DAY FOUR: Monday September 11 2006 Boxford MA to Boston MA

​Make sure I am up earlier today in order to be on time to accompany Henry to his new school. The three-year old boy has only been going there for one week but seems happy enough. The school, in Boxford Community Hall, is only a seven-minute drive away in Julian’s Jeep Grand Cherokee.
 
The women also dropping kids their kids off at the school all ask Julian how he had enjoyed the game yesterday, mentioning that their husbands were all jealous, just like Karen was. Julian pointed out that his English visitor was his excuse for being able to go, which made them all eye me suspiciously.
 
We drive back to the house to grab some bacon sandwiches and switch from the Jeep to the Camry for a trip into the great city of Boston. Karen needs the Jeep which has the children’s car seats in so see can pick Henry up from school at 1pm.
 
It’s an easy drive into Boston down the I80 which takes you right into the centre of the city and, in fact, can speed you through it and out the other side all underground following the amazing Big Dig construction of the 1990’s, a project Julian’s father-in-law, Dick, helped construct as an engineer. We head for the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) and park in a lot opposite it, on the roof this time – even Julian would not be able to forget that as his parking space!
 
As Julian and Karen as members of the museum, I get into the exhibition we have come to sees for free – otherwise a ticket cost $23. Entitled ‘Americans in Paris’, the exhibition is very good, although I could have seen it at the National Gallery in London earlier in the year, such turns the world of art. Lots of American women artists are featured; ‘Whistler’s Mother’ is here too; but the heart of the exhibition remains John Singer Sargent’s portraits, notably ‘Madame X’.  Beautiful but controversial, the bare shoulders picture scandalised the Paris Salon crowd – and that was after Sargent had been persuaded to repaint it with dress straps added! Madame X’s features remind me of an unrequited, married love interest in London – same profile and great figure.
 
In the gift shop after I buy the exhibition catalogue and also succumb to a framed print of ‘Madame X’ – just so I can carry it for 4,000 miles! Julian and I then lunch at the Bravo restaurant at the MFA, which is a cut above the café situated below it. Scallops and fettucine for me; Angus beef burger for him; half a bottle of Bordeaux to wash it all down.
 
The journey home is via a Stop & Shop for groceries, which is always fun, eyeing all the amazing things US supermarkets seem to have compared to UK ones. We get back around 3pm for tea with Karen who has picked up Henry, and then en masse we head out again, this time in the Jeep, to go apple-picking at Ingoldsby Farm. Both kids fall asleep on the way there – which was perhaps the aim – and when we reach the farm, we find that PYO apple-picking is only available at the weekends. Julian and I take Caroline into the farm shop anyway to buy some fruit and pies, plus some coffee to drink on the trip home and a Pumpkin Moon cake. Karen looks after sleeping Henry in the car.
 
We get back around 5pm to find dinner cooking on a timer. It is a special occasion as it is my last night in Boxford before my long road trip, so we open some wine to go with the very pleasant meal Karen has made. Henry, however, is overtired and mopes a bit. After dinner and a bath for the young chap, it takes Julian nearly an hour and a half to get him to sleep. Karen and I relax with a sleeping Caroline. Afterwards Julian whips up some cream – his signature food! – to go with a chocolate cake dessert and we eat that with a glass of wine watching TV in the room above the house’s integral triple garage.  It is showing President GW Bush’s address on the actual anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. His stand-out line is something like we will turn “the deserts of despotism into the fields of liberty”. Once again, I remember the events and feelings of five years before.
 
Julian and Karen both fall asleep on the sofa by 10pm as Henry has been waking them up early recently – it was 5.15am today. I empty out Julian’s piggybank – which he has said I could do – looking for statehood quarters, a series the US mint started a while back that I have been collecting on my trips to the country. I find four from 2005 and 2006 that I don’t have. The noise of shifting coins causes both Julian to wake and we repair to our beds. Car Mileage at end of day: 2,496.