First Thing.

Right (and that is how all my posts will begin) - this is it: my first post on this "blog". What a horrific word - "blog". It makes me think of some Lizard King arising from a primeval pond.

Right. These short bits will be about my time as a young man in the UK. Early nineties, petrified Suffolk country, large and ancient manor, uncomfortable couplings, technicolor - the picture has been made.

I'm an American. Minnesotan by birth and a bit Paul Bunyanish. Both sides of the family from German farmer stock (actually we were told they were Frisian and fled far away 500 years ago when the Spanish weren't so kind and Mallorca wasn't an option).

Quite quiet and perhaps a tad too sensitive (was it Stendahl who wrote he was born without epidermis?), I rarely thought of much outside Anoka County. Yes that place exists and you can look it up, reader.

Somehow, after many strange and fantastic coincidences (all true), I wound up as a gardener in a convent located in a, well, castle - I guess - in the UK. These coincidences, this wringing of fate, this failure and triumph of the Will - this is the subject of my "blog".

Why?

Well, I have a bit of time on my hands. All the time, actually. Having recently been persuaded to retire from my previous position (mostly prone) at a well-regarded college, and some selfish self-reflection,  I decided it would be healthy to tell the tale. Why is my neighbor mowing his lawn at this hour?

Mind you, I am no Anglophile. Anyone can write a quite-truthful memoir of zany characters populating a charming British village, or even scribble endlessly about pubescent magicians. In fact, I have spent far more time on the Continent. The broad boulevards, Linden trees, brutally efficient postal service...ach, that ist the life!

The point is that the time spent there in the UK was a bit insane.

It will be a wondrous story. All true and based on my diary that I precociously entitled "Galehaut". It is full of a ferocious miniature script based on Greek, Latin, and German that I (it's true) invented called "Cryptographia".

I have changed some of the names out of lack of interest in their actual, and quite common, references.

Please enjoy and come back often. My next post will describe how I arrived at the Convent. At that time, reader, there was a newspaper headline swirling around the town entitled "The Bug Wot Ate Me Face". This unnerved me greatly.

So please join me. It will all be truthful and quite normal.

Just like me.