First Impressions

I visited our new house in England this weekend. Husband S. has been living here already, starting our new lives, while I'm still in Holland, winding down our old ones. This is from my diary, the first day I was there.

Oh boy... everything is new, and yet so old and different! Our new village is so quiet! There's hardly any cars.

Our cottage is very tiny and cute, but I feel a little displaced. It's as if I'm on a holiday for one, dropped in some outback without a map or a destination. I'm sure all will be better when S. is here... or if I have a car. Right now it feels as if I'm only waiting for things to come.

I can't really relax: there's not enough books, daytime TV is weird and I don't really feel like trying the radio. Internetting is difficult without a) internet and b) a computer. That leaves only a few options: Nintendo DS (which is fun until the batteries run out), take a walk around the village (but as I don't have a map or any clue where I'm going, I'm a bit apprehensive about going to far. And it's not like I can Google it either... see above)

Which leaves only one thing to do: have lunch at the local pub and write. Very bizarre. It looks like a very nice place, but how do you start belonging to a tight community? How do you gain friends? I don't want to be pushy. I know that alone is not lonely, and lonely is not alone, but the two are very close together sometimes. At least one inhabitant of the pub seems to like me. One of the cats has stopped by repeatedly to be strokes. Or perhaps he has an eye on my ham-ciabatta of course.

England certainly tries to please me: the weather is absolutely gorgeous today. It's incredibly warm and sunny and summery for late September. I could spend hours more in the sun, watching the cat play with butterflies. Just a shame that I don't have much choice in the matter. I'll have to entertain myself until S. gets home from work.

The village of W. looks very cute, but I wonder how much that is due to the weather. Will it still be as nice when it rains and storms and everything is gray and wet?

England does make me laugh. Within a hundred yards from the aircraft you know exactly what country you're in. The floor is either covered in gray linoleum or in carpet (British racing green with some unfathomably ugly pattern in mustard yellow and wine red). And within ten paces you have encountered at least a dozen signs: fire door this, prohibited that, information such... The most amazingly inane things are slapped onto a sign to inform the public. And the English insistance is almost comical! I have not encountered a single door without the "fire door, please keep closed" sign.

Without fail, every public space, including the luggage collection hall in Luton Airport, looks like the reception room of your grandmother's retirement home. The aforementioned linoleum not just laid on the floor, with plinths, but it also covers the bottom four inches of the wall as well, creating the illusion of the inside of a tent. Very peculiar.

It seems to me that the people are both very friendly and very reserved. I think they're not sure what to make of me. I can relate to that: it's always weird, meeting someone new, especially if they come from abroad. I do feel that England will prove to be an important experience for me, even if it may not always be pleasant. I know that I can be a bit brusque and abrupt sometimes, and I need to be careful with that. In the long run brutal honesty may be appreciated more than false flattery, but that does not mean that it will be appreciated immediately, and it's probably a good idea to keep that in mind. Diplomacy is an art that I have yet to master...

Something else that amazes me: this country is so regulated, everything is nannied and locked down, but when I sit outside the pub, looking at it, I notice the way the electrical wiring for the exterior lights is fixed. The wires are obviously too flimsy for outdoor use, and it is fixed to the wall by small nails that go THROUGH the wire! Interesting building regulations! I wonder how many fuses they use in winter...

I hope S. will be home from work on time. He'll be tired, but he's got to take me out. To the pub, or at least to the (24 hours) Tesco. The sooner this feels like home, the better.