quality of life
Moving again, and as usual, it's everything all at once. And I lost at ferret roulette, again.
When I was a kid, more than anything I wanted to be a traveller. Always on the move, light on baggage. As usual, I'm punished by getting exactly what I wanted. Last week it was all dead folk and irregular verbs ...
This week, small-village Yorkshire. Time for the Sawley village fair, and my annual bout with ferret roulette. It's rigged, rigged I tells ye.
First, since victory begets victory, I play to my strengths. Those aren't exactly balls there guys, but it's a free coconut for every one you knock off the rack. This being Yorkshire I suspect everything was brought in by tractor so a coconut is an exotic prize indeed.
Scored 4 out of 5 and gave two away - when the train comes in, everybody rides. Biggest thing to hit Sawley since electricity, three wonderful years ago.
Amped, I take on my old nemesis, Rufus the unpredictable ferret. I'll take lucky number 3.
In goes Rufus ...
And out he goes the wrong pipe, along with my youthful optimism. The thrill of the coconut contest begins to fade.
All this seems poignant as it's starting to sink in that we're moving away at last. We've been angling at this for years and while England has been very good to us, it's time to go. Tess has a burning opportunity on the east coast, I have piles of data and a good dozen papers on the spike, 4 or 5 of which should actually be pretty good. I'll miss the dales, the blood pudding, and the summer days that reak of clover and moist decay. But the turning away has already begun in earnest, and somehow this time I know we're not coming back, not for good anyway.
So what's next. First, we have to find a house near DC, which sucks as it's crowded and trafficy. On the good side, it's commuting distance to horse country, and there are simply tons of houses for sale. And not a few foreclosures. It's the upside of the economic downturn, if you're looking to buy and have decent credit, fortune stands agape for thee. We've two weeks to look about, and it's all paid for so it's biscuits and gravy every night.
After that comes a week's drunken antics in Vegas followed by drying out in Utah. Home for the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh, then we cull the clothes we no longer wear, give away our English appliances (and, alas, my fish), and call the removers. We're taking this opportunity to lighten the load as we're also heaving it too - just yesterday I shook hands on a carved oak bench with a fold-up seat, heavy as stone and ancient. We rolled it up to check the joints and to my great surprise it's actually Jacobean, not a victorian knock-off. That makes it about 400 years old. Sweet.
May it ever remind me of days like today. Just got back from a 5 mile run, well mostly run, with time out for heaving. Through the marketplace where men gathered in 1569 for an uprising against Elizabeth I (and were subsequently executed), down the lane towards Fountains Abbey (12th century, now a ruin), and out through a WWI army training camp which prepared thousands of lads for the trenches, now forest and fields swarming with rabbits. A bit parched by the 3.5 mile mark so I stopped for a nice pint and ended up talking with a blind lady who reminisced about England during the war.
Really am gonna miss this place.
When I was a kid, more than anything I wanted to be a traveller. Always on the move, light on baggage. As usual, I'm punished by getting exactly what I wanted. Last week it was all dead folk and irregular verbs ...
This week, small-village Yorkshire. Time for the Sawley village fair, and my annual bout with ferret roulette. It's rigged, rigged I tells ye.
First, since victory begets victory, I play to my strengths. Those aren't exactly balls there guys, but it's a free coconut for every one you knock off the rack. This being Yorkshire I suspect everything was brought in by tractor so a coconut is an exotic prize indeed.
Scored 4 out of 5 and gave two away - when the train comes in, everybody rides. Biggest thing to hit Sawley since electricity, three wonderful years ago.
Amped, I take on my old nemesis, Rufus the unpredictable ferret. I'll take lucky number 3.
In goes Rufus ...
And out he goes the wrong pipe, along with my youthful optimism. The thrill of the coconut contest begins to fade.
All this seems poignant as it's starting to sink in that we're moving away at last. We've been angling at this for years and while England has been very good to us, it's time to go. Tess has a burning opportunity on the east coast, I have piles of data and a good dozen papers on the spike, 4 or 5 of which should actually be pretty good. I'll miss the dales, the blood pudding, and the summer days that reak of clover and moist decay. But the turning away has already begun in earnest, and somehow this time I know we're not coming back, not for good anyway.
So what's next. First, we have to find a house near DC, which sucks as it's crowded and trafficy. On the good side, it's commuting distance to horse country, and there are simply tons of houses for sale. And not a few foreclosures. It's the upside of the economic downturn, if you're looking to buy and have decent credit, fortune stands agape for thee. We've two weeks to look about, and it's all paid for so it's biscuits and gravy every night.
After that comes a week's drunken antics in Vegas followed by drying out in Utah. Home for the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh, then we cull the clothes we no longer wear, give away our English appliances (and, alas, my fish), and call the removers. We're taking this opportunity to lighten the load as we're also heaving it too - just yesterday I shook hands on a carved oak bench with a fold-up seat, heavy as stone and ancient. We rolled it up to check the joints and to my great surprise it's actually Jacobean, not a victorian knock-off. That makes it about 400 years old. Sweet.
May it ever remind me of days like today. Just got back from a 5 mile run, well mostly run, with time out for heaving. Through the marketplace where men gathered in 1569 for an uprising against Elizabeth I (and were subsequently executed), down the lane towards Fountains Abbey (12th century, now a ruin), and out through a WWI army training camp which prepared thousands of lads for the trenches, now forest and fields swarming with rabbits. A bit parched by the 3.5 mile mark so I stopped for a nice pint and ended up talking with a blind lady who reminisced about England during the war.
Really am gonna miss this place.