London for real

 

Well this was a major event for me, and no mistake. I attended the first day of a three day workshop on the historic and current significance of the Greenland-Iceland-UK Gap - at the IISS in London and actually in person. They didn't put pressure on me but clearly wanted me to be there as they were advertising the event as 'hybrid' - part virtual/part real. I was the only 'real' speaker - the rest were either from abroad (mainly US and two from Newport who I knew) or retired naval officers from the UK speaking from home. To get over my concerns about using public transport, they sent me a car so I really had no excuse ! 

I'll admit to being just a touch nervous about the whole thing, but it all turned out to be perfectly safe (well, as safe as one can hope for these days) and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. I knew quite a lot of the other people, including the NOs from the old days, which was nice. Best of all my driver took a route past sights in London I haven't seen for what seems like a couple of years - the London Eye, Marble Arch, Oxford Street, Buck House etc and there were a lot more people than I am used to seeing. The view of the London skyline from the top of the IISS building was great too. Since the IISS is literally just around the corner from King's it was very much home territory. The workshop itself was quite interesting too. Nice coffee.

Inside the building they certainly took great care. Masks everywhere except during the sessions. Chairman, Nick Childs formerly of the BBC, and all the other staff members carefully distanced. Even getting to the top floor was carefully choreographed. One young person put me in my own lift, then ran up 5 flights of stairs to meet me, puffing a bit at the top ! Him not me.  All great fun. But I didn't get home until 2000 - a timely reminder of how much travelling time/commuting that I and everyone else has been saved this past year and a bit.

Otherwise, life at Wansdyke continues pretty much as usual. I am beginning to have my doubts about the 'wilding' of bits of the lawn  just as I think Chris my gardener anticipated. It is starting to look uncomfortably close to neglect, with tall, unpretty things appearing everywhere. But I have to say there are real bonuses for me as well as for the bees and other pollinators. Orchids have appeared, one surely a pyramidical orchid  and others the same colour but not the same shape. I've never seen them before but presumably they were there all the time simply getting mown away before making themselves felt.

The big occasion though, was a weekend away first at Burgess Hill with Team Powell and then at Cross-in-Hand with Ruth, Simon and Violet. The occasion was the need for a mass signing of documents  to do with the settlement of my estate as my financial lady like to call it.  Christopher and Beth participated remotely because they were away on holiday in Devon. I took the opportunity of ruthlessly exploiting poor Chiff's expertise with phones. Basically the NHS App couldn't bring itself to work on my American phone, and my UK phone (being one of the originals) had jammed up with too much data to cope. I need the App to show President Biden that I have been jabbed just in case he ever decides to let me back into the US. So Chiff got me a new phone and case, rationalised and transferred data, so I now have two working phones, one for the UK and one for the US, which in due course I will be able to cancel without too much hassle. The camera system on the new phone is amazing.

This is just as well, because on my journey to Burgess Hill I discovered that the lens (not the outer glass cover) on my expensive  Nikon camera had cracked and broken in some totally mysterious way. I found this out when investigating Stoughton and East Marden Churches in the Till country of southwest Sussex.

I have absolutely no idea how this happened, or even could happen. I begin to think some malign influence is at work, as this Nikon was a replacement for a previous one that had stopped working when water got into it one rainy day on Dartmoor a few years ago. Not sure what to do next.

Despite this, the weekend was a great success, with a splendid  outside sign-in dynasty breakfast at Burgess Hill. Another delight there was meeting the new arrival - a pussy-cat cleared for Chiff's allergy.  Currently named Audry, she spent much of the time either hiding under the sofa (especially during football matches) or rubbing noses. 

I was also  very impressed at the improvements to the garden both there and also at Cross-in-Hand, not least their scale since I was last at both places which of course is some considerable time.  At the latter, there was also time for a couple of walks between rain showers around the sunken leafy lanes of what I suppose is the Weald. It's quite different country to the downlands further south and the wide open spaces of my part of Wiltshire -  enclosed, secret, steeply up and down, distinguished by big rich-looking houses behind electronic  gates. Their manicured grounds half glimpsed through the trees.  A reminder if one were needed that one is still quite far down in the food chain. It was all very interesting and gave my lots of opportunities to try out the swanky telefoto system on my new (UK) phone.

The last reward of the weekend was the opportunity to pick up my bust of Nelson, which in-law Mike had picked up for me from the Ardingly antiques fair. Actually it's too small for the garden as it turns out but will look super (and of course highly appropriate) somewhere in the house. I shall enjoy trying him out. And sending a picture of him to my American colleagues. To judge by the medallion encased in the base, it was made by a firm called Fredericks and exhibited, surely rather oddly, at the 1889  Exposition Exceptionelle  in Paris.  One of many I have no doubt since I've found other examples ,  exactly the same, on the web. No doubt he will add gravitas to the dining room. The picture though shows that the camera is still better but has unsustainable problems.