Goodbye to the Autumn of my days

I started writing this post in longhand on Sunday evening last, seated in my recliner in the Northeast Kingdom and sipping a Manhattan cocktail. Vermont's Northeast Kingdom is comprised of Essex, Orleans, and Caledonia counties and had a population of just 64,764 at the 2010 census. It is in the state's far Northeast and borders Canada. I relocated here in order to be close to my daughter and her family, and to see out my remaining years - hopefully still quite a few, but you never know!

Right now the temperature outside our Cape Cod style apartment building is 3˚F, but last night it plunged to -36˚F - colder by far than Alaska! It is likely to be the same tonight and has not been above freezing for several weeks. It is so cold outside that the salt that has been spread on Route 5 in order to melt the snow lying n the road has absolutely no effect. We have had two separate storms so far this Winter - one that swept in from the Great Lakes to the West of us, and the other a bomb cyclone that swept up the East coast from Florida, giving snowfall in that state and every other coastal state from Georgia to Maine.The ski resorts of Northern New England are crowded, and well over 90% of runs are open.

A couple of weeks ago Liz and I enjoyed watching my granddaughter in her debut stage role, a real treat for someone who has spent so much time walking the boards. I was so impressed with her performance and her singing,. If I had started my acting career when I was at her age I might have ended up as a professional actor rather than a naval aviator. But then the circumstances around my acting career were very different as will be found in detail in my autobiography, The Graceful Retirement of an English Gentleman when I eventually distribute it to family and friends. So far I am up to 97 pages and a little short of 20,000 words.

I have had a pretty good life - have set foot in more than 30 countries and resided in four. Unless I should happenstance make a big win in one of the state's lotteries I am here to stay. The alternative would be somewhere like St Martin or Guadeloupe - somewhere in the French Caribbean anyway. I have met presidents, prime ministers, and even a princess. I have designed websites (currently have three of my own) and have had more than 6,500 articles and web pages published on the Internet so one way or another have left some sort of legacy.

It has been an interesting couple of years here in the United States. I spend a fair amount of my time watching MSNBC (never Fox) and their coverage of the country's political news. It seems that we are getting closer and closer to a Mueller - Trump face to face. That indeed will be very interesting, although it will probably never be made public.Michael Wolff's Fire and Fury has disclosed how most staffers in the White House describe Trump as being childlike. He is certainly a liar and an egomaniac. In a couple of month's time, I will be eligible for citizenship, so I am swotting up on the Constitution and other citizenship-related subjects.

The Trump Debacle

So Trump won the United States presidential election - supposedly! Clinton won the popular vote, and by more than 2½ million votes, but because of the strange and antiquated "system"in this country the president is not elected by popular vote, but by an Electoral College. They voted for the arrogant Mr Trump, who has been called a pathological and self-possessed liar, misogynist, racist, bigot, xenophobe, a gaudy materialist, a megalomaniac and a number of other not-so-popular words. His frequent remarks on Twitter have shown just how ignorant precedent (sic) elect Trump is - for example in setting presidents (sic).

Liz and I have moved across the state border and are now temporarily living in Vermont. The house we had been renting for the last 24 months was eventually sold, and we had to move out in December. So, a frantic month packing a large house into boxes, a rented U-haul truck, and here we are in the beautiful Vermont countryside, surrounded by now-bare maples and white birch with the occasional fir tree, all set off by a white blanket of snow. We are now "house hunting" and hoping to find something akin to what we have been used to over the last couple of years. Everything is soooo expensive up here in the North Country though.

I was hit quite badly by the brexit vote. Unfortunately one of the drawbacks of being a British expat is that we don't get to vote. In my opinion that is a big fault in the UK system. So how was I hit badly. I get a relatively small pension that is paid into my UK bank account, so it is in pounds. The day after the result of the brexit vote was known the pound dollar exchange rate plunged from $1.66 down to $1.22. That meant that after converting to dollars my monthly income fell by roughly 25% ! Maybe with a bit of lick, when Trump is inaugurated the dollar will fall against the pound making me better off.

Enough self-pity! It's close to noon, and the temperature outside is just 2˚F (that's -17˚C) and has been below freezing for several days now. It is supposed to warm up a little overnight and even be up in the 40's over the next few days. Going to snow tonight, turning to rain by the early morning. Yeough! Ah the beauty of living New England.

Election Fever - and a Cook Out

I never really understood how the election system here in the USA worked. I mean I knew that there were primaries but until I actually saw them happening around me, I never really understood. I do now, and New Hampshire, where Liz and I live, has been one of the best places to witness them from. Traditionally NH is the first state to hold primaries, and we were inundated with months of town hall meetings, diner walk-ins and other types of electioneering leading up to the primaries. Although I didn't vote myself (it will be another 22 months before I am eligible to become a citizen) I did go down to witness the voting - back then there were 18 GOP candidates and just the 2 Democrats, both of whom are still in the race.

The only Republican remaining in the race today is the bombastic Trump, who has been called a misogynist, a xenophobe, narcissistic, arrogant, patronizing, a racist and many other justified descriptions. For a collection of the better ones visit this webpage. I cannot understand how anyone can be taken in by this self-opinionated individual. I sometimes feel quite glad that I don't have the vote just yet.

On Saturday the local Food Co-op was one of out ports of call - it was the 7th anniversary of their opening, so there were plenty of free samples being handed out. One of the free offerings was a caricature artist, who did the above drawing for us. Later that afternoon we drove over to Vermont to Jake and Julie's for a cook out. Fortunately we were blessed by having good weather with temperatures in the 70s (that's the low 20s ˚C). At the time of writing it has dropped to just a couple of degrees above freezing - that's NH for you.

It was a fun afternoon - two sets of grandparents and pork chops, hot dogs, hamburgers and all wound up with S'mores around the fire My many friends and relatives on the other side of the Pond will probably have no idea what S'mores are - I didn't, but you can see what they are on this Wikipedia page.

Beer - a Few Thoughts

I was weaned on beer.  From about my 10th birthday my parents were in the Hospitality industry, first when my dad was steward of the Stourbridge Institute and Social Club, and then running a 26 bedroom brewery owned hotel named the Bell Hotel (with 5 bars!). The Bell was tied to the Wolverhampton & Dudley Brewery, whose Banks' Best Bitter was my beer of choice for a number of years when at home until I finally left the UK  for warmer climes in 1972. Not that that was the only beer I experienced. I was one of a crowd of young adults who spent a lot of time meeting in a number of different pubs - I recall the Crown at Iverley, the Navigation, The Plough at Claverley and the Unicorn in Wollaston village. Our favorite beverage when on pub crawls was either draft Bass or Worthington E.

After joining the Royal Navy in 1964 I was introduced to a wider variety of beers. My first encounter with beers during my naval career was at the Floaters (The Floating Bridge Inn) in Dartmouth while I was at Britannia Royal Naval College, though I can't recall the brand of beer that they served back then. After my introductory Officer's Course I moved to Malta for several months for the Naval Observer's Course, and it was here that I was introduced to Cisk lager. On the completion of that course I was posted to the Royal Naval Air Station at Lossiemouth in Morayshire, then home of the Buccaneer strike aircraft, and it was here that I tasted my first Scottish beers, Youngers and McEwans ales. Three tours on aircraft carriers to the Far East brought me into contact with Tiger (Singapore), Tusker (Mombasa, Kenya), Fosters (Perth & Sydney, Australia), San Miguel (Subic Bay, Philippines) and a cluster of others in Hong Kong, New Zealand and other ports of call.

My emigration from the UK to Rhodesia in 1972 and later to South Africa marked the start of a dearth of good beers. The sum total being Lion and Castle lagers in both countries and Zambezi in Rhodesia. There is little doubt in my mind that South African Breweries "powers that be" lack imagination, and there is certainly room for the development of craft beers, of which there are none at all in that country. This scarcity was to last until I relocated to the United States some 42 years later.

Some of the beers in my closet

Up here in New England there are, without any doubt, some of the best beers I have ever tasted, as well as scores that I have yet to sample. Craft beers are a big thing here, and there is a huge variety to choose from. The average price of a box of 12 beers in New Hampshire is around $12, which works out to 66p for a 355ml bottle, although a few weeks ago I found some at a local market selling at $5 for a case of 12. The most common and popular beers are around 5.5% to 6% alcohol by volume, although I have found one or two on the Internet  as high as 18%!

It has been interesting doing some of the research for this article. Only when I started researching the names of some of the foreign beers I had forgotten, did I discover that a number of countries are turning towards craft beers. Also some countries, such as Belgium, have beers that go back many hundreds of years. Australia surprised me with a huge number of craft beers. Much as I'd like to taste some of the older beers of Belgium and the many varieties of craft beer in Oz, I will have to be content with what is available locally - and there is plenty to choose from without having to resort to to such common brands as Budweiser or Millers.

Thanksgiving - and more

This afternoon I am babysitting my grandchildren, Gracie and Owen. Jake and Julie have gone Christmas shopping in Tilton at the outlet mall. Next week is Thanksgiving, and the day after is called Black Friday, traditionally the day on which prices tumble in an annual sell off.  Many outlets have already dropped their prices, and this week we invested in a new washer, a dryer and two-door Samsung fridge, saving about $1,000 on the usual retail price by taking advantage of the Black Friday deals. Jake and Julie will pick up Luke from day-care in a couple of hours' time and relieve me of my duties.

We have now entered my fourth season in the States, and a little more than a week ago the first snow fell - earlier than usual, and just a couple of inches here. On Wednesday there was a severe winter storm in New Hampshire that left some 200,000 people without power over Thanksgiving. Nine inches fell here, and another two the following night. With the daytime temperatures below freezing it was no wonder that I slipped and fell on the ice - still I should have been more careful, and can only blame myself. Many of the New  Hampshire and Vermont ski resorts have already opened up, and the pistes are open weeks before they normally do.

A little over a week ago Liz and I moved out of our tiny apartment and into a house in Littleton. We were going to use U-Haul, but they completely screwed us around. In the end my daughter Julie loaned us her Town & Country minivan, and we got almost everything moved the 13 miles in 5 or 6 trips. Jake helped out with the larger furniture when he got back from Pennsylvania a couple of days later. After a few hiccups with the pellet stove (I think the house has been empty for many months) everything is now working smoothly. It is wonderful to be living amongst one's possessions and to have enough room to swing the proverbial cat.

On Thursday I hosted my first ever Thanksgiving - the menu a mixture of Southern and British cooking. The main course consisted of the traditional turkey, which I cooked along with baby carrots and roast potatoes (which my family has always liked), and Liz cooked a sweet potato casserole with marshmallows, a green bean casserole with french fried onions, and a blue raspberry fluff with fruit and marshmallows. We also had sweet corn, stuffing and gravy (mine). To follow (at least an hour later) Julie had brought a home made apple pie, which was accompanied by cream, ice cream or snow cream (there were 11 inches of fresh snow on the ground). A filling time was had by all.

Saturday. I am feeling sorry for myself right now. On returning from the supermarket late this afternoon I took a tumble on the ice between the car and the front door, opening up a deep cut on my left cheek and a smaller one on my left eyebrow. Julie and Liz patched me up, but soon after Julie and the kids had left for home, I tripped over a chair leg and opened up the deep cut again. I have been sitting here with an ice pack waiting for the bleeding to stop.

Sunday. A good night's sleep and ready for another day. I have been in the States for almost seven months now. When I arrived at the end of April there were no leaves on the trees - just a few cherry trees in Boston had donned their Spring blossoms. Liz and I were living in a tiny (750 ft²) apartment. It was so small that there was little room to move, so small that when our possessions eventually arrived from South Africa after a 3-month journey, most of the 125 cardboard cartons had to be put into storage.

Well, the seven months has been enough time for me to have witnessed all four seasons. The maples, oaks and birches are once again bare, save for the blanket of snow on their branches. The brilliant green hues of Spring and Summer gave way to the browns, reds, yellows and oranges of Fall, and instead of decking the trees the leaves are now lying on the ground beneath eleven inches of snow. Today the daytime temperature has risen above freezing for the first time in several days.

New England living

It is a quiet Saturday afternoon, and I have been thinking about some of this week's happenings. One of the great things about living where we do, out in the countryside and surrounded by the forest, is the ability to be "at one" with Mother Nature. This is an essential part of my spiritual beliefs and those of my wife, Liz. She encourages smal visitors to our wooden deck by leaving out small donations to some of Natures smaller animals - gifts such as birdseed, peanuts, and deformed strawberries from our small garden. This has resulted in regular visits onto our deck by a chipmunk and a pair of gray squirrels.

Yesterday evening we had an unusual and rare visitor - a skunk, that tucked into some small pieces of bread just three feet from our open front door. Needless to say, we were careful not to disturb it lest it decided to give us a squirt. A little earlier on this afternoon one of the gray squirrels decided to investigate an apple core I had placed on the deck. After taking a quick taste it ran off to its den with the core in its front paws. I heard on the local news today that a bear had broken into a house just three miles away, so I guess we should be more wary in the future.

One of the things that has impressed me more than any other is the high level of culture that is found in New England. I can listen to classical music on one of the local radio stations 24/7, and there are many summer music festivals and live concerts in Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Maine. In addition there are any number of active theaters scattered through the region - as a "retired" thespian (do we ever retire?) this is something that I truly appreciate.

I have just acquired a new domain - North Country Web Services. The website is still very much under development so don't expect to see much there right now. I have noticed that there seems to be a complete dearth of people offering web design, content and general revamping up here near the Canadian border. Most of those options are gathered down in the South of the state closer to Boston. My other local website is starting to get more and more visitors, a pleasing affair.

We often sit out on the deck until dusk to watch the bats starting their nightly forays from the space between the roof and attic. That's also the time when the lightning bugs come out in their hundreds, giving a spectacular firework display. Last night we were also treated to a group of coyotes howling down by the Ammonoosuc River a half mile away.

Newsletter from over the Pond

I have now been settled in our tiny apartment for seven weeks. Liz has made a wonderful job of furnishing it on a shoestring. She found me a Lazyboy recliner - 2nd-hand but very functional and extremely comfortable. A couple of weeks ago we went to a barn just outside Lancaster - a barn full of every conceivable kind of bric-a-brac from saddles and harness, books, vinyls, tools and countless household items. We picked up a rocking chair and footrest (also rocking) for Liz, a practically new Black and Decker cordless drill/driver, and a new turntable/tuner (which we will need once my vinyls arrive) each for just $20.

We were very fortunate to get this apartment, although it is far too small for my liking and the stairs to the upper floor are too steep. We are going to know it when our 105 boxes arrive from Cape Town in 4 or 5 weeks time. We do, however, have a small patch of garden in which I have planted potatoes, onions and scarlet runners, and which already has a mass of strawberries growing - we shared the first one yesterday. Although the smallest of the 4 apartments here, we have the largest wooden deck - 12' x 45' and facing South, so it gets the sun all afternoon until it dips below the tree tops, which rise some 300' immediately to the West.

We are visited each morning by a chipmunk, that runs across the deck from one end to the other, returning with its cheeks swollen with birdseed. It has stolen them from the adjacent apartment deck, where a black bear knocked down the bird feeder a couple of nights ago. Yesterday it actually came in through our open front door, looked around and then left again. We were also visited yesterday by a friendly squirrel, which sat on the deck,s balustrade eating peanuts (left there by Liz accidentally on purpose). There are also bats in the attic, and we have seen a marmont and white tailed deer close by.

Julie has gone down to Maine with the kids - Gracie, who won 5 medals at the State Gymnastics Championships, is attending a Gym Camp there for the week. We will look after their animals while they are away, and Julie will get a well earned break, to be joined mid-week by Jake.

As I compose this I am sitting on the deck, surrounded by the forests and green meadows of the North Country. In the far distance I can see Mounts Washington, Lafayette, Lincoln and Osceola.We are taking a coffee break. A robin is perched on a tree trunk, staring at me. At this time of year the weather is almost identical to the UK, so I will be well acclimatized when I fly to see my sister in a few weeks time. I guess that's why this region is called New England. It will be different when winter arrives. During this past one the temperature remained well below freezing, night and day, for three months. Even the Ammonoosuc, a usually swift flowing river, was frozen over.

I recently spent a little over $640 on a new laptop to replace the one lost by Emirates during my journey over here. I have had to send it back to Dell as the operating system was not seeing the camera - an essential piece of equipment in this day and age. It was delivered in Texas overnight, so I'm hoping it will not be long before it gets back to me. In the meantime I will continue using Liz's machine,

Sold the Farm - really did this time

Unlike my post of 11/27/2011, which was written immediately before the South African banks let us down on the first of several occasions, we really have sold the farm this time. Papers are signed and the money's in the bank - not nearly as much as we would have liked, but enough to get significantly more personal possessions across the Pond. Liz will be reunited not just with myself, but with her collection of shoes, clothes, beads and beading, lighthouses and witches. I've been following the New Hampshire weather during their winter - I don't think I've seen the temperature rise above freezing for at least 2 months. I guess that if I miss Africa at all, which is unlikely, it will be at this time of the year. Still - I did spend 8 years living (off and on when not at sea) in the far North of Scotland, so I have been used to those conditions in the past, albeit many years ago. I guess I'll get used to it - I'll have to, won't I?

NH wild turkeys taken 30 minutes ago

What will I not miss about Africa in general, and South Africa in particular? Well, I never wanted to live in SA in the first place anyway, but was forced here by circumstances. Since democratization I have witnessed a country where reverse apartheid is blatantly being practiced - I'm not saying that BEE is a bad thing - far from it, but the way it has worked out in most cases has exposed corruption, nepotism and bad management at their worst. The poor in South Africa are still poor, whereas the well-off have lined their pockets and those of their cronies at the expense of the underprivileged. You only have to look around you at present. As many as 4 years ago the Mail & Guardian exposed the scandal behind the multi-million rand upgrades on Jacob Zuma's Nkandla home - upgrades carried out at the taxpayers' expense (for those who have never heard of him, Zuma is South Africa's multi-wife president). Today, 4 years later, the scandal lives on. 

I will miss none of the above. What I will miss is the bush and the wildlife. The fragrance after that first rain shower after a period of drought. The ability to take a drive of less than an hour and be among a 30-strong herd of elephant, the bush buck that live on my farm, the monkeys that scatter when I drive to Bathurst, the sound of the jackals as they hunt at night, the call of the frogs from our small dam after the year's first rains, and the call of the fiery-necked nightjar - these I will never forget.

Yesterday I took my monthly drive into Grahamstown. The main street showed up mismanagement at its worst. Imagine taking a trash bin - well, probably taking dozens of trash bins - and emptying them along the sidewalk and gutters. The amount of trash just lying there was appalling. The thing is, the ANC have individuals all over the country in local government, mayors and councilors, who have no idea how to run a craft booth let alone a municipality. And they are all riding around in new Mercedes and BMWs. I'm not jealous - just sorry for the many individuals who cannot escape from the situation. Which makes me very glad of the decision I made when I first arrived in Africa - never to give up my British passport.

There is so much to get done during the next 58 or so days. Police Clearance Certificate, hand in Beretta, international driving permit, stop Eskom, stop Telkom, stop DStv, stop Post Box, change of address with various agencies, sell furniture, stop car insurance ... the list goes on. My clients will find my new telephone number on my main website, and I will still be available for work from South Africa. Just remember though, that if you call me the difference is 6 hours in SA winter and 7 in summer.

RETR command failed - 4 billion emails in inbox

I always seem to get the interesting ones - sometimes I put this down to the abysmal Internet speed provided by my ISP, but this time I cannot. I use Thunderbird as my email client, and it has served me well over the years. However a few days back I started getting this message:

After carrying out some research through Google it became apparent that the problem was not a Thunderbird one, but the mail server, in my case hosted through GoDaddy. Several individuals had reported through various forums that they had solved the problem by logging into the mail server and clearing out junk files. In my case I found about 400 files in my inbox but the other boxes were empty. Anyway, I deleted all but one message, which would not delete.  I tried moving the message to the trash box - it would not move. Naturally I assumed this file to be the cause of the problem - not so.

On logging out of the server I sent a test file to myself and tried to download it - to no avail, and when I tried to log back into the mail server again I got this message:

Clearly this was going to be a case of summoning the technicians at GoDaddy, and I had Liz (now in New Hampshire while I am stuck back here in South Africa trying to sell the farm) contact the GoDaddy team to attempt to resolve the problem - and they did. They had Liz log into the mail server from the back end, and here's what she found in my inbox:

Yes, you saw it right - more than 4 billion files in my inbox !  4,294,967,295 files to be precise! Well to cut a long story short, they deleted the files - but I guess down in Phoenix they're still talking about how they got in there in the first place. My immediate thought was in the direction of a virus or similar. I would appreciate comments in this regard.

Anyway, the problem has now been solved and I am once more able to download my email messages and to log on to the mail server if needs be.

Please contact me for Internet content of any kind - you will not find better!

New New Hampshire website

It has been a while since I last posted here, mostly because I have been kept busy writing for clients here in South Africa and in Myrtle Beach, SC.

Most of my regular readers will know of my plans to relocate to North Carolina, and of how my wife Liz flew back to the States more than a year ago while I stayed behind in the Eastern Cape to finalize the sale of our smallholding. After spending a year staying with her daughter, circumstances forced Liz to move on from Louisiana, supposedly to NC. However, things have changed. I was not happy about Liz arriving in NC under the conditions that were forced upon her, and so I asked my daughter Julie in New England if she wouldn't mind Liz staying with her for a while, and this is why Liz is now firmly ensconced in the Granite State with Julie and my three grandchildren.

To cut a long story short, Liz is so happy in her new home that we have decided that it is to be our final relocation destination, and I can't wait to get there. These new circumstances have led me to creating a new website, which, at the time of writing is just partly finished, although coming along in leaps and bounds. The design is all there, and it is now just a matter of populating it with good content and then marketing it. We have based the design on our info-nc and info-sc websites, which have proved so popular in the past, and the pic for the header was taken by Liz a week or so ago.

There seems to be no shortage of writing work on the other side of The Pond, unlike here in darkest Africa. Many of the domains ending with .co.za have been populated with content that leaves much to be desired, clearly having been written by someone not fluent in the English language, and of its subtle nuances and many idioms. This is just another sign of the times in South Africa, and is something that goes hand in hand with the neo-apartheid policies of the present government. The new upper class in South Africa is the reason for many of the setbacks experienced in the country. Much of the government and industry is corrupt, and the new leaders are filling their pockets at the expense of the poor. Why, only last week a local government official here in the Eastern Cape, after resigning from her position after only 5 months, was given a handshake of R2.5 million!  Only in Africa!

I will not miss this country one iota. I'm ready to leave - just need to sell the farm. Which brings me to one final point. A couple of days ago I received an email from some asinine idiot offering me R200,000 cash for the farm (I have just dropped the asking price to below R1 million). With the Rand crashing the way it is, I will consider any sensible offer, but I have only one reply to sheer stupidity - kma.