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.

Bathrooms, Showers, Toilets and Ewww Part 2: How to Descale Your Shower Head

One of the first places I lived in Bath was a shared house. We all had separate agreements with the landlord, but we shared a kitchen, a bathroom, a toilet, and a washing machine. The kettle was covered in limescale. In fact, it was virtually impossible to boil. Moreover the silver of the shower head had turned completely white. There is very little water pressure on most of this island. That shower literally dripped while spraying water out its sides. I asked one of my flatmates about both the kettle and the shower, he shrugged and told me it was a function of rentals in Britain. And we had a man who needed an attitude adjustment. In fact, it was a function of poor housekeeping. I can hear you laughing. I know you've seen all the dust in my photos.

So in today's installment of  Bathrooms, Showers, Toilets and Ewwww, I bring you: How to Descale Your Shower Head.

Step 1: Boil your kettle and make yourself a cup of tea. Then refill your kettle to the top most fill line. Reboil. And follow the directions on your descaler of choice. (Descalers can be bought at the local hardware store, scalers, and most grocery stores). I know that you'd never assume that all chemicals work the same way, aren't dangerous, or that I know everything.

Make cup of tea, boil kettle, go to step two

Step 2: Put boiled water into giant bucket. Make sure giant bucket is clear of other cleaners. Bleach and everything don't mix, and I like you and your lungs. Detol and most everything don't mix, and I like your soft skin. (The boil portion of this step may be completely unnecessary depending on the product you're using. The not mixing chemicals portion of this step is absolutely necessary.)

Step 2: Put water into bucket that has no other chemical residue in it.

Step 3: Open bathroom window. Place bucket into your bathtub. Make sure you are wearing any protective equipment called for by your descaler box. Add descaler. It is very important that you do not put your bucket on your bathroom floor. There is always some chance of overspill from the chemical reaction you may be creating. Add descaler. Did I mention that you should follow the directions on your descaler? I mean that.

The white bumps are limescale. It also builds up inside the grey bits.

Step 4: Remove shower head from shower head pipe (or hose for you Americans). Put it gently into your mixture. Get out of the bathroom until enough time has elapsed. Most descaler makes one heck of a smell and makes the lungs a wee bit ouchy. I'm really not kidding about the whole follow directions on the bottle thing.

Note: My model is not wearing gloves. Do not follow her example.

Step 5: Poor bucket down the drain and rinse everything with cold water before reattaching to the shower. I always run the shower for a few minutes after descaling. If scale is still present it helps to brush with an old toothbrush (clearly marked as descaling toothbrush) after you've rinsed away the descaler.

Shiny. Note: I did not put hose into the descaler

Step Six: Consider something friendlier. Vinegar and water will descale your shower head just as well as more caustic store bought mixtures. Your shower head will have to soak much longer (I do ours overnight). You will probably have to use some elbow grease. But if you keep up with your descaling (once a month at least), it isn't so bad.

Iota mentioned that toilets rarely back up in the UK. This is true. I do not own a toilet plunger. I'll let you know why that is on Monday. If you click the Facebook Like button on the right-hand sidebar, you'll be able to see more of Bath's flower boxes.

You can read Part 1 of this series here: Fabulous Things About England #33: Baths

The first batch of sourdough failed miserably. The second is gooood.

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?

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.

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.

The Secret to Creating Drooling Glassy-Eyed Americans

 Happy Home Maker UK asked me to take pictures of Target. For those of you in the UK, this may look like just another giant box store on an industrial estate. It is a giant box store on an industrial estate. More importantly, it is a microcosm (macrocosm) of American culture. Interesting fact: there are Target stores in Australia. they share the Target logo, a giant red target, and look rather like American target stores. The two companies are otherwise unrelated.

 I think it must be virtually impossible to be an expert in one's own culture. I wandered through the store knowing that there was something different, something American, about the store, but I still cannot articulate what that difference was. Perhaps you British, Canadian, French, and Australian Americanists can enlighten me. Certainly, there is more space in between the rails (racks) and the shelves are lower than in a typical UK discounter.

 There were of course the obvious differences. Hundreds of cheese poofs (cheese balls) for less than a British fiver. For that matter, there were animal crackers and animal crackers in bulk. You can see them at the very top of the above photograph.

 There wasn't just soup. There were sixty kinds of Campbell's soup. The soup aisle was twice as long as my local baked bean aisle. It was all a bit overwhelming, so I skipped canned soup all together.

 And the pickle aisle contained mostly olive and pickled gherkins. If you look closely you may be able to spot some things that are more at home on a British store shelf

 No matter how many times I tell myself that streaky bacon is the same as American bacon, I still know that it isn't true. I remember when I left America that I thought bacon was terribly expensive. It wasn't. I think it is even cheaper now. I'm grateful to my family and friends for feeding me rashers and rashers of crispy bacon and letting me have more than my share of the maple syrup.

 I have spent many a happy hour looking at the ink pens in Target's aisles, but it is very rare to find a fountain pen in such American aisles. Sarah metioned that she sensed a giant 'but' coming. There is indeed a giant 'but' coming, but there are a few more joyful things I'd like to share first. Slugs on the Refrigerator shared her own 'but' today. It's worth a read. My thoughts are wandering that way too.

Fabulous Things About America: Mother's Day

This is the seventeenth Mother's Day that I have spent without my mother.

 And it is the first that my father has spent without his mother.

  
It is hard to imagine a greater priveledge than spending Mother's Day with my three sisters, who are now mothers themselves.

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.

Things I Miss from Home

I love making cornbread from scratch, but cornmeal is hard to come by here. I've not managed to make polenta do the same thing, so a friend's husband very kindly brought me some mix from the States. I am ever so grateful for such good friends.

Now I just have to manage not to eat them before the BBQ tomorrow.