Next door, I heard, were going to hold a double 21st Birthday party on the
Friday night and it was likely to go on 'a bit late' and held in a marquee
fairly close to my bedroom window. I couldn't leave the country unfortunately,
as I had a morning commitment (Wiltshire
Historic Churches) beyond Cirencester
the following morning. Inspiration came. I would spend the
night at my old college at the Defence Academy near Swindon - for the first
time in more than 10 years, and catch up with some academic work at the same
time.
This was a great success and something of a trip
down memory lane, as they say. The place
was very quiet that weekend as the only course in were some Army reservists and
I had a useful and quietly enjoyable stay. Military people, I have found, are
nearly always very chatty and I picked up all sorts of interesting
tittle-tattle about what was happening - it was very much like old times, and
made me feel quite nostalgic. So after supper I went into the rather grandiose 'forum' with the flags of all student
countries around the first balcony and went to what I always thought of as 'my'
picture. When we were back in Greenwich over 20 years ago I noticed it in one
of the department's storerooms, behind a lot of old junk, leaning against a
wall, unframed, unprotected and with a big hole punched in it from where
someone, years before, had pushed an old
overhead projector against it. We rescued it and got the naval 'Prizes Store'
in Portsmouth to restore it. By an anonymous mid 19th Century painter, it shows
the Foudroyant blowing up in Nelson's
Battle of the Nile. A knowledgeable friend at the National Maritime Museum
valued it as £50,000. It's by far the
best picture in the forum- I felt rather proud of it !
The accommodation is pretty functional - not at
all the kind of thing that Cherry used to like.
The College has inherited the old naval custom of providing the bare
minimum - (and the inclusion of a tiny
private shower would have been regarded in many naval establishments as grossly
indulgent) - you even have to bring your own towels and soap. But you can't
complain at an entitled rate of £16.52 a night, and the 'full English' the following morning set me up for a fun day touring Churches around Cirencester.
.
Much less happily at this time I was still enmeshed in the
toils of American bureaucracy. To take advantage of a very attractive offer
from the US Naval War College, I have to get a work visa and a security waiver.
Both were applied for in late June/early July. Their non appearance makes the
starting date unclear and hugely confuses every aspect of planning for the
Autumn. Finally I heard, three days
before a booked flight to Newport, that my 'petition' for a work visa had been
approved. What took a wretched five hours on lap top and phone was the
discovery that getting the visa issued and collected would take another two
weeks despite being an 'expedited' person of 'outstanding ability' and include
a possibly de-railing interview. It
meant I missed my Hattendorf prize
ceremony. Apparently they put up a
big picture of me in absentia and were told to clap loudly enough for me to
hear in London. (They didn't !)
Up to now I had always found that Chinese
immigration was the most challenging in the world once India had largely
finally sorted itself out. But the US is in a complexity and difficulty league
all of its own, with arcane rules and descriptions, phone answerers who try to help but have
thick non-American accents and sound as though they speaking from the bottom of
a well. Worst was to come, when I arrived for my interview at the brand new
glittering US embassy near Vauxhall I was turned away as they had advanced its
date (because I was so important ??!!) but not told me. Extreme stress,
melt-down only narrowly avoided. I really felt like Hercules or Laocoon wrestling
with serpents, but at least kept my clothes on.
Later I discovered that it was because they had my
wrong e-mail address, but several hours of work revealed that neither I nor
they could change it. Fortunately Simon came to the rescue creating a new
address for me using their version of it, and this diverted their e-mails to me
at the correct one.
But apart from all this, life continued. I lunched
with university friends, Tony, Maya, John and Melanie at 'The Compasses' a
lovely old pub in the middle of nowhere west of Salisbury. Philippa, Chiff and
the kids plus Christopher came for the annual apple squashing the following day
We produced 33 litres of real apple juice, utterly different from the stuff you
buy in shops, and celebrated with a nice lunch at the National Trust cafe in
Avebury before walking the stones as usual.
The weekend after that, young Violet made her first appearance here,
courtesy of Ruth and Simon. A real sweetie-pie, she went up the Marlborough
downs behind us in fairly steady rain, field-mice, buzzards and deer all coming
out to be present at this historic occasion. I'm sure she will take after me,
having seen her lulled to sleep by 16th Century lute music.
The following weekend off to Burgess Hill, Phil,
Chiff and the kids to witness the spectacular torchlit march of the Sussex
Bonfire Societies through the town. Chiff was up north watching Scarborough
getting beaten in the last minutes of the match. Barney looked after me making
sure I had my fortifying cappuccino at Caffe Nero. Martha was in the parade,
Philippa in the escort.
It was all fire and smoke, bangers and marching bands
rounded off with an impressive firework display. How they get away with it
in Sussex in these days of oppressive health and safety regulation I cannot imagine - but I'm really glad they do.
It was fantastic, the great fire-banners flaring away over the heads of the crowds lining the High Street.
More quietly we all really enjoyed a trip to Lewes
the following day, seeing Anne of Cleves House (not her home, just part of the
marriage settlement) and the castle that towers over the diminutive houses
below to a surprising degree. And so home, rounding off a delightful weekend,
and a really enjoyable month, by being able to buy 10 naval/history books for
£2 from the Chapel Bookshop in Petersfield !
In the National Trust garden at Hinton Ampner on the way up to Burgess Hill, I had already pondered on the fact that life
was still generally enjoyable despite
the crippling loss of Cherry. I had just joined and found absorbing an
introductory talk on the garden; my companions of course were nearly all
grey-haired couples. I thought about this afterwards over a cappucino. Obviously, now, I would
have enjoyed it even more had Cherry still been with me, as the pleasure of her
company would have been added to the pleasure produced by the occasion. I
wondered whether I, like most people I suppose, had in the past sometimes fallen into the
habit of taking the apparently permanent presence of my loved one almost for granted, rather than
treasuring it as the positive but possibly temporary delight that it was. Maybe
it's one of those things that you only
fully appreciate when you lose it, or are about to lose it as I was last
year. Make the most of what you have seems to be the moral of all this, trite perhaps, but true
all the same. And of course, it still applies.
