I’m so ready.

.
July 8th sees me boarding a plane for the UK. I had so much fun at Oxford that I’ve decided to take a couple of classes this summer. That’s the nice thing about this new vacation/sick time thing called eTime that many companies seem to be adopting. That means that they lump sick days, vacation and any other time into one big pot. When you have been to a company as long as I have been at Earthlink, and stupidly you don’t take time off, you end up with lots of hours. So, truth be told I have almost as much time in the bank as I did when I took sabbatical last year.

Is life good, or what?

I’m looking at the course offerings this summer, and I find a class called “Spies, Treason and Plots.” How cool is that? Who could possibility pass on that? And that subject, it could be several different period’s of English History.

Turns out we are dealing with Elizabeth I, and all of the court intrigue, including the transition from Catholicism to Protestantism. As we know religious stuff is always a hoot, the old “kill one for God” type thing. Then there was the Spanish Armada, Walsinghma and his spy network, in fighting between all the English nobility, so many suitors that you needed a program. Don’t forget Mary, Queen of the Scots, who got her head chopped off.

I wouldn’t have been disappointed had we been studying the English/Russian spies, moles and old boy treason of this century’s cold war. A lot of good fiction came out of that period including La Carre, Ian Fleming, Graham Green and none of it as interesting as the real stuff courtesy of Philby, Burgess, Maclean and the boys. I would have enjoyed that.

Also taking a poetry class, which worries me more than it should. But, that’s for another day.

Did I tell you I’m ready to get on the plane?