Detours–or serendipity : : Anne McAllister

Back in June when my husband, The Prof, and I were returning for a visit to Quebec followed by a few days in Connecticut and New York City, we were scheduled to fly out of LaGuardia one morning and get home maybe six hours later – which considering that we live a part of the world where airline travel is still something you usually drive a car 80 miles to experience – was a pretty good deal.

Or it would have been if the airplane we were scheduled to fly out on hadn’t been struck by lightning on the way in.

We were sooo close to getting on the plane – and then, whoops, the loudspeaker informed us that we would all have to be rebooked.  All 220 or so of us.  I didn’t rush to the ticket counter with at least 100 others. I sat right where I was and called the airline on my phone.

Astonishingly, by the time I got through the phone tree to a real person, we had already been rebooked – to Dallas.

Dallas is about, oh roughly, a thousand miles from where we had been going, which was Chicago. 
“No problem,” the nice lady on the phone told us. “You’ll get there tonight.”

“And the rest of the way?” I asked, because there was a ‘rest of the way’ short flight we needed to take as well.

“Oh, certainly,” she said with terminal good cheer.

Sceptically, an hour later we boarded our flight. To Dallas.

We have a daughter who lives not far from Dallas. I called her from the airport when we arrived and said, “Guess where we are.”  "And, “No, don’t bother to come to the airport. We’re leaving again.”

As indeed we did. And quite amazingly, we got to Chicago in time – barely –to catch the late night commuter flight home.  Clockwork – as promised.

Except for the luggage which had gone straight to Chicago on someone else’s flight and beat us home by several hours.

But the detour, while meaningless in terms of the flight (other than some extra miles on our frequent flyer accounts, brought an unexpected bonus.

We got to watch an in-flight movie we never would have seen otherwise.  We got to watch it in silence because we didn’t have headsets, but it was intriguing enough to make me pick up a copy of the DVD when it came out.

If you have not watched Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, give it a look.  It’s a quiet little film with some interesting things to say, an unexpected hero (played unexpectedly by Ewan McGregor), a heroine who could work in the Good Cheer Department of our airline (Emily Blunt), a seriously handsome Egyptian actor (Amr Waked) who is called the “George Clooney of Egypt” – or so they say, and as the British Prime Minister’s press person, Kristen Scott Thomas, who was perfect and perfectly funny.

It looked good without the dialogue. It was better with.  And we had dinner last night with friends who live in Oman who had seen it there and were equally impressed. 

I doubt I’d have picked it up without my ‘detour’ to Dallas.  I’m so glad I went there now!  Let me know what you think if you’ve seen it.  And if you haven’t, take a chance on it. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed. 

Unexpected Pleasures : : Anne McAllister

A few years ago I met a man on the internet.

It isn't as sinister as it sounds. I was doing genealogical research and had posted a query about my husband's family in Australia. A year or so later, out of the blue, I had an email from a man in England who was writing to see if the family I was looking for was also the family he was looking for.

Turned out they had the same not-very-common last name but were not, in fact, related.

We exchanged an interesting set of emails, determined that we were not connected, and I expected that that would be the end of it.

It wasn't. He was retired, at something of a loose end, had, as a result, just removed a several hundred year old hedge from his property with his Volvo and a winch, and was looking for something else to occupy his time.

Did I have any loose ends I wanted tied up, he wondered. Any families in the UK I couldn't track down. He'd be happy to take a look for them. Otherwise, I got the feeling, the rest of the hedges had better watch out.

Well, I did have some loose ends, as you do if you've done genealogy for any length of time. There are ALWAYS brick walls.

So I gave him the name of a cottage in a little village in Cornwall and said I was trying to find out where it was. I wasn't having much success. Did he want to try?

Did he?! Oh, yes.

Within days he emailed me with an approximate location -- and a list of three local people I should contact who could tell me more about the cottages and the area. "Call them," he said. "That's what I did."

So I did. And I've since done more than that. I've visited the area myself. I have spent a few days with the people he found for me -- and one of them introduced me to a cousin who was born in the cottage I was seeking.

Unexpected pleasures, all of them.

So the next time I went to England, I emailed him and said, Could I take you out to lunch?

He said no.

No?

No. I was a visitor in his country. He'd take me.

The day we went out was an absolute pleasure -- an exquisite luncheon and an afternoon spent in the gardens of Gravetye Manor.

Built in 1598, it is a stunning Elizabethan manor house set amid some 35 acres of amazing gardens surrounded by hundreds of acres of forest.

As we drove in, two deer leapt across the road right in front of us. I realized then it was going to be an amazing day.

The manor's gardens, its greatest claim to fame, are a memorial to William Robinson, one of England's greatest gardeners and a proponent of the "natural" garden. He bought Gravetye Manor in 1884 and developed and maintained them until his death in 1935. After years of neglect, the house and gardens were purchased by a hotelier, Peter Herbert, who set about restoring them.

He did a magnificent job. I could have wandered in those gardens for days. I could have sat in the beautifully appointed -- but equally warm and welcoming -- public rooms for even longer. Every time now that I am in need of an English manor house -- or an Irish manor house for that matter -- Gravetye Manor pops into my head.

There are doubtless bigger, more lavish, exquisite places in England. But it is the standard against which I measure them all. And because I had such a wonderful day there - because it was so unexpected and so delightful, as well as proof of the way serendipity can bring people together -- Gravetye Manor remains my favorite.

I'm looking at unexpected events now, trying to work out the starting point of a new book. Gravetye manor seems like a good place to begin.

Tell me about your most unexpected pleasures. I'll get my unexpectedly useful golden retrievers, Mitch and Micah, to pick a winner from those who comment, and I'll send the winner a copy of my upcoming book, Hired By Her Husband. The husband in question is George Savas, my single-minded physicist, who turned out to be an unexpectedly sexy hero.

You never know, do you?

In Search of Serendipity

I am always amazed at the serendipitous moments in real life and in writing my stories. Many, many times, strange 'coincidences' happen and things work out in mysterious ways -- much like Robert the Bruce finding and watching the spider in that cave in Ireland when he was hiding. According to legend, it was observing the spider's relentless efforts to weave its web and inspire the Bruce onto bigger and better things....(If you magnify this photo, there's an itsy bitsy spider in the corner of one of the panes of stained glass in the Abbey at Dumfernline...)

Anyway...I believe that these moments happen and make things/my stories better. When I was writing my novella THE CLAIMING OF LADY JOANNA, I decided to use evil Prince. . er. . King John as a character but the story had to be set in Springtime in England. Well, heck, I said, as I wrote the novella and researched it as I was writing it. Amazingly, I discovered that the ONLY year King John actually held an Easter court in England was. . . the year in which I set my story!

Those kinds of things have happened lots of times in my life and my writing. Serendipity. Moments and events that I couldn't have planned but are special.


When I'd planned my first trip to Scotland, something I'd dreamed of for years and years, I ended up in the hospital. I begged my doc to let me go (once they couldn't find anything wrong with me) and I ended up joining the rest of the group a day late. Because of that, I flew to Scotland on my own, took a train across and into the Cairngorms and into a small town called Pitlochry. I also met a number of people I would never have met and was even helped from the train station by a nice young man who showed me around the town and found a ride for me (on a Sunday when no taxis were available). Pure serendipity.

One of the best examples of serendipity occurred during my first trip to Scotland when I stayed on with 2 friends - Sue-Ellen Welfonder and Lisa Trumbauer - to travel out to the Highlands. As we were on our way back to Glasgow, we passed by the sign for this castle I'd never heard of: Dunstaffnage. So, as Sue-Ellen fills me in on the history of it, we toured, climbed onto the battlements, walked the acres around it, all the time never dreaming that it would turn into a romance novel for me a few years later.

So, what's this all about? Well, I'm planning another trip to Scotland and I am in search of serendipity. I'll be driving all over the Highlands, visiting the islands and lots of places in between. And I'm hoping that something will click, something will ping, something from the cosmic universe to point me in a direction or inspire me. I suspect, with scenery like this-- -- it will happen!


Terri






While Terri is busy planning the trip, her latest Harlequin Historical - THE CONQUEROR'S LADY - is hitting the shelves. After beginning the story in her HH Undone, A NIGHT FOR HER PLEASURE in June, the Knights of Brittany return as Giles find his newly-betrothed wife marrying someone else! Visit Terri's website for more information about her upcoming novels and novellas.. www.terribrisbin.com

(okay - yesterday in work, we were talking about Elton John's TINY DANCER and how it was sung in a movie that none of us could remember; as I'm writing this blog, I changed the channels and came upon ALMOST FAMOUS as the whole group in the bus is singing along with TINY DANCER! Serendipity in action!)