Home Again

Being realistic, I had put aside two weeks after my return to the UK to get everything sorted out and ship shape after five years off-and-on of less than necessary house and garden maintenance. Now two weeks into it I realise how hopelessly optimistic this was. Despite the attentions of my (very good) gardener, the garden was in a pitiable state. No doubt this was thanks to his having inadequate time, my roe and fallow deer visitors and a long period of drought, plus of course the fact that his priorities for the garden and mine don't always quite align. The house was structurally sound and hadn't been flooded, but had a very large number of spider residents in every corner. At least this time (so far at least) there hasn't been those disastrous water-leaks which were such a hassle last time.

The immediate priority was to find somewhere to put away all the stuff I had brought back with me from Newport. It was when I discovered that I literally could not get the two suits that had been away back into the main wardrobe, that I realised that after all these years the time had come for a grand sort out and, frankly, chuck-out. This was clearly going to be a much greater campaign than I had envisaged. The process of normalisation that I guess will probably linger on into the Autumn. Another illustration of the same sort of issue has been finding places to hang the pictures I had brought back with me from the US. Many of these had gone out to the US largely because they used to be at my office at the JSCSC and when that closed (the office not the JSCSC) I had put them in store until inspiration struck as to what I could do with them. On my return from the US, part of the solution was simply to abandon the bigger ones and leave them at Newport for my successors to do what they liked with them. This had been a wrench, particularly one large one of naval manoeuvres in the 1880s which had already suffered in its journey out there. I remember being delighted by it, years ago, when stumbling across it with an unenthusiastic Cherry in tow in a junk shop on the Isle of Wight !  Instead of consigning the survivors  to the stables/outhouses I thought I would devote time to rethinking where some at least might go. Then something rather weird happened. I stood in front of one picture thinking, maybe I could replace it with another from Newport. I didn't touch it, but thought I would mull over the issue for a bit. During the second night of mulling in which I decided not to move it, the picture in question fell off the wall, strangely enough. Anyhow enough pictures have been successively slotted away for me to think the time well spent.

And so things are slowly falling into place. Another constraint on original plans also to devote time to the family and local history projects that have been neglected for so long is the fact that current events  and a continuing stream of invitations or requests of one sort or  other are combing to make it very difficult to cut back on the kind of academic activity that has been responsible for so many past neglects. The sudden, but totally predictable, upsurge of interest in the naval side of the Ukraine war of the past few weeks in the wake of Russia's withdrawal from the Black Sea Grain Initiative for example demands attention from people like me. I feel an op ed perhaps for Singapore coming on. 

Although it doesn't look or feel like it to most people who are focussed on the immediate effects of climate change or the cost-of-living crisis (both of which are made far worse, of course, by what's happening in Ukraine) we're very nearly at war with Russia and this won't help. It's hard to avoid the conclusion that the next few years could be the most dangerous since the early 1980s. Understandable that there's a reluctance to accept this and its consequences. Perhaps that's why, a week or so ago and on the day after it was announced that the US would be supplying cluster munitions  to Ukraine, and there was a particularly gloomy report on climate change, the Guardian chose as its main headline that one third of vegan meals had dairy in them. I mean no disrespect to Vegans (for they include some of the closest members of my family !) but it did seem to me to reflect an odd sort of priority. But maybe it also reflects that very human craving only to think about problems that you can do something meaningful about. Like gardening, or hanging pictures.  

Haul Down Report

 

When Admirals leave their current post, it is the custom for them to write a brief account (usually confidential) of their time and the issues confronted during their appointment for the guidance of their successor. This is passed over as their flag is hauled down for the last time. We have had an instance of that here at Newport in the last couple of weeks. I went to the ceremony as I’ve never managed to get to a US Navy change-of-command ceremony before and found it all quite interesting, although a lecture hall is not an ideal setting and means one can't see the flag in question. A shouted chain of orders snaking through and out of the building ensured that the flag was indeed hauled down at the appropriate time. I also did not see the contents of any such haul down report that the incumbent would have found on his desk afterwards. But I did get to meet the new man (his predecessor was our first female Admiral President, originally a helo pilot)  before he went on to get all of his undoubtedly mind-numbing briefings. 

This was because almost his first task was to come to the opening of our conference, and he stayed for the first session in which I was on transmit. The subject was irregular maritime operations. Apparently knowing what he was likely to be in for later on, he expressed a wish to stay and hear more, but was whisked away by his staff.  This was all very encouraging as getting on the right side of the incoming big wheel as soon as possible is a good idea, institutionally. Especially in a competitive place like Newport where budgets and billets are always at stake.

The conference went well, and benefitted by being held not on campus but in a big hotel overlooking Easton beach and the reservoir behind it, across and around which I used regularly to walk last year. The facilities were not so good but the food was much better and the view spectacular.

All in all I have also much enjoyed my time here in Newport, 5 years off and on, although I have to say that the college is much less collegial than it used to be because, since Covid, people don’t come in anything like as much as they used  to. But this is also true of all the other educational establishments I’m associated with. I think there is a bit of drift back to pre-Covid normality, but it’s slow and partial.  In consequence, there’s much less chance of picking up interesting tit-bits over the coffee. In fact there’s nowhere to drink coffee communally, which is a real lack. Another example of a great service partly strangled by its own bureaucracy I think. Still I’ve learned a lot over these past few years and made huge numbers of new friends one way and another and have been treated most hospitably once I got over the initial training courses about not eating spiders in the jungle and useful things like that. The students one teaches - ranging from their mid thirties to their early fifties in some cases were, absolutely excellent, interesting experienced, intelligent and nearly always extremely keen. Because I have found this time and time again over the years, I shall really miss sustained teaching, though I hop to keep my hand in for a little while yet through mini courses in Singapore and Brussels.

Because I suppose I’m now acclimatised to the American way, I haven’t fallen foul of the bureaucracy at all, even given a minor traffic accident. The US health service has been pretty good for me, at least as a Federal employee. I got an instantaneous renewal of my pills at the local pharmacy with no trouble at all, and very little expense. Mind you, one of my colleagues had a mild medical emergency and went to the local hospital in prosperous Newport and still had to wait 4 hours before being seen, just like the NHS I gather. None of them are on strike, but they’re short of nurses too.

What has really been driven home for me over the past five years is just how resilient this country is. The economy is going well despite the decayed infrastructure and I’ve seen no evidence for the common impression one sometimes gets outside the US of a broken society in free fall. There are still murderous events with guns and unbelievably polarised views on abortion, the LGBTQIA communities and so on but all the same everything seems to be working, and I haven’t encountered any unpleasantness of any sort, anywhere. It must all be happening somewhere else, in other states. Mind you it looks as though the next election will be close and a lot could depend on that. There is no question but that some of the people on the Republican right seem to me to be proto-fascist and dangerously isolationist to boot. Much, much more worried about China than Russia. From the US side of the Atlantic the view is that things seem to be a lot worse in the UK (which nonetheless and despite everything has a high reputation there) and, at the moment, France.

Imminent departure has led to me revisiting favoured haunts as much as time allowed. Three mansions this week, around a dawn-to-darkness three day conference in my last packing up and moving week. I was even having to work on a conference report while waiting for the taxi to the airport this afternoon. But I squeezed in a guided tour of the 18^th century ‘Hunter House’ on the waterside and refreshed my acquaintance with Newport in the war of American Independence when we thoroughly trashed the place once the majority Loyalists had left. I said good bye to my colleague General Rochambeau

 -  and also at last managed to get a visit to the Ida Lewis Yacht club. This is on a tiny island built round the remnants of a lighthouse  at the end of a very long boardwalk. It’s almost as exclusive as the New York yacht club ( my one major grockling failure !). My realtor who’s been looking after my rentals the past five years took me there, she being a keen sailor and long-term resident. A party of very rich beautiful young things arrived as we were leaving, just reminding one that this is not an egalitarian society, despite what Americans say. It’s just differentiated by money a bit more than ours is. But they will say that it’s equal in that everyone can make the money they need to rise. In theory, at least.

I walked, perforce, to the Marble House after I had taken the car back to the rental firm and took coffee for the last time in the teahouse and patted Cherry’s lion-dog farewell.

No matter how many times one goes to a place like that there’s always something different to see – an unspotted angle of the portico for example. Also in the basement I fell into conversation with the docent who said she thought ‘these Van der Velde’s’  deserved better coverage. I hadn’t realised that’s what they were (and still am not wholly convinced) so I checked them over closely.

Van der Velde died in 1692 and what these four large and very decayed paintings seemed to me be portraying was the departure of William III for England and the Glorious Revolution of 1688. My colleague John, whose period this is (and is the one our joint book dwells on) got very intrigued, saying he didn’t know they were there and rushed off to consult his books ! Like most inhabitants of Newport its aeons since he visited and of the mansions !

But I won’t weary you with a more detailed account of what has been a frantic few weeks which also included a farewell lunch at the Reading Room and a last sad visit to one of my very favourite places the Redwood Athenaeum. They will miss me as I became quite a fixture there. one of the ladies in attendance there was ex-English and waxed nostalgic on very occasion. She didn't want to go back home but the lady from Essex in 'June Love's English bakery'  said she often hankered for it...

All this culminated in my moving out of my new bijou residence on Roseneath Avenue, a painful process of ruthless decisions about what to try and smuggle back into the UK, what to discard and what to leave for charity. I left three large white sacks of radios, DVD players, car battery chargers  etc etc for the locals, a fair amount of food in the fridge I didn’t manage to eat – really sad to leave my marmite. My landlady, married to an Aussie is a Vegemite aficionado and can’t abide the real thing. The problem was the weight limit. I was going for 3 suitcases of 51lbs each and 3 carry-ons, one for laptops stuff, one for antiques and one for glass fronted pictures and files. All of them were ‘just a touch’ overweight.  I’m pleased to say that despite the heaving crowds and the pouring rain I have got away with it so far. Once I got the baggage trolley ($6 dollars for the hire) moving it rapidly developed the momentum of an Abrahams tank, but as far as I know I caused no casualties amongst the bustling throng.  I was dismayed when I saw they were carefully weighing each item of luggage of the person in front of me, but fortunately I was waved through with no comment, except for a slightly mystifying but genial  'how many is it this time ?' Even though I rather gave the game away by panting as I heaved each case onto the transfer rack !  Sometimes, as on this occasion, when putting my carry-ons in the overhead bins in the plane afterwards, I was in real danger of doing so again by falling over backwards.

The only slight hiccup was having one of my carry-ons diverted for further examination at security. Fortunately it was the least contentious one, the bag with the lap-tops. I was dreading having to watch my antique cups carefully wrapped in bubble wrap and old socks and pants being disinterred. But no, it was just a query about a glass paperweight from a conference in Malaysia years ago. They even manged to locate my belt which had somehow disappeared in the security process. Being over 75, I didn’t have to take my shoes off, either. I can tell you after all this, I was glad to get to the lounge largely unscathed just in the mood for a celebratory G&T. And so home to another new chapter…….

Post-arrival footnote. The trip worked like clockwork thereafter. No problem at all. It only started to unravel when I got home to discover that my new car, snugly in its garage, had been ravaged by mice who had chewed up the wiring pretty comprehensively, such that it was totally immobilised. Hence hassle and great expense in getting it towed away and fixed. This also complicated getting back to normal since I had no transport and the freezer had been emptied of food – so a long two mile tramp to the village shop to avert starvation was necessary. I also had to cancel a much anticipated local Church tour. Such are the benefits of living in the countryside. Still amidst the  chaos of a garden mimicking Borneo, I chanced across two pyramid orchids in the front, which I was delighted to see. Last time I found one in the paddock I was very excited until I saw hundreds of them at the Trundle near Chichester. So there are compensations to a quiet rural life. But, in any case, it’s good to be back…..