My English Cottage

Here we finally see a picture on my blog, and yes, it is where we are living. Don't get too jealous, though; Our flat only encompasses the top floor, and thus the top three windows (as well as the small side window in the picture, which is on the stairs leading up to the top floor, but is nominally in our flat, and a kitchen window, which is in the back of the house and not seen in the picture). Our next door neighbor, as I previously mentioned, and as is shown in the left of the picture, is St. Bartholomew's Parish Church.

We have a one bedroom apartment, with rustic wooden beams running through the top of the bedroom and living room. Unlike American houses, these ones actually serve a structural purpose, and not just a decorative one. Also, being a converted attic, the ceilings slope a lot, like in the bathroom, where even my head hits the ceiling if I stand up in the bath. We don't have a shower, just a bath, so it's not really a problem. The kitchen ceiling slopes a lot too, and so there are only bottom cupboards, and none on top. This results in Lydia foraging into the cupboards, and taking food or dishes out and playing with them on the kitchen floor.

The whole apartment is heated by radiators, which us being dumb Americans couldn't figure out how to turn on for the life of us, and so spent the first two days here very cold. On Sunday Avram tried to follow the directions in the service manual on how to start the heating, which led to the water gushing out of the cottage, because unbeknownst to him the pressure was set to high. Luckily, in a way, the downstairs neighbors called Maintenance because of the water, and this led on Sunday to our heat being turned on, which we've been very grateful for, although not in the method we would have preferred. There was no permanent damage, though.

Our flat is clearly just a normal shared flat, and not meant for a married couple; there are two desks in the living room, a table with two chairs, two armchairs, and two lamps. In the kitchen there is a table with two chairs, and most telling of all, in our bedroom were two twin beds, with two twin comforters, although they had pushed them together for us. The first night we tried to sleep crosswise on the beds, so that we could feel more like we had a marriage bed, and less like two illicit roommates. Unfortunately the beds are on wheels, and so slowly throughout the night the beds separated, until at the end they were four or five inches apart, with our middles sinking into the crack. We couldn't just hop out of bed and push them back together either, because Lydia was in bed with us, and we didn't want to wake her up. So now we've resigned ourselves to the two twin beds, although still pushed together. The Centre does have a crib, or cot, as they call them, but it's actually a pack 'n play, which mean it's a glorified playpen. And Lydia hates to be locked into anything, and so after we got it yesterday, and the bedding today, I took the mattress out of the playpen, and made a bed for Lydia on the floor. It seems to work well so far.

Tonight we're learning another new aspect to our home; at 8:15 pm the bell next door began ringing very loudly and repeatedly. After ten minutes, we went outside to investigate, and could vaguely see someone ringing the bell through the old wavy windows, but this didn't tell us anything. Then I walked around the front of the estate, and there were several cars parked by the church, so it wasn't announcing a fire, or anything, because then people wouldn't know to be there. I guessed maybe the Queen was dead (by this point it was fifteen minutes), because I didn't know what else would cause such prolonged ringing. So we went back inside and checked all the news on the Internet, but nothing had happened, except that today was the ten year anniversary of the inquest into Princess Diana's death. Kind of a stretch, but this was her ancestral family chapel, so it's possible, I suppose. Meanwhile, the bell kept tolling, the only thing changing being the bell changed to a lower note.

So I had Avram checked the liturgical calendar of the Anglican Church; maybe today is a high holy day of some sort, but it turns out today is nothing at all, so that was a loss. Finally, a half hour in (now mind you, this is a very loud bell, and we are about fifteen feet away from church, so it sounded as if the bell tower were in our kitchen) I looked on the Internet for reasons why the Anglican church rings bells. This didn't turn up anything specific, but I did find FAQs about becoming a bell ringer, wherein I learned several new facts, like you actually could be carried up to the ceiling like all the movies show in bell ringing, but that bell ringers are carefully taught when to let go of the rope, so that doesn't happen. Or that the bells on the continent ring in a random peal of bells, and carillon bells are struck, and so are "dainty" (that's what he said), but that the Anglican bells are the only bells that are rung in a full circle, free hanging, while still being able to be played in tunes, scales, etc, etc. (US, New Zealand, and other places that inherited versions of the Anglican church also have these bells).

Finally near the bottom I found out that associations of bell ringers usually practice on a weeknight for Sunday services, which finally answered our question...of course, it also means that this will be a weekly occurrence. Around this time the bells started ringing up and down the scale, which confirmed my hunch.

I shall write more about the actual Yarnton Manor and estate another time, but this serves as a brief introduction into our life.

P.S Tonight I made homemade chicken noodle soup, and as I was putting the noodles in Lydia came over and started begging, so I gave her a piece of raw noodle, expecting here to spit it back out in disgust, but not only did she eat it, she also begged for more, and is currently eating a lot more with Avram. Weird.