I'm sitting on the floor of my new home surrounded by books, pots, pans, clothes, lamps, and empty suitcases, debating whether to take what would be the third shower of the day and wondering how all this stuff fit in my car. Every inch of me aches. I feel as though I've been sitting in a tumble dryer. A very hot tumble dryer. This weather surely can't last.

And so I have a new home, but it seems to have been at the expense of my passport. The day I got my keys, that little red booklet that gives me the right to be here disappeared. There always comes a point, when I'm searching for an object, where I personify it somehow. I wonder what it's looking at right now. It has clearly not vanished or been destroyed. If only I could get into its head -- which is surely located somewhere within the faded gold coat of arms -- to see what it sees, I might be able to locate it. I have called rental car companies and hotels. I have searched and re-searched my suitcases. My frustration is made all the more poignant by just how obsessive I am about ensuring that this little booklet is safe. Failure.

What implications this loss will have remain to be seen. For now, I can only wallow in my frustration.

And so I have a home: a spacious apartment with a den and a balcony. I also own a bed, and by this weekend I'll be able to add a sofa and a desk to my new possessions (a check on the life list). This is true progress, I suppose, but it feels a little like I am stuck in limbo, waiting for something to fall from the sky as soon as classes start for real.

For now it's all about linens and plates and picture hooks. Sofas and desk chairs and power cords. Spices and shoes and books, books, books. They cover the floor. Late last night I picked out sheets for my new bed, and bought them from the same man who sold me my duvet at a 20% discount because he liked my accent. He remembered me. I left the store again last night having saved another 20%.

Today I sat in a shaft of blue-red light under neo-Gothic vaulted arches listening to the university president introduce a reem of deans. His carefully enunciated words reverberated around the cathedral like laughter. In front of me, a curly head, matted from the heat, bobbed like a heavy yoyo in an attempt to stay awake. The ears, which stuck out at dramatic right angles, were shockingly pink.

Earlier, I had walked from the back of the chapel listening to the 50-bell carillion, which apparently plays every weekday at 5 and after Sunday worship services. This, combined with the pomp and circumstance of the ceremony, gave me a surreal feeling of being between cultures. As I stood under cold stone arches and studied the stained glass, listening to the familiar cold echo hush around the vaulted space, I lost myself; that split between my two worlds ripped back together. I stood up for the invocation/prayer and bowed my head... in an English cathedral with an English voice speaking clearly. It wasn't until the Amen bounced back off the pews that I realised it had been an "Ah-men," and that the chapel's dean is English. Fitting, somehow. Given this strange cultural mix, it was more than surreal to stand before the 5,000-pipe organ and sing oh, say, can you see...

There is a certain element of religiosity to the whole convocation proceedings, even independent of the setting, the hymn, and the prayer. Praise be to the almighty "Big D". Take the Alma Mater, for example (the words and music of which is printed in the convocation program):

Dear old Duke thy name we'll sing,
To thee our voices raise (we'll raise),
To thee our anthems ring,
In everlasting praise.
And though on life's broad sea
Our fates may far us bear,
We'll ever turn to thee,
Our Alma Mater dear.

And so I am now officially a graduate student at Duke. I feel I should be studying. In truth, I probably should: I had my first class at Chapel Hill yesterday, and we will be starting with Burney's Evelina. I've read it, but should brush up...

Life is a little odd right now.

In the next scene -- act two -- my car dies. It won't even cough at me as I turn the key. About an hour later help arrives in the form of a beat-up, rusted Chevy Cavalier and two guys with dreadlocks, gold chains, and pants slung oh too low. Progressive Auto's answer to jump-starting me, which is done in an efficient and grunt-aided manner. Fast forward a couple of hours and my car is being fitted with a new battery in a Sears auto center. Me? I'm back in the mall with an empty stomach... again. And all I want, all I can think about in this bemused and lonely state, is potato. I need potato. Potato and butter and cracked black pepper.

Ten minutes later I am sheepishly requesting a lone baked potato in Ruby Tuesdays...

I may have found a home. We shall see. Next step will be a bed and a couch. But for now it's back to the hotel room and its orange polka-dotted couch and red zig-zigged desk chair.

I ate dinner alone tonight and watched a date gone horribly wrong. He had flat blond hair and a thick, thick neck. He wore a Copenhagen Hard Rock Cafe shirt and attempted to list all the cities that produce their own Hard Rock Cafe apparel. Her straight ginger hair was pulled back in a purple barrette and her bare shoulders were speckled pink. She had her back to me. He turned the subject to grades -- they were both undergrads, probably from different colleges. "And what's wierd is, is there are, like, three failing grades. What's that all about?" The speckled shoulders shrugged.

I barely made a dent in my plate of pasta. My throat refused to swallow, as it had earlier after just a few bites of the much-anticipated potato. But here I sit on my bed at 12:30 a.m. winding green forkfulls out of a black plastic container. The microwave is downstairs in the lobby, but on my way down I ran into a security guy who guestured me into the staff lounge. "You don't want to walk all that way, I know it," he said. No, of course, those fifteen long paces would have just done me in. So I stood beside a poster that said "90% of guests don't complain, they just don't come back" and waited for the ding.

Sometimes my life feels like a movie. Only in a movie, you know there will be some sort of resolution, and you know to expect it within two or three hours. I haven't read the script. The cameras just keep rolling.

This morning I woke up in a strange, unfamiliar town that is now my home. My sense of adventure kicked in, but this city, with its tree-lined roads and blue university road signs, was not in the mood to lay out a welcome mat. Thunder voiced its hostility. I ate lunch in my hotel room, staring at the ridiculous blue-yellow-orange geometric patterns on the runner attempting to brighten up the bed. I thought about being over 400 miles from anyone who knows me.

I still have no home, but this afternoon a familiar face, a cup of tea, and stained glass rewrote the script. And later, the comforting taste of McAlister's honey mustard.

and storming in Durham. What wonderful weather for apartment hunting...

Never arrive in a strange city at night with an empty stomach and a tired mind. Avoid this at all costs, even if it means stopping off at a Taco Bell on the road. For the next five years, I will have to look back on my first meal upon the event of my relocation... and remember sitting in the mall eating pepperoni pizza and a side salad from Sbarro. Ugh. Southern Living Editors hang their heads in shame.

I am sitting in a hotel room in Durham on a king bed that eats up the room and makes me feel the size of a pillow, trying to ignore the stale smoke stench that has seeped into the yellow walls. A lonely, strange city. First night blues.

Last night I drove from Birmingham to Atlanta with my jet-lagged mind playing tricks on me. Josh Ritter sang about Kathleen and California, the rain and the moon, as I sat still and the world moved around me, as if on a screen. The road passed below my feet and the darkening night on either side, the occassional bridge above. In the distance the ink and indigo of tree lines overlapped, one on top of another, fading into the orange-grey glow of the hot evening sky.

England is so far away now, despite the fact that I have spent the day driving in its direction. The air, the light, the smell, the heat -- oh, the heat -- the roads: all so different, so foreign to England, and yet not so foreign to me. Today I added a state to my list: South Carolina. Jimmy LaFave's breathy song carried me over the state line from Georgia -- "Ain't nothing but you and me and the open road" -- and across bridges over wide lakes laced with tall dark trees. En route I noted the delightful American town names: Fair Play, Townville, Liberty (x2), Kannapolis. My favourite: Gibsonville. Rivers have imaginative names like "Deep River." And I had to look twice at a sign advertising "The Loyal Order of Moose." No kidding; I googled it when I got here: www.mooseintl.org.

The Elizabethtown soundtrack -- a perfectly appropriate one for a road trip -- sang me beside a giant peach and signs that advertised the likes of "Mr Waffle" and "Chow Chow Relish." Nobody knows what it's all about; it's too much, man. Let it all hang out. and This time around you can be anyone. And then across a new line into my new home state: North Carolina. The soundtrack was a mix I'd made for the trip. Gary Jules's Falling Awake was playing as I pulled into the Welcome Center, because, well, you just have to. The heat makes it hard to breathe. State map in hand, I pulled back onto I-85N, which led all the way from hotel to hotel, Atlanta to Durham. To lighten the mood, I sang Augustana's Boston at a silly volume: I think I'll start a new life, I think I'll start it over, where no one knows my name. But the destination was Durham, not Boston, and Damien Rice sang me in: And now you're coming home. Where is that, exactly?

It's rather sobering to think your life can fit inside a Mazda 626. I wheeled my television into my room on a cart (rather than have it on show in my car) and past a lobby full of confused glances. I imagine those glances will be slightly more alarmed when I wheel it back out again!

Tomorrow: must find somewhere to live.

I am surrounded by books and clothes and other miscellanea, and two open suitcases. I'm reminded of those silly games: how many grown men can you fit in a mini and still shut the doors? How many naked teenagers does it take to fill a shower (a game played with great gusto by many of my compatriots at The Abbey)? My predicament: How many books will fit in two suitcases? Of course, it's not that simple. No longer is packing a game of space. They changed the rules just as I got rather adept at condensing molecules. It was all in the rolling of clothes and the stuffing of socks in shoes and the final combination sitting-bouncing-zipping act. Now it's all about weight, which takes out all the skill (and the fun). Out come the bathroom scales, and a Norton Anthology is always the first to go. My usual argument that books are more important than clothes is made all too jarringly real this time: I'm heading over an ocean to do a PhD; I can't very well leave Barthes and Austen at home. It's a game of favourites, and it hurts my head.

Of course there's always the option of just wearing all my clothes on Tuesday...

Today I went for a picnic with my mother in the shadow of Salisbury cathedral. On a rug not far from us two women sat knitting and watching their children run barefoot through the bright green grass. Whenever they strayed too far, knitting needles were laid to rest, just for a moment, and a cry of "Barnaby! Felix!" reached the trees and the cold grey stone.

Barnaby? Felix?

I read an article in The Times last week about the correlation between a name and career success. "Naming consultants" can be hired to pick out a name best suited to get your child into Oxbridge.

This wasn't actually what I thought as I sat eating my tabouleh on the lawn. In my mind were two future kittens asleep at my feet while I read a book. Barnaby and Felix. Perfect.

This is a special day for a special person. Happy Birthday to the sweetest person I know and the bestest best friend a girl could wish for.

I have made a discovery, one that had been there all along -- as is the way with most potential discoveries -- but only just now enjoyed. A few years ago I bought a copy of H.V. Morton's A Traveller in Italy, but the poor volume suffered the fate of too many other pages on my bookshelves: it sat unread, it's smooth spine uncracked. About two months ago I picked up a dusty volume of Morton's In Search of England in a wonderful little used bookstore in the Virginia Highland's neighborhood of Atlanta. I read a few sentences here and there, intrigued, but reasoned that I should do justice to his Italian journeys before abandoning them for those in my own country. But my bibliomania got the better of me, and about two weeks ago I bought a modern edition of the book. This one has had a happier fate than its predecessor.

It all begins with an illness in Palestine ("I believed I was dying in Palestine. There was no woman to convince me that the pain in my neck was not the first sign of spinal meningitis, so that, growing rapidly worse, I began to attend my own funeral every day."), Morton finds himself standing on a hill with Jerusalem at his feet, and suddenly, in this far-away land, feels a pang of homesickness:

"I find it impossible in cold blood, and at this distance, to put into words the longing that shook me... There rose up in my mind the picture of a village street at dusk with a smell of wood smoke lying in the still air and, here and there, little red blinds shining in the dusk under the thatch. I remember how the church bells ring at home, and how, at that time of year, the sun leaves a dull red bar low down in the west, and against it the elms grow blacker minute by minute. Then the bats start to flicker like little bits of burnt paper and you hear the slow jingle of a team coming home from fields... When you think like this, sitting alone in a foreign country, you know all there is to learn about heartache."

He continues: "I have learnt since that this vision of mine is a common one to exiles all over the world: we think of home, we long for home, but we see something greater -- we see England."

For him, this is a sentiment that defies location; but it's also one that defies time.

This is the beginning of his narrative, the initiation of his search for England. And what a delicious narrative it is: a mixture of wonderfully dry English humour (see below) and the perfect turn of phrase... the enchantment of the perfect words strung together.

"I have decided that when I grow old, with or without gout, sciatica, rheumatism, or lumbago, I will retire on Bath with an ebody cane and a monocle"

"Fight as I may, I have never been able entirely to conquer the belief that women are in all situations honest. All men I suspect; all women I trust; for -- I believe in living dangerously!"

H. V. (Henry Vollam) begins his journey in London and winds his way all the way up to Durham and back down again, passing through cities, towns, villages, and recording his observations, his conversations, his musings in his notebooks "without deliberation by the roadside, on farmyard walls, in cathedrals, in little churchyards, on the washstands of country inns, and in many another inconvenient place." And all this back in the late 1920s, when England was still stinging from the shock of war. "I have gone round England like a magpie," he says, "picking up any bright thing that pleased me." These bright things are gems, or at least they are to me, as I read about Winchester, Salisbury, Exeter: the worlds that are my England, and the familiar places in between: Bath, Newbury, Tintagel, Plymouth, Bristol, Romsey, the New Forest, Stratford-Upon-Avon, and, of course, London.

The arches of Exeter cathedral are "like a problem in mathematics set to music... At one moment it seems that the whole fragment might fly up to heaven or dissolve in cold, formal music." At sunset in Salisbury's cathedral close "nothing it seemed could ever hurt: the soft green grass, the mighty church pointing its slim finger to the sky, and the old grey cloistered buildings dedicated to centuries of peace." Looking out of a window at the spring descending on a London square, "the top boughs of the trees were etched against the saffron stain of a London sky, but their boles descended into a pool of darkness, silent and remote... The very pavements seem ready to crack and lift under the denied earth; in the air is a consciousness of life which tells you that if traffic stopped for a fortnight grass would grow again in Piccadilly and corn would spring in pavement cracks where a horse and spilt his 'feed'."

My only regret: that a 2006 Methuen edition doesn't feel quite as right in the hand as that dusty volume.

In Andover town centre today a man with a cane and slightly crossed eyes sang Moon River to himself.

Two drifters off to see the world.
There's such a lot of world to see.

my england

Winchester

Winchester

Winchester

Sunset from my garden

Salisbury

Salisbury

Salisbury

Salisbury - view from the top of the cathedral tower

Thatched roof in Chawton

Bath

Bath