Hudson, Take These Back to the Box Room

We will not be going to Zermatt this year. Nor will we travel to Deauville, Paris, London, or even Buffalo. No. We will summer in Pleasantville, that picturesque and quaintly post-Industrial-era hotspot. And we shall winter there as well.

And spring and autumn there, too.

Yesterday, I ran through the exercise of seeing where I would pass my measly ten vacation days.

My Visa bill is outrageous and I'm still paying for the furnace and central a/c that got replaced in Ma Maisonette three years ago.

I also know I'm about to add to my burden by buying a new car. I know, I know, I don't have to buy a new new car, but there is some stubborn mental block in my head that won't let me buy a used car. I wish it were otherwise.

So here's yet another aspect of the circle game - I buy a new car and then I can't afford to go anywhere.

These days, a hotel room seems to go for a flat hundred bucks. You can fiddle, cajole, plead, play all kinds of games on Expedia, but in the long run, it always turns out to be a hundred smackers. And I have to have someone come in to watch the cats, which turns out to range anywhere from $20 - $40 per day.

So vacationing will be done largely at home this year. It makes me slightly queasy to think of a year trapped in Jersey.

I had hoped that I would get to go to a trade show in London in the spring. I knew exactly what I would do if the siren song of Paris didn't get to me first.

I have always wanted to see Harrogate in Yorkshire. A friend of mine at work had a calendar of garden in Harrogate, in full bloom, and it was breathtakingly lovely. It's also in the general vicinity of Bronte country. And I chanced upon a lovely, quaint inn in a village called Masham. I priced train tickets from London to York.

And more than that, I wanted to stay at the Dean Court Hotel in York.

In 1974, I was turned away from the hotel because I was young, alone, and wearing jeans. It wasn't cheap, but I was willing to fork over the money because I was alone and feeling addled and wanted nothing more than to spend a night in cleanliness and a bit of luxury. Instead, I was turned away.

I ended up spending the night at a B&B in a row of condemned buildings. There were stuffed birds in bell jars everywhere I turned and when I went up the stairs, doors opened a crack then slammed behind me.

There will be no Dean Court Hotel this year. I am planning on my annual pilgrimage to Richmond in the spring and that should pretty effectively wipe out any float I manage to scrape together between now and then. But at least I'll get to drive there and back in a shiny new car.