my retirement home

My first visit to England was in 1988. I left Toronto with 500 pounds in my pocket, a return ticket to Manchester and a two-week Britrail pass. It was raining when I arrived so I lugged my backpack and soggy duffle bag onto a bus to Manchester station where I proceeded to fall in love with British trains, riding the rails almost non-stop for three straight weeks. I ended up in a bed-sit in Rutherglen, Glasgow. Jobs in the food service industry were hard to come by so I decided to shift south to Oxford, a town seemingly overflowing with lovely blonde ladies and exquisite architecture. I worked at Pizzaland downstairs in the High Street for about three months, making friends and scrounging by on 75 quid a week. One of the better friends was a fellow named Ben who lived on a narrow boat just a few streets over from my home by the train station. I met him on the street carrying a cast-iron wood stove and we hit it off right away. I remember busking in the covered market on my mandolin with Ben on his kazoo. We visited London together once after spending the night in jail in Oxford for borrowing a bike. Upon my return to Canada I received a phone call from a friend of his wondering if I could provide a lift from Nashville to New Orleans. It seems I had mentioned something one evening about going to Mardi Gras. I got a single letter from Ben with a comic he had drawn anticipating his upcoming job interview with Richard Branson. That's the last I heard from him. When my strawberry-blonde Canadian girlfriend and I visited Oxford the next year the only trace of Ben I could find was his name in the cement at the base of a mooring post on the towpath where his boat used to be.