3-2-15
My first weekend with Matt in the UK – it was lovely. It was nice to have him home during hours where we could accomplish things, though we didn’t quite make it through all of what we had planned. And, I missed the company last week, more than I realized. I let myself get pretty isolated last week, when I really didn’t have to, I mean I had a good excuse – fear of freezing to death in your shower is a viable reason not to do it often and not going out in public when you are greasy and grouchy is also not a completely invalid excuse, but I will have to do better this week.
Saturday, our landlord came over and helped us figure out the issue with our water pressure and temperature. Which means… wait for it… HOT WATER AND REAL SHOWERS! If this person were not a stranger I probably would have kissed her. I am so over the moon about it. She’s a nice woman, young and energetic, she seems a little spacey, and it’ll be interesting having a landlord who is more homeowner, less property manager, I haven’t seen that before. She doesn’t seem too precious about anything though, so that’s good. She did put a no down on us repainting the bedrooms, so that was both a relief (it was going to be a lot of work) and a disappointment (just wait until you see the color). Atleast she is very responsive to inquiries thus far. After she fixed the shower, Matt went to use the facilities, so to speak and discovered that upon flushing water began to pour out of the lid of the toilet tank and continued to do so until the bowl had refilled itself, which is not quick (it’s a weird old bathroom, lots o’ quirky (quirky is a euphemism for weird and a little awful) elements). We put down a huge bucket (luckily, they had left one in the house, because the only large container we had of our own was my dutch oven – and LIKE HELL – was that going to happen) an emailed her to get some one out to fix it asap.
We spent the rest of Saturday doing some really serious shopping. We walked through a lot of Wantage, stopped at a lot of charity and regular stores and did pretty well for fitting up the place. Charity stores are all the rage over here, they’re like really tiny Goodwill’s, mostly clothes, shoes, textiles and maybe some bric-a-brac and each run by a different charitable organization. We saw one called Debra, whose tagline was, ‘for people whose skin doesn’t work, we do’… I love that one and in no way understand what they are referring to. Skin cancer? Albinism? Roseacea? Anyways, we stopped in a local pub with free wi-fi and had a pint, then we did a load more shopping at the strip mall of discount/generic stores near the grocery. By the end of the day we had way more than we could carry and had to buy one of those roll-y shopping carts to get home. I’m going to use it to pick up a few more heavy things today – hello wine! Also, but less exciting, dog food.
Wantage really is as lovely and charming as Matt said, we had a lot of fun walking around the town square and I’m going to make myself go hang out there and be out of the house in it more often. Especially with our still playing the waiting game for wifi and furniture, it’ll be a nice break from the house. I think parts of the town are really quite old, particularly in the town center, while other areas are much newer, I know some of the developments on our end of town are only a few years old, though we think ours is likely at least from the 60s or 70s, if the bathroom is any indication. It is somehow sort of surreal walking around a place that looks more like a movie set from something I would totally watch than a place that makes visual sense in my everyday life. Does that make sense? It’s a wonderful sort of surreal though, and it doesn’t last too long, as there is a lot of new out there that strikes a much more ‘normal’ chord.
Sunday morning a father and son duo delivered a dresser that we purchased from them on Gumtree (UK’s version of Craigslist). We then spent a lot of the afternoon traveling by bus and by foot to view a few sofas posted online and to make arrangements for internet and cellphone. We got lucky and one couple agreed to deliver their couch to us on Friday as they are already renting a van to move (that’s why they’re selling the couch) and we’re on the way! SO, in 5 days and for a small extra fee we will finally have a sofa! And, as a ridiculous bonus for Matt it is leather. And, it reclines!
Days like yesterday make me really wish we had a car, I definitely wore the wrong shoes for as much walking as we did, but fortune was with us and we didn’t miss any of the not-as-frequent-as-you’d-hope busses, so I suppose I can’t complain. Except about the bus prices – holy crap – they are high. You’re often looking at 5+ lbs for a round trip ticket anywhere nearby and maybe much more if you’re going a few more towns over. Also, there are multiple bus companies that service any given area (we’re not sure what if any affiliation they have with the government) and they do not honor each others passes, so even if you buy the day pass for one company, it doesn’t work if you need to use another company’s bus, because say they have more regular trips to the town where the cellphone store is and the store closes by 4pm. Matt is lucky he’ll be getting a pretty great discount on his annual pass through RAL, because it’s like a 10 lbs. commute each day right now. Not to say nice things about LA or anything crazy like that, but spending a day with the transit system here makes me much better appreciate how awesome LA’s metro/bus system really was. Although, I can’t picture anyone getting into a fist fight on the busses here.
Observations: Everything here is lovely or brilliant, nothing is great or good.
I’ve now been asked more than once, ‘Canadian or American?’ Apparently they can’t pick up the difference, but I kind of like the opportunity to lie and go Canadian… Fun, ay?
Altogether, we’ve been very lucky so far with the kindness of the Brits towards us, they’ve agreed to deliver things, or they’ve helped us with questions, confusions, etc., or they’ve just been very nice to us so far. Thus far, it’s been a really great experience here in that regard and I am grateful for it, we would definitely be suffering a bit without it as the logistics of this move have not been easy.
More to come.
– alaina