Mark Carroll's Journal

This morning, I wondered if the UK Conservative leadership are deceptive or^* ignorant; I concluded that, despite Hanlon's Razor, they probably share the current US Republicans' tendency toward the former. Having often felt somewhat to the right of many of my friends, I surprise myself in also feeling even somewhat left of Labour these days. My father opined that people move rightward as they grow older. If they do, the parties seem to be outpacing me.

Decades ago, I had the sense that, politicians may get it wrong but at least they were often at least trying to find their way to good policy. Recent decades have made it increasingly difficult to extend such benefit of the doubt. Well, I'll credit much of the US Democratic Party with that I believe they genuinely want impoverished minorities not to suffer then die, but that feels a low bar.

Maybe I just need a bit more sleep, I awoke somewhat prematurely this morning. Things may seem rosier then …

^*One may suspect and.

It feels odd to be back in a rented flat having lived in our own detached house. I enjoyed the feeling that my family and I could be truly alone, left to our own devices, even for the long term. So long as it were legal, we could do what we liked in and to that house, and keep on doing it, just so long as I continued generating at least some income. I savoured having a small world all of our own that was nobody else's business whatsoever.

I do not eat much fast food but I do enjoy it. In my last days here, I sometime eat at places that do not have locations in Scotland. Today's choice was Hardee's, I've not visited for years and I like their mushroom swiss burger. It turned out that they have a location in Oliver Springs so I headed there this lunchtime. For not being busy, they were rather slow, they omitted the sauces/dips I'd ordered, and the burger was … not something that would create in me the ability to miss it, not that I can put my finger on the disappointment. Their slowness was doubly surprising given that I had placed the order from home for pick-up ASAP. Still, they were apologetic enough about the delay that they assured me that my apple pie was the best of the batch, though I'd expect a small variance among them.

While waiting for Hardee's to complete my order, I sat in the warm sunshine, in my rented Chevy Malibu, watching the traffic on state route 62, and reflected on how very at home I feel in the less-populated areas of the US. I really enjoy living here, that's why I returned, and why I'd hoped to be able to share it with my children now that they are adults. Still, at least I got to spend some more time here, we all have alternative lives that we might have lived, I just wish that I'd had more warning that my stay would be greatly truncated. On the way back home, I saw four deer in somebody's back yard.

It is strange to be driving an automatic, I keep wanting to control the gears. East Tennessee can get hilly and I like to use low gear downhill. The automatic has an L which seems to be a lower gear but too mildly so. I was surprised to observe that the cruise control seems to shift into a higher gear when going rather faster than the target speed but, again, insufficiently aggressively. I give it marks for effort, though.

I was thinking back to where I've lived over my life. I was born in Urmston in Manchester, my parents moved to a village in mid-Cornwall, I read for my degree in Cambridge and got a summer job there for my last break. After graduating, I moved to Columbus, Ohio, back to Cambridge, England, back to Ohio again: the cities of Columbus and Delaware, then rural outside Marysville. After that, New England: Providence, Rhode Island, then Belmont, Massachusetts. From there I took a job in Dundee, Scotland, lived in two different villages in Perthshire, moved here to Tennessee, first to a short-lease apartment, then a house, and am now to move to Aberdeen, Scotland. Quite a mix of rural and not. A result of these moves is that my eldest child attended seven different schools: two in Ohio, one in Rhode Island, two in Massachusetts, two in Scotland. We ensured that the children never had to change high school.

An urgent reason (a good one) arose for me to return to Scotland within the next few weeks so I have now accepted an offer to be programming in Rust for a startup. The plan is for me to work remotely from Aberdeen and apply for family visas for my wife and her sons to come to join me there. I have therefore been unusually busy recently and that will continue for some while yet as many ducks require linear arrangement. Of course, it would be incredibly helpful for the visas to then be approved but at least the processing times are far shorter than their American equivalents even if the fees are outrageously high.

(Kudos to Bright Purple for finding me that vacancy and some other good prospects.)

I was just thinking back to when I made toad-in-the-hole in summer 1995 and found myself suspecting that those who were with me probably have no memory of it. There are many memories from years back, some of which concern others more than I, and, quite often, if I mention these past occurrences, those concerned have no recollection of them. For instance, somebody I'm no longer in touch with made me lasagne just a few years later, I wonder if they now recall. More generally, I wonder if others remember equally many things, mostly ones that I forgot, or if I remember more than most.

For someone who grew up in England, another Christmas living alone in the US during a pandemic will certainly be strange. Listening to BBC Radio online helps. In my grocery shopping today, given what is easily available, I went more for convenience foods than items I would have thought of as being seasonal; I will cook my usual, more healthful, meals on fewer days. Complicating the meal planning are that the coming two weeks include days off work and a rescheduling of the usual Saturday morning shopping.

With today's lunch I am eating a can of Progresso's spicy Italian-style wedding soup. I give them credit: their spicy range does reach a good heat level for me. Further, my usual fallback of non-spicy soups — lentil, garden vegetable, butternut squash, hearty tomato — are all quite good, notable given that I do not usually like canned butternut squash soup.

Stopping in Aldi was a disappointment: I planned to pick up Edam cheese and white chocolate, they appeared to stock neither. Aldi's the only place in the city that I have found Edam, and I had wanted white chocolate in attempting a simple cookie recipe (just an experiment), fortunately Food City had plenty.

Also fortunate was the weather: we had thunder and lightning earlier but the rain was already lighter by the time I finally dragged myself out of the house. Tomorrow is forecast to be sunnier.

During my shopping, I was comfortable in wearing an FFP2 under my cloth mask that has a HEPA filter inserted into its pouch (thanks to mst3kmoxie). Few other shoppers were masked.

( I am a better researcher than I look on paper. )

( My current workplace is different because I am surrounded by acknowledged experts. )

( I am not expected to lead research but I would like to. ) I am minded to try not being inhibited by the local expertise, just go ahead, do some reading, and put forward research ideas anyway, even if I doubt their relative merit, people can fund them or dismiss them but at least I will have shown what I can. It feels a bit like addressing imposter syndrome by: act as if you are not an imposter and see if it flies. ( If I don't get to then at least I can still help those who are also good at it. )

I am now back from visiting Scotland for a few weeks, helping mst3kmoxie and our children to move house. It had been just about a year since I had last seen them. I loved getting to be with them and help out. It is strange to adjust now to being without them again, not even in a welcoming house yet, given the work that still needs done here. I know this path is right for the longer term but it's not easy in the meantime. Coming back home, waiting for my connection in Atlanta, I changed my cash, payment cards, driver license, etc., in my wallet. It felt oddly like changing identity and, on reflection, that's hardly false. My life here is very different and separate to that in Scotland. On a different note, the lined ceiling at the gates in Schiphol made me feel slightly like Max Headroom when I looked at myself on a video call there.

Travel in the times of SARS-CoV-2 was interesting. With my connection at Schiphol, outbound I thought that I might need a health declaration form for the Netherlands. No, but I needed one on my return where I had also, just a couple of days ago, printed an old version of the passenger attestation form for the US. Similarly inconsistently, the domestic Delta flights started with providing me a santizing wipe but the long-haul didn't. To my surprise, on returning to the US, no longer did I have to provide a customs declaration form (electronic or paper) to someone after passport control, instead the passport guy asked me a little about what I'd brought, then that was it, apart from those randomly pulled aside later. It's always annoying to have a international-to-domestic US-side connection as, at least in my limited experience, one has to fuss with one's checked baggage and pass through security again. The UK wanted me to be tested for COVID-19 after arrival, the US before departure, so I did both tests during my visit. I have another test coming up soon, my employer was happy to provide me one because of my travel.

My first impression of Perthshire was that I had forgotten how pretty it is. First impression back in Knoxville were that I'd forgotten how the drivers at the speed limit are well into the lower quartile of speeds. Mask-wearing was imperfect in Dundee, even among staff in establishments requiring it, but then, when I shopped for groceries on return to Oak Ridge, I found that I was now just about the only person still wearing a mask. For the travel, I used FFP2's which felt as if they worked well.

I still find that my parents are much in mind. For me there is much to appreciate about my childhood with them. Earlier this week I finally got around to again polishing the leather shoes that I wear to work. As a child, cleaning our shoes was a weekly chore that I did with my father. The wooden brush that I used this week for applying the polish still bears his handwriting on the back.