D.C. Diary: The Turkey Tycoon

We've had a very quiet Thanksgiving holiday this year, most of it having been spent in our attic. We did venture out for Thanksgiving Day itself and had a wonderful evening involving some good friends, a lot of eating, much laughter and a game of charades. Of course, the festivities were somewhat marred by the sad news that the Turkey Tycoon, Sir Bernard Matthews, had passed away. (But what spectacular timing for the news of his death to break at Thanksgiving, and as UK families are gearing up for Christmas - yet further proof of Mr. Matthews' marketing genius). Being from Bootiful Norfolk myself (I was one of the few people at my school who did not have a holiday job skinning turkeys or working on a Turkey Twizzler production line), I was particularly interested - and actually somewhat surprised - to see that there was so much coverage of the local boy done good. The news of his death even made The Washington Post. The most entertaining obituary appeared in The Telegraph, which gave a great quote:

" Though sensitive to criticism, [Matthews] was robust in defending himself. "Turkeys have a very low IQ," he said, rejecting criticism of the conditions in his turkey houses. "All they need is food and warmth. They don't need to be taken to a cinema twice a week." "

Brilliant.

And so back to the attic. Rather than taking a trip to North Carolina, which had been our original plan, we decided to be sensible, stay home for the long weekend and start preparing for our departure. We will be leaving the US in January - a fact about which we have been, thus far, in total denial. (I keep thinking if we don't mention it then maybe the Embassy might forget that we are supposed to go home and we could just stay in Washington forever). So we have spent most of the Thanksgiving holiday clearing out the attic, packing boxes, sorting baby clothes and wondering why moving countries never gets any easier. We seem to be encountering the problem faced by every family on a diplomatic posting: one spends three years living in a nice big house in a foreign country, during which time one's possessions mysteriously expand to fit the available space, before remembering that we will be returning home to a small flat in London (or in our case my mother's house in Suffolk) where the Persian carpets and crystal glasses seem distinctly out of place. So we have spent the last three days dividing our worldly goods into five categories: long-term storage, medium-term storage, stuff to sell, stuff to give away and stuff we actually need when we get home. We've got the packers coming round soon to estimate whether our belongings will be within our allotted shipping allowance. I just hope they'll be able to advise us exactly how to squeeze the contents of a three-bedroomed house into four small suitcases and a couple of cardboard boxes.