From the Inconstant Blogger (Didn't Spencer say that?)

    Regrettably, that title is too accurate. I have been distracted from my blogging and almost everything else lately by travel plans. I would almost always prefer to plan a trip than do anything else - even write.
     Some time ago, one of my husband's friends began to encourage us to come visit him and his wife at their "getaway", which he built near a remote village in western Ireland.  A getaway from his places in Paris and New England, that is. After much waffling (not by me) so that the trip would include visits to as many of my husband's U.K. friends as possible, we picked the fairly short notice date of midSeptember, when Ireland was assured of being windy, wet and chilly, just as it is the other  twelve months of the year, but when London friends would also be available.
     I have been to to the U.K. several times, went to Exeter U. for some International Law studies, and traveled pretty much the length and breadth of that beautiful island, but my husband has been once, and only to London, which is like saying that you've been to America, and only New York City.
      This time we will go on the train to Salisbury to visit the Cathedral and marvel at the original Magna Carta and the first clock, and make a side trip to Stonehenge. We will dine with a vicar friend in a poor parish somewhat south and west of that, in his 500 year old farmhouse.
      Let's hope the household plumbing has been updated.  I cringe at sounding like a prissy tourist. I have traveled to places where the "loo" is a hole in the floor, so this will be better. And my daughter tops that, reminding me of the months she lived in remote Sikkim, high in the Himalayas, with only an unlit "pee ravine" where one balanced on two boards above a rocky-sided ravine, day or night, all weather.
     But, not to dwell on plumbing. I am already packing my bags because it takes a lot more planning and materiel than it did when I threw a few things in a bag just hours before departure. I expect I will be on a travel thread for awhile before I refocus on writing issues. Consider it research.