HOUSE

Here are photos of the house and such.
This is the start of the high street, just as you come into town:


I didn't take a photo of the front of the house, as you have already seen that. But here is that photo again, just for reference and/or stalking purposes:


As you enter the house, the first thing you see is the entryway:


From here, you can go upstairs, or go through the doors to the kitchen or living room. They form an "L" with the dining room in the corner of the L. This is what it looks like if you're at the far end of the living room looking down at the dining room and kitchen:


And here's standing in the far end of the dining room looking back at the living room:


The living room and dining room have sort of matching fireplaces. This is the dining room one:


And this is the living room one:


Here is a photo of the kitchen:


Then, upstairs, you can go to the bathroom:


Or bedroom one:


Bedroom two:


Or bedroom three (the first and last time you'll see an ironing board open and ready for business in this house):


The view from Bedroom Two is the back garden:


As you can see, the back garden is divided into two sections. Just outside the patio doors that lead from the dining room is a wooden deck:


After this, is the first section:


Then a second section, which ends in the greenhouse. Standing at the back next to the greenhouse, and looking back at the house, it looks like this:


There are two apple trees next to the greenhouse:


The front garden has some really lovely rosebushes to the left side:


And it makes the view from the living room pretty:


The timber shed in the back garden promises to be the source of many territory disputes:


Okay, I think that is a pretty complete tour.

By the way, that's not my decorating. Mine is considerably less tasteful, and involves far more sheepskin (or is that redundant):

Tits

I have just discovered that what I've been calling "chickadees" in the back garden are the same birds Mike is referring to as "tits." I knew about the little blue tits, but as it turns out, the Great Tit looks almost identical to a Chickadee.


Great Tit


Chickadee

(The colors on those photos make it look like the Great Tit is significantly brighter, but it's just the pictures--in reality, they're quite similar).

Chickadees and Tits are the same bird family, evidently, and I think there are some birds which are called chickadees in the U.S. that are called tits everywhere else.

...and that's my language lesson for the day.

Incidentally, when Mike and I went camping, I was wearing a blue jacket, and he bought me a Blue Tit pin. He thought he was being funny.

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.