\nEngland is well… England. The stereotypes are all true.\n<\/p>\n
\nLittle lanes
\nWet weather
\nTiny shops
\nSmall cars
\nOutrageous prices
\nLittle red chimneys
\nBritish countryside
\nAll those silly Monty Pythoners everywhere. Two on the corner. One
\nserving me at the store. Two figuring out how to hire a shopping cart.
\nHelp! I’m stuck in a skit.\n<\/p>\n
\nIt’s like an overdone Hollywood set brought to life.\n<\/p>\n
\nFlew in from bright sunshine and fluffy into a slow descent into wet and
\ndrizzling. Welcome to London, Stephen Dodd.\n<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\nWe have no heat. This is not a mistake. This is a feature.\n<\/p>\n
\nOur three-storey flat is not heated. We stepped out yesterday to discover it
\nwas warmer outside. It’s like walking into a room and discovering all the
\nwindows have been left open all day. But they’re not. They’re just single
\npaned with no insulation. And no heating.\n<\/p>\n
\nWell, that’s no entirely true. When they fire up the deep fryers from the
\nFish and Chips shop downstairs, we get leftover Fish and Chip heat. Mmmmm.
\nFish and Chip on the brain all day, everyday. Tune into your 24 hour deep
\nfried fish and chips channel.\n<\/p>\n
\nOk, the living room has two wall units that must be plugged in to work
\nsporadically. You have to keep the living room door closed or the heaters
\njust laugh at you. I wear thermal long underwear even in the living room.\n<\/p>\n
\nThe bathroom definitely does not have heating. It is very reminiscent of
\nusing an outhouse on a brisk Jasper morning. Actually the “bathroom” on
\nthe top floor is just that – no toilet even though there is a definite spot
\nfor one. In the middle of the night the bathtub almost looks tempting.
\n(Note to Michelles and mums – note the *almost*. We are civilized. Yes,
\nyes.)\n<\/p>\n
\nIt’s a relatively large three bedroom flat complete with washer\/dryer in
\nthe kitchen for a modest $2000 cdn (or less) a month. It could charitably
\nbe described as run down. The carpets are the color of dirty cement.
\nFlipping a switch requires a pause while the lights consider. I’m just
\nnow realizing how immaculate our old “adventure” house was.\n<\/p>\n
\nOn the plus side, out the back between buildings, alleys and sorry looking
\nbrick gardens is – barely- a view of the sea! Out the front are double
\ndecker buses that look right into the living room as they go by. If I had
\na pole I could poke the bus as it goes by the window. Poke! Aiiieee!\n<\/p>\n
\nDown the street are dozens of tiny shops including a Safeway with almost
\nseven or eight aisles. We tried our Safeway Club Card. It didn’t go no
\nmatter how many attempts the clerk made.\n<\/p>\n
\nPretend you had a law that said all shops must be built on a back alley.\n<\/p>\n
\nNow imagine careening down the alley, dodging cars, lorries and
\npedestrians, thinking all the time that you were about to exit onto a main
\nstreet. But you don’t. The alley’s just lead to lanes. The lanes lead to
\nmore lanes. It’s a good thing the curbs are low because the sidewalk is
\noften needed as vehicle navigation. It’s like being in a maze, minus the
\nminotaur plus a car.\n<\/p>\n
\nI’m glad I wasn’t driving. I kept wanting to pull over to the right which
\nwould have been terrible inconvenient for my insurance record.\n<\/p>\n
\nThere are main streets. It takes two lights to cross them with a wee bit
\nof tea break in the middle. The roads have “LOOK LEFT” AND “LOOK RIGHT”
\npainted on them which is very handy as it seems even the locals can’t quite
\nfigure out the traffic.\n<\/p>\n
\nThey love traffic circles here. Big ones, little ones. Odd ones. Whoosh.
\nImagine your local residential street corner with a traffic circle.\n<\/p>\n
\nStopped at a convenience store for cell phone magazine. In one corner was
\nthe hardcore porn (can you say 144 pt “SHAG”), in the other family
\nmagazines with pictures of the Queen Mum. In between was this nebulous
\narea of uncertain content. Blazing headlines and flesh prevailed. I had
\nno idea if the inside would turn out to be Letters and Lovers of Better
\nGardening.\n<\/p>\n
\nI would expect Pubs to be called the Crow amp; Dog or Iron Keep but the local
\npub bears “Spread Eagle.”\n<\/p>\n
\nWe went to two estate agents. They both smiled and looked slightly amused
\nwhen we explained we wanted to rent a flat.\n<\/p>\n
\nOne said, “oh, well it’s really quite slow and what we do have is really
\nquite expensive”. You’ve got to be worried when a sales agent uses the
\nword expensive.\n<\/p>\n
\nThis is Brighton. The major city south of London. 2 Bedroom flats for
\nrent: Agent #1 – Two. Agent #2 – One.\n<\/p>\n
\nHere it seems quite common to purchase a floor of a house with other people
\nowning other bits and pieces. I can’t quite figure out who then repairs
\nthe roof or fixed the foundation. I suspect the answer is “not”.\n<\/p>\n
\nWe did find a listing for a nice detached house (an uncommon thing) for
\nrent for only \ufffd3400 \/ month ($8500 cdn).\n<\/p>\n
\nThe market’s going crazy. My relatives insist we should buy instead for
\nthe same price. I’m tempted.\n<\/p>\n
\nSometimes it’s the little things.\n<\/p>\n
\nThe shopping carts have independent back wheels. This makes it very easy
\nfor parallel parking. Very difficult for turning to avoid little old
\nladies or navigating heavy groceries up a steep inclines – like where we
\nlive. Yikes!\n<\/p>\n
\nBT Telecom at great expense put out an elaborate booklet and CD-ROM with a
\nfree phone number to call for questions about signing up with them. So I
\ncall the phone company and get “bzzt…This service is temporarily
\nunavailable. <click>” Somehow it just seem appropriate. \ud83d\ude42\n<\/p>\n
\nNo don’t get me wrong. I’m not bitter. It’s all rather amusing. Quite crazy
\nactually but that’s alright; you have to be to live here. I’m starting on
\nit now. \ud83d\ude42\n<\/p>\n
\nTomorrow, I see the sea. From here you can hear the Gauls.\n<\/p>\n
\nMiss you all.<\/p>\n
Cheers!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
S&M Files, Episode 1: November 24, 1999 Introduction England is well… England. The stereotypes are all true. Little lanes Wet weather Tiny shops Small cars Outrageous prices Little red chimneys British countryside All those silly Monty Pythoners everywhere. Two on the corner. One serving me at the store. Two figuring out how to hire a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[166,177],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-br1ght0n","category-sm-adventur3s"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/einiverse.eingang.org\/ein2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/einiverse.eingang.org\/ein2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/einiverse.eingang.org\/ein2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/einiverse.eingang.org\/ein2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/einiverse.eingang.org\/ein2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/einiverse.eingang.org\/ein2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/einiverse.eingang.org\/ein2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/einiverse.eingang.org\/ein2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/einiverse.eingang.org\/ein2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}