Tuesday

Tuesday
Just as promised, Shaun picked us and our huge luggage up at 9:45 AM to take it to the house, then the weekday 10:30 AM Eucharist at St James. At the house, the diocesan property “man” Geoff had the gardeners clearing the yard, a project which hadn’t been undertaken since the beginning of the year : lots of long grass – you couldn’t even see the driveway and other paths, and there were overgrown shrubs all along the perimeter.

Then over to St James for the Eucharist. We hadn’t been to the church when we visited before, only met some of the people at their coffee hour, which they hold in the fellowship hall/ commty centre of the Methodists. St James is an “ecumenical project” with the Methodist Church and one of their ministers, Sue, presides once a month.

The 10:30 AM service

Quick standing up lunch from the market while waiting for the bed to be delivered.

Got a phone line ordered – our first utility! The BT system is pretty simple compared to the States – only choosing between 3 packages with a discount for “friends and family” of 25%; AND they’ll do a blocking thing for telemarketers on the line – hooray. Sarah said they are doing more of the automated kind who want to leave a message; but we’ll deal with that later.

Bank Account – The Cooperative Bank : it’s odd how you can’t be “connected” from anything financially in the US – there’s pretty much no way to get money to England unless you want to wait 6 weeks unless you take out cash from the ATM then put it into our new account : no way to transfer from the account, or deposit a check, or anything. Then, to make sure we’re not money laundering they need proof of address from a utility or something which of course we don’t have yet !