An American in Britain

Last day of school.  The kids were excited about that, especially since it is so much later than what they were used to.  Six weeks of vacation is nothing like 12.  Already, they’re wishing it was six years.  They have not realised that they may be involved in lifetime learning and now’s not the time to bring that up.

Because summer vacation (or holiday) is so much shorter than in the US, I hope they learn to appreciate the time and make it worthwhile.  Though we had a TV in the US, it was one of those old analog models that cannot pick up signals very well without the use of cable or satellite.  So, it was only used to watch videos or DVDs.  Now, we no longer have a TV, but we do have laptops.  And they are hooked on YouTube.  I would hope they do not waste their time with that for the duration of this break.  But, they did mention they wanted to go to Nanny’s tomorrow because there was a movie on TV they wanted to see.  Sigh.

The school year is divided very differently from the US, and despite the half-term and end-of-term breaks, the number of days off for holidays is still far fewer than in the US.  It is so hard to gauge whether the increased school days translate into more or better education. 

Things have changed so much according to my husband and critics have complained that education has been dumbed down.  The method of teaching using various historical themes is very different.  This year, it has been WWII, the Tudors, the Romans and Anglo-Saxons.  For each period, they made “topic books” and they brought them home at the end of each term.  However, the last one is to be returned at the beginning of next year so that their new teacher can see it.  The topic books contain everything they did related to the period and it looks almost like a complete scrapbook.  It makes it so easy to save and store for future reference.

The themed study made it fun and interesting for the girls and I’m glad they had that.  I have to say that I have been impressed with their writing.  I cannot comment much on their reading skills as assessed by the school.  I know they both have great reading skills but I have to say that I was a bit disappointed in the lack of teacher-assigned reading as well as requisite reading for their level.  Let’s hope that the summer reading program will make up for that.

The Ashes.  A long-standing tradition in England (and Australia, for that matter).  And England finally won the match, or test, at Lord’s – I believe they said it was the first in 75 years.  Well, it was also the first time I actually watched a cricket a game (or part of).

The English are well-known for their reserve, and I think it also applies to sports.  By this, I mean that they do not go out of their way to explain it.  My husband and his family have always been sports fan.  That is, they follow all the English sports and have their favourites, even if they really don’t go fanatical like some fans.  They also don’t try to convert people to their sports religion.

This is very different from my experience in the States.  Over there, if you mention that you don’t understand the American ball games, someone would stand up and go into detail about how the game works.  Some sports fans, like one of my brothers, may bore you with all the statistics of a particular favourite player, completely oblivious of the interest (or lack thereof) or understanding of the listener.

Football (soccer) is easy for me to understand, as that is played in the US.  Rugby I have seen a little of and understand understand how they score, etc.  But cricket is another matter.  It does not help that I had never seen a match before yesterday.  But the terminology had been cmpletely baffling to me.  Even when I’ve asked a question, everyone just shrugs it off with “It’s cricket.” 

So, while visiting my mother-in-law, who is recovering from her fall and is finally home, we watched the end of the cricket match, the second test.  At this point, England needed 4 wickets and Australia needed something like 185 runs.  As much as comparisons are made between cricket and baseball, they are completely dissimilar.  The physiotherapist, an Australian, arrived just as England scored the first of the last 4 wickets.  By the time she left, the game was over.

In that time, I learned what a wicket was and what is meant by an “over” (though I fail to understand how that terminology came about).  I still don’t know how they decide who bats and who bowls and whether there is a set number of runs that needs to be scored, while I understand that the number of wickets is 10.  I still cannot grasp how a game can last days on end, the terminology of 20/20, or why a female cricketer took nine hours to bowl nine overs.  As far as I can understand, 6 balls is an over, so 9 overs is 54 balls.  Why did it take so long?  Of course, I’m still too ignorant of the game to even ask more questions and no one’s about to explain it unless I ask specific questions.  Is it because it’s too complicated?

This summer we’ve attended numerous summer fetes and seen many traditional English games, events and stalls.  This weekend, at the Isfield Summer Fete in Sussex, we experienced for the first time terrier racing.

It was an idyllic English summer afternoon, bright and warm, with passing puffs of light cloud against an azure sky summoning an occasional light breeze.  The turn out was good and many of the summer fete standards were popular: the three-legged race, a dog show, egg throwing, bouncy slides, face painting and more.

Mid-afternoon, a crowd began to assemble around a fenced 30m track and the announcer informed us that the terrier racing was about to begin.

At one end of the track was a set of six “traps”, each about 18″ x 12″ with a gate on the front.  Members of the public registered their dogs and the dogs were separated to run in several heats.  Running along the centre of the track was a thin rope circuit with a foxtail attached to it. The rope was controlled with great skill by a fellow at the other end of the track using an upturned bicycle.  The rope was fed round the rear wheel and the operator span the pedals back and forth, correspondingly jiggling the foxtail back and forth before the expectant terriers.  This he did several times until the loader had all the dogs in their traps and was ready to raise the cage gates on the front of the traps.

The foxtail was brought to rest a few feet from the traps and dogs and spectators alike excitedly awaited the loader’s signal.  At the drop of his hand the loader opened the traps and his counterpart at the opposite end of the track span the bike wheels like crazy to pull the foxtail along the track keeping it ahead of the chasing terriers.  Along the track they all sped chasing the tail that reached the other end and mysteriously vanished in to thin air before a stack of hay bales. Some attempted to follow the tail in to the bales, others leapt over the top while a few simply turned round and ran back to the start to do it again.

OK, it’s the first day in a week that we’ve had a little time to spend on the computer.  I have not been blogging much, nor visiting my web friends, including my old friend Peggy (all the way back to college/university), who has just started her own blog.

Now that the kids are nearing the end of their school term, we are more serious about finding jobs.  We have been living off savings (terrible situation) and the situation has become dire.  We had looked into jobs previously but there have been little available in the area.  We are considering moving, but this was difficult with the kids in school and the tenancy agreement.  But the situation is about to change.

It did not help that my mother-in-law fractured her wrist and hip last week.  We have been up and down to London to visit her and to help with errands for my father-in-law.  She was extremely independent before and there has been such a change in routine for the both of them.  He has learned to be a little more independent and tending to regular household duties.  We’re considering going up to give the dog a long walk again.  She has to learn to take things easier and only push herself gently.  She has had to have a blood transfusion, and yesterday, we found out that the surgical site was leaking.  It could help explain why she is so volume depleted and her blood pressure keeps dropping when she gets up, not to mention that her appetite was down for a while.  She is progressing well with therapy, despite the bad wrist.

Unfortunately, her bedroom is on the second floor (third floor for us Americans) and she is not allowed to climb stairs yet.  When they decide to discharge her, we’ll have to make arrangements to move a bed down to the kitchen.  Having never been in such a position before, we are starting to appreciate what many other families have to deal with when an elderly parent or grandparent becomes temporarily disabled.

We had thought that the kids could spend a week with Nanny and Granddad over the summer break while we attack the job market, but that idea is now nixed.  Unless they can be of help and not just sit in front of the TV, waiting to be served, we cannot impose on my in-laws in such a way.

I finally went down to the DVLA in Brighton to start the process for my driver’s license.  I’m not expecting anyone to need it for at least the three weeks that my passport will be gone, but you never know.  Perhaps, I’m courting disaster, but if the disaster is that someone needs to see my passport to complete the hiring process, then it’s the kind of disaster that I would welcome at this point.

Again, apologies to my blogger friends.  I can only promise that I’ll look in now and then for the moment.

It’s the second time we’ve had to look for a car.  As my readers know, our car went kaput! a couple weeks ago.  Considering the difficulty we had in finding a car, I thought it best to share some of our experience so that others can commiserate and beware.

First and foremost to American drivers: if you do not drive a manual, you’d best learn. Unfortunately for me, I’m too old a dog to learn a new trick.  Not that I even have a UK license yet.  I can’t even do that as I’m waiting for other things.  The fact that I have to lose my passport for three weeks has prevented me from starting this process – I have had to keep it handy for other purposes.  But, back to the point, automatic cars are hard to come by, unless you’re willing to pay for it.  We have too tight a budget.  In fact, one dealer told us that for the price we had in mind, we would have to find a very old car and/or a large car.

Our last car was not big by American standards (1.6L), but in the UK, it is moderately large.  It was not as fuel efficient as the majority of small cars on the road, but it served us well.  The problem was that we put a lot more miles on it than we had expected to.  It must be all those winding roads.  For a car used to a quiet, gentle existence, it was like doing 6-months hard labour in its dotage.  We had paid 350 GBP for the car – it was well worth it. 

Even before the dealer had put in his two-pence worth about our budget, we could see that we would not get what we wanted.  We wanted a more fuel-efficient car that was reliable and had enough space for the four of us to get from point A to point B.  Anything remotely resembling that was a manual.  Of the automatics, they were of the 2L models or bigger.  That’s not to say that we didn’t find any smaller, fuel-efficient cars under 500 GBP (our limit).  They were either snatched up before we had a chance to view them, or they were not worth the price.

We mainly searched the Friday Ads, until someone put us onto Ad Trader.  Seeing that cheap economical cars were selling like hot cakes, we had to act fast.  We had nearly settled onto a Proton for dirt cheap until we figured that we had to get an MOT very soon, as well as tax.  That brought it up to our budget and we were somewhat sceptical about the reliability as well as the availability of parts, should the inevitable happen.  On the same day, a new ad appeared on the Ad Trader site; we went over the next day to look at it.  It was a Renault Clio, with MOT and tax.  It was over our limit, but we managed to get them to reduce it a bit, so that we were only over by 50 GBP.

We had been renting a car for the past week – a newer Ford Mondeo that has been well-used with 180K miles on it.  It was powerful, smooth and had a blessedly cool air conditioner (great for the heat wave we just passed), but it ate a lot of juice.  We were desperate to get a car so that we would not have to rent it for another week.  Though we do miss the air conditioner – we were spoiled in the US.

Americans have traditionally scorned French automakers, but we just brought the Clio home and it is performing well.  In fact, it has more miles on it than our last car did when we bought it, yet it rides fairly smoothly.  So, this American will have to reserve judgment for later.  We have always owned Japanese cars, so this is a first for us.

Our older daughter participated in Area Sports yesterday.  There were 8 schools total. 

It was apparent even before the sports day that our school was not very serious about this competition.  I say this because they never practiced.  In addition, there was never any formal process in selecting the participants.  We had passed one other rival school at various times and they were holding after-school practices.  On the day of the competition, a couple of the schools were out and warming up properly.  Ours stayed cool under their tents.

Despite the disadvantages, our school did fine.  They ended up third, despite having no one making or breaking any record (every other school had at least one of those), despite several participants not knowing what they were supposed to do, dropping batons, taking off late, etc.

Of course, we were unfamiliar with the other schools, but the other parents shrugged their shoulders at the results, already anticipating the outcome and sure enough, they were correct.  The same school won for the umpteenth time.  Nevertheless, no one got angry, no one booed anybody else, cheers were given to all and to encourage the students to complete their races despite the heat.  So unlike the atmosphere at another Area Sports event I read about early on in the year.  It was nice to see that these parents were showing their kids good sportsmanship.

It’s been sweltering recently, and with predicted global warming, the trend is for colder, wetter winters and drier, hotter summers.  That said, I wonder if the UK will go the route of central air conditioning.

After weeks of attempting to rectify the car problems, the mechanic thinks the head gasket has gone.  Luckily, he passed us on the road, shortly after he had fitted in a new hose pipe for the coolant.  We were on our way to the gym.  It was lucky for us that my daughter had insisted on going to the gym that day (she refuses to go sometimes).  Otherwise, we might have been heading a different direction with disastrous results.  We had to turn around and made other arrangements for the girls to attend their afternoon activities with Stagecoach.  We took a couple buses to town.

As we waited for the kids to finish, my husband and I lunched under a tree in the church cemetery.  Afterwards, we decided to go to the library, expecting it to be cooler.  Whew!  It was sweltering in there.  We decided to go back outdoors and spent the rest of the afternoon under a tree at the school.

I couldn’t understand why there wasn’t air conditioning in the library.  And, if there is, why wasn’t it on?  I can’t believe that anyone could possibly work in such conditions.  I know many public buildings have air conditioning, so why not the library?

My husband then commented that school examination halls were like that.  He recalled taking exams in hot, stuffy halls.  What were they thinking?  In the US, examination halls tend to be on the cool side.  We’re always reminded to take a sweater, just in case.  The heat makes people sluggish and it’s well documented that people perform worse on exams in the heat.

Well, we’re renting a car right now and it has a functioning air conditioner.  What a difference in this heat.  Our car didn’t have air conditioning and I was constantly sweating.  And when the sun is beating down on you through the windshield, it burns.

And, as I’ve complained before, we have screenless windows, so if we must open the windows to air out the house, we have to accept the herd of insects that we openly invite inside.

I have to say that, though many of the wildlife here in the UK can be found in the US, I have not personally experienced many of them until I lived here.  Today presented another new experience.  Had I reached the poor animal first, I probably would have squealed and jumped, crying out against the rodent population.  As it was, my cool, level-headed husband found it first.

He was on his way out to the car when he spotted a small, furry animal on the ground.  Needless to say, it was dead.  But, instead of jumping out of the way, he examined it and found that it looked like a long-nosed mouse.  He suspected it was something other than a mouse, so he went back in and pulled out one of our nature guides.  Sure enough, it was a shrew. 

My animal-loving kids had to go see.  They thought it was so adorable.  I won’t say what I thought.  I don’t know much about shrews, but I know they aren’t rodents.  Yet, they breed like rodents.  One thing is for sure.  Since shrews usually burrow underground, I cannot blame the scratching in the loft on them.