Her Grace Wants Your Ladyship Resting In her Room

There is a story told of Lady Randolph Churchill while on a weekend visit to a ducal country estate.  Despite the printed program given her on arrival, listing the times for every event, she found herself casually wandering in the grand gardens of an afternoon only to have a liveried servant come out to say “Begging pardon, Your  Ladyship, but Her Grace has scheduled ‘rest in the bedroom’ at this hour”. Back in the sixties of the last century I used to do a lot of lecturing thither and yon around the country.  A major discovery that changed my way of life was the number of times I would be met at the airport by an emissary of whatever institution had invited me with a printout of the schedule of events during my two or three day stay.  Arrival at airport, such and such hotel, rest in room, cocktail reception at Dean so and so’s house, dinner, talk, back to hotel. Next day breakfast meeting with such and such committee soliciting my opinion, mid morning swim at university pool [something I always demanded]. lunch with students of classics club, and so on and so forth until my listed departure. I had never before beheld my life scripted like that, and I have never looked back. It means you don’t have to think and plan while trying to be “in the present,” as they say in some group or another.  Of course, this is a no-brainer for the Queen of England and other full time celebrity vehicles, but it is surprising how well it works for the little people, too.  But the preparation is all mine, of course, and when managing the schedule is the work of a brain well along in life, it can be gruesome.  I have recently been working on a series of trips which require scheduling, and if I were not completely aware that the alternative is to wander clueless day by day, I would not be doing this.  I am flying to Manhattan in ten days, there to see a series of friends, certain art shows, and attend some theater before taking Amtrak to Boston where I join my husband who has meanwhile driven up from Florida. I will be met and we will go to a new play by someone we much admire and then home to the seashore, where a month’s interlude of gardening and doctor’s appointments will ensue until we shall be off to London.  I have just been in the process of organizing our so-called “London theater week”-- or should I spell that theatre?--, an utterly grueling experience, because like the rest of the world centers, one can go nowhere without reservations.  Obvious for hotels, of course, but to be encouraged to make restaurant reservations over a month in advance because of the demand is daunting, since at the same time you discover that the two favorite theater pieces on your agenda are long since sold out that week and you must find alternatives that are worth the airfare to London.  Then there are four or five dear friends whose schedules you work to mesh with your own so that you can enjoy either a meal together or a theater evening together or a walk through, say, the British Museum.  Turns out that this last has almost no tickets left for the Pompeii Herulaneum show in morning hours and i won’t go after lunch. As I am in my dotage, I don’t think I would choose to be present at the Second Coming over a good nap after lunch. Still and all, the entire process is an exhilarating exercise in fighting off dementia as one balances days of the week, hours of the day, a mental image of the map of central London, a complete list of friends that are “must be seen.”  And now I have started on the birthday present for my husband’s seventieth--a ten day sojourn in Budapest--where we will stay on a dreamy island in the middle of the Danube, and go into the city center, when we can bring ourselves to leave the swimming pool, massage tables, exercise rooms, and shady walks and vistas.  Downtown Budapest has been restored since the end of the Soviet Era, and the advantage is that nothing was done to repair the ravages of war torn Budapest in that earlier period, so the glorious Art Deco and Art Nouveau architecture remained intact, just waiting to be spruced up.  Heaven!  Now all I have left is to plan the trip to Kentucky for my grandson’s wedding.