In the grounds of Wellesley College, Hilary Clinton’s alma-mater, there is a wooden replica of Shakespeare’s birth place. It is the home of The Shakespeare Society. It stands incongruous, a mock Tudor sanctuary surrounded by stone colleges and sorority houses. A short walk from there and you find the alumni hall, the two tiered college theatre, haunted by the lazy ghost of “Top hat man”. The Shakespeare Society provides a twofold service for the Actors From The London Stage. It provides a buffer zone of enthusiastic audience members at the front of the stalls cheerleading for the actors, and it provides an equally enthusiastic stopping place for the tired actors when the show is done. The company has been coming for nine years now, and the routine is well established. “The Shakespeare Society traditionally kidnaps the actors on Friday, but I’m sure they’d welcome you every night if you have nowhere else to go.” So I am informed on the Thursday by Elena our stage manager, (herself a member.) And it does indeed. Although going there carries a burden, as you will end up staying up all night talking about verse plays and poetry and acting and theatre.

So by Saturday night the need to wind down after the show was taking precedence over the desire to see the dawn, no matter how much I love to geek out. But it’s a lovely little bubble, and I know I would have been a member had I been a student there. It felt very familiar from my student drama society days, right down to the fact that there were no men involved. I was very excited to see that they had some huge working log fire places but “They were last lit in the ’20s. Someone almost burnt the place down.” I know for certain that had I been a member I would have been expelled from the society for lighting them with smokeless fuel and getting caught.

Wellesley itself is a dry town close enough to Boston for it to be easy to visit. I wanted to get a lobster and clam chowder, and Georgina had been tipped off as to where to go. We really felt the “New England” vibe when a bearded man in a cap growled “f*ing tourists” at us as we finished our meal. Aside from the fact I was on the receiving end, it made me feel right at home. And it was clear proof that we had come to the right place, as had we been in the equivalent of an Angus Steak House there would have been nothing but tourists for miles, and nobody to growl at us.

New England is familiar. I got my first Flat White in America, a bacon sandwich, cheddar cheese. I also had to wear my coat and jumper. The people drive like lunatics on bad roads, they randomly insult tourists, the portions are normal sized, people don’t do their utmost to make your life pleasant, it rains. I could live in Boston and not feel too homesick. And as per my previous post, the colours are astonishing in The Fall.

Now we are in Austin Texas, again. Chasing the tail of summer. I just walked into the most beautiful hotel room. Life is excellent.