As Hampton Court shifts from flower to lifestyle show, garden ideas shrink as shopping grows

A browse back through the photos from past outings to the Hampton Court Flower Show tells the tale.  It's always been a shoppers paradise.  Every year, I go with my friends Philippa and Alex, and every year we wonder how the hell we're going to get home by the end of it.  (Pictured is Alex, wedged in the back of my convertible with a few of this season's prizes.)  And while plants have always been the backbone of our sprees, each year the other stuff seems to grow.

This year, a food and cooking pavilion in the middle of the grounds, where the Daily Mail-sponsored show gardens used to be, seemed to indicate a tipping of the balance towards a broader lifestyle show with gardening roots than the strictly horticultural outing of years past.  The arts and crafts tent seemed more crowded than ever and I'd guess more than half the vendors' booths were decorative geegaws, clothing, garden furniture or tools rather than plants.  There was even one stand hawking cars.  Granted, they were electric cars and the company was sponsoring a garden to play on the whole green agenda, but still...

Don't get me wrong.  I had a blast.  The food tent was a brilliant addition.   Themed around grow-your-own vegetables, it offered both plants and foodstuffs to take home, with a theatre to one side where chefs demonstrated recipes drawn from the garden's bounty.  I came home with a head of fresh giant garlic, almost impossible to find in grocery stores, and a subscription to Riverford Organics' weekly fruit and veg delivery.

But in this year where I went to Hampton Court with studious intent and a completely blank plan for the current mud patch that's soon to be my garden, actual gardening ideas were thin on the ground.  The only thing I actually photographed with a speculative eye was the bottle design feature in the Badger Beer garden.  Empty beer bottles, turned upside down, balanced on bamboo rods and massed together in undulating waves.  It would have sparkled nicely in the sun, had there been any, and we could whip that up in our own garden with empty wine bottles after just a few months.  (Or after the house warming party.)

There seemed to be fewer show gardens, and those were less memorable than in past years.  The modern, conceptual gardens bit seems to be getting bigger every year.  Dominated by plexiglass cubes, long tunnels and modern art installations, this bit always leaves me cold.  This year there was a large, unadorned square of concrete paving blocks.  Huh?  The only thing worth a lengthy pause here was one of those plexiglass cubes, filled with butterflies and their attracting plants.

Of the more traditional displays, a Hawaiian garden with tropical plants and a black tufa water feature entranced me, more for the memories it evoked of the islands than for practical planting ideas.  The urban gardens section was interesting, with glimpses of agrarian bliss through holes in grim, graffitied walls.  A tropical garden planted inside a building covered with artificial grass (sponsored by the grass maker, of course), viewable only through thin windows, was memorable if not beautiful.  Lots of pleasant things to look at, but my notebook remained closed in my handbag.  Across all the gardens, only a small one with a particularly good use of box hedging to divide a limited space into distinct garden rooms had me pausing thoughtfully.

That doesn't diminish the fun.  The main floral marquee was as magnificent as ever and, though I wasn't buying plants this year, it had my brain fizzing with plans for next.  The north facing exterior wall of the house, which I'm fairly sure will never be in direct sunlight, is crying out for a hosta garden.  I lingered over specialty suppliers' displays, appreciating the diversity of plants and wondering how many varieties I could get into a 9x3 bed.  And could I work in that little stream, as well?  I couldn't resist ALL the plants, however.  I am now the proud owner of a fig tree, something I've been fantasising about since I sat under the figs in my uncle's garden as a child and ate the warm, treacle-like fruit right off the branches.

The biggest flights of fantasy, however, came on two stands without plants.  First, magnificent bronze sculptures of trees, wired as fountains so that water flows from the top, dripping down leaves until it falls like tinkling rain into the pool below.  My imagination was designing a whole water garden around it.  And then there were the luxury chicken coups.  I adored the miniature gypsy caravan, but even in my fantastical early thoughts know there's not enough room for that.  However, it turns out that charming little fenced options can house four bantams happily.  And would fit easily behind the garage.  Fresh eggs and a nod to country living.  But could Datchet the bird-obsessed spaniel share a back garden with four hens?

I suspect our eggs will continue to come from the shop.

Forget the Royal Opera House. For a magic Flute, give me Longborough

It takes an opera you've seen before to really drive home just how special Longborough is.  I've written about all four of our excursions to this up-and-coming opera festival since our first outing, to Die Walküre, in 2010.  I've loved the whole feel of the place, the Cotswold setting, the black tie picnics in the fields, the luxurious B&B to round out the weekend.  And the opera performances, of course.  Up to this point, however, everything we'd seen on stage was new to me.

This summer's first production was The Magic Flute, a Mozart classic with fantastic music, a strange plot and one aria that must be amongst the 10 greatest pieces of music ever written.  We'd seen the full bells and whistles version at the Royal Opera house last year.  I loved it.  But Longborough bettered it.

Granted, there was no big budget production, lavish costumes or internationally-known singers.  Longborough's stage is no bigger or more advanced than that of a high school musical, and their budgets allow only economical sets.  Budgets force a cleverness of design that, in this case, created a compelling and mysterious set that moved the plot along elegantly.  There's innovation in production, too.  The spoken parts of the opera were done in English.  It drew some gasps of shock from the audience, but why not?  It gave the plot a continuity and pace I hadn't felt in the more traditional production.

Sliding screens gave us a black, ominous vortex that served as the Queen of the Night's realm.  Those slid back to reveal clean lines of a simple building; the structure and order of Sarastro's temple.  Tricks of perspective and diaphanous screens made the stage look much deeper than it was.  Most impressively, a large, silky expanse of cloth was variously a serpent, a screen, an ocean and the murky clouds of dreaming, thanks to the dextrous manipulations of the cast.  Papageno's birds are tied to helium balloons and you can watch the sprites make thunder by rattling a sheet of metal.  The only high tech effect was lights shining from books to illuminate the faces of the temple priests holding them.  Otherwise, it felt like a production Mozart would have recognised.  And that felt good.


I thought all the voices were strong, and that Penelope Randall-Davis’ Queen of the Night delivered the famous "Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen" ("The vengeance of Hell boils in my heart") better than I'd heard it at the Royal Opera House.  That, of course, may be to do with sitting practically on top of the performers.  When you can hear each nuance, see every movement and pick up even small facial movements, everything comes to greater life.  That effect was glaringly noticeable in Nicholas Merryweather's Papageno (pictured above), brought to his full comic potential by the singer's gangling frame and expressive face.


Outside, the weather was dire.  We'd assembled a merry band that wasn't going to give in, however.  Screened from the worst by our tent, we did a full four-course dinner, complete with silver candelabra, champagne and chicken liver parfait brûlée flamed on the tailgate.  It might have been cold and wet, but it was elegant.


As usual, we returned to Windy Ridge.  Immediately after the opera, we returned on a golf cart, trying to avoid crashing into trees as we drove through a pitch-black arboretum.   I haven't laughed that hard in years.  At the end of the path was my favourite B&B in the UK, which continues to delight.  I've started referring to it as our holiday cottage.  Why bother with the maintenance issues and responsibilities of a second home when we can settle in to this lovely estate a few times a year?

Night class at Newlyns entertains without detail of Saturdays

After enjoying two full-day Saturday classes at our local cooking school (Butcher it, Cook it, Carve it and Fabulous Fish), I thought I'd try out Newlyns' weeknight offerings.  Half the time and half the price.  How would it stack up to the more detailed course?


I enjoyed it, but this is definitely a different beast from the Saturday classes.  Our Tapas and Spanish Wine night was less serious instruction, more a bit of cooking followed by a merry meal and a casual wine tasting.  

I loved all the recipes; they're probably my favourite of all the dishes I've cooked at the school.  Prawns with a Romesco sauce, chorizo with chickpeas and tomaca (a type of bruschetta).  Good thing I took the class with my friend Christine rather than my husband, however, as all three recipes were laced with tomato.  With so little time, head chef Hannah can't really demonstrate, so she quickly talks you through the recipes, then leaves you to read and cook with her stopping by to help. The advantage is that you don't have such a long time on your feet, and the self-cooked meal we sat down to was easily the best of the three classes.  There are take-away containers should you have leftovers, but this isn't the multiple meal take-home of the Saturday classes.  We enjoyed our food so much there wasn't much to bring back!


The wine tasting was a great idea, but a bit at odds with the food.  One of the principals of Caviste, the wine shop within Newlyns' bigger store, ran us through a variety of his favourite bottles from Spain.  It was a great selection, comprising a cava and a sherry (both of which were the house wines at world-famous El Bulli, yet were both under £15 a bottle), one white, two reds and a pedro ximenez.  Two problems.  First, because everyone straggled in from the kitchen at different times, the tasting didn't get under way until most people had finished their prawns.  Which, it turns out, was the dish that matched best with most of the wines.  Second, the wines weren't chosen to match the food, but were simply the instructors' six favourites.  Several were so at odds with the food that, to be honest, we would have done better to finish eating completely, and then do the tasting with water biscuits alone.


But, heck, I soldiered through.  And in doing so found that the Vina Sulpicia Tinto 2009 from Castilla y Leon is a complex, deep, full fruit wine that can go head-to-head with really expensive Burgundies or Bordeaux for £10.95.  And the Fernando Classic Pedro Ximenez, from Jerez, Andalucia, which I had never had before, was an eye opener.  Liquid raisins in a glass, with a kick.  A great break from the usual port.


For your at-home discovery, I include the recipe for my favourite dish of the night.  Which you might want to try with a white Rioja called Labastida Tierra Bianco 2010.


CHORIZO WITH CHICKPEAS
2-3 tbsp olive oil
1 large onion, roughly chopped
2 garlic cloves, chopped
250g chorizo, in small, fine slices
150ml sherry
Pinch of dried chillies
100g chickpeas (garbanzo beans), rinsed and drained
2 tbs chopped, flat-leaved parsley
3 beefsteak tomatoes, chopped roughly


Place the oil in a frying pan and heat.  Add the chopped onion and garlic and cook on a medium heat until caramelised.


Add the chorizo and cook for another 3 minutes until softened and the oil is released.


Add the sherry and deglaze the pan.


Add the chillies, chickpeas and tomatoes and cook on a low simmer until the tomato has dissolved completely into a sauce, and thickened up.


Serve with flat-leaved parsley sprinkled on top.

Bring on the gardeners to save Olympic Park

I was lucky to get a sneak preview of London's Olympic Park yesterday.  Overall impression:  Wow, is this grim.  And grey.  Very grey.

My view was from the balcony of Cisco House.  The networking company's penthouse complex, perched atop an office building on the edge of a huge shopping mall right next to the park, is a beautifully executed corporate hospitality and marketing complex.  But in a better-than-usual location.  As a major partner and provider to the Olympics, it made sense for Cisco to build next to the big show, and one of the glories of the place is a broad, covered balcony overlooking the heart of the new sports complex.

There's no denying that the architecture is good.  The swimming pavilion (middle left) is supposed to look like a wave but reminded me of some giant whale's tongue.  Amusing, and certainly aquatic. Water polo, just across from it, is monumental and interesting. The main stadium looks like it will soon start spinning and levitate on a mission to Mars.  Very Disney Tomorrowland vision of the future.  That vibe continues with the observation tower you can spot sticking up on the left, which looks like it should have a great roller coaster zipping around it but, sadly, those curves are just a giant sculpture with an observation deck on top.

And those things in the front?  Security tents, I was told.  A frightening logistical challenge, but obviously necessary.

You can see what a horrifically grey and wet day it was.  One hopes the weather improves in late July and August but, let's be honest:  this is England.  Chances are poor, especially since May and June have already been a chilly washout.  So we have white and grey buildings, against a backdrop of white and grey skies.

Maybe they were trying to be culturally in tune with the ancient Greeks.  Pericles and his boys loved white buildings.  The Acropolis looks fabulous against its frequent backdrop of vivid blue.  This grey on grey London scheme, I'm afraid, isn't promising.

If you're hoping the background will add some colour, think again.  We don't have mountains or dramatic landscapes to enliven the scene here.  This is the industrial mouth of the Thames.  Dead flat, punctuated by grim 1960s tower blocks.  Guess what?  They're grey.  Like most modern Olympic sites, this one has been built in an area desperately in need of regeneration.  A great thing for the area's future, but it means the views beyond the park are grim.  I hope visitors realise that they're going to have to travel to other places to see London's gracious, historic architecture.

All of which left me wondering why the architects didn't add interesting colours to the fascinating shapes of these buildings.  They could have splashed a vibrant statement onto a grey landscape and boosted the mood all around.  Instead, these great buildings fade into the background like a pack of snowy owls in the Arctic.

Let's hope for blue skies.  Then perhaps we'll get the "Greek effect" of contrast to show off the colourless beauty.  Alternatively, let's hope the horticulturalists work some magic in the next few weeks.  For hundreds of years, British gardeners have brought colour to otherwise dreary summers.  The cool rain is their friend.  While the skies might be grey, the weather brings out vibrant greens and plays friendly host to flowers in every shade.  If they can build the Chelsea Flower Show in a week, I suppose they can tart up the Olympic Park wonderfully in five.  I wait with interest.

Thank you, Ma'am, for the four day weekend ... sorry I couldn't make it to town

Before last weekend, the British monarchy had celebrated just one other diamond Jubilee in its history, when Queen Victoria made it to 60 years in in 1897.  I can't speak for the rest of the world, but I can't remember hearing of any other such long-serving monarchs.  Which makes this past weekend not just a once-in-a-lifetime thing; but something far rarer.

In my first decade in England, the proverbial wild horses couldn't have kept me away from the party.  Those were my heady days of 500-mile a weekend road trips, cash lavished on any event at a historic venue and a 6am start  ... and six hours in the queue ... to file past the Queen Mother's coffin.  My love of history and monarchy is intact.  If anything, continued exposure has made me respect and admire Queen Elizabeth II even more than when I first landed on these shores.  But I gave London a wide berth this weekend, watching the events on the BBC.  Just 45 miles from the action, I was having pretty much the same experience as all those Americans who would have killed to be there.

Blame the weather.  Like clockwork, the sun and warmth faded the closer we got to the holiday weekend.  Most of the big events played out in a rain-drizzled chill that would have done my perpetual, chemo-inspired chest problems no good at all.  Common sense said that decent views at any event would have required camping out; I later heard that people showing up for the river pageant four hours in advance ended up 14 rows back.  Of course, they didn't see a thing.  We got every detail in the living room.

I might not have battled the crowds in London, but it didn't lessen my enjoyment of the big event.  The whole country has gotten into the festive mood.  Union Jacks and patriotic bunting flew everywhere.  Patriotic street parties brought communities together.  Radios blared with a consistent soundtrack of the national anthem, Zadoc the Priest, Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance, Rule Britannia and the like.  Every magazine cover themed itself around the event.  I even spotted fireworks on the horizon.  It was as if the English ... usually hostile to any expression of national pride outside of athletic contents or Proms-style concerts ... suddenly decided to have their own Fourth of July or Bastille Day.  It was fabulous.  I wish we'd do it every year.  


We celebrated with our own barbecue, generous lashings of TV viewing and a lot of admiration of the woman at the centre of things.  A woman who's never had any choice in her role, has always lived life in a fishbowl, yet never shows us anything but grace and dignity.  A rock of calm surety in a world of mad change.  With every year that goes on, everyone seems to appreciate her more.  Those dark, anti-monarchical days following Diana's death are long gone.  Few would speak a word against the crown these days.  That makes at least one her majesty's adopted subjects very, very happy.

Real estate ... and a surprising choice ... takes priority as we return home

A bit over two weeks ago, we left a cold, wet England, feeling more like March than late May.  We returned to high summer.  Skies were sunny, the air was warm, we drove home from Heathrow with the roof down and I spent the last afternoon of my vacation in the hammock in the garden, thankful for the geniuses at Amazon who invented the sunlight-defying Kindle.

That was the last bit of calm for a while, because life's getting interesting.  It's not just the return to work which, now that I'm more than a month past my last chemotherapy treatment, will need to be approached without excuses, short days or drug-induced sluggishness.  No, it's the very big business of buying and selling houses.

We finally got a buyer for the place I inherited from my mother.  Scans of initial paperwork emailed back and forth between Baltimore and St. Louis during holiday, and now it's full steam ahead for a closing in about two weeks.  A solid offer for that house in hand, we're now legally able to make our own offer for a home here.  Which is exactly what we did at lunch today.

You may remember the start of my house hunt and my strict criteria for the village where I'll sink my roots ... someplace with a high TQ (thatch quotient).  I haven't written since on the topic, but we have been busy managing a spreadsheet of ideal house features and setting up the initial mortgage.  Most weekends before we left on holiday found us house hunting, and we'd developed a tidy little list of possibilities.  Within those picturesque villages of my last blog entry on the topic, the price point that was our furthest stretch tended to throw up four bedroom places built in the late '70s or early '80s with some nice gardens.  Pretty close to what I grew up in, really, but without the basement, half the garage and four times the price.   Location, location, location.

And then we threw TQ, gardens and charm out the window for square footage, value for money and the convenience of the new.  

The new marital home of the Basingstoke Bencards, on which we made an offer and were accepted earlier today, is so new it's still a brick shell standing amidst scaffolding on a muddy lot piled with construction material.  It's in a high density, modern development that was a farm field just four years ago.  No thatch, no duck pond, no ancient church or pub within a stone's throw.  What possessed me to give up my fantasies of village life and pottering in a big garden?

Money, for one thing.  The new house ... which is bigger than anything we saw before it ... is £150k below our target price.  My perception was that modern English housing meant cramped rooms, shoddy quality and bad design.  This three-story, detached, townhouse-style home has a great floor plan, lots of nice little design touches and a dream of a kitchen, clearly designed by someone who understood people who love to cook.  The rooms are a good size and filled with light, an impression enhanced by doors between rooms on the ground floor that close to maintain heat but have large glass panels to give a sense of openness.  The master bedroom is a two-room suite, the main guest room has its own en suite bathroom, Piers can have a sizeable "man cave" in the third bedroom on the top floor, and I get my own office in a studio with separate entry over the two-car garage.  

The development, Sherfield Park, is remarkably attractive for new construction.  The designers were clearly influenced by the streets of Bath.  Though you'll never mistake it for a Jane Austen film set, the curving streets, classical porticos and architectural detailing create a pleasing neo-Georgian continuity.  The developers have also taken a lot of care with landscaping, providing playing fields on the development's edge, a pond and wildflower meadow at its heart (which our new bedroom windows look over) and other green spaces.  Best of all, beyond the confines of the development it's still farm and forest.  Though the same distance from Basingstoke as the place we're renting, the surrounding area is far less developed.  And given that the woods to the north are a Ministry of Defence training facility, it's not likely that it will be.

Nothing needs to be replaced or upgraded, and everything is state of the art.  Great insulation.  Efficient, double-glazed windows.  Built-in kitchen appliances and alarm system. Computer network, communications and TV cabling laid into every room. No doubt influenced by the huge expense of renovation required to sell Mom's 40-year-old house, and the money I've had to dump into my 200-year-old cottage, charm has been trumped by efficiency in the face of reality.  


And if you really want to talk reality:  that price difference means a much smaller mortgage payment every month, which means we still may have some discretionary income for travel and nice restaurants.  Which will continue providing stuff to write about.  See ... I'm doing this for you, dear readers.

All this gain does not come without pain, of course.  The houses are cheek-by-jowl.  The garden is small and overlooked by other people's windows. It's very much a housing development, not a village ... though there is a community centre and an area set aside for shops in the future.  As a mixed development following modern government guidelines, there's housing at every price point.  No well-heeled, comfortably prosperous and exclusive Hampshire village here; we'll be near the top end and we expect plenty of young families with children (not a positive on our list, children mean noise) and some social housing (aka welfare assisted).  But there is a proper village, Sherfield-on-Loddon, a mile and a half up the road.  Which means a pub and a small shop within walking distance.   I've even spotted a church steeple, connected to what seems to be a manor house hidden behind high brick walls.

All in all, the balance is a happy one.  All systems go for a move in late August.

Durham's Arrowhead Inn takes us back to honeymoon luxury

I'd always heard that American B&Bs were different from their British counterparts.  

British bed and breakfast started as staying in someone's spare room as a cheap alternative to a hotel.  And though the scene's gotten more sophisticated, and more expensive, I wouldn't send visitors here to a B&B if they were looking for high end luxury.  In the USA, I'd heard, B&Bs were more like up-market boutique hotels, with prices to match.  I can now, with a great deal of sybaritic satisfaction, confirm that observation.

The Arrowhead Inn, just north of Durham, North Carolina, is a lot closer to the magnificent places we stayed on our honeymoon than any B&B of my experience.  The surroundings were exquisite, the room palatial, the food gourmet and the service exceptional.  And the price?  The $235 a night we paid for our room was far more expensive than most American hotels ... more than triple what we paid at Massanutten, where we started this trip ... but about what we pay for that advantageously priced hotel room at our club when we stay up in London.  All things are relative.  

Arrowhead's not an everyday sort of place, but if you want to treat yourself, this is great value for money.  In fact, it's is so wonderful I'd consider it a destination in itself.

The house dates back to just before the American revolution.  Its white clapper board siding, porch with two-story white columns and gracious gardens with the requisite magnolia trees make this a small but perfect southern mansion.  Though the interiors are decorated with respect to tradition, the place doesn't show its age.  Everything is show-home tidy, in pristine condition and in achingly good taste.

We stayed three nights in the Brittain Room, which had to be the biggest and ... I suspect ... the most opulent of the seven rooms in the house.  (There's an eighth option in a snug but luxuriously furnished log cabin in the garden.)  The square footage of our Arrowhead bedroom was about the same as the footprint of my entire cottage in Berkshire. 

 It was dominated by a king-sized four poster with mattresses so high, steps were available to get into bed.  There was a fireplace with two wing backs in front of it, a jacuzzi tub in the corner and a TV and VCR hidden away in a mahogany wardrobe.  A sliding glass door led out to our own private deck overlooking the gardens.  And of course, there's a big, beautifully decorated bathroom with a large shower.

If we got tired of all that, there were plenty of public areas in which to lounge.  The space beyond our room door was technically the entrance hall, by merit of the front door at one corner, but it had another fireplace and was furnished as a sitting room.  At the back of the house was a formal dining room leading into the "Keeping Room", a big wooden extension with tables for breakfast on one side and seating around another fireplace on the other.  A door here led out to a shady patio with tables, chairs and an outdoor stove/firepit for cold nights, and beyond that a lovely garden with perennial beds, winding paths, a gazebo and a dedicated court for that old fashioned game of pitching horse shoes.

The innkeepers, Gloria and Phil Teber, live across the garden in a neo-classical outbuilding that adds to the view, gives them privacy and contributes to the overall feel of boutique hotel rather than houseguest quarters.  They make a great team, Gloria friendly, considerate and primarily front-of-house, Phil cooking up delightful stuff in the kitchen and occasionally popping his cheerful frame out to say hello.  

Between them, they seem to anticipate your every need and lay out all the thoughtful touches that make the place so luxurious.  In the room, there's a candle beside the jacuzzi, snacks packed in cellophane and ribbons in a little basket on the desk and a stereo with iPod charger next to the bed.  In the Keeping Room, they lay snacks out on the bar every afternoon, the fridge is filled with complimentary bottles of water and cans of soda, and there's a wide collection of DVDs to borrow for that player in your room.  Next to the back door, a basket of sunscreen lotions, in case you want to soak up some, but not all, of that southern sun.

Beyond the decor, the innkeepers and the little touches, the food sets Arrowhead apart.  The night of our arrival, we'd arranged for Phil to prepare his five course chef's menu for us, choosing from several possible main courses (in advance, by email).  We dined alone, by candlelight, in the Keeping Room, overlooking the garden and enjoying a great wine from Gloria's list.  You don't have to make special arrangements for special food, however.  Breakfast is a gourmet experience.  Unlike the typical British B&B, where every institution from Lands' End to John-o-Groats does essentially the same fry up, Phil comes up with a different option every morning.  After your compote of fresh fruit and your first coffee, you might get pancakes, eggs benedict or grilled bananas besides crepes stuffed with sweet cheese.

With all this to enjoy, you won't be surprised to learn we didn't wander far.  This part of the holiday, after all, was about resting between all that sightseeing and the return to the real world.  Durham is a vibrant small town and there's plenty to do.  We met a friend of Piers' in the American Tobacco District, now a buzzy area of restaurants and bars just next to the minor league Durham Bulls ballpark, continued our Civil War exploration at Bennet Place (see the entry before last), wandered around the Sarah P. Duke gardens and had a successful afternoon at the local outlet mall.  But really, all we wanted to do was hang out at the Arrowhead.  And so we did ... lounging in the hammock in the garden, steaming in the jacuzzi or snuggling down in that magnificent room with wine and movies.  The vibe was so much like South Africa's Birkenhead House, we felt like we were on honeymoon again.  It was just what the doctor ordered.  Quite literally.

And now, officially, it's back to the real world, and life as normal.