I am up early for the bus to Liverpool. Months ago, Chris invited me on the bus tour that he organizes every year for the university’s foreign students. Chris is a music enthusiast and Beatles fan, so I think the trip is as much for him as it is for the students.

I walk briskly to the Student Guild where the buses are queuing. There is a cutting wind, but it is not raining. There are already about 100 students there waiting. I see a few of the international students I’ve met. Olha from the Ukraine is clutching British Council literature that Chris has asked her to distribute on the bus—it’s our schedule, tickets, etc. Together, we board one of the buses.

Olha (the Ukrainian version of the name Olga) is getting her MPA here from the School of Public Policy in an accelerated course that takes just one year. She speaks fluent but heavily accented English and speaks very fast, which together cause me to miss some of what she says. She began learning Russian in the 1st grade and Ukrainian and English in the 2nd. She belonged to a group called the Pioneers, which she equates to the Boy Scouts. But the military maneuvers she describes are not like any Boy Scout meeting I know. She talks about how, in order to find hidden items, they had to… “What is the word for it?” she asks, “To move on hands and knees parallel to the ground?” “Crawl?” I suggest. She was 17 when the Soviet Republic broke up.

She is proud of her Ukrainian heritage and indignant that Americans think borscht—beet soup—is Russian. “It’s a Ukrainian recipe,” she declares.

She is disdainful of several of the other Russian students in our group who are from Kazakhstan. They are well-dressed in expensive leather jackets. In Kazakhstan, I think I understand her to say, the wealthy party leaders let poor people live in dirt caves and treat them like slaves. She said this arrangement continued until very recently. Despite this, she assures me that everyone in Russia is equal—all middle class. Everyone has the same food, the same housing, and the same cars. I keep my skepticism to myself.

The bus trip takes almost three hours. The first Magical Mystery tour starts at 11:00 AM and we pull in just a few minutes after the hour. We are divided into four groups. Olha and I are in tour group #3, which is scheduled for 2:00 PM. The bus drops us off at Albert Dock on the banks of the Mersey River to do some shopping and sightseeing in the meantime. The old docks and warehouses that used to hum with commercial shipping activity now house shops, restaurants, and museums.

Olha, who has been to Liverpool before, scoots us over to the “The Beatles Story” museum. It traces the Fab Four from their earliest days playing the Cavern Club to their much-lamented breakup in 1969. The museum is splendidly done with a good mix of newsreels, memorabilia, exhibits, and even a full-sized yellow submarine completely constructed for the museum’s purpose.

I love the early clips, before the long hair and hippie clothes. A young John Lennon looks nervous as he is about to meet Princess Margaret. Despite his clear respect for the Royal Family, John Lennon refused his MBE, which would have bestowed on him a knighthood, in protest of Britain’s involvement in the Vietnam War.

The display commemorating John Lennon’s death is specially moving. It is a totally white stage with only a white piano and on the piano a framed black and white picture of Lennon and a pair of his trademark round hippy spectacles. His song, Imagine, is playing in the background; one of my favorite songs of all time.

Then we board the yellow-painted Magical Mystery tour bus for a nostalgic ride through the Beatles’ old stomping grounds.

The bus takes us to the top of Penny Lane and we all pile out to take photos of the street sign. Of course, as we do, we sing “Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes.” One Indian student asks me as we get back on the bus, “What is this? This Penny Lane?”

Our tour guide, an obvious and self-admitted Beatles fanatic, loves Paul McCartney. Well, who doesn’t? She met him once at a charity event when she was wearing a Linda McCartney cancer-fundraiser t-shirt. Paul reached out and touched it and said, “That’s a really nice shirt.” Now, she says proudly and a bit cheekily, “Paul McCartney touched my chest.” As a lad, the cathedral’s music director refused Paul a choirboy spot because he wasn’t good enough. Forty years later, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra performed Sir Paul McCartney’s classical oratorio at that cathedral. “He showed them,” says our besotted guide.

There is an arresting sculpture at the top of Hope Street looking down toward the River Mersey. It is a pile of stone-sculpted suitcases and trunks randomly stacked in the middle of the traffic island. The suitcases are labelled with brass plaques of the famous people who have passed through Liverpool like Charles Dickens, 19^th century feminist Josephine Butler, and a trio of modern Liverpudlian beat poets: Adrian Henri, Roger McGough, and Brian Patten. A small stack of suitcases and a guitar case stand a bit off to the side by themselves memorializing Liverpool’s favorite sons.

We pass an enchanting little bronze statue of Eleanor Rigby “dedicated to all the lonely people.” She is wearing a handkerchief headscarf and sitting on a bench with her shopping bag.

Back at the Albert Dock is a massive obelisk dedicated to the engineers who lost their lives in the Titanic tragedy.

The Titanic, although having sailed from Southampton, was registered in Liverpool. The offices of the ship’s owner, the White Star Line, were in Liverpool, and many of the crew was from here including Captain Smith, the eight heroic band members, and Fred Fleet, Titanic’s lookout who spotted the iceberg.

We have about two hours to kill before our dinner/party at the Cavern Club. I want to go to the Merseyside Maritime Museum. Olha is not interested in ships she says and goes off to City Centre to do some shopping with some of the other students. I am the only one who goes to the museum, which is about as interesting as you would expect a maritime museum to be. But, I came to see the small exhibit dedicated to the floating palaces.” It has pictures and memorabilia from both the Titanic and the Lusitania.

I have tea in the museum café before heading out to meet the others.

The Cavern Club is where the Beatles got their start and is today still a working club. Chris tells me that some Saturday nights, it is overcrowded, smoke-filled, and smells of sweat. But it’s a mecca for Beatles fans and would-be musicians the world over.

The whole of Matthew Street, where the club is located, is a tribute to the Beatles with a bronze statue of a young John Lennon. Behind him is a wall of bricks engraved with the names of all the bands that have played at the Caravan Club over the years: Jerry and the Pacemakers, Rolling Stones, and many more. There is also the Beatles Shop, the Lucy in the Sky Pub, Abbey Road Bar, and on and on.

Upstairs is a banquet room with music that Chris says will get louder as the night progresses. I sit at a table with Olha and a young couple from Botswana. They too speak excellent English. The young man says to me, “I like your English.” I ask if it is easier to understand than the British accent, by which I mean the impenetrable Birmingham brogue, and they both nod their heads vigorously. They know someone in Washington DC. I say I love Washington DC but don’t go there in the summer as it is too hot. They say the heat wouldn’t bother them as it is hot where they come from (I am not sure that they understand about humidity). Anywhere the sun shines would make them happy, “Not like this place,” the girl Keeya says mournfully.

Olha can’t wait to dance. Keeya and her boyfriend (I didn’t catch his name) join her on the dance floor. The Indian man I met at the City Hall awards reception sits down to say hello. It comes to light that he mistakenly thinks Dean is my husband. When I correct him, he is embarrassed and maybe a little angry saying, “But I asked about your husband before.” Earlier on the bus he asked me, I thought, whether I brought my colleague. At the time, I wondered if he might have said “hubby,” instead of “colleague” but I couldn’t imagine an Indian-speaking person for whom English is a second language using the word hubby and assumed I misheard.

I dance a couple of times until it gets too hot and smoky, then retreat to my table in the back. We leave around 9 PM but, not before Chris gets on the microphone and begins to sing, “I did it my way.” It is so unexpectedly different from his normal British reserve that I know he has drunk many beers.

I spend a quiet few days in the office.

In a small-world coincidence, Jane Lutz gives me some materials on performance contracting from a presentation she went to here at INLOGOV. The presenter was Bruce Clary of the University of Southern Maine, whom I know. I email him and he replies sending me the web address of a Maine Policy Review journal that contained the article I wrote on performance budgeting.

Dave Lachance from Maine’s budget office emailed me to say the first performance budgeting commission meeting went well. Happily, they seemed to like the new budget model.

On Wednesday, I attend a training seminar sponsored by INLOGOV. It is held in the Wast Hill House just off campus. Caroline markets this house for conferences and seminars as part of her job at the university. The Cadbury family owned the house—which explains the doorknobs throughout shaped like cocoa beans.

The training seminar is quite good. But I am beginning to realize there are no promising conclusions. The British government is doing the same things we are doing in Maine, and struggling with the same issues. But I meet some interesting people in the field. One woman works on best value in Cheltenham, a borough in the Cotswolds, where Prince Charles’ country estate, Highgrove, is located.

With the time change, it is dark when I walk home now, It is a gloomy reminder that winter is coming and my time here is going by fast. I am at the half-way point and feel like I am just starting to know what I am doing—almost. Plus, it is raining so it is a messy walk home. But it will be warm and dry when I get there with Lutchford to greet me.

• In today’s news: Prince Charles stepped into the political limelight again and is reportedly annoying the Blair government. The monarchy is prohibited from criticizing or supporting one government’s programs or policies, according to Britain’s unwritten constitution. Recently, Prince Charles has expressed his concern about government approvals of genetically modified foods, boycotted the government-sponsored banquet for the Chinese president, and, this weekend, took his sons on a fox hunt, which the Labor government is trying to ban. A furor ensued. Analysts say his behavior is beginning to indicate a pattern that undermines the government.

The fox hunt is an interesting issue; one that pits urban against rural Englanders, much the way deer or bear hunting does in Maine. Tony Blair has vowed to ban the fox hunt; a practice that reeks of upper-class privilege, which he is bent on dismantling, only in this case, cloaked in objections about animal cruelty. Rural England sees this as a slap in the face to their traditional way of life. Prince Charles has always hunted and attends the elite Beaufort Hunt every year. This year, because of legislation to ban the hunt, one would think he would see the political landmine and avoid stepping right into the blast. But maybe that is his intent. I see Camilla Parker-Bowles’ hand in this this; an avid hunter herself, she also rode in this year’s hunt.

At the same time, Prince Charles is working with the Government to champion British beef abroad; to become an ambassador of sorts to help bolster British beef exports, which have suffered following the Mad Cow outbreak.

My guidebook says there is good local bus service to Avebury from Marlborough or Devizes. I ask at the Bristol train station, but there are no trains to either of these towns. “The closest you could get,” the ticket agent says, “is Chippenham.” “Well,” I think, “there must be buses there.”

Only there aren’t. In Chippenham, the bus station is closed. I ask a nearby taxi driver what the fare would be to Avebury. He says £20. I ask if there are taxis there to bring me back. He says no, but if I pay for his waiting time, he will not charge me for the return trip. All told, it will be £30. Avebury is on my “must-see” list, so I jump in and off we go. It’s about 10 miles to Avebury and my driver points out the sights along the way, keeping up a steady chatter. He is better than any tour guide.

We pass the White Horse of Cherhill—a 165-foot-high, horse-shaped figure cut into the Wiltshire hills revealing the white, chalky soil underneath. It stands out starkly against the grassy slope that surrounds it so that it can be seen for miles . There are more than a half-dozen of these chalk figures in the area, dating back to the Bronze Age. No one knows why they were originally cut, but archaeologists re-discovered them in the 17^th century and local people have maintained them for centuries. My taxi driver says RAF pilots used them as landmarks during WWII.

Avebury – Better than Stonehenge

The 4,500-year-old stone circle at Avebury is the largest in the world, with 76 stones standing today, but once boasting as many as 600 stones weighing in excess of 40 tons each. I love the stones. The site actually consists of circles within circles of stones. Sheep graze contentedly and the little village of Avebury is nestled among them.

One postcard I buy says, “The village would not be Avebury without the prehistoric monuments and the stones would be unfinished without the houses, shops, and the postman.”

At first the stones seem to be everywhere and I can’t see any particular pattern. Soon though, I can discern the circular pattern of a massive ridge that slopes down into a ditch that encircles the scattered stones. The scattering begins to make sense too once I realize there are gaps where stones are missing.

Wiltshire is remarkable for its many Neolithic sites from Stonehenge to Avebury to the chalk figures along with other numerous barrows and henges dotting the county. What is it about this area that prompted ancient man to build so many monuments here?

My taxi driver takes me back to Chippenham, whose population he says has doubled in ten years. Not even in my guidebook, this sleepy little suburb is on a direct rail line from Paddington. It is an old market town and the covered market stall stands as a monument to a distant agricultural past that has given way to mini malls and ATMs.

Roman Bath

From Chippenham, I take the train to Bath.

For several years of her life, Jane Austen, lived in Bath and two of her books are set here. A line from Northanger Abbey makes me smile every time I read it. She says of the streets of Bath, “Everybody may remember the difficulties of crossing Cheap Street –a street of so impertinent a nature.”

I visit the Jane Austen Center located in the same street, but not the same building, where Jane Austen lived when she was in Bath. It is small, with some exhibits of period clothing and a film about Jane’s life in Bath and, of course, a gift shop.

Hungry, I pop into the Sally Lunn tea shop for one of the famous Sally Lunn buns; a large, round, light roll, popularized in Georgian England, which Jane herself would have perhaps eaten in this very shop. Sally Lunn was a young, French refugee who invented the sweet roll named for her. It is not that great actually; plain and dry, but better with Tiptree strawberry jam and copious amounts of tea.

The abbey bells merrily peal out a delicate Handel-like tune for a quarter of an hour as I make my way through the people thronging the wide Bath streets.

Even though I have visited them before, I could not leave Bath without a trip to the Hot Baths; a marvel of Roman engineering, and one of my favorite sites in England. Constructed around a steamy, natural hot spring, Roman patrons of all social classes would come here to bathe. Over the centuries the baths were lost to time until, in the 19^th century, archaeologists re-discovered them and, in the over-the-top way that Victorians had, they imposed an ornate colonnade with Roman emperors and governors carved of the soft, golden, local stone over the original Roman drainage work.

A hot spring fed the Roman pools reaching temperatures of up to 200 degrees Fahrenheit. The Romans piped the water to bathing pools. They then erected a temple over the baths with a central carved figure of a Gorgon’s head that glowered down on the bathers. Today, a replica of the Gorgon greets me at the entrance to the underground chamber that leads tourists to the baths. It is supposed to be a testament to the power of the goddess, Sulis Minerva, who, in legend, helped Perseus slay the creature.

In that way that conquerors have of integrating old ways into new to promote acceptance of their subjugation, Sulis Minerva is a two-in-one goddess; Sulis being the Celtic goddess of healing and sacred waters; Minerva the Roman goddess of wisdom.

The surplus hot water, not needed for the baths, flowed through a Roman drain to the River Avon a few hundred meters away. Still functioning 2,000 years later, the basin through which the steamy water drains is a rusty color, rich in iron, and strewn with pennies. I add my bright, shiny penny to the lot.

The Romans also wrote prayers on small sheets of lead that they threw into the spring, hoping Sulis Minerva would answer. I see samples of these prayers in the museum. They are labelled the “curse tablets” because many of the prayers asked Minerva to avenge wrongs done to them. A surprising number wanted redress for having their clothes stolen while bathing, which makes me laugh out loud. Archaeologists have found over 130 curse tablets.

I end my visit by tasting the water in the Pump Room; a Georgian addition, where health seekers came to drink the water in civilized surroundings. In describing the meeting between her heroine, Catherine Morland, and Henry Tilney in Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen wrote of the fashionable Pump Room, “Every creature in Bath […] was to be seen in the room at different periods of the fashionable hours.”

My suitcase that I have been schlepping across Cornwall and Somerset feels interminably heavy as I make my way back to the train station. The train takes me back to Bristol from where there is a direct line to Birmingham. It is crowded and somehow, I end up in the smoking carriage. The 90-minute ride feels interminable.

On the bus ride down Bristol Street headed back to Glenelg, fireworks are popping around us. Today is Halloween. The Brits don’t celebrate Halloween the way we do in the U.S. There are several stories on the TV news this morning reporting on how the Americans celebrate Halloween—bizarrely, the stories said. In England, Guy Fawkes Day, or Bonfire Night, is the big day (November 5), which is celebrated… naturally…with bonfires. The Brits roll Bonfire Night and Halloween into one celebration that lasts for two weeks. I have been hearing firecrackers off and on all week.

Tony and Caroline are off on holiday in Wales this weekend. They’ve hired a young student to take care of things in their absence. But I do not see her and just head up to my room.

The early morning sky is still dark as I walk up the hill to the train station to begin my four-and-a-half hour journey to Tintagel.

It is not easy getting to Tintagel via public transportation. I must take the train from Bristol as far as Bodmin Parkway. From Bodmin, I catch a bus to Tintagel. There are only two buses from Bodmin to Tintagel; one at 11:30 and one at 17:00. So, to get to Bodmin in time for the morning bus, I have to take the 7:40 train out of Bristol rather than the more leisurely 10:00 one I had anticipated. From Bodmin, it is an hour-long bus ride to Tintagel. There is no bus service tomorrow, on Sunday, so I have to come back tonight, when I had originally planned to stay overnight in Tintagel. The bus leaves Tintagel at 16:35, but only goes to Bodmin Town, not the train station, so I have to make a city bus connection at 17:28 (the Tintagel bus gets in at 17:18 PM) to catch the 18:40 PM train back to Bristol. Phew.

The train winds down the south coast through Exeter, Torquay, and Plymouth, running along the edge of the gray and choppy water of the Cornwall coast, before turning north and skirting Bodmin Moor. From the train window, Dawlish catches my eye—a cozy seaside town with large resort hotels hovering on the water’s edge. Dawlish, along with Torquay, is part of what is known as the English Riviera on the southern English Channel. I didn’t realize when I made my travel plans that I would pass through Agatha Christie territory; Torquay being the setting for several of her books and where she lived for much of her life. I must come back.

I am no longer surprised when I see two women who share my carriage eating crisps with their morning coffee. It is just after 8:00 AM. At Frances’s house the other night, I commented on how eating crisps seemed to be a British national pastime. Frances said, “You mean people in America don’t eat a lot of crisps?” I responded, “Yes, but not for breakfast.” They asked about the flavors in the U.S. and I named them: barbeque, sour cream and onion, salt and vinegar. At this point, Frances’s daughter, Kate, brings out some for us to have as a pre-dinner snack. I asked which is her favorite flavor? She said, “Oh, I’m disgusting actually, I like prawn cocktail. I confessed that it is my favorite too.

The train takes forever with about 15 stops along the way. I am anxious about making the bus connection. But, shortly after I disembark, the #125 bus to Tintagel pulls up. The driver tells me I can’t board yet, it’s about a 10-minute wait. A sweet little lady in the train’s buffet area makes me a cheese and tomato sandwich. She cuts mild white cheddar off a big block, sprinkles it lightly with salt, and puts it between two slices of soft white bread along with sweet, juicy tomato slices. It is delicious.

I am the only one on the bus, although others get on and off during the 1-1/2 hour trip. It begins to rain hard. Near the end of the journey, I see two large windmills whirling madly in the wind and rain. They are massive and stand out dramatically on the stark moor. As we move to higher ground I can see there are a dozen or more of them lined up. They are white and utilitarian and look like they are marching along the hill’s ridge like the walking war machines in the War of the Worlds.

• Editor’s note: I learn later, when checking my facts on the Internet, that the live Halloween broadcast of War of the Worlds that sent the American nation into full-scale panic was aired on Sunday, October 30, 1938―this very day, 61 years ago. I am astonished at the coincidence.

By the time the bus pulls into Tintagel, I am once again alone on the bus. I am not confident of the connection back and ask the driver. He doesn’t know either because it is a different bus line going back. But, he says the bus will pick me up around the corner at the Methodist Church.

It is pouring and, as I walk towards the castle, I pull my hood tightly around my head. My upper body clad in Gortex is dry, but my jeans and sneakers quickly become sodden. I begin to wonder why I made this crazy trip out in the middle of nowhere. Then, I get my first glimpse of the castle ruins, the 12^th century stronghold belonging to the Duke of Cornwall that legend attributes as the birthplace of the mythological King Arthur. It takes my breath away.

The eerie ruins of Tintagel Castle stand high up on a cliff, stark against the stormy sky amidst the whipping wind; angry ocean waves ebb and flow from Merlin’s cave hundreds of feet below. It is easy to understand how so many legends became associated with this place.

The cliffside climb to the ruins is steep and the stone steps are slippery and uneven. It is not for the faint of heart and my legs are little wobbly by the time I reach the top. But the rain is beginning to slow.

An English Heritage guide, a local historian, is giving a free tour to a small, umbrella-ed group and I join them. The bearded, burly guide is excellent, giving an overview of the castle’s Roman origins and its intimate connection with the Arthurian legend.

He tells us about the 400-year Roman rule of Britain. England, at the time of Arthur, was thoroughly Roman. By 400 AD, Celtic rule would have been as far back in the memory of those Roman Britons as our association today is with the Spanish Armada. However, Britain’s pleas for help from Mother Rome against the invading Saxons went unheeded as she battled her own invaders, the Huns. The Arthurian legend stems from a powerful Roman Briton king who beat back the Saxon invaders. History tells us however that the Saxon’s relentless onslaught was, in the end, invincible.

By the time our guide finishes his tale, the sun is out; the water sparkles below us.

When asked if Arthur was a real man, our guide says that much of history is steeped in myth and legend. But legends have their origins somewhere; told and retold over centuries so that you no longer recognize the truth. He tells us about an ancient oak door covered with supple leather that hangs on one of the gates in the walled city of Exeter. Local lore, long dismissed, had it that the leather was the human skin of a captured Viking invader put there as a warning to other raiders. In the 1980s, when repairmen were re-hanging the door, someone thought to test the leather. It turned out not to be animal skin as people supposed, but human, and carbon-dated to within 30 years (+/-) of the height of the Viking invasions of England. So, while our guide does not subscribe that King Arthur is a real man, neither does he dismiss the Arthurian legend as totally fiction.

I love history. To study it teaches you how to think, how to ask questions, how to interpret facts. It is much more a discipline than a bunch of dates and facts.

• Arthurian inscription found at Tintagel: On 6 August 1998, English Heritage revealed that while digging on the Eastern terraces of Tintagel Island, a broken piece of Cornish slate was discovered bearing the name “Artognov.” The 6^th century “Arthur Stone” as it has already been christened, clearly reads “Pater Coliavificit Artognov,” which Professor Charles Thomas of Exeter University has carefully translated as “Artognou, father of a descendant of Coll, has had this built. Dr Geoffrey Wainwright, chief archaeologist at the, normally cautious, English Heritage declared, “Tintagel has presented us with evidence of a Prince of Cornwall, in the Dark Ages, living in a high-status domestic settlement at the time Arthur lived. It has given us the name of a person, Arthnou. Arthnou was here, that is his name on a piece of stone. It is a massive coincidence at the very least. This is where myth meets history. It’s the find of a lifetime.” Source

I walk back to town and poke in the shops along the way, all wonderfully tackily named commemorating the Arthurian legend: King Arthur’s bookshop, Camelot Collectibles, Merlin’s Gifts and Confectionery, etc. I stop at King Arthur’s café and eat a Cornish pasty; a meat pie in pastry folded like a calzone and eaten hot or cold. At this café, they proudly claim to have the true thing—“Cornish pasty made by the Cornish.”

King Arthur’s Great Hall is not old but founded in the 1920s as a fraternal order to celebrate fellowship and chivalry. The grand hall holds a regal granite throne, a massive oak roundtable, and some of the most beautiful stained-glass windows I have ever seen. There is a laser light show that describes the King Arthur legend. Afterwards I walk quickly through the hall and exhibit area. I only have a few minutes before my bus is due to arrive.

At the Methodist Church, I see no sign of a bus or a bus stop. I go into a pet food shop next door and ask the proprietor. She says, “Oh, just stand in the church yard, they will pick you up there.” I ask if she knows the bus number. “No,” she says, “but it will be the only one.” After much anxiety that I will be marooned on the Cornish coast, the bus pulls up.

Once again, I am the only person on the bus and, as it winds through the back roads, it reminds me of Ireland with the lush, green countryside, off-and-on rain, and narrow roads. Only this time, I am in the bus and it’s the oncoming cars that must pull over. One lady backs up her car, smiles, and waves to the driver as we pass.

Bodmin Parkway station is very small and empty. I feel like I am in Fiddler on the Roof, when Tevye takes his middle daughter to catch the train to Siberia, where it is nothing but a bench and a flag on a pole. Bodmin is not that bad, but it is definitely not full service. There is one rail worker, but the buffet is closed. I’ll have to get something on the train.

There are no sandwiches on the train’s trolley cart; I get a flapjack and bottle of water. As we speed through the dark, along the edge of the rough ocean, I have a fleeting thought wondering how the train driver sees at night, but then decide I am better off not thinking about it. I lean my head back and close my eyes. We pull into Bristol around 10:30 PM. Back at my Holiday Inn Express, I set the clock back one hour before turning off the light.