Hunger Games !

After a pleasantly restful nine weeks at Newport, a period of turbulence is fast approaching, so I am packing things in before the next upheaval. It would have been Cherry's birthday at the weekend, on 24th November and she wouldn't have wanted any of us to mope, so we didn't. By the wonders of modern technology, thanks to Beth and Chiff, I was able to participate in a spectacular family food and firework party at Chateau Powell in Burgess Hill, even watching the triumphant launch of a culminating mega rocket - apparently to the great danger of passing aeroplanes.

My own commemorative acts were of a quieter more reflective nature, doing two things that Cherry loved - first some 'birding' as the Americans call it at Sachuset Point nature reserve on a glorious brisk sunny day. To be honest, not with much success though I was aware of being under the unyielding gaze of a red-tailed hawk

 

perched on the top of the visitor centre, getting only a departing shot of a Mocking Bird and some distant ones of immature Eider duck across a sparkling sea.

The other act was a guided tour of Belcourt Mansion which is directly opposite my place. Both house share one characteristic, being built to house horses and carriages on the ground floor, hence the little square windows in my sitting room - where the horse stalls were.  The Mansion obviously was on a much grander scale. I enjoyed my tour - as it was a personal one just me and the guide. We had mutual acquaintances too.  The mansion was in the process of restoration (being over 100 years old- gosh !) and it was interesting learning about that. But it was also great learning about the famous wedding held here a few weeks ago, some of which I watched in a bemused kind of way from one of the spare bedrooms looking down on the gates to the drive and the crowd of fans outside. The bride was the famous Jennifer Lawrence who played in 'Hunger Games' and also as the ferocious young lady in 'Red Sparrow' which I've watched a couple of times on plane journeys. She was the highest female earner in 2105 and 2106. At the time I knew none of this. $250,000 on the flowers alone I was told. Only 150 guests though, with everyone behaving very well apparently. By the agreement, the house is not allowed to capitalise on this - no mention in the literature, no pictures, just a little bit of informal gossip, now and then. I was reassured that my guide hadn't heard of Jennifer Lawrence before either !

The only upheaval at work was Trump's sacking of the Navy Secretary, Richard Spencer. So both the Admiral who supervised my arrival at Newport and the Navy Secretary who gave me my prize in the Summer have been dismissed. Is Trump trying to tell me something ?

I managed another hike to the Reject's beach wanting to get a shot of that weird crab like shell- a foot across- that I came across last time. Showing it around I was told it was just a Horseshoe Crab shell. Inedible they said.  There was a really cold wind and the place was completely deserted as it was Thanksgiving Day and everyone was tucked up inside their houses. Later in the day I joined some colleagues for the Thanksgiving dinner. It is supposed to celebrate the  feast of the first pilgrims in 1621 with a bunch of local Indians who plainly didn't know what they were letting themselves in for. President Washington started the custom in 1789 but it didn't catch on until President Lincoln revived it after the Battle of Gettysburg in the Civil War. Just a little bit of trivia.  There's also the legend that times were so hard for the settlers that hunger stalked the land and so there was celebration when someone spotted and caught their first wild turkey. I'm guessing that it was a tough old thing but better than nothing. Accordingly turkey has to be the centrepiece - and was, with all the trimmings.   

Hunger if of a different sort was also the name of the game for the following several days (which a lot of people take off), as Christmas, seems to start immediately afterwards: the decorations go up and everyone surges into the shops on 'Black Friday.' I went to the charming little fishing village of Wickford to see their Dickensian village decorations. In fact they hardly showed up in the bright sunlight but it was nice looking at the old wooden houses again. One local device is to close inside shutters and place little houses with lights in the gaps between them and the window.

It probably looks spectacular after dark. My visit ended with my satisfying my own hunger by having a lunch out and sitting at the counter of the local very crowded restaurant. I indulged in some fish and chips, and it was the best I've had for ages. I was sitting in front of the wall-mounted television and so could hardly avoid watching a football match between Southampton and Watford ! Getting me ready for a return to the UK, perhaps.   

Two Years and Counting

The weather in New Haven when I was with Christopher was pretty cold but it warmed up soon after. The following Monday was Veteran's Day holiday (remembering ex-military types not just old people) and warm sunshine lured me out for a walk by the sea a few minutes from the house. It was perfect and I had the whole of the private Bailey's beach and the Rejects beach (for those not admitted to Bailey's Beach club) to myself and the occasional sea gull, standing on one leg and giving me a 'a good ignoring.' There were great banks of sea weed thrown up by recent storms and hundreds of stranded jelly fish, some completely transparent and some with a pinkish tinge.  I gather that the Mansions up this end of Bellevue avenue not only have automatic access to Bailey's beach but are also allowed to gather seaweed - a real boon I should imagine. I had the beach to myself the following weekend too, but that time the solitude was easier to understand as it was a grey cold day, with a chilling wind. There were just a couple of miserable looking fishermen down on the rocks of the point I scrambled past on the way back to the house. Some interesting shells 10 inches across  - some kind of large crab ? 

The contrast in weather from day to day is very striking. On Saturday the day before my walk on the Beach I did the usual hike down Bellevue Avenue, stopping off at the China Tea House at Marble House for coffee on the way back. It seemed almost summery and people were sitting outside. Whatever the weather, it's a nice place to read one's Wall Street Journal - and the coffee's not bad. Cherry's is the nearest Liondog, and he likes a good pat 

Liondogs apart, there's a surprising amount of nature around here. The weekend before I visited the Norman Bird Sanctuary and walked some of its extensive trails. Not that many birds emerged into sight - there were still a lot of leaves on the trees, but lots of rocks to scramble over  on the trees and other things to see. Including another of those charming little family burial grounds, with delightful if sad 18th Century tombstones. Incidentally, I was pleased to track down some information on little Phoebe Marsh who died in 1729 and who I came across last time;  - I was right she was a baby, born 16th June but didn't survive. Her father was a shoe-maker. What you can find out on the web is amazing although it has to be said that the Americans are really good  at preserving their history, and make looking up such things very easy.   

Of course, today it's now Cherry's second anniversary. It's hard to believe that two whole years have passed since we last spoke - but the fact that I still talk to her pictures makes it seem much less than that. To some extent she's still present and I am sure that she always will be. In the course of the mammoth family history project on which I am engaged alongside everything else I came across this in one of the weekly letters which Grandma Till sent us: 'If Dad was alive we would have been married 56 years today - a sad day for me, one never gets used to it.' Paradoxically, I hope Grandma was right.

So on my way home from College today I popped into the Zabriskie Memorial Church of St John the Evangelist right by the water to light some candles for Cherry and write it up in their book, then sat down and looked at pictures of her on my phone. This is one of the nicest ones of her taken in her last few, very brave months.  Got a bit dewy-eyed inevitably.
 

It's an attractive church inside - 1893 full of US naval associations but very English Anglo-Catholic, the 4 patron saints of the UK in the windows, a statue of Our Lady of Walsingham, a capital carved from a stone taken from Whitby Abbey and so on and so forth. Cherry would have enjoyed visiting it, but now in a way she has.

Christopher at Yale

Obviously as the two year anniversary of Cherry's death draws closer I have been thinking even more than usual about this and the differences that this has made to my life. Curiously, this was underlined by a recent adventure suggested by Christopher. He was over here for a meeting in Washington and flew to New York to see some friends; he suggested we meet at New Haven halfway between New York and Newport, two travel hours for both of us - train for him, car for me. Everything on the way worked perfectly; I even found a parking space directly in front of the station entrance. So it was no more difficult than picking someone up from Pewsey, though it took a bit longer.

Everybody raves about the pizzas of New Haven so of course we went to one of the most famous such venues, 'Modern Apizza', fortunately arriving just before all the big crowds. Neither of us indulged in the ultra speciality - white clam pizza. Mine (anchovies) was fine - though I wouldn't rave about it, Christopher could only eat half of his - though he took the rest away in a box. They were both 'small' ones, 12 inches across. Quite often, in fact, I have found that food in the US isn't really up to the hype - though I haven't been to the 4th Street Diner for a while, admittedly. I had a similar reaction to a recent staff lunch visit to the famous 'Pasta Beach' in Newport, where the 'server' spends ten minutes telling you what's in everything in exhaustive detail. It was perfectly OK, but nothing out of the ordinary I thought. Maybe this reaction is due to the huge improvement in British restaurants over the past couple of decades ? 

Anyhow, the other thing they rave about in New Haven is the Yale Museum of British Art, and that really is worth raving about and also gets me to the point of this transmission, which is one small example of the difference between then and now. When Cherry and I went round art galleries, our interests and tastes were very different. I like romantic stuff and paintings that help illustrate something I am studying in some way; Cherry who after her course at Oxford knew far more about art than I did (though I think I was the one who introduced her to it) would often go round the galleries largely separately, liaising every now and again. We'd then gather for coffee, compare notes, identify the painting we would take away with us if we could, explain why and then go back and inspect the paintings in question before departing.

These pictures  illustrate my interests, Lawrence of Arabia (for the family history when it comes - my father knew him when he was in the RAF- and the painter Augustus John lived in nearby Fordingbridge) ,  an Admiral or two  (obviously),

an idealised picture of corn-reapers also for the family history though I suspect that conditions were not quite as harmonious for our ancestors in Sussex as they are portrayed here !) 

and a picture of Hayes (where we Tills used to live when I was a small blob of squalling humanity long, long afterwards).

I also liked the portrayal of Sir Jonathan Steele's cottage on the rise in Hampstead as you come down and see London laid out before you. No family connection - but just generally good for the historical inspiration and will get me writing the historical novel I have always meant to write.
 

 

I noticed though that Christopher took a picture of a deliberately garish modern painting which was a play on the classical 18th Century rural portrait, with a black woman with a gun substituted for the white self-satisfied male aristocrat leaning against a tree his wife in billowing skirts seated demurely beside him that you normally see. This was an exploration of social and gender stereotypes in art and society - an appeal to reason, not sentiment.

He also spotted a mirror image of the Queen and cleverly took a picture of us inside it. His tastes and interests in art are more like his Mother's than mine. Typically I had passed by the Queen image with hardly a second glance; he was the one who saw its possibilities... 

 

So the fact of indirectly identifying the differences  was the same, but we didn't sit down and discuss our responses and tow the other back for a second look, partly of course because there was no coffee place (there never is in US museums and houses - another crazy inefficiency in the US way of doing things !) and partly because we were running out of time and wanted also to do a little tour of Yale University. Would we have done it if we had had time ? I don't know. Maybe, and maybe we should next time.

 

Of course we enjoyed the canter around the famous Yale University, chilly though it was getting. Grand Victorian buildings, gracious and stately,with large leaf covered areas for walking and reflecting on matters of moment. So all-in-all a very successful visit well worth the effort - perhaps especially for the Museum both for the building itself and for the collection which was splendid, and its extent overwhelming - they seem to have more British art than the National Gallery !

 

Christopher and I then parted company outside the Union Station with expressions of mutual esteem, he to his two hour train journey  back to New York me for the long drive home.  By then it was getting dark of course so getting back wasn't   quite so easy, especially the country roads section I was taken on at the end of the run. Vera (the voice of truth - my sat-nav) had also warned me of a crash up ahead on the I 95  which delayed me for about 5 minutes with police cars rushing past. When I got to the blockage I was surprised to find myself having to ease round a light aircraft, which had come down a few minutes before. No-one was hurt I heard later, but they had to close the I 95 down shortly afterwards, so it was perhaps a good thing that Christopher and I didn't take time out to discuss our responses to art a bit more !      

Back in Newport

Getting away from home was stressful as I discovered that water was coming in through the roof of the annex kitchen, seeping in via the decayed thatch on the garage next door. It had also knocked out the all the electrics. Obviously I couldn't leave things the way they were for two months before I got back.   So in the three hours or so before the taxi came to take me to Heathrow I had to locate a thatcher to remedy the leak and once that was done an electrician to restore the power. It was after that awful weekend weather and, to judge by the number of unanswered phone calls , all such people  were out dealing with other disasters . I managed it in the end, sort of, but left for Heathrow feeling a bit limp. It was a good job I was packed up and ready to go well beforehand: even so I had to get Mick the taxi-driver to stop just to check I really had packed my passport in all the excitement.  I was really glad to immerse myself once more in the comforts of air travel.

Once back in Newport the repair process set in motion before I left actually worked amazingly well - with the help of Nathan and his Dad. The leak was stopped with a tarpaulin the following day and unbelievably the thatcher got to work in a couple of weeks. My normal thatcher couldn't have fitted it in before the Summer but coincidentally the chap who did the garage back in the 1990s had already contacted me and since it was a simple job said he could squeeze it in before his next big project. The only problem is that he's a foreigner - from Somerset- and won't do it quite in the Wiltshire way. Sharp rather than rounded edges. I was able to keep in touch and, with the aid of photos, sent by e-mail helped sort out, from the other side of the Atlantic, the original leak problem caused by badly fitted lead flashing under the thatch. Amazing what modern technology can enable you to do !

Newport seemed much the same as far as I could see. Autumn, as they call it here - not 'Fall' - is quite advanced with leaves all over the place and some great colours to be seen. The town is famous for its mansions but it deserves some recognition for its many magnificent trees, really big ones. As this photo shows, if you stand still long enough they will physically engulf you.

 

 

I visited one of the mansions left over from the Summer tours - Chateau sur Mer again marvelling at the trees which looked far older than the 150 years which is all they can be. Over the road at Bellecourt there was a lot of excitement with the wedding of a 'famous film star' Jennifer Lawrence (who I've not heard of, but never mind). The place was full of the police, press, fire engines and of groupies and gawpers watching all the comings  and goings until late at night. I should have hired out the front bedroom with its perfect  view....

Just over a week later I left Newport again for a conference in Australia, one of a regular series that Cherry and I have been too on many occasions over the years. It was based at a big conference centre at Darling Harbour  in Sydney, an attractive place we knew well, stacked with nice restaurants and a big Maritime Museum at one end. My hotel is the tall dominating block with a hard rock cafe in the basement - not that I heard a thing.

I quite enjoyed re-visiting old sites. The conference was fine, the attached naval defence exhibition bigger than ever. We always enjoyed these - Cherry to pick up all the freebies, me all the industrial gossip about who was selling what to whom and why.  Most of the people who staff these stands must be bored out of their minds unless occasionally dealing with people who seriously want to buy a Destroyer or two and are quite candid and expansive when talking to harmless academics like me with no axe to grind.  I did get a few freebies, but nothing like the amount that Cherry would have cajoled out of them for the grandkids - pens, notebooks, bags, glasses cleaners, adaptors, koala bears and so forth.

Newport also has a lot of tiny intimate burial grounds, as they call them, attractive places in which to meditate on mortality in the best historic tradition. I had gone to a lecture on gravestones in the area and so resolved to explore one of them - Clifton Burial Ground near the Library.

Obviously with Cherry's second anniversary coming up I've been thinking even more than usual about such things and was particularly struck by one tiny gravestone to a Phoebe Marsh who died in 1729. I wonder who she was - a child ?- and thought now she would have been forgotten as though she had never existed if it wasn't for this small piece of engraved and fragile stone and maybe some documentary evidence.

But because of it she lives on - in a way.  Cherry does too, of course, mainly in the memory of those who knew and loved her but with much more tangible evidence all around. I talk to her photos all the time and, glory be, have found a local Episcopalian Church on my way to work where they still have real candles you can light.

It's turned much colder now in Newport, but in the main the weather is still generally bright and sunny, and there's a certain amount of tooth-sucking going on that it's going to be a bad winter. But there was a brief spell when some really savage winds and heavy rain tore across the island. Regardless, as they would say over here,  I had a Sunday lunch pic-nic in the Snowbird, as I have named my Jeep, at Brenton Point watching the waves crashing against the rocks.

Such a contrast with the week before in which the same place was warm and sunny, the sea flat as a millpond providing plenty of opportunities for artistic shots of rock and waves and of a cooperative cormorant or two. One of things I've done recently is attend a presentation in the Redwood about a famous photographer of the interwar period called Russel Lee - quite inspiring.  

We've had Halloween as well, which they make much more of than we do though my colleagues say there's been a noticeable decline in the number of trick-or-treaters calling at peoples' houses. Maybe that's just as well since some of the tricks are on the unfunny side involving toilet paper, spray painting with shaving foam and even egging cars ( which I am told damages the paintwork). Sounds a bit more like a protection racket. 'Nice place you have here, Sir. Shame if it got damaged.' To avoid that kind of thing localities are now doing these things more collectively. Nothing like that happened here but I was amazed at how seriously they took it in the staid War College - with departments competing for the prize in who displayed the most pumpkins, skeletons and pumpkins. We didn't enter it of course ! But anyway, next stop Christmas, and I'm already beginning to think about the next trip home to see family - and the new thatch.