Okay, Jan asked. So here is my little grandson, four months and a day old when the picture was taken last week in Seattle, just before I left for the airport.

Little Julian and Big Julie

Young Julian is doing well, thank you, and giving his parents exactly enough bother to make his grandparents smile and remember that revenge is sweet.

I maintain that he is a particularly pretty baby. One school of thought declares that I am biased, which might just be possible. Or we could simply agree that he is not only unusually attractive, but also shows signs of extraordinary intelligence.

Here, he looks almost as cute, though perhaps a wee bit more gormless. Nevertheless, as I have tidy hair for a change, I thought I would post this picture too.

Nona and Julian.

The gentleman is 4 months old and the lady is 55.  When he is in her arms she thinks she is a young woman again

Heathrow was barely functioning in record breaking cold when I touched down after four months away. The weathermen said the worst was over, but it was still snowing when I got to Oxford.

Meanwhile the government has ordered a go-slow on rock salt use, because we’re running out. Oxford seems to have entered into the ban with great community spirit. There wasn’t a cleared pavement in sight.

Pedestrians made their way gingerly, some using ski poles for help. Others, like the tall woman who grabbed me and nearly brought me down as I later shuffled and slid to the shops, relied on fellow travellers to steady themselves.

I was jetlagged and felt unreasonably foreign as I puzzled over the choice of my evening’s and morning’s provisions, finally settling on bread, wine, tomatoes, avocado, rocket (arugula), the chorizo sausage I have been dreaming about, and, extravagantly, cherries flown in from Chile. I felt bad about the food miles, but I needed something that tasted of summer.

When I finished shopping my ex-husband drove me cautiously to Pangolin, the 62 foot long narrowboat where I now live. Pangolin “lies” (as they say) in rural Oxfordshire, about 9 miles north of the city. My usual route to the boat was impassable; a lorry had been stuck for days, blocking the road, but I was assured that the alternative way, through Kidlington and down Bunker’s Hill, was clear.

A friend had lit the coal fire, and though the boat was burgled while I was away (I knew that, and was expecting much worse than I found), and my car was covered in a snow drift and dead as a door nail, it still felt wonderful to be home again.

The next morning I took some pictures.

Looking north, towards the bridge:

Looking south, towards the lock, the Cherwell River, and Oxford. Part of the canal is still frozen.

My early visitors are lovely, but they are invariably grumpy, and never grateful for the bread I throw.

Outside the window

I gobbled my cherries as I looked out the window and remembered my towpath garden in late September when I had last seen it.

O westron wind when wilt thou blow?
The small rain down can rain,
Christ that my love were in my arms,
And I in my bed again

Maybe there isn’t that much competition for a great four line poem, but since I first knew it I have loved this medieval fragment, and I think of it when I get very cold, or very lonely. It’s by that prolific writer Anon, and as there is a fair bit of disagreement about the definitive text, and since I don’t have my books with me, I am going for my (possibly dodgy) memory of exactly how the lines go.

The point of the longing for the west wind from Anon to Shelley and beyond, which I finally understood after I had lived in England for a while, is that there the prevailing wind blows from across Atlantic and is tempered by the wide sea and the mild Gulf Stream. The western wind is gentle and warm compared to what comes from across the North Sea or eastwards from Siberia, dry but bitterly cold. No geography lessons here, but if you want literature, think of John Jarndyce from Bleak House: whenever anything unpleasant happens he insists that the wind must be in the east.

As I might have mentioned, I am back on the small island, looking after the bulimic cat and the toy poodles and house sitting for my mother who is flying back from New Zealand as I write. Her warming carbon footprint will be felt any day now. I am looking forward to it.

Never mind what they are saying in Copenhagen about the warmest decade in history, it is unusually cold here, and I am not used to it. The last time I was in temperatures this low for this long was in my final year of college in New England. I lived in an apartment a couple of miles from campus. Each morning as I stood in line for the bus the tears on my eyelashes froze.

In England the cold is different. It’s that bone chilling damp where the only solution is to meet wet with wet and take a hot bath followed by a nice cup of tea.

On my boat I have a coal fire. It’s a matter of boater pride to “keep it in” all night long, closing down the dampers and allowing just enough air so it doesn’t go out. I can’t speak for others, but my technique is that when the BBC World Service signs off at 5 am, and while the Shipping Forecast gives way to News Briefing, I stagger naked the boat’s 62 ft length (the bed is near the back and the stove near the front), throw a few coals on the fire, open the dampers, and scurry back to bed, snuggling in with Farming Today until the warm air drifting along the cabin invites me and Melvin Bragg to get up.

I confess I don’t draw the curtains at night, but I am really shortsighted and my theory is, if I can’t see them, they can’t see me. Besides, anyone eager enough to wait up until just before dawn to see a 55 year old woman in all her glory myopically stoking a stove deserves all he gets.

I don’t mean to be flippant. I am Against climate change (in so far as I have a vote). I am in Favour of polar bears (ditto) and since I have actually demonstratrated a willingness to be cold on their behalf (and they have never been at all nice to me) I am resting my case and moving on.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I am worried about getting my mother’s house warm enough for Old People.

There’s no central heating and the space is many times larger than my boat. The Permit Queen (remember her?) said it was awfully hard to get the chill off a house in just one day and I ought to light the fire tonight, and so I have. For the first time in a couple of weeks the indoor temperature is almost 55.

When I open the stove to throw in more wet, northwest wood the smoke alarms scream, the cat bolts and the dogs whine. Never mind! I’ve raided my mother’s pantry for the last of her best after dinner, festive, warming comfort (something sweet and sticky called O’Mara’s. I wish there were more).

It will be early morning up with the dogs and the cat and the fire and then off to the airport, but right now I feel just fine.

By tomorrow anything might be possible, including the westron wind.

I.

I am on an island 8000 miles from home, looking after my mother’s house, a bulimic cat, and two toy poodles. 

A wind storm has knocked out the power all over the island.  The wind blew so hard that it broke the brand new dock, and the ferry captains are refusing to carry cars after dark.

My one telephone that actually plugs into the wall seems impossibly old fashioned, but it allows me to receive “power updates”.  A message assures me that personnel have been despatched to assess the damage and that if I see power lines on the ground I should assume they are energised and keep clear.  If I think public safety is at risk I should hang up and dial 911. 

Although I would very much like to have internet access (among other things, like light and heat) I resist the urge to cruise the island’s streets looking for energised power lines.

Nevertheless, as I did not achieve my daily goal of having a single face to face conversation with a creature without a tail I am a little tempted to dial 911.  In fact, as I did not even achieve my secondary goal of having a single telephone or internet conversation with a creature without prejudice to tails, since on the phone or internet they are hearsay, the 911 option is looking pretty good.

Any readers of this blog from its early days will know that when I am on this particular island 8000 miles from home I hang out with firemen, and if I dial 911 I will probably have familiar faces mustering on my lawn.

Because I am a responsible citizen, instead I stumble around in the dark, find a torch, light candles, round up the animals (wouldn’t you know they are all black?) and retreat with them and a bottle of wine to the warmest space to wait the wind out.

My computer has power, for a while at least, though no internet connection.  I can write in the dark since I am a pretty good touch typist.  I have a story about learning to touch type.  I might as well promise to tell it one day.  Tonight I don’t have anything but promise.

II.

I am on an island, 8000 miles from home.

Yesterday, before the power went out, as I walked the poodles in blustery winds and the pouring rain, my elder daughter (the day before her 26th birthday) called my cell phone to say she felt really, really sick and was in bed in her father’s house in England.   She had a sore throat and a fever.  She didn’t have the energy to get food or medicine.    There was no one to look after her.  She didn’t know where anyone was who could help.  Why did I go away and leave her?

I made reassuring noises.  I said I would call her back.

I telephoned her little sister (my 17 year old Baby) and asked where she was.  She was in her father’s house in England.

So from 8000 miles away I organised one child to walk down a flight of steps to deliver medicine to another child.  Since that seemed a really trivial achievement I also sent the younger one the five minute walk to Starbucks (hurrah for globalisation). 

Acetaminophen and frappacino are still the best swine flu cures I know.

In my last job at Oxford, which ended in August, my informal title and official email address, was Webmaster.  That’s how I feel now; only a few months ago I got paid.

I am beginning to think that conversations with creatures with and without tails are overrated.

III.

Lunch time next day I still have no power.  The computer is nearly out of battery.  I am getting very cold.  The power company phone number tells me that it will give me an update and let me know when normal service might be resumed if I provide my 10 digit meter number.

I am 8000 miles from home.  This is not my house.  I do not know my 10 digit meter number. 

So I think I will just see what happens if I hold the line and do nothing.

A very cross voice shouts at me, first in English, and then in Spanish, THAT IS NOT A VALID RESPONSE.

I’m just guessing that that is what the Spanish says, but I am probably right.  Everyone knows that if you shout loud enough, anyone can understand a foreign language.

IV.

I have, completely informally you understand, and without burden on the public purse, consulted a fireman, and am now privy to a switch that makes my propane stove spring into life, supposedly without benefit of Puget Sound Energy.  My fireman friend said, I’ll just turn it off, and you can try turning it back on, so you are familiar with how it works.

So I flipped the switch, all by myself. 

Though I am still just a wee bit sceptical, because by then the power was back on.

V.

Here on this island, 8000 miles from home, I can get the internet again, and the BBC is all about floods in the Lake District – weather conditions, they say, that come up once in a thousand years. 

It’s raining in my heart and raining all over the world.

I could go on, now that I have computer and internet and Wikipedia and light and heat and all, but after writing nothing for months I fear I am getting a bit long winded, though I always remember that it never rains but it pours.

Poodle getting warm by the newly lit fire.

In the UK they don’t really understand the US version of Halloween, and for a long time politicians, the police and the church all regularly denounced it as a tradition that encouraged a combination of juvenile delinquency and devil worship.  At best it was described as an “unwelcome American import”.

Nevertheless, it is catching on, bit by bit, and in many neighbourhoods these days children go trick or treating.  Sometimes they are met with surprise and occasionally with anger, but usually sweeties are doled out and everyone is happy.  It doesn’t always work the way you expect, though.  At one doorstep my little daughter held out her bag and said sweetly, “Trick or treat!”

The man replied, “Oh, I should much prefer a treat, thank you!”  And then he reached into her bag, took out a sweet and thanked her again.

Even where Halloween is celebrated there is nothing like the American enthusiasm and energy for the holiday.  Pumpkins, once somewhat exotic (and still expensive), are now available in every supermarket (jack-o-lanterns used to be carved out of turnips). But on the whole, people do not erect tombstones in their front gardens or hang strings of skeleton lights or startle trick or treaters with dangling spiders.  Costumes are simple, and very repetitive: children dress as witches or devils or vampires.  No one goes as Michael Jackson, the Cat in the Hat, a pirate or a fairy princess. 

Grownups don’t answer the door in costume, and grownups don’t get invited to Halloween parties.

This was my first Halloween in the US for 30 years.  The Lawyer Sis and the Lawyer Brother-in-Law invited me to join their annual celebrations, always elaborate and coordinated.  Last year they went as Sarah Palin and a moose. 

My joining them meant, my sister insisted, that we had to come up with a costume idea for a threesome. 

And unfortunately, she added, she was useless with a sewing machine, so I would have to make the costumes for whatever threesome I decided on.  She would be in charge of props.

Here’s how we looked:

(The Duchess is the mouse on the right.  No one else was willing to wear the mouse undergarment constructed out of mattress pads, hung from the shoulders by blanket ribbon, to bulk out the suits…  Nevertheless I thought we looked pretty good – and I sewed the suits without a pattern, or rather I made my own pattern from pencil scrawls on taped together sections of the NY Times.  I thought the Lawyer Sis handled her prop brief well too.  The white canes adapted from sawn off Bo Peep crooks were inspired.)

We gathered at my brother-in-law’s brother’s house.  Since we lacked a Farmer’s Wife, his friend the Freudian Slip – who is in real life a bassoonist with the Seattle Opera – wielded the carving knife.

After mayhem we all went to Highway 99, a blues club in downtown Seattle where the brother-in-law’s brother had a gig (he’s a professional trumpet player).  I thought his girlfriend must be dressed as a groupie of some sort, or maybe a cocktail waitress, but she informed me that she was Marie Antoinette.

Osama Bin Laden – former principal trumpeter with the Seattle Symphony Orchestra – brought his own cocktail.

And the mice enjoyed a martini or two.

It was a lot of fun.  I’ve missed Halloween!

*******

Poor neglected blog!  For any readers I might still have I will try to do a series of catch up posts soon…

Huricane Bill has made his way over the Atlantic, and what is left of him is blowing the trees about in an ineffectual sort of way.  Bill’s rain is what the Brits like to call “wetting” rain.  I know what they mean: the effort feels half hearted, but it doesn’t half soak you.

I knew Bill was coming, so this morning I lugged up the tow path my two toilet cartridges – what the boaters call, “shit suitcases”.  I thought I’d do it early because I prefer to stay dry when I sluice my effluent.

The cartridges were surprisingly heavy, and their contents were all mine.  It amazes me how much waste a body makes in a week.  I have had no other home except Pangolin since last Tuesday. 

I am still having anxiety dreams about moving out of my house and waking at 3 am in a panic.  If I can wait just a little while, at 4 am I know the BBC World Service will give me lovely, familiar, soporific news to doze by, but I have learned that the radio is not my friend in every sleepless hour.

In my last nights at Hedges (my former home) I sometimes turned the radio on too early.  One night the program was interrupted mid sentence, and there followed, for twenty minutes or more, a series of clunks, dings and fog horn type noises.  Was no one else listening?  And no one at the station to intervene, apologise, and offer me “a little music” while they sorted it out?

There was no such intervention, and when I next heard a voice it was speaking a language I did not recognize, except intermittently when it shouted “Afghanistan!”  “Pakistan!”  “Taliban!”  The voice, whose unfamiliar syllables sounded to me angry and aggressive, continued for another fifteen minutes.

With insomniac logic I calculated that the whole point of the BBC World Service was that it was English, the Language of the Empire, the Common Language of the World, and more importantly, the Language I Understood, and which ought to be lulling me back to sleep. 

If the radio wasn’t speaking English, something must be badly wrong.  I began to be certain that terrorists had taken over – if I imagined World Service studios at all I imagined them remote and vulnerable.  The terrorists were now broadcasting to their brethren (and me).  How many more times were they going to say “Afghanistan”?

While I was wondering what to do next – surely I should call someone – I heard the words “BBC Swahili” and then English, and normal service, resumed.  Okay, fine.  But next time before the Swahili program comes on don’t break the tape first.  And maybe try throwing in a few comforting, international words, the sort that terrorists always eschew, like Disneyland, weekend, and Big Mac.

Meanwhile, no one on the towpath can get phone, tele or internet reception.  Leaves on the trees, apparently.  I can sometimes get connected if I wander around outside and point my screen hopefully at the sky.  So I need to brave Bill, and the wetting rain, to post this.

When I get back inside, I think I’ll read Mansfield Park.  I packed it near the top of one of my boxes, because I thought I might need it.  It’s a comfort text, with nice dry pages, reliably in English.

Just as soon as I find out where I have packed my knickers, I promise to describe the last hours at Hedges and my move to Pangolin.

Did I say? Pangolin is the name of my boat and Hedges is the name of my house, rented as of yesterday.  In the days when my ex husband and I were trying to run a business from home I thought the house – and hence the business – ought to have a more grown up address.  I knew there wasn’t a lot I could do about the lines “Buckland, near Faringdon” but I was sure I could at least get a house number. 

With some difficulty I found out who was responsible for numbering houses and I telephoned the local official.

“Sorry, love,” he said, “but we can’t give your house a number.” 

It was hard to argue with his reasoning.  “Unfortunately,” he explained, “all the numbers are used up on the other side of the road.”

Hedges is still numberless, but the Royal Mail (which briefly demanded to be called “Consignia”) now objects to “near Faringdon”.  These days we aren’t meant to use the old fashioned “near” in addresses.  Instead we are to write FARINGDON (or equivalent postal town), the “near” having given way to shouting.

It’s an official objection.  In practice, just as Consignia was abandoned after a few weeks of ridicule and the revelation of how much in brand consultancy fees it had cost to come up with the name, the Royal Mail is still pretty good at parsing obscure addresses.   I once got post delivered that was addressed: “White house near the shop, two big noisy dogs in the window, Buckland, Oxfordshire.”

I love the UK, and I am very partisan.  So I am particularly distraught over the Ashes.  Below is the latest. 

Read it, and parse it, and weep.  And don’t forget they make it all at once weird and silly and tragic entirely on purpose.  I am particularly fond of the part where Ricky Ponting (the Aussie captain) calls incorrectly at the toss, but that is because I know (and you might not) that toss is a naughty word.

England struggle in deciding Test

Fifth Ashes Test, The Oval, day one (close): England 307-8 v Australia    By Jamie Lillywhite Bell looked set for his ninth Test ton until his dismissal straight after tea England failed to build on a promising position in the deciding Ashes Test as Australia restricted the hosts to 307-8 after the first day at The Oval. They were 108-1 at lunch, with skipper Andrew Strauss making an assured fifty. He shared a century stand with Ian Bell who overcame a torrid start to top-score with 10 fours in a valiant 72. Andrew Flintoff, in his final Test, made only seven as five wickets tumbled after tea to a combination of poor shots and aggressive pace bowling. England, who need to win the Test to regain the Ashes, won the first battle of the day when Ricky Ponting called incorrectly at the toss and Strauss chose to have first use of what looked to be a perfect batting wicket. But an exceptionally dry surface started to show signs of wear after just a couple of overs, courtesy of Peter Siddle’s bustling footmarks, and by lunch repairs usually made much later in a Test match were being carried out by the ground staff. Occasional spinner Marcus North was finding extravagant turn and bounce, and with pieces of the pitch breaking up frequently, assessments of what constituted a good score began to change. BEN DIRS BLOG Too many of England’s batsmen were delicate racehorses, cantering a few yards before pulling up lame Ben Dirs After the out-of-sorts Alastair Cook rigidly prodded to second slip in the sixth over, Bell was given a formidable working over by Siddle, who reached speeds in excess of 93mph. Bell, who made a pair in the 2005 Ashes Test at The Oval and went into the match without a century in 31 previous innings at number three, had been moved up the order despite a poor display at Headingley where England were crushed by an innings and 80 runs. He might have been given out on nought after a Siddle bouncer brushed his wrist, but umpire Asad Rauf correctly gave him the benefit of the doubt, with several replays unable to determine whether contact with the glove was made. But the Warwickshire batsman showed admirable resolve and also weathered a prolonged series of short balls from left-armer Johnson, another to pass the 93mph mark, to compile his 21st Test fifty. The combative Siddle has a total of 10 wickets in the last three Ashes innings In the second over of the afternoon session, Strauss drove gloriously through the covers to the boundary to record the century partnership from 139 balls, the captain’s contribution 52. But three balls later he was gone, for 55, to a disappointingly tame nibble outside the off-stump, neatly caught low by Brad Haddin, although replays showed bowler Ben Hilfenhaus had over-stepped by several inches. The partnership was 102, the same number made by the entire England team in the first innings at Headingley. Australia used their four seamers for 46 overs before introducing a change of style, in the form of North’s part-time off-spin. Trott’s first run came after 12 balls, including a bizarre bouncer from North, and no doubt a few choice words of mental disintegration from the Australians aimed at the South-African born batsman.   606: DEBATE The way the pitch has crumbled and deteriorated has made 350 look a very decent score Red_Doc Paul Collingwood drove loosely to gully and the departure of Bell, who got an inside edge that left his off-stump out of the ground in the first over after tea, saw the scoring rate dip alarmingly. Although Matt Prior hit two stylish boundaries he was hopelessly deceived by Johnson’s slower ball, through his drive early and easily caught at cover. That brought in Flintoff to a wonderfully warm, stirring ovation, somewhere between a heavyweight title fight at Madison Square Gardens and The Last Night of the Proms. He opened his account with a boundary through gully off Johnson, but it was to be his only one and he edged a wide one in the left-arm paceman’s next over, to immense dejection from the crowd. Trott, having replaced Ravi Bopara in the side, showed signs of his prolific county form with some elegant strokes, but after a patient 41 he was brilliantly run out by Simon Katich, whose razor sharp collect and direct hit from short-leg saw the batsman out of his crease. England lost Graeme Swann in the final over but Stuart Broad was unbeaten on 26 at the other end and England must hope he will be to muster enough runs to help the bowlers apply pressure on the Australians. Scorecard

I am thinking of entering my house for the Turner Prize. 

In just 8 days my tenants move in.  Do you think it is time to start panicking?

Day after tomorrow I have movers coming. They have already shaken their heads at the sight of my stuff and sucked their lips and said it would be a lot cheaper if I packed myself and could I be sure my bed was fully disassembled before 8 am?

I want to have hired the kind of movers who will, without demure, pack up my breakfast and deliver a half eaten egg hours later at my new home.  

I don’t want the cold egg and I don’t have a new home.  But I also don’t want the alternative, which turns out to be examining every object I have accidentally acquired these 25 years and asking, Is it worthy enough to be moved?  Is it valuable enough to be stored? 

I worry that when the objects are gone I might forget to tell the stories, so like some capricious god I preserve a few and pitch away the rest.  Amongst the Saved are all the birthday cards from my elder son and the doll given to my elder daughter by a mad, middle-aged Japanese graduate student, former nun obsessed with Iris Murdoch’s husband.  I also preserve the crumpled school play programmes wherever I see the name of my younger son, all grown up and off to drama school, and a sweet, lumpy, spotted pig fashioned in clay by my Baby her first term at school.  I don’t think she is going to be a sculptor, but I expect she will forgive my semi-formed sentimentality, matching her pig.  It’s the thought that counts.

Meanwhile, books turn out to pose the greatest difficulty. I got rid of boxes and boxes of books (meaning I donated them to Oxfam) when I first put the house on the market in 2006, but it seems I have acquired more books since.  I ought to pitch them, but it’s so hard. I look at each book and think there is a possibility I might want to read that again.  Or I might want to give it another chance and read it a first time.  Or it’s a book no reasonable household should be without, just in case someone might want to put it in a footnote. 

And there are books that might actually be useful, like the London A-Z.  I need that a lot and often forget to take it with me, so I buy a new one.  I used to say that when I retired I would set up a used book store selling back editions of the London A-Z.  It would be a niche market. I’m a few years from retirement yet, but only found 8 copies today.  I thought there would be more.  Apparently I’ve got my work cut out for me.

Besides the A-Zs, there were 3 copies of The Woman in White (Wilkie Collins), probably not a best seller even in my retirement bookstore, and 4 copies of the same edition of The Aeneid, A New English Translation. 

I think my first book cull must have been incomplete.  I refuse to accept that I am accruing copies of the Aeneid, even in translation, at a rate of more than one per year.

So that brings me to today’s game.  Which books appear more than once on your shelves?  (optional: How many times?  Why?)  I am so disorganised that I am not even going to count books where I have merely two, but in better regulated households two is a quorum and eligible to play.