Bathrooms, Showers, Toilets and Ewww Part 4: The Mixer Tap

The above is a mixer tap.

The above is NOT a mixer tap.

I bet you didn't know that a lack of mixer taps are proof of everything from how backwards the English are to the idiocy of the UK's failure to join the Euro to the lack of technologial savey of the countries young people, to what huge (insert series of expletives here) the English are. It's not true. I'll explain at the bottom, with citations. 

Behold: a mixer tap combines hot and cold water, shoots it out one tap, and creates warm water. Can't you just feel the controversy brewing? Aren't you just dying to know why it matters? I thought not.

Any gathering of immigrants to the UK usually results in discussions of things we don't understand about the UK. While having a moan is typically English, the purpose of these discussions is rarely just moaning. It does happen that one person will ask a question, in the form of a complaint, and another person will say, "I just found out why that is." Here is an example:

Me: I still can't get past the lack of mixer taps. Why, if you're fitting a new bathroom at the department store, would you then fail to install mixer taps.
My Friend: Mixer taps have an interesting history here. They're hard to fit into old style plumbing systems. Department Store was refitting not replumbing. There was also a period after they were introduced when there were concerns about hygiene given the way mixer taps in the UK originally worked. {Note: Hygiene is often cited for skipping over new bathroom introductions. Remember the idea of bathing was once horrifying}.

See, perfectly reasonable. Replumbing a building is much more difficult and expensive than simply putting in new taps and new basins. And honestly, I was glad to see that they had fitted watersaving toilets. If you're desperate, you can see the current in-pipes in the picture above.

Me to my friend: I hate scalding my hands while trying to wash them.
Woman next to us: Fill the sink with hot and cold water. Use that.

So actually not really a problem. It feels like a waste of water, but I've experimented and discovered that I use more water when I wash my hands under running water. {She washed her hands with scalding water}.

Do not, I mean it, fail to recognize the signs around sinks that warn of very hot water. They're not kidding. You will, trolling through comments on such stories, see that folks claim a lack of mixer taps are the reason for so many scaldings in the UK. It's important to remember that hot water can be turned on without cold water thus resulting in hot water, even in a mixer tap.

The issue of mixer taps, which are largely used throughout the continent, comes up now and again in the news. It is rare, even from UK sources, to see any sort of in-depth research into the topic. And usually the reason given is that non-mixer taps are traditional. It's lazy journalism. It's hard to see indoor plumbing as traditional. Most certainly the reasons are tied to money, old plumbing rules, habit, and ancient plumbing. Remember that my kitchen drain was attached to a Victorian down pipe.  

Sine those news stories are inevitably fluff, they tend to carry with them pages and pages of comments. Go on and read them. You'll discover as I did that mixer taps are proof of the alleged failings of the mostly the English but sometimes the UK as well. A few points of view are linked below.

Other Places Mentioning Mixer Taps
BBC All 2gether Now Project
The Guardian's Nicolas Blincoe 
The Offensive to Everyone, WSJ via Warwick University Blogs
And for good measure a message board with some useful if not entirely correct information

Other Parts of the Bathrooms, Showers, Toilets and Ewww series
Why English Toilets Don't Clog
How to Descale Your Shower Head
Electric Showers and Yet No Electricity.

Some Clean Up and A Small Jig

Ooo, Flowers, Tourists, and Sun!

Sooo, I've gotten a handful of questions in great repition. I thought I'd answer them here. I know that you were just dying to see that I'm covered in flour and the flowers in Bath.

Yum, Flour.

Q: What happened with your bread.
A: I spent most of last week covered in flour. No really, the photo about doesn't do the flour coverage justice. My first attempt at sourdough starter went from one cup flour, one cup water to sponge in 36 hours. As for the bread, the first loaf burned on the outside and suffered extreme doughyness on the inside. It was inedible. The second loaf came up lovely, if a bit heavy.

Second Attempt at Sourdough Loaf.

I know you're just dying to comment. And then I killed the starter by washing the bowl. That's right: I picked up the starter bowl and tossed it into the dishwater. I don't think there is any way to save starter from detergents. The second attempt at starter is currently becoming a sponge. At least, I hope it is becoming a sponge. If not, I'll have to go buy bread tomorrow. That would defeat the whole point. I suspect that I'm going to be going through a lot of flour in the coming weeks.

Q: Did you really have an outhouse?
A: Yes, two in fact. I was terrible at having an outhouse. Wait, I was terrible at my first outhouse. Saving a bit of dosh by living without running water in a dry cabin in Alaska seemed like a good idea. Besides I really really wanted to prove that I could do it. The week we moved in breakup (the great melt that happens in June in Alaska) occurred, and it became clear that the outhouse hole hadn't been dug properly, I'd moved into a bog, and that my landlord was creepy. I spent most of the ensuing seven months using a honey bucket (five gallon bucket in the house) and 'flushing' that down the outhouse. My second outhouse experience was pretty fabulous (Thanks, Jennifer). Of course the local mama moose really liked the extra foliage that grows around outhouses, and she often wasn't going to let me near it. Luckily it was Alaska and I had already become a dab hand at squatting in the woods. Phew.

Q: I grew up with an outhouse and their were various creepy crawlies I couldn't stand. How did you cope?
A: I would not have coped at all any place that has snakes, spiders bigger than the palm of hand, or wasn't frozen 9 or so months a year. I do often miss my outhouse and its large expanse of wilderness. I hate cleaning the toilet, and I hate having to wait my turn. The English don't like it when you use their gardens as 'the necessary.'

Q: Wouldn't it be cheaper and easier to replace your shower head rather than descaling it? 

A: It might be easier except that I don't have a car. It's a twenty-minute bus ride followed by a twenty-minute walk to the nearest place that sells shower heads. I'd have to do this approximately once a month. It's actually less time consuming to descale the shower head and more environmentally friendly. I broke our last shower head when I dropped it from a great height. The cheapest new one was 9 quid. At the time that would have been 18 dollars. Even the heavy duty chemical descaler costs about 1.50 per descale. Vinegar is of course much cheaper than that.  It is a job I hate, and if I could convince people that I live in a dry cabin and need to shower at their houses, I would.


Q: What's the weather like there right now?
A: It's unseasonably warm or cold. It's probably raining and windy or muggy with no precipitation or it's blowing a gale. I suggest putting on a pair of trousers, a short-sleeve t-shirt, a long sleeved t-shirt, and a jacket. Put a skirt in your handbag (or if you prefer carrier bag). Subtract clothing as necessary. Add clothing as necessary. I'm not being sarcastic. I really do this. I works rather well. 

Q: Do you celebrate July 4 there?
A: I do. Some of the English celebrate with me. They bring me gifts, usually flowers. They call it the day they finally got rid of those obnoxious Puritans. Some people find it very offensive that I continue to celebrate. Most people just want an invite to the bbq.

Tomorrow is mixer tap day. Warm water out of a tap. Who knew? I'm still debating whether or not to approach that whole religion thing. I'm trying to be brave.

Thanks so much to The Jason Show and Finger Rolls and Folding Chairs for kindly linking to me. These are both blogs I enjoy, and I hope you'll go visit them. Someone else has linked me, or shared me, or shouted about me, but I haven't been able to figure out who. Let me know if it was you, please, and I'll link you up.

PS: I'm not sure comments are working for everyone. Will you please e-mail me if you're having problems, americaninbath@gmail.com? 

Bathrooms, Showers, Toilets and Ewww Part 3: Why the English Flush Better

Clearly, I have nothing but your best interests at heart. I've spent the whole of the weekend trying to find out why UK toilets clog less frequently than US toilets. I'm exhausted from all of the effort. Someone should really bring me dinner and a drink.


Former residents of Chez American in Bath had much better tastes in toilets than in baths, don't you think? Not only is the toilet suite white, but the toilet has not blocked in the almost five years I have lived here. This may be why I know absolutely nothing about UK plumbing. Few midnight plumbing problems leads to lack of knowledge. In fact, I think that you should go clog you toilet immediately in order to give your children an education in plumbing.

Inside of an English Toilet

While it is easy to find diagrams of how US toilets work, it's not so easy to find the same for UK toilets. It's as though people don't find they need them. I can tell you that the basic theory is the same, but something is different. Maybe I should become a plumber?

In the interest of pretending to know what I'm talking about, I offer you the following list of reasons why maybe, just possibly, probably UK toilets don't clog as frequently as those in the US. (Oh my, it is rather unpatriotic of me on this America's birthday or as the English refer to it the day they got rid of that obnoxious colony).

5. US toilet paper is thicker and breaks down more slowly than UK toilet paper. If you live in the US buy a cheap one-ply brand.

4. The English eat more fiber thus causing fewer clogs. (Yes, I made that up.)

3. The English descale their toilets.


2. English toilets are rarely on the ground floor. Never underestimate gravity.


1. The UK exit is larger.

See: Larger exit.

Try not to judge me too harshly. I know that you don't dust the back of your toilet either! 


Citations I would have used, if I knew what I was talking about.

Water Wise
EPA

Wednesday is the day that we'll talk about mixer taps. Don't know what a mixer tap is? That's because you live in a country that has them AND uses them. Friday I'm all about descaling the kettle, that or we're going to have to buy a new one. Next Monday is probably, maybe if I'm brave on the topic of religion. hmmmm.

Previous in the Series:
How to Descale Your Shower Head
Electric Showers and Yet No Electricity.

Fabulous Things About England #33: Baths, Showers, and Electricity

Light switch is outside the bathroom

You were hoping I'd show you my toilet, weren't you. The light at this time of night is terrible, so you'll have to wait until another day to see how I feel about thick bleach. If you're very lucky, I'll do a week of blogs about toileting and bathing facilities.

Why yes, that is an Armitage Shanks bathroom suite in pink. You're dying of envy aren't you? Not as envious as I am of avocado green refrigerators, but it does come close. Nonetheless, the pink isn't so bad when you consider that this used to be my toilet.

Outhouse that used to be mine

The outhouse also had no light unless there happened to be sun. My fantastic pink bathroom does have light, and like every other bathroom in the UK the light switch is not on the inside wall. This is considered far too dangerous as there is so much water in a bathroom. Instead, you'll find the light switch on the outside wall of the bathroom or as a pull cord just inside the bathroom door.

Difficult to See Pull Cord

Pull cords are always white, never neon. Ah, the Americans are saying, it does rather make sense. No electricity in the bathroom means fewer accidental electrocutions. Until you add in this:

Should probably pick up some descaler

That would be an electric shower. That would be an electric shower that shares a wall with my outside the bathroom light switch. Now the English are shaking their heads and pointing out that these are usually installed by well qualified folks to keep us all safe. And they're right, but wasn't the person who installed the house's electrics also highly qualified?

Midsummer and Solstice

Summer Solstice, Alaska 2007

When I was in Kindergarten, Mrs. Barnhill read us a book about the seasons. She informed us that regardless of the weather, spring began on March 21st, summer on June 21st, autumn on September 21st, and Winter on December 21st. I was terribly put out. I was a winter baby regardless of what Mrs. Barnhill's calendar book said.

In Alaska, regardless of religion, the solstices are days of celebration. In winter, it is an acknowledgement that there is hope and days will not be getting any shorter, that we are not spiraling into an eternal night. In summer, it is a celebration of that hope in that fruition.

Here in parts of England, the solstice is part of Midsummers' celebrations. For some, it is a religious celebration. But like most of  America, many will not even note its passing.

And now I live in England where the summer solstice speaks to midsummer's day, a time of growth before the harvest,

Fabulous Things About England #32: Walking in the rain

Out the London Road

We are wet here in the West Country. After last weekend's unusually long deluges and wind, the constant patter of a slow soaking rain is almost reassuring.

The path stops at the river.

What better way to spend the early evening than meandering around the edges of the the countryside?

At least I think it's elderflower

And stopping to smell the elderflower.

The leaves look like elderflower

The farmers and the plants are still desperate for rain.

The Toll Bridge at Bathampton

 Sometimes I walk out this way

The countryside boarders the river and the road.

To be reminded how far the river travels.

How to capture rain drops?

or to see if there are any ducks among the reeds,

The Bathhampton Inn

 And to watch the river falling.

There is no toll for walkers

 Before turning toward the hill

Who lives here?

And heading home.

Brightly Colored Veg: Learning to Live with Five a Day

When I was growing up, my mother made cucumber and carrot sticks, she broke off cauliflower and broccoli florets, and she cut stars into the tops of radishes before throwing the lot into old margarine tubs and covering with them with water. Mom would place these on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator, allowing my sister and I to graze our ways through the day.

It isn't a terribly practical plan here. My butter containers would fit just about two carrots. Refrigerators are small, and unlike the US, freezers tend to be on the bottom. I've tried over the years to emulate my mother, but vegetables tended to get eaten before they made it to the tubs or forgotten all together. Here I share the the refrigerator with my housemate, and she'll be the first to tell you that I forget about the food I cannot see when first glancing below the counter and into the fridge. Food was rarely wasted, just eaten well into the floppy but edible stage.

I'm terrible about making complete meals for one. I plan them, buy the food stuffs, then eat the ingredients one by one. This usually results in a lot of uncooked pasta and rice. It isn't that I don't have the time, but that I generally eat when I reach the point of starving or when I'm trying to sit down to write. I generally cook when someone might thank me for doing so. The question is one of degree. While I am happier when I am fed, I am happier still when I have fed someone else.

Years ago I stopped getting hungry. Until the point at which my eyes rang the migraine alarm bells or I simply fell over, my body gave me no reminders to eat. I wouldn't have eaten at all at University had the other women in my hall not knocked on my door and asked me when I was going to dinner, to breakfast. Mostly, I forgot lunch until after the dining hall had closed because there was no one to remind me to put food into my stomach between classes and work. When I tried to explain, men and women alike envied me my stick figure.
I still rarely get hungry; though, I have lost the stick figure.

Friends will tell you that I am never so grateful as when someone feeds me a meal they have cooked. They'll say that I eat ravenously. They may even say that they have heard me utter the words: I'm hungry. My friends are reasonably smart people. They know what I mean is that I want to break bread in their company. They know that I have likely forgotten to stop for a moment for lunch. They know I have looked toward my own kitchen and figured I'd go and make something soon. Soon is rather like the rest of the future; it rarely arrives when we most expect it to.

The night before we buried my grandmother, my sister made a roast for my brother-in-law, my father, my stepmother, and I. We ate slowly, taking our time over the thick slices of pork.  We didn't talk about what the next morning would bring; though, my father slowly articulated our families life in that far off place we call a long time ago. For one short moment, we forgot the forks in our hands, the dishes to be done, the years in between that make the distances between us so necessary. There in the rental house, I sat with my father and one of my sisters, and we ate a home cooked meal as a family--something that hasn't happened in sixteen whispering years.

I am trying to learn to eat food cooked for one. It has become, rather suddenly, a necessity. After that dinner in Denver, we sent my sister and her husband on a date. My stepmother began to do the washing up, and Dad prepared for bed. I opened my laptop, typed my password, and discovered that the job that made up the bulk of my income no longer existed. Nor did the job of anyone else who was working from outside of the state in which the university's buildings sit.

And I am lucky. I have a second job with good people who are throwing as many hours as they can afford in my direction. I have friends who have been out of work for two years, who at thirty-three are living with their parents who themselves cannot afford to retire. I have friends who have been told to go back to university to retrain, despite their PhDs and decades worth of student loan debt. I have friends who dole out calories to their children, skimping on their own, in hopes that children who feel hungry are still well enough fed. But I also know how thin the line between underemployed and unemployed is. I know that the electric bill is going to be much higher than the amount the housemate and I toss into the savings account each month. I know that I may or may not have enough hours next month to make up the difference. I know that what I write as melancholy is really fear. So while I search for another job that may well be forthcoming, I'm buying what's left at the end of the day at the veg stall to avoid paying rent with the emergency plane ticket. And I am grateful that it is, for now, more than enough.

Untranslatable: Ants and Pants

Part of being an immigrant to this lovely green land is learning to live in a new idiom. That is to say that you must learn to live in a new figurative language. Should you manage an invite to a barbeque, I cannot recommend highly enough asking a wiggly English child if they have ants in their pants. You will become ever popular with the under-10 set, and the adults will be forced to engage you in conversation.

For those of you who are English and would like to play the game, ants in one's pants refers to a general state of wiggling or impatience for a desired event. If you want to share your own antsyness, you'll want to announce, "I have ants in my pants, and now I've got to do a boogey dance." A boogey is, of course a bogey.

Thanks to the University of Alaska, Fairbanks for the shout out in the alumni news feed.

Other People's Nursery Rhymes

The problem is, of course, leading other people's children astray. It's a question of not sending an English boy off to nursery singing "Ring around the rosies/ pocket full of posies/ ashes ashes/ we all fall down." The English sing "Ring-a-ring of roses/ pocket full of posies/ a-tishoo a-tishoo/ we all fall down."

While American toddlers learn to blow dandylion seed in hopes of making a wish come true, here in the West Country they are simply attempting to tell the time. I hear that there are places where children learn that they are trying to tell the hour at which their wish will come true.

Fabulous Things About England: The Railroad Bridge, Bathampton

Between Bathampton and the toll bridge

Years ago, I went to Florida to take care of my grandmother while she recovered (as far as recovery happens in the later stages) from an exacerbation of COPD. I was a year into a PhD, and I thought that it would be easy enough to write when she slept. Inexperience is a fabulous reminder of the eternal naivety of the human condition. I read a lot of blogs during those months, and I wrote a handful of rather dire personal essays, but mostly I coped with a seventy-five year old toddler. I didn't see a lot of Florida that trip; though, I let Gram dream aloud about what we would do the next time I visited. I didn't mention how much I hate Florida, but I did apply for a handful of permanent faculty positions close enough to her residence, far enough away from her residence.

We spent a lot of our time in the medical-industrial complex that runs the length and breadth of Florida. One stucco building runs into the next until you're practically eating peaches in Georgia. Most days, as tempting as it was to keep on driving, I kept an eye on the amount of oxygen left in the green tank that road shotgun attached as it was to Gram. I learned to turned us toward home before the red indicator light would frighten her.

It isn't surprising, now that I have time to ruminate, that when my great aunt relieved me I hadn't seen much of America. I headed north for my sister's wedding and began the litany of things I had forgotten: which way to look when crossing the street, how heavy nickles are, the intricacies of filling up a petrol tank, how American roses smell, the necessity of greeting people you pass in the street, and American boys. I'd forgotten their long khaki shorts and worn-out t-shirts, the way they sit in threes and fours on front stoops drinking brown bottled beer, that they shake hands, that they hug each other, that they can throw a Frisbee up and down a road for hours. I'd forgotten America boys, train horns, and wintergreen mints.

I find a certain disquiet in knowing that melancholy is little more than knowledge of a memory turning first pleasant, then fading. I like to stand on the railroad bridge out by Bathampton for no greater reason than I am finally old enough to do so for as long as I choose. There is no great adult insisting on a bath then bed, no one to tell me one more train and then we'll go. And still, until I snapped the picture, I hadn't remembered how the city rises quite suddenly on the horizon.  I am grateful for pavements that are no wider than my hips, for the shadow the abbey throws in mid-afternoon, for the weight of a pound or two in my left pocket.

I am glad to be home.

On the Way to London

I don't prepare for travel well. I'm fine for the actual traveling. It's the getting ready that knocks me for six.

The travel dreams always begin classically. The Greeks also dreamed that their Trojan horse was boarding, they'd forgotten to pack and had no idea what they'd done with their passports. For me one anxiety dream begets another. The other night I dreamed that both my parents had been murdered via the oh-so-likely vehicle of a car crash. In the dream one of my sisters and I had to set all to rights, but we couldn't figure out how given all of the hard grieving we were doing. The problem is that it sometimes takes me hours after a dream to sort out what is real from what is produced by the ether of mind. I spent the next morning trying to shake the dream. I kept reminding myself that there hadn't been a car crash, that there was no rush to sort out funeral plans, and that my parents were still alive. Except that last one isn't quite right. Mom's been dead for sixteen years now. It's that part of the travel dreams that I couldn't cope with this time around--the part where I think everything is as it should be only to remember it isn't.

I finally wrote a packing list last week and packed. It made the dreams stop; though, I've had to repack since then. It's odd what I thought I needed until I realized that I didn't really want to carry it. Fair warning to the family: I washed ten pairs of socks. I can't find them now, so my feet will probably smell.

There's An Election Acomin'

Posting of Elections, Guildhall, Bath

 It's election time here in the UK. Elections to the National Assembly are taking place in Wales. Northern Ireland will be electing officials to both the Northern Ireland Assembly and to local councils. Scotland will be electing members to the Scottish Parliament. Here in England the elections are local. You could think of it as elections to the city or town councils in the States. These are the people who decide such things as zoning, traffic patterns, rubbish collection, parking allocation, and rents on city-held properties. Folks here in Bath are far more aware of their local representatives than in any place I have lived in the U.S. Both the Lib Dems and the Conservatives are hoping for high turnouts across the UK because there is one more very important issue at stake. 

The British are being asked if they want to change the way they elect Ministers to Parliament. That's not quite true. They're being asked if they want to go from electing Ministers in a first-past-the post-system to an alternative vote system. In the current system (fptps) the party which receives the most votes in any constituency gets that constituency's seat in Parliament. Since this is a country of three major parties and many minor ones, a party that received 30% of the vote could feasibly take the seat. Under the proposed system, each voter would be allowed to rank the parties in order of their preference. The party with the least votes in round 1 would be dropped. Then second choices would be added to the first choices until one party had made up 50% of the vote. Confused? You can read more here. I have more luck explaining these two systems to Americans than I ever had the American system to the British. There's a reason for that. The British are very smart. They value their votes. They do not understand a system in which the whole country could vote for one candidate and another candidate could still end up in office.

 I did try to get a photo of a 'No' sign, but one can only point their camera at people's windows so many times before the locals get twitchy.

A bench outside Bath's Guildhall.

I'm off to the States in a few days. I wonder what I'll find there. In the meantime, I'm packing. I'll annotate my packing list for you.

In Which I Have To Think

A View of Bathford

Sarah has suggested that it might be good if bloggers defined what they hoped their blogs achieve. That sentence construction is very British. Sarah is English, and she managed to say it more bluntly, "I thought it would be so cool to read through a post that really defines what your blog is about." Signs that you've been in British academia too long: You believe in your own brilliance. You're offended at the idea that your teaching might be more important than your research. You cannot write in anything but the passive voice.


I suppose those problems of the cultural language of British Academia are how this blog began. I wanted a space in which I could share, sometimes bluntly, my life outside of British Academia. I love this country (defined both as the UK and England) for the life it offers me. I wanted to share that with the larger world.


When I began the blog, I saw three possible goals. I was working with international students from the US and Nigeria at the time. Every term, they would come in and give me a list of things they wished they had known before arriving in the country. I hoped here to share some of those things with students and others who were coming into the country. I wanted to move beyond that to share those Fabulous Things About England that keep me here. Finally, I hoped to build a large enough reader base that might one day read a book I've written.

Local Race Horses

That last goal is no longer a way of defining this blog. Rather, the blog is one way of sharing an eclectic way of viewing the life I have here. It's a life that I love and value, and one that often frustrates me. When I began writing here, I did not tell my friends and family. Slowly I began to share it with all of the people who have joined me at important junctures in my life, and it has become a way of staying in touch with my community and making new friends. 


You can pop over to Sarah's to read more about the hows and whys of people's internet spaces. Just click the button below.

The Television Screen.

It's gorgeous outside. The sun has just dipped below the hills west of the house, so the fields below the are innumerable shades of green and the neighbors horses are gently grazing. I'm watching friends and thinking about everything that somehow must get done tomorrow. It isn't much really, but I'd like to finish the shawl I'm crocheting and that feels like a pleasure. As a child of protestant America, I'm not allowed to do the pleasurable until the work gets done. I'm likely to finish that shawl sometime next January--unless we're suddenly allowed crochet hooks on planes.

Sherry at Wherever She Goes  in Alaska has given up her family's home internet and television. They've not done it for the same reasons that so many essayists and editorialists seem inclined to mention. It isn't about saving her daughter from the red monster, nor is it about rejecting a modern way of life.  Rather Sherry and her husband would like to buy a house one day. Getting rid of the telly and the intermonster have done all of those other things for them, but it is also allowing another $100 a month to go towards that one-day home.

My current big purchase dreams are a sewing machine, a bed of my own, and dishes. It's difficult for me to remember that the Great British need to buy a home isn't part of my own experience or make-up. Culture here demands that one of a young person's goals should be to own a home. There are some good reasons for that that I may get to another day when I'm feeling brave. But it wasn't until I moved here that I ever thought that owning a home was important. I certainly didn't see renting as a problem, particularly since I didn't have children.

While I could now, given the right job in the right income bracket, afford a mortgage in the States, I carry a lot of student loan debt. Even at the height of the economic-ruination bonanza, I wouldn't have been able to get a mortgage for exactly that reason. So what money I do have to save goes in the sewing machine/new bed/dishes category. I'd happily give up the television for a sewing machine, but we don't pay for television. I can't give up the internet--I use it to do my job. And for me, there are many other negotiations involved.

When I moved into the flat, I only expected to be here for eighteen months. A year before moving in here, I'd given away or taken most of what I owned to the transfer station, left a few boxes with friends, and simply left some of it behind in the cabin. Giving those things up wasn't difficult; the reality of living out of two suitcases was. I no longer owned a bed or a chair, so I tried not think about who else had slept in the beds in my rentals. I tried to remember not to balance my coffee cups on a the couch cushions, and I was very careful not to obtain things I might want to keep. I did bring a skillet, a soup pot, cutlery, and bedding with me.

Back then, it made sense to move into a partially furnished house with a housemate who had enough kit to fill out most of it. Over time, my own belongings have begun to bulge from my room, off my bookshelf, and out of my cupboard. More than that though, I'm longing to make a home of my own. I don't want to need to apologize when I break a glass. I want to be able to put my headboard against any wall in the house rather than having to think about our shared wall, I want bowls that aren't blue. It all comes down to another desire--I want my life and decisions to stop being made on the basis of transience.

When I first moved into the flat, we didn't have a landline or internet. I did most of my work at the local or uni library, and I felt like I was allowed to watch telly when I got home. I did a three-year master's degree in the States. Inevitably, I had class on a Thursday night. For the following year and a half, I taught on a Thursday night. Those first six months of evenings in this flat were spent getting caught up on Friends two episodes at a time. I got into the habit (or back into the habit) of keeping the television on for the sake of noise and company.

It is looking increasingly like I am not going to find a job that pays enough to keep me in the country under the points based system. Still I need a job in addition to the teaching I do online to live out my UK visa days. As I said, the television isn't mine. I don't own it, and it sits in communal space. I'd like to see it gone because my own will-power isn't enough to keep me from turning it on and ignoring the things I need to be doing on the internet.

Unexpected Rules: A Conversation With the GP

Circa January 2009:

GP: How much do you drink?

Me: A glass here and there.

GP: How much did you drink last week?

Me: I haven't had a drink since September.

GP (said with very real concern): Do you have any friends?

Me: Yes?

Circa 2010, Phone Call With Consultant to correct information in a letter

Consultant: How much do you drink?

Me: I have a glass here and there?

Consultant: How much did you drink last month?

Me: Three glasses of wine.

Consultant: You don't drink.

Circa 2011

GP (filling in request for x-ray): You don't really drink.

Me: No.

I'm glad we've finally clarified that point.

A Walk in The Woods

Last week, I met up with an old friend and her two boys. We went on a walk to find a wood. We were looking for a particular wood, but we only knew it existed because my friend had accidentally found it while lost a few summers ago. This time we had to find it while not-lost. So we went in search of the wood that we knew existed somewhere near enough to walk but far enough away to have once lost our way. It was a rather perfect day for a journey with two small people, two big people, a packed lunch, and a pushchair (stroller). Pushchairs, by the by, can be lifted over kissing gates.

Like this one, many built-up areas in this part of the UK, have protected green space for wildlife, socializing, and long walks. We did manage to find the wood by looking up high for a copse of trees and walking toward them. We sat on this log and had our sandwiches. This cat followed us in and rather begged to be photographed. The floor (ground) of the wood is covered in bluebell plants. They should spring out sometime this month.

We saw the many places the Wiltshire Wildlife Trust had begun to make habitat for birds and hedgehogs and children inclined to playing house. The wood is rather small, if you consider that I used to live in Alaska, but like all planned wilderness in England, it has been perfectly formed to make long walks possible. The trees have been coppiced. It's a rather brilliant way of cutting back trees almost to the ground to create quick and thick regrowth and assures more wood for future use. One of the things people will tell you here is that island nations learned early the necessity of renewing resources--even if they are now having to remember that heritage. Coppicing and copses have a long history in the UK, and the British are particularly fond of their woods.The human need for a bit of nature seems a foregone conclusion to them.

I suppose that is rather obvious as so many of us grew up with the stories of Pooh and Tiger who lived in a wood. I have it on good authority that this is Piglet's house. Piglet, of course, couldn't climb the tree. His door had to be down and close to the ground. We did knock, but he wasn't in. I suspect we should have rung first, rather than just calling in. Surely then he would have been expecting us.

I can imagine spending a rather perfect childhood here. Doesn't it seem that this path leads to a long journey to just about anywhere? There is no poison oak or ivy here, and if you stand quietly enough, you can imagine noise from the motor way is simply a nearby ocean.

Even perfect days have to end. I've tried objecting and running alongside a small boy on a bicycle and sitting quietly reading books, but those things only extend the joy before dusk settles in. These are early spring flowers. I've been seeing them on people's lapels recently. What are they? What do they symbolize?

Warning: Census Exacebates Existential Crises

I'd been relatively excited for the census form to come through the letter slot. It landed in the hallway many days ago. It's a little like those Christmases when all I asked for was a scarf, and I was given warm socks, gloves, and stacks of books. I'd feel so tremendously grateful, but my neck would still be cold. My cold neck would keep telling me about the wind chill factor, even as my feet thanked my sister for the new wool socks. It wasn't a lack of gratitude, just a niggling whinge. I'd send my neck to bed without supper. That usually solved the problem.

At first I wondered if my great nieces and nephews would take the time, a hundred years from now when the specifics are released, to track down my name. I wondered if they would try to piece together who I was and perhaps why I was here instead of in the States. I wondered what they would know that I do not yet know. Do I remain? Can I be found in the 2021 census U.K citizenship in hand? Or, will they have to search for me in Australia or Canada or America or Belize? Will I finally be the maiden aunt that my three nephews and niece recalled seeing once every few years but not much after my fiftieth birthday? Will they know that the book, any book of mine, had finally been published? Will it seem odd to them that I hold an Academic title or will they know already? What will they make of the scattering of information the census will give them?

 They most certainly will not know that my pen hesitated and hovered when it came to giving my country of birth. It is an easy question. I am, by birth or otherwise, not English, Welsh, Scottish, Northern Irish, or from ROI. I am without question from Elsewhere, Write in the Current Name of Country. Black tick mark, USA, and I am forever listed, by my own hand as foreign.

When did you most recently arrive to live here? How long do you intend to stay? Are you in good health? Do you help family and friends? Is your national identity: English or Irish, Scottish or British, or Other Write In? And your ethnic group: English / Welsh / Scottish / Northern Irish / British, Irish, Gypsy or Irish Traveller, or  Any Other White Background Write In? What passport do you hold: United Kingdom, Irish,  Other Write In?

I'm grateful to the UK for a lot of things. This year's census isn't one of them. So here is the story I would have told had I been given enough space.

Household Questions:
H6: Name of person 1, Name of Person 2
Actually our names haven't changed since question H3.

Individual Questions:
1. What is your name?
Actually my name hasn't changed since question H3 and H6.

4. On 27 March 2011, what was your legal marital or same-sex civil partnership status?
Never married and never registered in a same-sex civil partnership. It's terribly redundant by the way. The courts have been very clear that same-sex relationships cannot become marriages and dual-sex relationships cannot become civil partnerships. As for my marital status, I'm not married. Or if you prefer the term my grandmother used to use, I'm 'still single.' Yes, I know that I just told you that I'm thirty-three. Yes, I know that this government would let me have some extra dosh if only I'd go ahead and get hitched. Yes, I'm aware that there are a lack of marriages, if you ask some, and my singleness will lead to practical starvation in my old age. If you must know, no one will have me. And even if someone would have me, I'd have to ask permission of the government to get married seeing as I'm foreign. It's been months since I thought about it, so thank you for reminding me.

9)What is your country of Birth?
Elsewhere, write in name of Country, USA. I'd have spelled it out, but those whole nine spaces you've left me to do so, were oh so helpfully too short. Clearly, I am an American. Don't you read the blog?

10)If you were not born in the UK, when did you most recently arrive to live here?
12/2005. And in a few months time when the current government stands up in parliament to whinge about all those people who have outstayed their original visas, had the nerve to pay for a new one, filled in the all of the paperwork, sat in processing centers, and been given permission to stay longer, I'll know that you mean me. Never mind the countries actual need for highly educated persons. No, I know that you'll spit me out as one of those statistics that imply that I am clearly taking advantage.

14) Do you look after or give any help or support to family members, friends, neighbors or others because of long-term physical or mental ill-health/disability. Problems related to old age?
Yes. Do you think that you could mention that alongside question 14, please?

15) How would you describe your national identity?
American. I'm foreign. I'm pretty sure we covered that before. I really want to describe myself as British, but I suspect that that isn't really what you mean.

16) What is your ethnic group?
Any other white background, please write in. American. Can we please, please, please only use the word ethnic when it is definitionally appropriate? And maybe you could consider that ethnicity does not exist except as a way to define the other. Someone remind me to address the ethnic group debate here and in the US.

22. What passports do you hold?
Can we talk about this? Would it worry you if I said Martian? I'm an American. I'm foreign. I am here legally. I get that I am not a British citizen. Can this be the last question that highlights this, please? It is. Good.

25. Which of these qualifications do you hold?
So I told them, but then they wanted me to tick a box if those qualifications are foreign. But only part of them are. Hmmm. I do feel for the statisticians.

34. What is your full and specific job title? Hourly paid lecturer. Yes, it is exactly the same job I held before coming here and spending a lot of time obtaining a PhD. Yes, it is true that I thought a PhD would get me a full-time permanent position. No, I couldn't have predicted that I would ever live through such a deep recession as this. Yes, I should have predicted that the humanities would be considered a convenient line item i the budget here and abroad. Yes, I see that I should have followed my mother's advice and become and engineer. No, becoming an engineer now will do me zero good, since new engineers are making a pitance.

38. In your main job, what is the name of the organisation you work for? The University of ________. Um Yes, I do see that that is not in the UK. Did I mention giving up a shop job to take another job and the new company going bankrupt? Did I mention that I love teaching online, but it doesn't actually pay the bills? I get that I am a complete failure in the obtaining work paying 35,000 pounds a year in order to fulfill the points-based system requirements. I get that that number is 11,000 pounds a year higher than it was 18 months ago. I get that I am more ancient in the land of the points based system than I am on the marriage market. I get that I am well qualified for work that you are desperate to have filled, but that work does not fulfill the 35,000 pound requirement. Thanks for bringing it up.

42. In your main job, how many hours a week (including paid and unpaid overtime) do you usually work? That depends on whether you ask the university or you actually add up my hours. Do you really want to have this conversation?

Declaration.
My name, today's date, and my telephone number are exactly the same as they were an hour ago.

I must sound even more bitter to you all than I do to myself. The purple form has been filled in (out) and popped in the mail. I'm reasonably certain that I'll not see another census form for at least nine years. By that time, we could all be living on Mars.

As for the above photograph:  All government forms in this country have a pastel main color with bright color highlights. Those of you who work in design can perhaps tell me why it is Easter year road in the government forms department. The census is no different. It's pastel purple with true purple highlights. True purple is also the universal color; it looks good on all of us. Boy does it stand out with the other mail. I feel like it should have been what we called diarrhea green when we were kids. Maybe I'm being unfair  because Census 2011 made me want to blow chunks (wasn't being a kid fun?).

Edit: Kym of the Kanon Collective in Denver points out that purple, as a royal colo(u)r, seems appropriate for any form which counts the Queen's many citizens.