was feeling wretched. Given the circumstances, climbing into my own bed felt almost orgasmically wonderful. Within five minutes of getting home I was asleep. What I didn't appreciate then was that the feeling wretched would last for over a week. I suppose the only good thing about the situation was it meant I got the length of my trip exactly right. If I'd still been in the US then I'd have been moping around pathetically at the home of whoever I'd arranged to stay with at that point. This would not have been fun for any of us. Instead I got to mope around pathetically in my own home, to shiver away in my own bed, and to be ignored by my own wife, (I love Avedon dearly, but she has all the bedside manner of a Dalek.) My most fervent desire during this period, the little ray of hope that made me smile and helped me get through it, was that I might have given this to the bastard who sat in front of me on my return flight. So that's my trip report. Yes, events have been nipped and tucked a little here and there, some may even have been given a nose job, but I leave it to those of you who were there to decide whether I went as far as adding breast implants. I think I have on the whole been mostly truthful, but all writing is a performance.
Looking back on my week in Portland and Seattle I can't help but feel I've closed a circle. During my TAFF trip in 1984 it had always been my intention to include a visit to the region, but it didn't come to pass. In a very real sense then, this was like the part of my TAFF trip I never got to take. Finally, I had made it to the beautiful Pacific Northwest. And I loved it. - Rob Hansen, May 2013.
For more photos from CORFLU XXX, by someone who's a better photographer than me, see
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