Gone West

 

Amazingly, I got nearly everything done back at Wansdyke before departing for the US though it was a bit hectic. This included in the last week (the one after my return from Singapore)  getting three separate injections, having  a dental check, hosting two Peppermill lunches for friends  and even exploiting friendships ruthlessly for help in getting a huge apple crop either  juiced up on the spot or taken away for later juicing. I was really pleased and grateful for this as I can't abide waste ! I closed up the house, though of course Nathan and Carline will be looking after it, and even did some pre-emptive de-micing and de-ratting !

My flight back to Newport by contrast was completely hassle free. Everything worked perfectly. The meal on the plane was really excellent and the service couldn't be faulted.  I must say when BA gets its act together it really is very good.

Of course coming back to the College did involve hassle. I spent the first whole day in Newport collecting the car, being taken on a walk-round of my new rental and then the really arduous business of collecting all my stuff from my office on the third deck (this is a naval college after all) at the of the old Mahan building. As well, there's been yet another re-organisation of office accommodation. I've lost my former proper (shared)  office but am still in the one I temporarily perched in on my own. Because I thought I would be moving out of that bolt-hole everything in it had all been boxed up and so had to be un-boxed.  When that's piles of books and papers, it's no joke ! On top of that all my stuff from my 'proper office had been boxed up and moved in and also had to be unboxed. Worse still so had all of colleague John Hattendorf's because he had been moved in with me. Presumably the thinking was that those two old half time codgers would be perfectly happy up in their eerie and not get in anyone's way. Which is perfectly true ! I spent a whole day sorting  this chaos out and was aching all over when I stopped. It was the long weekend of the Columbus day holiday so there was no-one else around at all. It was also a hot day - over 70 Fahrenheit. It was just as well no-one saw me too closely.

But it's done. Personalising my new house, on the other hand was fun. I enjoyed unpacking everything  and discovering things I had forgotten about, including an old Burmese lunch pot I thought I had inadvertently left behind in the Carriage house when I scuttled away from Covid two years ago. The house is a single storey wooden two bedroom cottage built around 1900, with fittings that in part date from the 1960s I should think. Here's a picture, with my new rental car - Snowflake III the third white one in a row.

To the right of the tree you can just see the sea. The house is part of a small estate centred on a large house of about the same period that is divided into condos. It's surrounded by trees but provides a view of the ocean from the back porch. A view, I might say, currently dominated by two huge cruise ships in port for the holiday weekend. Behind my dining area there's a large window looking out on some superb and large rock formations. My landlords live in South Carolina. I don't think there can be much wrong with them since they left me a bottle of gin and four bottles of wine, plus a whole load of food ! Mind you I did have to give quite a lot of the cutlery and cooking equipment  a good clean before using it. You can't have everything.

A few minutes away there's this rather splendid statue of General Rochambeau who arrived  with a French Army in 1780 to help the struggling George Washington drive us Brits out. Weirdly, he seems to be pointing back at France, perhaps acknowledging that supporting revolutions didn't turn out to be a very good idea as far as the French were concerned  !  So far, at any rate, I have concluded that being here still does look like a good idea, but we'll see.