Profession

Kensington

I spent the weekend mostly getting getting my house ready for a two week absence--which mainly involved purging the fridge of perishables and making sure everything was clean. I tidied my textbooks away in my library in a place of honor and prepared space on the wall for my new diploma, as well as placing a grocery order that would be delivered to the gatehouse on Monday. I went on a date with Jon on Saturday night and spent some time with my friends on Sunday. Jinx was just about ready to deploy the cockroaches, and I'd be able to keep up on events through the computer. They also promised to keep me informed if things broke before I came back. Thus reassured, the dogs and I slept in  on Monday and went out to the airport for our 2 pm flight. This time there was no trouble with the pups' Asgard citizenship and they slept almost the entire time. They liked taking off and landing but were bored with everything in-between. We took a cab to the house, picked up the groceries, and walked along the recently-shoveled paths to the house. It smelled fusty when we came in, but it had been a long time since we'd lived there. The dogs went back outside for a frolic and to sniff around, and I put the food away and turned on the heat. It was chilly. Although the air filters kept dust to a minimum, I did a bit of cleaning and brought out throw pillows and afghans out of storage, flicking on the fireplace in the living room so that the pups would have some place to warm up when they came home. Upstairs, there was unpacking to be done, then I just kind of prowled around my house to sort of reacquaint myself.

The hot tub was drained but not the pool; it took a lot of time and water to drain it, so it was easier to have the equipment to do automatic maintenance. The hot tub had components that could be clogged with the buildup of minerals, so that was always drained, and because I'd only be here for a couple of weeks, I wouldn't be refilling it this trip. I was glad to be able to swim, though. Everything looked good, and as I came back upstairs, the pups burst through the kitchen door, having had a great time playing in the snow and investigating the village. I dried them off and they padded off for a good snooze in front of the fire.

I went into my study; it was what I missed the most when I was in New York. I had my USA Rowing medals in my library in the US, but here was my Cambridge memorabilia. My diploma, handsomely framed and my big academic achievement, had pride of place on the wall; there were also mementos from my college rowing team and the university VIII that I'd coxed. Since I'd modeled it after my tutor's study at university, this place was at the center of my heart, the place where I really felt my accomplishments the most. Cambridge had been the best part of my life so far, all in all, but it had also been a time when I'd been estranged from my immediate family, and let's not mention the graduation. I flicked on the desk lamp and started reviewing the plans for the photo shoot; what I'd need to bring, what was being provided, what I needed to do to gain entry. I'd already signed the contract, which contained a confidentiality clause in case I saw anything sensitive at Kensington Palace. Originally, I'd been expected to turn over my negatives and all storage devices, but I'd refused to lose all rights to my work and refused. I'd won that round, but it had taken some doing; my standard contract clauses were eventually accepted. They spelled out how I could use the images I took--I could display one image in my studio, but not in any advertisements or other work such as a retrospective (I needed to do a lot more work before that was even a possibility) without written permission. That worked for me.

I puttered around for a couple of days, meeting up with friends who were still around, hearing the latest news and gossip, then on Wednesday, a car picked me up and took me to the palace. Quite an experience. The driver was formal but friendly, and he gave me little touristy snippets of information about the palace and grounds. I knew that the palace had been halfway destroyed in an alien attack about two hundred years ago, but it had been rebuilt as a symbol of British resilience. The royals had paid for it themselves, with the help of their insurance payout, and had taken the opportunity to modernize it to the standards of the time. It had been restored as closely to the original as possible and was a baroque showpiece. He delivered me through the south gate to a security post, which politely went through my camera bags and equipment cases rather than sending them through the scanner, which sometimes messed with the cameras. I'd already had the film canisters out, just in case. There would be a person to escort me to the place the princess had chosen and to help with the equipment, but they were late. I was chatting with the guards about what it was like to work in a palace when my classmate showed up.