Things I'm Learning As I Go - Part One

1. To flush a toilet in England, push the button or flusher down very hard and swiftly or you will likely get an unsatisfactory flush.  The quality of flush seems to be related to the handling of the flushing mechanism.

2.  I have got to stop referring to the clothing I wear on my legs as pants, as in "bought some new pants today - want to see them?".  I'm going to embarrass myself soon, if I haven't already (note to the North Americans: "pants" means "underwear" in England - the outerwear is called "trousers").

3.  Always look right before you cross the street.  It's not a good idea to realize halfway across the street that you failed to check for oncoming traffic because you looked in the wrong direction and are very lucky to not be on the underside of a car right now.

4.  Many people will assume you are Australian if you speak English fluently but with an odd accent.  The correct response to this is "Yes, I've come to work in your pubs."  Apparently England is full of Australians who have come over to work in a pub for a year or two.

5.  November = Fog.  Nearly every day in the past week, I would not have ventured outside the house in a car if I still lived in North America.  Here, the roads are just as full and people drive nearly as fast.  I guess if fog puts you off driving, you'd better stock up in October for a month of being shut in.  Our car has fog lights, but I still haven't figured out what they do that is beneficial to us.

Didcot in the Mist

Approaching from the M40, I can identify your location 10 miles away
Though the fog covers everything else on the horizon
The smoke from your six regal cooling towers pushes through into great plumes in the sky
It reminds me of Toronto's CN Tower, a sign that our destination is approaching

Walking through the park, a narrow strip of green through the power corridor
The power pylons loom overhead like great floating ghosts
Nearly invisible through the cloud, eerily levitating above us
Their presence becomes more tangible as we approach, the sound of high voltage buzzing in the atmosphere

There's something almost beautiful about this monstrosity of power plant and town
An arranged marriage where one of the partners is most unhappy
But eventually learns to live with the other, settling into existence
Yet all is barely visible through the mist

Could we live here?

Lost in Translation

Tonight at a church function, Nick and I were sat at a table with a few folks that he's known for a while.  We chatted easily about many things.  At one point, I said in response to a comment, "Well, that's 'How to Interact With Children 101'", and the target of my comment smiled and nodded appreciatively.  Nick quickly informed me that "101" doesn't mean anything to people in Britain.  I asked my conversation partner if he knew what I had meant when I said "101" and he smiled and said "No."

I wonder how many other times I have said or will say something to someone here and they'll just nod and smile and I'll never know that they didn't have a clue what I was on about.

A place to live?

We've been looking for a flat now that we know where Nick will be working.  The rental market is such that nice flats get snapped up quickly since a lot of people can't get mortgages to buy homes.  We've had a couple of flats snapped up out from under us (in one case less than 2 hours after we went to see it).  Finally, we have found a flat that we really like that no one had applied for before we did.  It's in a village in Oxfordshire which is really lovely, and there's a pub next door to the property that is really charming and has great cider and what Nick called "the best pint of Brakspear Bitter" he's ever had.

We're on pins and needles to find out if we've gotten the place.

The Car Chronicles

One hurdle in getting settled in England is the fact that I do not know how to drive a car with a manual transmission and approximately 95% of the cars here are manual.  In Canada, there are at least as many automatics as manuals on the road.  To compound this issue, the British actually have different drivers licenses for automatics and manuals - you can drive an automatic car with a manual license, but not vice versa.

We needed a car pretty much immediately as we're doing loads of driving and can only leech off my mother-in-law's generosity in lending us her car for so long.  Also, after my little accident with her car which Nick is currently out at a garage getting fixed, I haven't been too keen on driving it.  I'd rather have my own cheap little ride that I didn't car about if I dented it or scratched the wheel.  Off to Autotrader we went, searching through hundreds of listings for cars, most of which were either too far away, horribly bad deals, horribly bad cars, or manual transmissions.

We finally found one that seemed like a reasonable deal - a 2003 Rover 25 for just 1200 pounds.  The Rover car company went out of business, so old Rovers are cheaper as they aren't made anymore.  The car was in Dunstable, a 45-minute drive from where we are currently, but looked great and the description sounded perfect.  We called to make sure the car was still available and off we went to Dunstable.  We arrived at the used car lot and immediately identified the Rover out of the approximately 150 cars they had - it was the one with the jumper cables attached to it.  The smell coming from the hood wasn't fantastic either.  Nick went to find a sales rep while I called my father-in-law to give him a laugh (he provided us with lots of pre-buying advice on what cars are reliable, what questions to ask, etc.).  The rep assured us that the car with the cables attached next to the Rover was the one being jumped.  Uh-huh.  We took it for a test drive anyway.  The car lot was on a one-way street which curved in a U-shape emptying out on the High Street (main street for those in North America).  We got to the intersection and a police car was sitting on the High Street right there.  "Oh shit, oh shit, uh, uh, uh..." said the sales rep from the back seat.  That was a good sign.  Turns out the taxes on the car had expired... December 31, 2009!  That means the car hadn't been legally driveable since then which means it had been sitting in the car lot for nearly a year.  Nick didn't like the way it drove anyway.  We got back to the lot and listened to the engine, which sounded awful.  The sales rep immediately started talking about how we could get a discount if we paid in cash.  We had already decided we weren't going to buy the car, but attempted to find a polite way to extricate ourselves.  We found one.  "Can I see the service history?" asked Nick.  "Oh, I can't find it right now.  We're going to do a clean-out of our files on Sunday, so I can mail it to you then and give you a discount now for your trouble if you pay in cash."  I quickly and tersely stated that we wouldn't be purchasing the car without the service history (which they said in the ad that they had!) and we took off like a shot.

A couple of days later, we found another ad for a car just 7 miles from where we are, and it seemed reasonable.  A 2001 Vauxhall Astra hatchback.  Since we had been concentrating our search on Astras (father-in-law said they'd be one of the better buys in their car class), we jumped on the opportunity.  "Where are you located?" asked Nick on the phone.  "In Chesham, at the hand car wash next to the Total petrol station on Berkhampsted Road."  Alright, off we went.  We arrived at the hand car wash next to the Total petrol station on Berkhampsted Road and asked around for the car seller.  Nobody knew what we are talking about.  Nick called the seller who said "I'll be there in 2 minutes."  Ten minutes later, we're wondering what's going on.  Nick got a call - "I'm here, where are you?"  Nick reiterated that we were at the hand car wash next to the Total petrol station, just like he asked us to be.  I'm starting to wonder if we're about to get mugged.  After about 10 more minutes of this nonsense, we deduced that there are TWO Total petrol stations on Berkhampsted Road, BOTH of which have hand car washes adjacent to them.  We drove to the other one and found the car seller.  The car was a bit dinged up, but we could't expect much for an 8-10 year-old car.  Nick took it for a test drive.  It wasn't awful but he wasn't super-keen on it.  The engine sounded awful.  "The engine is perfect," said the car seller.  This is code for "I know nothing about cars and/or am trying to scam you."  To boot, the seller wasn't even the owner of the car.  "It's my cousin's car."  Uh-huh.  No way are we going to buy a car which is possibly stolen.  We made up some dumb excuse about not having enough cash on us.  "Oh, you can pay me a deposit and then pay the rest later when you pick up the car."  Sure, we're stupid.  We'll just give you a wad of cash now and hope that 2 days later you still exist and happen to still have the car and won't jack up the price.  We took off like a shot.

Today, Nick made a call to the DVLA - the British driving license authority.  They informed him that I could drive a manual car on my Canadian license for 12 months.  We decided to expand our search to include manual vehicles, which Nick could then teach me how to drive.  A 2002 Vauxhall Astra estate came up and was just in the next town over.  We went to see it, test drove it, loved it, bought it.  We probably shouldn't have paid sticker price, but at least they threw in a new MOT test (annual test required by the government for emissions and safety) and guarantee on anything that might go wrong during the test.  We pick up the car on Wednesday.

So I've just bought my very first car.  It's nothing fancy of course, but it's not so expensive that I'll cry if I ding it, and I'm sure my mother-in-law is very relieved.

Putting My Foot In It

For our anniversary yesterday, Nick and I ventured out to a B&B in Oxfordshire for the night.  Rectory Farm B&B was delightful - the bed was soft and comfy, the shower was great, the breakfast was tasty and the host was lovely.  And we left with some cuts of their pedigree beef (it's a working beef farm)!  For dinner last night, we ventured to the pub 'round the corner from the B&B (and the only other business we saw in the tiny village).  Their homemade cottage pies were lovely, and we enjoyed a chat with the husband and wife who run the pub as we were their only customers - how they pay the bills is beyond me, but they said they do well in game shooting season so I guess that keeps them going.  We discussed why we were in Oxfordshire - Nick had a job interview in Wallingford which is a beautiful town of about 6,000 people in south Oxfordshire.  When asked where we might decide to live, I said "Wallingford is a bit expensive for us, but I hope to live there rather than in Didcot (the next town over and much more affordable) - wouldn't want to live in Didcot with that awful power plant to look at!"  As soon as I said it, I cringed inside as, with my luck, though Didcot was a solid 40 minute drive from where we were, the pub owners would know someone who lived there and find offense at my comment.  Indeed, they themselves own a house in Didcot.  Way to put my foot in it.  They were very kind, though, and said that the six cooling towers at the power plant which can be seen spewing smoke from 10 miles away were something that "when you see them, you know you're home" and "they don't run in the winter anyway."

After we had breakfast this morning, we decided to drive to Witney - a nearby large town which seemed somewhat interesting from what we'd heard of it before.  "Would you like to drive?" asked Nick.  Feeling bolstered by my successful venture out on the left side of the road the day before, I took the wheel.  Within 10 minutes, while turning a tight corner with a brick curb, I managed to brush the wheel against the curb, putting a gash in the tyre (or "tire" as my fellow North Americans know it) and damaging the metal wheel on my mother-in-law's Audi A3.  Brilliant.  Nick took over the driving at my insistance and I cried all the way to Witney.  Driving here really is like learning to drive all over again - I feel like an awkward 16-year-old who doesn't know what they're doing.  I don't know what half the road signs mean, I'm not used to driving from the right side of the car on the left side of the road, and roundabouts really confound me.  I should be driving a 10-year-old beater car, not my mother-in-law's 3-year-old Audi.  She very kindly brushed off my groveling, noting that both she and my father-in-law have done similar things in recent months and I'd better drive tomorrow so that I don't get scared off driving.  I clearly married into the right family.

Tomorrow, we're off to Windsor for another interview for Nick.  I'm keen to go as I've heard it's a really lovely town (the Queen spends many weekends at her castle there, for starters).  I might get up the nerve to do a bit of the driving, and I'll remember not to mention Didcot to anyone there.

We're Here!

Tuesday afternoon, after the movers finished emptying our home of all of our worldly possessions, we gave the house a once-over cleaning, packed up the rental car and drove to my older sister's house to stay the night.  I was able to leave work at about 2:00 p.m. with the excuse that a torrential storm was forecast for the evening rush hour and we needed to get to my sister's before it hit in earnest.  It was really lovely to spend our last 24 hours in Canada relaxing in a still-furnished home with people we love.

Wednesday afternoon, very heavy winds blew in which made shuffling our luggage to and from the car a bit of an adventure.  I think I'll be combing the knots out of my hair for the next few weeks.  We left in plenty of time to get to the airport, had about a 30 second wait at the check-in counter, then proceeded to the Plaza Premium Lounge for some dinner, free drinks, WiFi and the ubiquitous CP24 TV broadcast.  We arrived at our gate within moments of the boarding call, and since we were flying Club Class, we were in the first group to board.  We got settled into our seats and after being offered a newspaper, prepared to sit back and relax.  Nick went to turn on his reading light, but on pushing the button, the button fell through the casing and into a hole somewhere.  Oh Air Transat, how we love your inexpensiveness and ridicule your cheapness simultaneously with such delight!  Shortly thereafter, the image appeared on the screen in front of us to show us where the plane was on the flight path.  "This looks like something on a computer in 1991," said Nick, and I have to agree that Atari probably designed it.  As we hurtled down the runway in preparation for takeoff, the bulkhead in front of us made rythmic creaking noises - "I thought you couldn't join the mile high club until after the plane has taken off," says Nick.  The flight itself was lovely - our food was delicious, the seats were relatively comfortable, and thanks to the aforementioned heavy winds, our plane made it to the gate almost a full hour earlier than scheduled.

As we disembarked, a bunch of pamphlets in the jetway declared "Welcome to London!"  I looked at Nick and said "We're not moving to London!" in mock agitation and could tell from his face that the very same phrase was about to escape his lips.  We've had more than our fair share of people assume that we are moving to London as surely London is all there is to England (just like New York must be all there is to the USA).  For the record, I deplore the city of London and only if it were a very, very last resort would I ever consent to inhabitate the place.

Currently, I'm sitting in Nick's parents' living room, watching the breeze ruffle the trees outside which are just beginning to turn colour, and starting to give real thought to what we've just done.  Well, we're here now, and that's that.