The Foxes

I've told you about the foxes all over the place here in London, haven't I?
How at my old apartment, the elderly lady downstairs (who actually drove me nuts, but then we probably drove her nuts first), warned me to keep the lid on my rubbish bin (or top on the trash can) so the foxes wouldn't get to it?
How I laughed to myself and said right, yeah, that's a nice understated British way to say RATS.
How right after that, I saw my first fox, followed by my second and my third, and then I stopped counting?
Well, we've moved to fox city, folks.
They're all over the place here.
It's kind of eerie, actually, but original too.
There's a stand of unoccupied houses in front of us.
And a fox family has moved in there.
I kid you not.
They roam in and out of the broken windows there, sunning themselves on the roof, cleaning their paws in the daylight, a whole bunch of them. There's always one out there.
It's like something out of an Edgar Allen Poe story.
The Foxes. By Edgar Allen Poe.
What do they get up to in the dead of night?
Our bedroom window looks out over the unoccupied houses. Which I know sounds trashy. But is actually kinda cool.
When I get up, first thing I do is look out the window and check what the foxes are up to.
This morning, one was out there, scratching his/her butt, when I opened the curtains.
He/she looked up at me, and stopped scratching.
Some of them look pretty unhealthy -- scrawny and mangy.
Yeah, some of them have mange, my neighbor told me.
Okay.
One of them walked into our garden last night.
But then ran away.
They're more scared of you than you are of them, my neighbor said.
Okay.
My husband says there are so many because they stopped hunting them here, the land of the fox hunt.
Okay.
The Foxes. By Edgar Allen Poe.
Every day.
Every night.
Right outside our bedroom window.

Screw British Telecom

Damn British Telecom. Damn Italia Telecom. And damn all the Telecoms of this world. It's such a stitch-up, as they say here.
I haven't written for a lot of reasons.
But the main reason recently is that I don't have reliable Internet access -- and won't have for ages. Weeks, even.
You'd think I was in Yemen or something.
Where I was going to go. But then didn't, largely because I lost reliable Internet access at home. And a landline with which to call Yemen to set it up.
And then my nerve.
And then the volcanic ash covered Britain.
Long story.
Back to British Telecom.
Who I hate.
Almost as much as I hate Italia Telecom.
We've moved to our new place in London. Which I love.
Even though it's tiny. It's like a doll-sized version of a house, especially for a spoiled American like me.
But still it's a house.
And I love it.
But no phone yet. Or Internet.
Been almost three weeks now.
You can't order a new phone line until you give up your old line.
So the day we moved, we called to order a new line.
Two-week wait for a phone, even though there's already a phone line here. And we had a phone. And a phone number, just a few blocks away.
We made the appointment. Then we made the mistake of calling to see if we could change it since my husband went to the election debate here in Bristol and I wanted to go with him.
After calling, we decided we shouldn't change it. Too risky. Really need a phone and Internet access. (Internet access two weeks after the phone. Don't even ask me why).
So I came back from Bristol after only one day.
They didn't show up for the appointment.
I cried.
Why does this shit have to be so hard?
Why do I have to keep moving?
Why aren't I just home now, wherever that might be?
Is it so hard to just be home?
I used to have a home. I used to have friends. I used to have a job. Why the hell did I leave everything?
Back to the Internet.
In the old apartment (which god, in hindsight, I really did not like and now thank god, I can just say it) you could crib onto other people's Internet access.
Here for some reason you can't.
So we're using a key, like at our side of the hill in Italy.
Which sometimes works.
And other times doesn't.
The line keeps falling. Which drives me crazy.
Which is why I haven't written.
Among other reasons.
Bigger reasons.
Don't-know-what-I'm-doing kinda reasons.

London's daffodils

The daffodils are out in London. Finally.
They're more than a month late.
But now, they're everywhere. Every park, every green, thousands of them.
Hello, hello, hello! You sunny little harbingers of spring, you.
What a winter.
Everywhere had a bad winter, it seems.
Not just here.
I've worn one of two big black coats I own every day for months here. With a big scarf.
I am so sick of it. My scarf is fraying.
What the hell. I want to chuck it in the bin, as they say here.
This morning was beautiful, warm, balmy almost.
Everyone immediately dressed down.
I walked to the Tube on the sunny side of the high road, letting that sun just shine on me.
It felt so good.
When I got in, someone at work suggested we go sit in a nearby park at lunch and eat outside. Yes.
Within an hour, it had clouded up. Gotten windy.
We got busy. Scrapped lunch.
By the time I got home, it was raining.
Didn't have the umbrella, of course.
My hair got wet. Looks like complete shit when it gets wet like that. Just as frizzy as all get out.
Gotta take what you can get here.
When it's sunny, you go out then. Right Then. Not two hours later.
That's the trick.
Been thinking about Italy.
Been talking to my son there a lot.
At least we're in the same time zone.
Italy feels like another planet, though.
Always does when you're here.
It's close, yeah.
One cheap(ish) flight away.
But really far too.

Cream tea

Another thing that makes this country great: cream tea.
Anything to do with tea really, the Brits excel at.
But cream tea -- tea served with scones, cream and jam -- is special.
Even at Sainsbury's, the local grocery store, cafe.
Even when it's the last one they've got there, all wrapped tight in clear plastic.
Which is kinda gross.
But it's still good.
Certainly preferable to anything they make with coffee here. Which they're not very good at. (Wrong temperature, too much milk, coffee too weak. I could go on.)
Back to tea.
I've told you about its healing powers here, how it's trotted out as a remedy to everything that ails you.
How where I work, people make it for each other by the mugful, every day, several times a day.
I'm really starting to feel guilty about that.
But I never want it myself. So I always pass.
It's a genetic thing.
You either want tea or coffee.
I want coffee.
Like an Italian.
Little powerful shots of it.
Throughout the day.
They just do not know how to do that here.
Anyway, do like the odd cream tea, though, must say.
So many cute little places, grand hotels, or everywhere in between, do it here.
And it always feels like an occasion. Even at Sainsbury's cafe, surrounded by a pack of suburban housewives.
Scones, sliced in half, with raspberry jam spread on top and a big dollop of cream as punctuation.
What could be wrong with that?
With a nice cup of tea.
With a friend.
A chat.
Of an English afternoon.
Lovely.

The Place to Get Sick

Still really liking Britain's National Health Service. Although I am ready for the time I won't.
I mean, compared to the States, where we've just got nothing.
C'mon, you old tired, lazy Washington politicians. You can do something! Redeem yourselves, please, if you can.
My husband got sick as a dog this past weekend at a friend's house on the south coast of England -- the land of hedges I was telling you about.
Just vomitted and vomitted and vomitted for 12 hours straight basically.
Now, my husband is a bull.
He doesn't get sick.
Unless he gets REALLY sick -- as in life-threatening disease, or emergency operation to remove a body part.
He doesn't just get kinda sick, like you and me.
So, after all that non-stop vomitting, I thought, okay, time to figure out if this is bad.
So my friend and I called the NHS hot line.
We talked to a nurse pretty quickly and explained to her the problem.
No problem whatsoever that we don't live anywhere near there, have no doctor there, or any connection to that part of the world at all really. And there's no mistaking that I'm American.
The nurse didn't like that my husband couldn't stop vomitting. Said that if he didn't stop soon, they'd have to send a doctor over to make sure he did stop, via an injection or something.
Send a doctor over? Boy, did that sound good.
Said the doctor would call in an hour or so.
After just about an hour, a doctor called.
Asked to talk to my husband directly.
That was smart.
Much better to talk to the patient than to the hysterical wife or the concerned friend, right?
Wife and friend always want the doctor to come.
At that point, my husband hadn't vomitted in about an hour and a half.
Doctor zeroed in on that right away.
Talked to him for about five minutes. Asked him exactly what was happening, down to the color of what was happening.
Told him a violent stomach bug was going around, how to wait it out for awhile, what to watch for, when and if to call back.
All turned out to be right.
Pretty impressive show actually.

The Country of Hedges

I have never seen hedges like here in this country.
No country does hedges like England.
They're a work of art.
Every great country has something that just sets it apart.
And hedges may be what sets this little, once-mighty island in the rain and mist apart.
That's right. The hedges.
We drove down through the South Downs this weekend -- just a beautiful part of England. Rolling green hills, tidy little brown brick villages, winding roads, old country pubs.
But it's the hedges that get me every time.
Seven-foot high, perfectly curved or ramrod straight, not a branch out of place, just going on and on all over the place.
Amazing.
Maybe I should take this further, though, and say gardens are what set this country apart.
Spent some time with two amazing gardeners this weekend.
Both men.
Both really proud of what they can make come out of this great ground of ours.
One showing me his seedlings, what he's planning for this spring, what's coming up soon in his lovingly-tended garden.
The other, pictures on his cellphone of the big garden he creates and maintains each year. One of those big formal English gardens. That go with a big stately house.
I was humbled by both of them.
By their love -- and tending -- of mother Earth.
It's not surprising, I guess.
They're both from the land of hedges.

Work, Part 5,468

If we could sort out work, I figure we'd have a lot of life worked out.
Work is a big one.
When we don't have it, we want it. When we do have it, we want to get away from it.
Now that I have just a bit of it, you'd think that might be right.
Wrong.
Shall I try to get more?
There?
Elsewhere?
Working somewhere just a couple days a week means not having to care.
It's actually hard not to care.
Part of me cares.
Another part doesn't.
If you care, you're really part of it.
If you don't, you're not.
Do I want to be more a part of this new place?
Part of me says yes, of course.
You're lucky there is this new place.
Another part of me screeches 'no way.'
Do other things! Fulfill those dreams, girl, damn!
I read a study recently that said older people are much happier than younger people.
And one of the main reasons cited is that they don't have to care about work anymore.
Their careers.
Or lack thereof.
If they've fulfilled their ambitions.
Or haven't.
Or any of that.
What freedom.