Cheltenham to Manchester

At the moment, I'm sitting in my room at the Holiday Inn about 2 miles from Manchester Airport and am listening to BBC 2 (Big Band with a British accent). The picture is from the train from Stafford to Manchester Piccadilly. The train to the Manchester Airport stop was undergoing maintenance so they substituted a bus that was right outside the doors of the Piccadilly station as I arrived.

The day was both stimulating and restful. I walked to St. Luke's Anglican Church with Rob this morning, through the streets of Cheltenham. The service wasn't all that different from the Congregational church as this particular congregation has cast off "high church" associations. The people were incredibly warm to me and the sermon was quite good and coincidentally, about aging! I heard an amazingly painful story from a woman whose husband had early onset dementia. She finally had to place him in a home where several months later, the police raided it and arrested the director (a physician) for killing 8 residents! Within 2 days she had to find a different placement for him, and she thought that place was good. However, it, too, was providing such bad care (during hours when families couldn't visit) that the police shut it down. Now, three years later after her husband died, both facilities are being tried in court. I am gaining a real appreciation for the resources we have in Wisconsin.

Rob cooked a wonderful big meal that we had about 3:00. We then drove north to Stafford where I got the train to Manchester. Tomorrow morning, I'll take the hotel shuttle to the airport and get the 10:05 flight to Stockholm. More adventures to come...