Home Again, Home AGian, Jiggity-jig

Great relief when I checked into the flight home the evening before my departure ! The major hurdle of a last-minute cancellation now largely behind me. But even though I was totally prepared with everything 'squared away' where it should be, the actual departure from the house turned out to be extremely stressful. I've always hated that last minute dependence on the reliability of the taxi to the airport. So when it was apparently ten minutes late, tensions were rising. I then checked my last message to them and saw that actually I had ordered it for an arrival thirty minutes earlier - so it was forty minutes late, eating deeply into the extra time I always allocate for such journeys. I tried to text them. No response. Next, an anxious phone call and then that infuriating message 'not registered on network' came up. A complete melt-down threatened. In search of help I somehow got through to the main house and a very competent couple (my landlady's son who happened to be there and his partner) rushed over. Their phone worked. Apologetic messages from the original taxi firm, who had been confused by all my changes after earlier flight cancellations but no alternatives available. Fortunately a local taxi service who I had never heard of came to the rescue. A huge black limo with darkened windows. His name was Bud. He gave me an exact time of arrival both to the house and the airport. I would make it for the right time with two minutes to spare. 

            By this time my wallet with the card I used to hire the new taxi had 'gone missing' in the panic. After another wasted five minutes looking for it, I gave up and off we went with me sitting in the back panting through my mask, zipping and unzipping bags until I found it put way in the wrong place !

            Fortunately it was a fast unimpeded trip. Not much traffic and those dreadful claustrophobic road tunnels as you approach Logan airport Boston (which are frequently clogged up) were completely empty.  As was the terminus. It was all very bizarre - with nothing open except the check-in desk - no business lounge, cafes or shops, not much light, just groups of masked employees standing around chatting to pass the time. Every third seat  was off-limits. Nowhere to go but something to do. I had to fill out a great long on-line form telling the authorities where I would be for my 14 day quarantine period. The only way I could do this was to get out my main lap-top, find somewhere to plug it in (as its battery is useless) unearth my adaptor and to string up all the wires. So I sat there for the hour it took festooned in electronic spaghetti and just did it. My reward was a certificate sent to my phone which I had to show since they said you had to have done it before boarding the plane. The first boarding call came early just after I had finished all this.

            They boarded by little groups of rows starting at the back. There were only about 50 of us - all Brits or Continentals as far as I could see - so it didn't take long. I had used my points for a Business Class seat. There were only four of us plutocrats aboard, the nearest about 20 feet away. Everyone was masked. We took off exactly on time. Not the normal service of course, packaged meals, but we were well looked after. No drinks trolley, but the young lady came to enquire what would like. 'A G&T please I said,' I said (my first for five months but that's another story). She must be used to gauging expressions and came back with two of them and a bottle of wine. Plastic disposable glasses. Supper followed - a superior but cold package of stuff. Disposable cutlery. Before the end of the first film,  a grim little thing on the Polish mafia, I had fallen asleep. Breakfast was also a package but had an enormous wrap with a bacon omelette thing inside. Extremely difficult to eat, while avoiding the cardboard container that it came in, as it just wouldn't slide out, as I imagine it was supposed. 

            Heathrow was just the same as Logan. An echoing space. The electronic  immigration machines were shut off. We followed socially distancing stepping stones in lines to a  couple of human beings behind glass screens. Unmasked I was surprised to see. I handed over my phone with the certificate on it and the passport. 'Welcome back !' he said. A loo stop and three hand-sanitisers later, I was in the reclaim luggage hall. Ours was the only carousel in operation. I arrived in time to see my book-laden suitcase disappearing back into the maw of the system but it soon re-appeared. It all took about ten maybe fifteen minutes.

            No 2 son had been a bit concerned about meeting me because of the crowds, but he was one of less than half a dozen greeters in an otherwise deserted and empty lounge. Taking no chances, he sprayed me down in the car park. Logically, I should have reciprocated I suppose. He then kindly drove me home. England looked much the same as ever, making me wonder why I ever left. It was good to be back.

Homeward bound ?

I must say that I very much hope this is the last transmission from Newport for a while, but after two cancellations on me I won't really believe it until we are wheels up and half way across the Atlantic. In all my planning I hadn't thought of coming back earlier until Number 2 son suggested it. I suppose the natural inclination when a flight is cancelled is to ask 'Well, when's the next one ?....rather than when was the one before ?'  Also after those previous cancellations, most of my planning was about where and how to find an alternative bolt-hole after my lease runs out at the end of June. 

            Meanwhile, the weather has turned warm and generally sunny, making my cliff-top bench a particularly nice place to have lunch. All through the period on my rounds I have been noticing different flowers coming out and different scents as well, the latest being rhododendrons, great banks of them.

But I have also discovered one of the snags of these great estates - and that is the need for constant maintenance of the grounds. Ocean View isn't too bad and is treated with a degree of benign neglect, so the gardeners only come about twice a week, but Miramar next door is something else. The gardener is there every day and the place is manicured to the nth degree.

The snag is that he uses heavy machinery for absolutely everything and there's a constant roar nearly all the time - except at the weekends. His results may look good but pretty devastating for the environment I should think.

            I have finally conceded defeat to the squirrels and thrown away the old bird feeder I brought with me. I had a cunning plan to suspend it from my bedroom balcony using about 10 feet of fishing line (found on the beach - which I thought no squirrel could possibly climb down) ending in a birdfeeder near the top pane of the window in living room/library near a window at last five feet above the ground, with no climbing points anywhere near it. The result can be seen in the attached photo. I have absolutely no idea how this was done, but was hugely impressed, and thought he made a nice picture, even to the little bits of apple-core on his whiskers.

            Otherwise what I hope will be my last week here for a while with complications of packing what I plan to bring home, leave here or return to the local library which has just re-opened. This week should also be enlivened by some very early morning lectures to a naval group in Singapore (where their time is 12 hours in advance) and last struggle to get enough access to my College account to do at least some of the mandatory training that the US navy requires of everyone (suicide awareness, being on the look-out for trafficked persons, hackers etc). I don't anticipate much success since after three gruelling hours with the IT team, where they eventually got inside my laptop here trying to work out why things were proving so difficult, it's all very shaky still.  He said he had never seen before, and couldn't understand, a message that kept flashing up somewhere in the link between my laptop and the College system, which he managed, all the same, to work around. But this morning when I virtuously tried it out, it completely failed. I begin to understand why the US is so frightened by Chinese 5G.

            Everything is loosening up over here. So far the figures in Rhode Island are still drifting in a downwards direction but there's been an increase in some of the southern states like Texas, Arizona and South Carolina which are nevertheless loosening the restrictions. What with that and the lack of social distancing in the George Floyd protests I think there's substance in the fear of  second spike in the US. Around here, probably half the people you see are wearing (or at least carrying) a mask even out in the open air with few people around. Interestingly Asian Americans (or tourists I suppose) always do. Significant I think. The Federal Government doesn't announce national daily figures any more, as Bolsonaro in Brazil tried to do.  There was a depressing story on the radio about a meeting of health specialists in South Carolina. It turned out that 80% of them had been threatened over the phone or by e-mail for supporting the Covid lockdown restrictions. This really is a very polarised country. So much depends on who and where you are. Anyway that's enough of that.

            I'm eating things up at the moment but was delighted when a punnet of freshly picked strawberries arrived (together with my copies of the New York Times) from the big house. Sounds very 'Great Gatsby' I know.  Less good news on the supposed arrival of my long awaited hair clippers. I went on 'tracking' a couple of days ago only to find they were still on a lorry in China !  Not much hope of them arriving any time soon, by which time I really hope I will have gone.....for the time being at any rate    

 

Wildlife Comings and Goings

June 1st and another month begins. It's now 10 weeks since my virtual house-arrest by the virus started. I've only been out once and that was an abortive trip to Brenton Point a nearby beauty spot. the real incentive was to make sure the car battery wasn't flat.  The car-parks were closed so i couldn't stop unfortunately. But now the restrictions are easing a bit in Rhode Island I might try again.  So far I have no signs of going stir-crazy, but maybe that's because I seem to have so  much to do. My heavy-ish teaching load is coming to an end in mid June so there will be some easing off then, but not that much I suspect, as 'the book' is going well and likely to absorb much attention.

It's weird but if anything the activity level of contacts around the word has if anything increased - as I suppose we are all at home, keeping ourselves busy. I actually travelled to London one day last week, virtually of course, and participated in a 'webinar' (a web-based seminar)  'at' the RUSI on Whitehall. On what faces the Navy after Covid-19. It was a strange experience but quite fun. Talking to 300 or so people without being able to see their reactions and waiting for their questions was a first for me. I have some lectures for Singapore coming up too.

Talking of which, even two-an-a-half years after the event, I still suddenly get bombed about losing Cherry, out of a clear blue sky. This time it was in one of my classes, when a super-bright Italian was doing a brilliant presentation on Turkey and its navy. Amongst his pictures was one of the famous Mosque seen from the Bosporus - and that set me off, because our trip there was so successful with so many happy memories. In particular,  I recalled the photo I took in a Turkish-delight kiosk in the Grand Bizarre when I captured the chap selling it (a Syrian actually) hardly being

able to contain his delight at the presence of Cherry the intrepid shopper supreme. We spent a long time there, eating and chatting. After that I needed to go into the records to find it !  

As for Covid-19, Rhode Island is easing up a bit and after two weeks of this the downward trend is still holding which is encouraging locally. But there's a lot of concern that other parts of the States are easing up too fast. The Washington Post ran an article on this picture of a Memorial Day pool party - doubly shocking because its hardly appropriate for what is the American equivalent of Armistice Day and secondly there's not much social distancing taking place. Not unnaturally, there's concern that the US may see a big second peak in the Autumn. All the same on a crude deaths per head of the population count, the US is doing a lot better than the UK. I 'did the math' as they say round here,  on Wiltshire and Rhode Island, the death total is roughly similar but the population in RI is nearly three times bigger.    

 

For variety's sake, and to make the most of the nice weather I move my office out onto my sitting out area, by the sadly headless statue of Ceres (or if you prefer the Roman, Demeter), the Goddess of the Harvest (the same as on the top of the Devizes Corn Exchange). It's nice out there

but hard to see the screen of my little laptop. So I have taken to putting it inside a big cardboard box, out of the sunshine. The only problem is that I have to put my head inside the box to read it, which rather defeats the purpose of the exercise ! But I shall carry on experimenting. The weather here is now very variable really hot sunshine one day, fog another and ferocious winds on the third. I blame Trump.

My 'rounds' are still going well, though it's now twice that I have skidded on loose gravel and fallen off my bike, so I'm being a bit more cautious. This keeping fit lark seems to have its dangers. But as the temperature warms up I have noticed a proliferation of new wildlife, when roaming around the place. A lot more birds but they are much more difficult to see now the leaves are out and I keep getting irritating shots like this one of a Cardinal.

I did have one treat though, which I could see from my bench on the cliff top - a Great Egret fishing on the shore of the Chesapeake Bay. The same day I was joined by a rabbit,

as tame as you like, crouching obligingly still while I took a photograph of it from a yard away. Another welcome find was George the very furry cat of my landlady's daughter, who normally lives over the water in Jamestown. Equally happily the large squirrel hole in the front of the house has now been covered up with copper sheeting. Apparently there were signs of racoon activity up there as well. So peace, perfect peace, as the handy-man said.    

   

I gather from Nathan back at the house that the same explosion of wildlife is taking place there too. He texted me that a Moorhen had taken up temporary residence in the pond and frightening the life out of the fish. That was a first. We've had Mallard ducks in the small un-netted pond but not Moorhens. Apparently there was one spot where the net had dipped under the water and the Moorhen was splashing about on top of it making everything much worse.

But the big news is that I have discovered to my amazement that BA are resuming a near normal service from Boston and so unless there is a major hitch I shall be taking the somewhat perilous flight home in early July. This would be as well since my lease for the year runs out at the end of June. When I asked whether the usual tenants for July and August were coming to take over, she said she was afraid so - 'They're from Texas' she explained. Read into that what you will