Bringing Down the Tone

So, the boy and I both have newish jobs, and this relocation has brought with it a hellish commute. So we're looking at places to move, and trying to find some place that's a quick and easy commute for both of us.

This means Essex.

Essex is like...the Alabama of England. Or maybe parts of Texas. At any rate, it has a reputation for being White Trash.

Of course, like all areas with this reputation, there are some perfectly nice neighborhoods and some perfectly nice people, and, of course, I'm sort of kind of white trash myself, so I'm not actually completely snobby about this, but it's the sort of thing you're kind of obligated to tease others about, partly because you can guarantee that if you move to Essex, everyone is going to give you grief about it as well.

So anyway, Mike and I very rarely have plans beyond "I think we'll have pie for dinner." But, as it turns out, if you want to move somewhere, it is always a good idea to actually look at the place you're going to move to. So we had this brilliant plan--since the town we're considering is about two hours from where we live now, but less than an hour to work for each of us, then we would go there after work, look at a bunch of houses, and then stay the night, commuting to work the next day.

Brilliant plan.

The morning of the trip, I dropped Mike off at the tube station and then started my journey to work. The car was completely covered with dew, and the windows were fogged up, so I rolled down the driver's side window to look for traffic. It wouldn't roll up again.

I tried to get the window up for about half an hour, then gave up and drove to work. Did I mention that I had meetings all day? Even on my lunch hour?

So, if you did the math up there when I was talking about commute times, you know that work is over an hour away. And, of course, having a broken window causes torrential rain.

When I got to work, I talked the warehouse workers out of a roll of shrink wrap, so that I'd at least be able to keep some of the rain out of the car's, to quote Denis Leary, "All leather cow interior."

So that was it.

We had to go to view houses with a shrink-wrapped car. This fashion accessory for cars is second only to cinder blocks.

It takes a lot to bring down the tone of the neighborhood in Essex, but with enough commitment, it can be achieved.