We come up from our first ride on London’s Underground, fresh from Heathrow and our flight from Boston into the chaotic streets of Camden Town. It’s already dark here and the High Street is alive with young people. They swarm along the sidewalks where the shops and stands offer Hot Dogs!, Bubble Waffles!, Tattoos and Piercing!, Pizza!, Best London Souvenirs! A line snakes out of the Electric Ballroom, while clusters of young guys huddle in doorways where money, or something, seems to change hands. A bearded man sits cross-legged at an intersection, surrounded by the diatribes he’s written in colored chalk on the pavement — his philosophy? — along with a cup for donations.

Our friends shepherd us through the crush, helpfully pulling our luggage. At the side of a brightly lit shoe shop they stop at a plain door in the purple brick wall, out comes a key and we all slip inside. Up a dark, narrow staircase; “watch out for the bike” our host says, and sure enough, not one, but two bicycles hang from the staircase wall. A toilet is tucked into a tiny room at the first landing (by the end of the evening we’re calling it the loo, too.) Another turn of the stairs and we come into the kitchen of this remarkable flat.  

I’ve known of this place for years, the London home of an old friend who spends half the year in Lincolnville, but this is my first visit. It doesn’t disappoint. Books line the walls floor to ceiling as I knew they would; wherever there are no books, a painting fills the space, for John, a life-long collector of books and Judith, an artist, have spent fifty years in these rooms. Our other good friend, Liz, a writer whose Lincolnville home wraps you in the same warm and welcoming aura, rounds out the group around the table on this, our first night in London.

Outside, the crush of Camden Town visitors is intensifying, but the sound barely penetrates the thick walls of this pre-Victorian, about 1834, building. A roof-top garden off the kitchen gives an overview of the nightly street life here, including a view of the unlikely week-end urinal (they say ur-eye-nal). During the day time it resembles a paved-over manhole cover, but come Friday night it comes into its own, rising out of the pavement, a handsome appliance – stainless steel with three lighted stations, a necessary convenience where there’s a bar on every corner and a surplus of young men; I’m not sure what the young women do.

As we sit around the candle-lit table, Don and I congratulate each other on pulling off this trip. We’ve come to London for a week, meeting in Boston – he flying up from Florida, me arriving there by Concord bus – and going out this morning on a $100 British Air ticket (that’s to get over; coming back was $250 – go figure). We booked an Airbnb, a two-room flat just four blocks down the High Street from John, Judith and Liz.

Ah, our Airbnb. It’s a council flat, akin, I guess to our public housing projects, government-built, affordable rents, minimal amenities. We spend the first day or two inspecting it with our American hotel-besotted eyes: the loose shower head that sprays all over the place, the bathroom door handle that hangs precariously, ominously off the latched door, the broken futon which is the only place to sit, the windows too grimy to see out of, the lingering odor of cigarette smoke embedded in the carpet. Yet after a few days we’re thinking of it as home. We’ve finally figured out the shower that threatened to scald, found the place to sit on the futon (only one of us at a time), and no longer notice the smell of smoke. We thought of all those former tenants of the place who must have called it home.

As Don and I have driven several times to and from Florida in our three years together, we have certain expectations of what we’ll find in, for instance, a Holiday Inn Express. 16 Pratt Street, Camden Town, London isn’t that. The mail we find on the doormat every day, dropped through the slot, is addressed to at least four different individuals with names I couldn’t begin to pronounce or even guess at their nationality. Sub-letters of this place, John says, immigrants surely.

And that describes the hundreds of people we share the sidewalks with every day as we walk from Pratt Street to the Underground, heading out on our day’s exploration of London. Not the young throng up by our friends’ flat – most of them seem to be tourists or Londoners out on a daytrip – but rather, an incredible parade of races, ages, languages, dress, hair. For me anyway, with my eyes full of the so-familiar faces I encounter here in our almost totally white, almost totally English-speaking little corner of Maine, it’s overwhelming. Maybe we’re just out of practice, negotiating crowded city sidewalks, but we never could figure out which side to walk on; inevitably someone would be heading directly for us no matter what part of the sidewalk we chose. Pedestrian chicken, Don called it, as nobody breaks stride till the last moment.

And I have to mention the homeless, sleeping rough in doorways. We see them at night, still out with a hat or cup held out for coins, then see them next morning, asleep in a bundle of bedding, one guy lies under his wheelchair. Next door to a tiny shop stocked with every imaginable kind of pasta and yogurts, soft cheeses, olives, where the owner stands every night guarding his sidewalk display of fresh produce – I guess he’s Turkish – there’s the entryway to a closed up business, piled high with cardboard boxes and plastic bags of trash. Each time we pass I see the silhouette of a woman in there, rearranging, always rearranging the bags. Even when I don’t see her, I hear her shuffling stuff. That nest must be her home.

We find out that the Underground is the secret to exploring London. The night our friends met us at Heathrow they introduced us to the Oyster, the omnipresent plastic card that every Londoner carries. You buy it at a machine in the Tube station, putting say, thirty pounds on it. Then every time you enter an Underground station you press it to a scanner on the turnstyle, and then again when you leave. Whilst (another new word) below ground, you can change trains as often as you wish; it also works on the seemingly thousands of double decker buses that constantly roll smoothly by on nearly every street.

John says no worries when I wonder how to find our own way, “just get northbound on the Northern line and you’ll end up in Camden Town.” The few times we ventured out alone without Judith or Liz we never got lost, though we may have had to back track a few times. The Tube stations are as varied as Londoners themselves. A few are incredibly modern, all glass and stainless steel with lifts where you can see the cables that pull them up and down. Most are the kind of drab stucco tunnels I associate with the subways I rode 50 years ago, though many are decorated with artwork by contemporary London artists; Judith tells me who created each of them. Some of the stations harken back to the Underground’s 19th century roots when they actually used steam engines, though how that worked below ground we can’t imagine. Baker Street station, (yes, there’s a statue of Sherlock Holmes) feels incredibly old. From the art deco tilework to the grimy brick arches, nothing about it seems even vaguely recent, except that the trains run by electricity. It was my favorite.

At King’s Cross where Harry Potter embarked for Hogwarts, there’s a sign pointing to Platform 9 3/4 and the back end of a train car disappearing into the wall. Unfortunately, it’s cordoned off, and you have to stand in a queue to have your child’s photo taken. Liz remembers discovering it with her two children when it was just an unassuming sign, half a rail car and no queue.

We followed those two children of hers, all grown up now, through their first visits to London as she recalled the day her young son was messing around near the edge of the platform, kicked out his foot as a train was approaching and watched his shoe come off and sail onto the track. Sobered, he was silent the rest of that day. Another time while touring King Henry VIII’s castle, circa 1500s, her little daughter, dressed in a sweet red coat and hat, caught the eye of a guard who asked if she’d like to see something. He pulled back a hanging in the grand room and showed her a secret door which he opened so she could look inside.

Each day’s excursion ended with lunch in a pub. Not that we had any idea where that pub would be, but our guides came up with a different one every day. They had names like Walrus and the Carpenter, The George, Mute Swan, Eagle, and Seven Stars. There’s a certain protocol to a pub we learned; though all serve meals, they’re not restaurants. No hostess greets and seats you; instead you’re free to rearrange the furniture – chairs, stools, tables – to suit your party. Then you send someone up to the bar for beer or whatever, and find a menu. The bartender brings the food. You can sit all day if you want; nobody hustles you out or brings the check. When you’re ready you settle up at the bar.

They’re dimly lit places, dark wood, well-used furniture, nooks and booths, high tables, and often with many rooms leading off one another. The bar is central with its taps of local brews. One, The George, was built in about 1660. Imagine a two-story wooden building, 400 years old, and not treated as a museum, but rather a functioning public space. We went there twice and sat in a different room each time.

At The Eagle in Cambridge we were in the RAF barroom, where WW II airmen, both the RAF (Royal Air Force) and the U.S. Eighth Squadron, hung out during the war. Stationed nearby, the men took to writing on the ceiling of this room, signing their names, their units and messages to the world; they must have stood on the tables, and used candle stubs, lighters and lipstick. They wrote boldly, with heavy strokes; even today you can see the thick candlewax. These were young men, barely into their twenties and must have known what they were likely facing.

The ceiling’s been preserved just as it was during the war, and sitting under it, realizing that something like 60% of the fighter pilots and their crews didn’t make it back from their bombing missions during that awful war, is powerful.

One rainy day we tumbled into the Seven Stars, soaked through and through, to find we were the first patrons of the day, and settled into a table by the gas fire. The owner, an older woman with bright red hair and her cat, wearing a ruff around its neck, sat in a corner making up the day’s menu. Don and the young Irish barmaid struck up a conversation, and the food arrived from the upstairs kitchen via a dumb waiter. The loo was upstairs as well, and was reached by a tiny staircase, more ladder than stairs, with handles to help you negotiate it.

So the second chapter. For my friend Don and I, both left behind when our spouses of 50+ years died – as we see it now, our first chapter ended – this does indeed feel like a new one.

Town

At last night’s Selectmen’s meeting the fate of the Beach Schoolhouse/LIA building was again on the agenda. The 1892 building needs extensive repairs: a new roof, foundation work, support for the second floor, and a new furnace. As the second floor tenants, the Lincolnville Historical Society has a big stake in what is decided, as do Lincolnville Improvement Association members, the group that has maintained the building since the town closed it as a school in 1947. To hear the discussion, watch it via livestreaming.

Library

There’s been a changing of the guard at the Lincolnville Community Library with director Elizabeth Eudy retiring and Sheila Polson returning as director/librarian. Elizabeth will continue as a volunteer, much as Sheila did after she stepped down a few years ago.

Anyway, Sheila writes: “Please join us this coming Tuesday, Feb. 25 at 6 p.m. for the book group's discussion of The Giver of Stars by Jojo Moyes (postponed from February 18). Based on a true story, the novel tells of the adventures and challenges faced by the Packhorse Librarians, five women who delivered books throughout the rugged landscape of Kentucky during the Great Depression.  

We’d also love to hear from anyone who has read The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Richardson, another novel about this group of traveling librarians. This book has gotten top reviews and both novels have drawn attention for their striking similarities. Come share your thoughts with us on Tuesday!” 

Merryspring Noon Talk

Archaeologist Harbour Mitchell, a member of the Lincolnville Historical Society board, and who has done work at Ducktrap and at the site of Philip Ulmer’s last home on Whitney Road, will be discussing his recent findings at Merryspring Nature Center in Camden on Tuesday, Feb. 25, at 12 p.m.

According to Harbour, his discoveries at Merryspring include midcoast Maine’s rarest archaeology and Camden’s earliest settlement, the 1770s Elisah Gibbs Homestead Site. This represents “not only the earliest European settlement in Camden and Rockport, but a critical period when a small Continental militia force, and a few Penobscot warriors, might well have been all that stood between the British and southern New England.”

This lecture is part of the Winter Talk series at Merryspring, sponsored by Allen Insurance and Financial. Admission to Tuesday talks is $5, with free admission for members of Merryspring.

Red Cross Blood Drive Saturday

A Red Cross blood drive is scheduled for Saturday, Feb. 29, 9 a.m.-1:30 p.m. at the Community Building. To schedule an appointment call 1-800-RED CROSS (1-800-733-2767) or online and enter Lincolnville CB.

Doll Fest

Here’s a get-out-of-the-house and see something different event: Saturday, March 14 dolls will be on display at the Community Building at the first ever Doll Fest, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Bring your own dolls to display if you want, or if you’re a dollmaker, bring along a doll-in-the-making. Admission is $5, children free. There’ll be demonstrations of doll-making techniques, a tea, and a chance to dance with Ida, the life-size doll.

Sympathy

I’ll add my condolences to the news that Kay Dinsmore passed away last week. She is always in my heart when I think of the years my mother spent in the Camden Nursing Home where Kay was one of the women who took care of her. Whenever we ran into each other around town, she would say something kind about my mother, and that was years after Mom’s passing. It takes a special kind of person to do that work with such love for the patients; my sympathy to Kay’s family and friends.

Coleman Pond Association Newsletter

“Ice-in this year was December 19. After that, and until recently, Coleman Pond has been quiet, with only occasional ice fishermen, ice skaters, cross country skiers, and snowmobiles as the surface allowed. The ice is now thick and despite adequate ice there has been little evidence of wildlife. On Sunday, February 16^th and the following day, President’s Day, there was a notable increase in ice fishing activity.

“To date this winter has been characterized by frequent temperature fluctuations: 40 degrees one day followed by 1 degree the next combined with rain and strong winds.”

Another Word About Winter

As a long-time fan of our Midcoast Maine winters, this one is, so far, a disappointment. Not enough snow, not enough cold. Of course, I’m speaking as someone who doesn’t have to get out in it every morning, clean off the car, and drive to work. Still, there’s walks and driveway to shovel, hens to feed and water in the coop out back, wood to bring in, ashes to haul out, stove pipes and chimneys to monitor. There are dark mornings, short afternoons, and long nights to be gotten through. Pipes that freeze, ice to negotiate, and for some, the inevitable fall that puts one on crutches or in the ER or worse.

Still. Bring it on.