I had another great workout this morning with a Moroccan trainer named, of all things, Abs. Funnily enough, the trainer I hired in New York was called Abby. I'll have to try to find a trainer called Abigail when I'm in Boston, to complete the series. Abs is a short, powerful, professional bodybuilder. Working out at a gym in England is always completely different than working out in the States, since it seems that a much larger proportion of the gym customers are huge, muscle guys. And for some reason it seems incongruous to see these huge guys suddenly speak with broad cockney accents.

By eleven thirty, I was on the road North, heading for a village south of Birmingham to visit an old friend of mine. It was a startlingly beautiful, hot day, with a perfect blue sky. Since I wasn't meeting my friend Rob until late afternoon, I decided to take the scenic route instead of the motorway, and to take detours to check out little villages and the countryside.

My first stop, near Wigginton. This photo expands into a wide panorama.

It was a lovely, simple experience, walking along a country path in mid Summer, birds singing, a breeze.

A lone poppie amidst a field of corn and daisies

I had a picnic lunch in the churchyard (St Giles) of a small village in Oxfordshire (Wendlebury)

Chicken and ham pie. To be followed with double-gloucester cheese.

Exploring the churchyard

I arrived in Worcestershire (try saying that five times quickly), the county where my friend Rob lives, by around four, and arranged to meet up with him at the train station in Alvechurch. He'd been to Birmingham for the day. Since I had some time, I explored the little village, including the old church on the hill.

Rob lives in nearbye Blackwell, but we decided to first drive down what remains of an old Roman road to a pub to have a drink and catch up. I haven't seen Rob in at least three years, I think. He's one of the very few college friends I'm still in touch with. Rob and I went through quite a lot together. When I went through my Christian phase in college, Rob was my spiritual mentor. Much later, of course, we'd both dump Christianity and come out of the closet. We've traveled together in the States on a couple of occasions. And most importantly, I was with Rob one cold day in England when we came across his Dad lying in the gutter in an untidy heap, dead of a heart-attack.

At first, as we talked, it felt that maybe the ties that bind had grown too loose through neglect. There were quite long pauses in our conversation, as though we didn't have enough points of reference. But after we drove to his house in Blackwell, and took a sunset walk through the long shadows, our old way of talking came back to us, and it seemed like just yesterday that we'd seen each other.

Walking with Rob near sunset

We went back to the same pub where we'd had a drink earlier, this time for dinner. We wallowed in a perfect bath of nostalgia, speaking of our days living together, first in Commonwealth Hall, a student hall of residence in Bloomsbury, then later when we lived, together with two woman, in the house of Canon Keith de Berry near Buckingham Palace. The food was great, and I finally gave in to the little voice inside me that's been saying "Chocolate! Pudding!" ever since I arrived in England, and I ordered bread and butter pudding with hot custard for dessert. When we came out of the pub, it was after ten o'clock, but there was still some light to the sky. Not enough light, though, to drown the shooting star I saw the instant I looked at the sky.