Today was any given Monday. I woke up early to the sound of my phone alarm. It's an annoying little jingle that both gets me out of bed and makes me want to crush my phone all at the same time. That I'm using my phone as an alarm at all is the first little absurdity in my day. We don't have an alarm clock. We've tried to buy one. The local gadget store sold one that projected the time onto the roof, which was a little more clock than we wanted. The Tesco had one with a digital radio but it cost nearly $50, which seemed too steep. Argos (the Consumer Distributing of Britain) has one: we've seen it in their catalogue. But getting to Argos has proven problematic. So my phone is our clock.
At 7am, about 30 minutes after I leave and just as the light starts to appear over the Oxfordshire fields, I call Ange to wake her up. Indeed, rural Oxfordshire is lovely in the mornings. The cool nights lend themselves to early morning mists. The mists wander through the trees that separate the many green fields of the rural drive. Dorchester, with its ancient abbey, passes on my left as I head to work. I then pass through the village of Nuneham Courtenay, which is comprised of a series of nearly identical small brick 'duplex' houses that look to have been built in the 1800s. The roofs sag slightly and the black timber framing contrasts against the brick. The doors are all noticably smaller than anything from the past 200 years. And, as a backdrop to this lovely drive, which sits high on the hills to the west is the Oxford Nuclear Power Station. Its cylindrical towers, just like those Mr. Burn's Springfield nuclear power station, rising high above the church spires that sit in front of it and the smoke rising into the sky. What bureaucratic process led to putting a massive power station next to one of Britain historical gems?
I work in an old mansion. It is now a place for Oxford Brookes Unversity receptions and houses most of Corporate Affairs for the university. It is probably only about 150 years old. My office was probably a bedroom at one time. The Victorian coal fireplace mantle is still there, but the opening has been covered to prevent drafts. The old single pane window fits loosely in the frame ans shakes in the wind, but a second glaze has been retrofit to the inside frame and provides modern insulative properties. Oddly, the men's loo remains unheated.
Returning home after a day of work that has been entirely enjoyable, the little frustrations of rented accomodation strike me as vaguely humerous. The perspective of the arctic flat still in my mind, these don't amount to complaints: merely observations. Because water standard water pressure leaves something to be desired here, the owners of our flat have installed some sort of motorized pump to pressurize the water before it makes it to our shower. It makes an aweful noise as it gets going but worked quite well up until this weekend when it suddenly started to cut out. At first it was only once or twice a shower. It slowly got worse until this morning's shower, when it quickly deteriorated into horrible convulsions. The racket of the motor coming on and cutting out while water spurted and sprayed. I stood there incredulous. Why is having a normal shower such a luxury for me over here?
Then, tonight, as I went to make some quesadillas I realised that the owner of the house had only provided the most ridiculous of cheese graters. Barely the size of the palm of my hand, it amounted to only about 1/4 the size of the block of cheese I was trying to grate. It slipped and slided. I grated the cheese and my finger. Who would bother to make a grater this small? Was it actually a Monopoly character? Our quesadillas were not the cheesiest ever.
By contrast, we needed a couple of items for dinner tonight. We didn't need to bundle up: it was 10 degrees at 6pm. As we walked out, one or two of the houses in our terrace were burning their coal fires and the smell of coal fire lingered in the air. The smell immediately launched me back to our travels through eastern Europe. It can't be 300 yards to to the Waitrose supermarket. We bought our items and were back in the kitchen in 15 minutes. It's just different. Yes, it is absurd that Oxford has a power station on its horizon, that water pressure is strangely unattainable and that we've rented a place which has provided a cheese grater completely incapable of grating cheese but tomorrow I will drive back from Oxford along a route that will take me up a small rise and through a village that looks much like it must have 300 years ago (apart from the speed camera keeping me to 30mph). And I will shake my head at the beauty of the Norman church that sits amongst the collection of houses, pubs and shops. And then I'll pick up Anna and she won't care about the phone alarm clock, the power station, the water pressure, the cheese grater or the church. She'll just be happy to see me. I'm already looking forward to it.
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