How Time Flies !

Even though the last couple of weeks was spent in quarantine, the time has flown by. Interestingly, no-one checked up on me to make sure that I really was in quarantine so I am far from sure that the hour or so in Boston airport that I spent laboriously filling up that form actually served any useful purpose ! But the days have passed very quickly and fortunately I hadn't picked up anything nasty on the flight. Looking at the way the numbers are going in the US (though not, admittedly, Rhode Island) I think I made my escape in good time.

But time has flown in other ways too, as re-settling in the UK after 5 months away has taken up more of it that I had anticipated, and I haven't yet been able to enjoy that idling time of rest and tranquillity that I thought would be my reward for the slogs of the past. It's my own fault of course. The grass might be racing upwards outside,  but I am still reluctant to give up the academics. So I am still 'teleworking' with colleagues back in Newport  and having to cope with evening Zoom 'meetings' because of the time differential. This always seems to amuse them for some reason ! I've also collected  some zoom sessions here in the UK.

Time had an impact on one of those too. Because Zoom sessions usually only show one's top half,  it's become the fashion to wear formal gear (maybe jacket and tie) on top and, in hot weather shorts below. So the visual side of Zoom is quite easy to handle. The audio side is more difficult. I have a 1930's striking German clock which I like not just because of its sound and appearance, but also because of its associations with my Aunt Ethel in Southsea of whom I was very fond. It sat on the mantlepiece in her sitting room and from my earlier days I remember being charmed by it dignified, loud and sonorous chimes.

Cherry always hated it because for her it summoned up memories of oppressive silences of homework and other such enforcements from her Convent boarding school days. Accordingly, the clock was consigned  to a detached and harmless existence in my study. Well, last week I was in a zoom session on the Russian Navy  with some people from NATO in Brussels, when of course the wretched thing went off and solemnly banged its way through ten chimes while I was on air, and so was heard all over Europe and in the US. The meeting collapsed in laughter. Fortunately it was just a rehearsal. When the organisers had recovered, they politely asked me to make sure I had silenced it for the real session.  So time can fly geographically too, apparently.        

                My 'domestic staff' as I like to think of them in my more 'Downton Abbey moments' have done a great job in looking after the house and garden. Both were great shape - although I could see that there were lots of things I could hardly wait to do. Sadly, though, and mysteriously, I seem to have contracted a mild case of 'Housemaid's knee' which makes walking uncomfortable after a while. This is frustrating and has slowed up progress on making acquaintance with my new mower. The old one died, rusting away, while I was still in the US. But that apart I have been gainfully employed catching up and sorting out and also of course carrying on with the academics.

                I have now seen most of the immediate family, Christopher who takes things seriously picked me up at the airport, sprayed me down in the car park and drove me home.  Team Powell  came for a day soon after I got back, when we engaged at distance very nicely with fish and chips in the garden. Finally S,R &V came last weekend. The weather allowed a  real adventure - a breakfast rendezvous on the downs behind Pewsey  where Simon cooked bacon and egg while red kites wheeled in the bluest of skies, directly above us.

Quite by coincidence we discovered from the survey map that there was one of the Wiltshire 'white horses' carved in the turf behind us, but invisible from the little road. Of course we went to find it, a short way away via a field path. At the site there was a stunning view over the Vale of Pewsey which I knew nothing about and even a bench to rest upon. In the evening a properly socially distanced barbeque followed and on Sunday, the promised pilgrimage to the Eagle Oak in the New Forest. I had told the big oak tree on my keep-fit rounds in the grounds of my Newport mansion all about the Eagle Oak and was able to convey cousinly greetings. A picnic afterwards completed a very successful weekend, and marked the end of my time for re-acquaintance with the UK.