From Bloomsbury to Cambridge in Bloom

After all the fun of weeding the yard and then doing taxes during my visit home for Spring Break, I have sadly just returned to Cambridge. In truth, I had a wonderful homecoming to Arkansas and a too brief visit with my family in N.J. too. If Tricia weren’t coming to stay with me in Cambridge in thirteen days for the rest of this last term, I’d be most sad–not oh to be in England sad, but ah to be away from Fayetteville sad.
So I came back a couple of days before Easter Term itself begins on St. George’s Day (better known as my sister Diane’s birthday) in order to attend the London Chaucer [drink now] Conference at the Senate House of the University of London. This year’s theme was "Chaucer [drink now] and Time." I myself did a twenty minute paper on Chaucer’s [drink now] prosody. Not only was I quite afraid of putting the entire audience to sleep, but I dreaded nodding off myself while reading because I was still so jet-lagged. However, my own gig went well enough. The whole conference was, not surprisingly, first rate. I sucked up. . .I mean, I networked with a number of major scholars in my field who, as instructed by Chaucer’s [drink now] House of Fame, remain the most humble, generous and yet spectacular brains in English.
I stayed at a lovely bathroom-down-the-hall hotel–the Penn Club <http://www.pennclub.co.uk%3e./>. It was only £55 for a single–which is still not cheap because the dollar is dying here. Excellent coffee if you like American (not "Americano") brew.
I trained from London to Cambridge on Saturday. Wolfson seemed abandoned. . ."seems," nay ‘twas. But everybody is returning today, Sunday. I also learned that the head porter David had a heart attack just as he was preparing to vacation in Egypt. He’s well on the mend, I hear, which is so wonderful. But how does this place work without him? Stay tuned for future notes from Chaosville.
I’ve been moved to a new room in W-block. "Luxury!"–well, sort of. Everything is new and clean and works–which America does better. This room lacks the leaky, creaky charm of the Penguin Palace; however, it does have a double bed.
For me, the most astonishing feature of my return to England has been seeing and smelling the sheer beauty of the season. Spring was going quite well in Arkansas; our red azaleas were especially spectacular and the dogwoods too. . .but then that hard frost hit. Even our boxwoods croaked. But here it’s hayfever heaven.
I wish I knew the names of flowers. For me, most of them remain nouns in poems with handy footnotes. But I do know two. Right in front of the Porter’s Lodge at Wolfson is a splendiferous, oh so Arkansas-like Redbud. Here it’s called a "Judas tree" because the flowers appear before the leaves, and that phenomenon betrays God, I guess. Does every Southerner know this already? And, if so, why do you keep such secrets from us damn Yankees?
Of course, the other name I know is the "daisy"– the "eye of the day," Chaucer’s [drink now] favorite flower.
Well, it’s time to get all my ducks in a row.