Andre becomes eligible to be a Brit

The weather continues its atrocious way through August as it began in July, with the wind switching from the N.W. to the N.E., bringing heavy rain lashing my windows at the back instead of those at the front. It is cold and miserable, and I must seize any brief moment I can grab to walk the dogs. The pigeons sit huddled on the roof tops looking miserable, yet in the distant sky a lone swallow swirls about, no doubt trying to dodge the rain as he hunts for his feed.

The Sainsbury's delivery man has just arrived, bringing the first batch of drinks for our Heave Awa' celebration. He is wet and cold, but says it's not too bad when he dries out in his van between deliveries; the worse time is when he gets totally drenched and doesn't dry out all day. The celebration is only six weeks away, but Ann is reluctant to order too many drinks yet in case either of us is ill or doesn't make it. We take a break for toast and tea, now the bread has arrived.

 Andre has been in the UK long enough to qualify for citizenship, and this week took his "Life in Britain" test in London to complete the process. Sample questions were: Which two houses fought in the Wars of the Roses? Who was given the title of Lord Protector? What king was defeated by Oliver Cromwell during the Civil War and hid in an oak tree before escaping to Europe? We all tried the practice tests, and while Ann and Edwin passed, I confess I failed. I also failed my mock driving theory test when Andre was practicing for that, but I suppose I could swat up a bit if I really had to take it again. Thankfully we don't yet have to retake the driving test every couple of years; we really need our cars, living here in the sticks with no shops and not even a bus for transport. I suppose we'd have to rely even more heavily on Amazon orders  and take a taxi for vital appointments.

Lucy said Andre needn't have taken the test to become a British Citizen, as she would marry him. She would then be called Lucy Suzzy, which amused us all, but made me think of an alternative twist: gay man comes out of the closet and confesses to being secretly hetro, leaves his partner, and runs off to marry partner's sister. It would certainly be unusual. Edwin may be able to quote such a story already being extant, otherwise I offer it to any budding authors.

I had an online meeting yesterday with someone in Indiana who'd read one of my papers and wanted to talk about its relevance to his own work. Chris is a young man with wild hair and a straggly beard, fresh from his PhD so he knows much more physics than I do and is far more up to date, leaving me reluctant to return his call, but he was easy going and the chat was general. He's left academia to work for a start-up of his friend's father; it's one of those enterprises that will either crash and burn rapidly or else go on to make the founders rich, but he finds it too demanding and time-consuming so is already looking for another job. I wished him well and hope he keeps in touch about his future paper.