Back in the U.S.S.???...my return to Maine from England

I hated the song but it’s in my head!

‘Back in the U.S.S.R, boy

You don’t know how lucky you are, boy’.

What did Lennon know then? Are we feeling lucky yet??

But also:

‘Been away so long I hardly knew the place---

Gee it’s good to be back home.”

First and above everything THANK GOD FOR MAINE, and to be back to wild land, locally grown veggies and friendly, local banks (you don’t want to know about my 6-week long struggle with Barclays that resulted in eventual failure to access my tiny stash of emergency sausages-and-cream-bun money) -- and American music. ‘Tennessee Whiskey’ was playing somewhere on my journey back. The English don’t get this stuff at all and I love it.

The dash to the loo on arrival at Newark provided welcome (comic) relief. One is invited to

comment on one’s ‘bathroom experience’ by hitting a red, amber or green button on leaving

the loo. I found the options limiting and suggest adding, maybe ‘timely’, ‘disappointing’,

‘invigorating’.

On the last day we went to Hever Castle, to exercise the younger great-nephew while his big

sister stayed home to study for her GCSE’s. She is a classics scholar in the making and provided me with this excellent quote from Pliny the Younger --

‘There is no book so bad but some good might be got out of it.’

I hope that will be true of Body in the Blueberry Barrens, now on its way through the publishing process.

Anyway, back to Hever - pictures attached. It was Anne Boleyn’s castle and is now a truly lovely place to spend a day, but I find the perfectly managed beds of exquisitely grown flowers and tightly clipped hedges to be a bit scary. The total control of nature which drove that whole garden design movement is why England is now a wildlife-depleted desert. Oh well. The daffs and the primroses were wild-ish and lovely.

It is strange and rather wonderful to get back to the beginning of spring. My own Groundhog

Day. Snowdrops were all done and the daffs in full bloom when I left England and now get to do it all over again. Not bad.