A Little House in the Woods

 

In strong contrast to the previous Newport Carriage House that I stayed in, this one is much smaller, shared with someone else who will probably be moving in before I have left,  and hidden away in the woods. For that reason, no doubt, UPS keep taking my mail to the big house next door. Well  I say big house, but compared to Ocean View it's quite modest. The 'mail' in question was in fact two food parcels. These are from a firm recommended to me by my colleague John that sends out a couple of meals for two in one box every week with exact ingredients all packaged up and detailed instructions on cooking them. They said it only takes 15 minutes or so to prepare. In fact I find it takes much longer than that, but I have to say that the result even when I cook it is very nice, and much more interesting than my normal fare. 'Monterey jack Un-fried Chicken' and things like that. The meals are for two and so, since each box has two meals, one box lasts me four days,  which is just fine. The second batch I didn't think so good but we'll see.

I have actually had a letter now so at least the postie in his little iconic electric truck is up the job. It was from the nice people at THRIFT. For Federal employees the Government takes away some of your salary adds to it and invests it for you as a retirement nest egg. I was intrigued as to whether they would know when I went through my on-boarding as a new entrant employee that I was already with them, but sure enough, they did. Welcome back, they said. And from today Blue Cross, another Government run scheme for their own employees kicks in and so when I am working I am covered healthwise too. Again its only for Government employees. Everyone else has to pay a lot more - and health cover is an amazingly complex controversial issue over here. A large proportion of adverts on the telly are about health products - all followed up by the legally required warnings about possible side effects which make one feel quite unwell. In a couple of weeks I shall need to top up my NHS pills, which last time I got for free through CVS, the local pharmacy. At the time I found the process quite mystifying and don't recall how I did it, so that's a challenge to come.    

                In due course, more mail will be arriving I expect as I am nearing the end of reconnecting with all the administrative necessities of American life - the tax people  and such like. I am now effectively 'on-boarded' at the College too and most of the time connected up to all systems. It's been much easier than it was last time, though still takes an inordinate amount of time. Tomorrow I have to go and get finger printed by the security people. To get my access card (required otherwise the marines won't let one in) I had to have both index fingers or thumbs done. The machine was not very cooperative and this took nearly an hour (for both the finger-print taker and my escort) so getting them all done could easily write off the whole morning.  I often seem to have trouble with finger-printing, although they look perfectly normal to me. I think one of the things that throws it is a scar I have on one thumb, from an accident with a test tube at school.  

                Otherwise life has been quite quiet, though as usual I have somehow allowed myself to become overloaded but with what is going on in Ukraine at the moment, it's very hard to detach oneself from all this.  I am still doing a fair bit of zooming even though the 12-13 hour time differential with Southeast Asia is rather too challenging.

                Nonetheless, I am determined to enjoy being here as much as work allows. John invited me to a St Patrick's Day dinner at the Reading Club, which was fun. But even here one couldn't quite get away from work as I found myself next to General Zwack who used to be Defence Attache in Moscow and is a regular on CNN at the moment about the Ukraine. That was very interesting and even less Irish than everything else was. Just an excuse for a nice dinner really. 

I also regularly walk up and down Easton's beach and along and round the famous Cliff Path. A cliff fall has blocked off part of it just beyond the 40 steps but there other access points to be investigated as well. I have rejoined the Preservation society and done my first mansion again - Marble House which I think is my favourite. The China Tea House is closed but may re-open later in the season for coffee which I would very much welcome.

  They have just removed the last Covid restrictions for visitors, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if the increasing prevalence of the latest Omicron variant led to some of them being re-imposed. So one downloads the programme on one's phone, plugs in and listens to that. The Society is very full on 'The Gilded Age'  which is the new American version of Downton Abbey likewise written by Julian Fellowes and in part based on the real life antics these people got up to. They used all the Mansions for the filming and so the series is ideal for house-spotting. Sadly my super-duper Entertainment System, now rigged to my specification and working well, can't actually deliver the Gilded Age so I suppose I will have to wait until the series arrives in the UK.       

                The only adventure I have had is to have a fire - a real one. I peered up the chimney and thought the way was clear, and having been told there were no instructions to follow indulged myself with a brisk little fire of driftwood and branches from the grounds to dispose of a pile of tax and other sensitive paperwork I accumulated the last time I was here. Needless to say things didn't go quite according to plan. Some smoke came out and instantly both the alarms went off. One of them is on a ceiling quite 10 feet high. The sound level was extremely piercing  and audible at quite a distance I should think. I had to scrabble onto all a kitchen stool to try to turn it off, found I couldn't and ended up dismantling it very rapidly.  Fortunately my cleaning lady was due in the following morning and called someone out to reassemble them. Not having them in rented property is against the law she said ! They've also dealt with the flue problem, so I can have another fire whenever I like, but I think my nerve has gone, as have the sensitive papers,  and I'll wait until later this year at home. The real one, not this little place in the woods.

My colleague John had a similar issue when coping with his food parcel last week. Like me all too often doing two things. He put something in the microwave, dialled three minutes instead of 30 seconds and went back to complete a sentence on his laptop, suddenly heard the alarm, saw the smoke, threw open the windows and the found a fully kitted up fireman in the living room. Embarrassing.  His system is linked into the city system. Mine isn't, fortunately,  on that occasion anyway.  

I have also managed one (very cold) walk around the bird reserve at Sachusett Point also and renewed acquaintance with the bird life which since there are no leaves on anything yet are somewhat more visible than usual. This involves going past the famous 'Hanging Rock'  under which Bishop Berekely a well known philosopher of the time used to sit when philosophising back in the 18th Century. I rather liked this water colour of it at the Redwood.

 

Letter From America

 The weather since I arrived hasn't been as cold as I had expected. Although there are still piles of dirty slush around the place, I seem to have seen more sun over the past couple of weeks than back in the UK for some considerable time.  Not that I've had much time for lazing around enjoying it,  as I have had to hit the ground running with all the distractions of a truly cumbersome and byzantine 'on-boarding' process, plus having to follow the dreadful unfolding of events in the Ukraine etc.

          Since there was a gap in my contract because of my Covid-enforced absence, I am having to  go through the on-boarding process a second time which is tedious, but at least I understand a lot more what is happening now than I did. It still takes time though. Even with the help of the IT techies, for example, it took the better part of two hours to get my two desktops connected to the nearest printer, for reasons beyond my understanding. There's a long way to go yet, both at work and domestically.

          It was fun unpacking and sorting out all my stuff. Curiously I thought, none of the food I had stuffed away into the Jeep when I scuttled out of Newport back in June 2020 seems to have suffered  at all. Suits and shirts required a bit of remedial work with the iron after having been squashed up into suitcases for over 18 months, not surprisingly, but that was about all. I enjoyed sorting out the chaotic jumble of boxes my helpers back then had piled into one of my two (temporary) offices in the College. It was like a gigantic Christmas since I had almost completely forgotten what I had left behind in that breathless departure. I was glad to find that my two lovely ladies - the bodhisattvas  Guanyin- had survived  intact and are now ornamenting the table by my reading chair, on either side of my CD player which has Puccini belting out while I still can.(See later)         

          One unlooked for and quite unexpected issue domestically, though,  is ants. After hopping in and out of Singapore for the past decade or so, I thought I was fairly inured to the presence of noisome insects ( unwisely killing a cockroach on my office desk at the RSIS with truly disgusting consequences remains as one of my most vivid memories) but I really hadn't expected to be plagued by ants in the depths of a New England winter. But here they are, tiny little indestructible things currently running over my desk in the house,  even my laptop, and sometimes me. I've had the pest control man in already once. He squirted stuff everywhere, told me a lot about them (some of which -like the probably existence of several nests below the house each one with half a million inhabitants- I would rather not have known). He counselled patience, but it's wearing a bit thin.

          That's one reason why I look back on my previous Carriage House on Bellevue with some nostalgia. Another is the fact that this carriage house is divided into two and there will be someone else living right next door. The problem is that there are painters in at the moment and I can hear everything they say because the house is wooden,  with thin plasterboard walls. Being used to the silence of Wansdyke, this fills me with some foreboding about the future. A third issue, is that this place is a lot more expensive than the last one. It's apparently a consequence of Covid. Local rents have shot up because so many people from out-of-state and New York in particular have moved out, at least some of the time.  

          In other respects, of course. The house is fine. It's certainly very pretty both inside and out and surrounded with pine trees and one massive European beech of some sort. It's set back from the road, so there's no traffic noise and it's very conveniently located for the college   (getting to work in ten minutes has a lot of attractions) and ideally placed for a walk up and down Easton's beach or along the Cliff Walk to the 42 steps (actually 48 - I counted).

It also has one of the most comfortable beds I have ever graced -once I have scaled it. It's a modern four poster and takes a bit effort to get up onto. Falling out of it could do one serious injury.   Swings and roundabouts I suppose ! But overall it reinforces how lucky I was last time, even given my battles with the squirrels.

          I've found time for a few other outings too. I went with John H to a special  Evensong at the really lovely Holy Trinity Church (not sitting in George Washington's box pew of course), had lunch in the historic Reading Room (no women members allowed - how on earth do they get away with that in the US ?!)  and re-acquainted myself with the equally delightful Redwood Library (founded 1747) where, just for curiosity,  I attended a talk by the new (Democrat)  Governor of Rhode Island  which was fairly inconsequential. 

 

          As a bonus at the Redwood, there was an exhibition of 'Sailor's Valentines' made up by a local artist in the old style, with hundreds of shells collected from local beaches. They were pretty stunning, and must have involved pains-taking work of many,  many hours. But I have to say that I've never seen shells like that on the local beaches. Perhaps I didn't look hard enough, and/or spent too little time there. I'm sure there's a moral to that ! Take it all steadily - don't try and do everything  all at once - things like that. Easily said of course.....