Not an English Rose but an English Cold

Saturday

I spent almost all of the day “in bed” trying to feel better from a little bit of a cold that’s been bugging me since about Tuesday. I slept in, then just hung out in our one comfy chair doing needlepoint and reading – and napping in bed for some of the afternoon. All while drinking orange juice and taking EmergenC. It’s not a lot of fun to be sick in a place other than your real home, but this is becoming our home so I’ve got to get better here this time.

Later - Our first dinner at our new home : AS ABOVE

Watching the very British : “Last Night of the Proms” on the TV, they’re also doing something with fireworks live at Heaton Park here which they say is the largest municipal park in Europe. Seems very prideful for the parts – Scotland, Ireland, England when their people play or sing – sort of like 4th of July. Something to be appreciated that we don’t quite get in our huge country – the sense of community : although I notice that most of the faces are quite white and there are lots of non-white people around.

Everyone smokes and I was wondering if the govt does anything to try to get people to stop smoking ? The packages have huge letters saying “Smoking Kills” and there is lots of non-smoking places to eat in restaurants, but what about on TV. Finally saw a commercial for not smoking, not a PSA but an advert for a patch.

It still feels sort of like we’re camping : we’re sleeping in a bed on the floor very near the crazy pads for the carpet; we boil water bec we haven’t turned on the gas boiler yet – they come for maintenance on next Tuesday. We haven’t washed clothes yet – JD’s getting close to the end of his clean clothes… But everyday we get more and more settled.

TGIFF - thank god is first friday

Friday
Waiting for the appliances
The afternoon with Sarah and +Stephen. I know work with the Gorton & Abbey Hey Team Ministry as an Associate Minister – there are 3 churches : St Philip’s, St James’, and Emmanuel. As they say almost anything I need to ask what it is, and then write it down in my notes. They’re being very patient with me. And after the bishop left, Sarah and I went through our "diaries" (what they call calendar) and it felt very much just like any “staff meeting” at home, the calendar does rule the church person’s life I guess. I’ll be presiding at St George’s Abbey Hey and we’ll go through things on Tuesday. I continue to really like Sarah … and the leprechaun well …we’ll see how things go.

Sarah & Phil invited us to go out shopping at ASDA – the huge store associated with WalMart here. Sort of just like home, but I’d never shopped at WalMart. It was very near the City soccer team’s stadium (which holds appx 45,000)

Thursday - cleaning curry explosion

Thursday
Sunny day – and they say sunny thru all the weekend – hooray!!
Got our TV yesterday so I woke up on time to watch morning TV – something very weird about when shows begin and end - it’s not on the hour! Maybe bec there’s no commercials, which is great, but they have lot of odd starting times. When there are regular programs on, JD and I think we understand about 1/3 of all the sentences … that they should have subtitles for us even in English.

Spent the day dedicated to cleaning! Cleaning the kitchen mostly; there was mostly clean cupboards, but not on the outsides – everything had lots of grime around the pulls. The whole cupboard set is not wood, so it all cleans easily but needed a lot of elbow grease. Every few inches there were little spots of yellow, so I think there must have been a curry “explosion” at some point. There was also a sort of scum on all the tiles – as if they hadn’t been really cleaned so they shone. It’s funny bec there’s tons of cleaning supplies in the grocery stores and the pound (dollar) stores – which are on every corner.

Today I got all matching plastic things like tubs, broom and ??, trash cans, etc. Spending a pound ($2 US) doesn’t seem like a lot; but some people seem to be trying to make their money go pretty far at the little store – and you can’t believe people could keep needing all the plastic tubs and bins, etc that are stored outside each shop. Now the kitchen is clean for the delivery of the appliances tomorrow – and it feels really good to do something other than shopping or buying things : focusing on what we have (this place) rather than what we’re missing (everything in it)

JD did a great job on getting up all the carpet tack strips on the stairs. We’ll clean up the hardwood, maybe sand and paint it an even color. JD also got the gas and electric changed over to our names. We also had a visit from the electric company who sent a man to change out the meter – both the electric and gas meters are located in a little cabinet in the front hallway and at some points you call in our own meter readings to get the bill accurately accounted.

Our new transportation adventure : getting off the Picadilly-bound bus at Brunswick Street and walking the 2 or so-blocks to the University. It was just about 6 minutes; much faster than last night when we tried to get there a long block early. Then we walked Oxford Road instead of waiting for the bus to our other “favorite” restaurant for Curry in Rusholme. We continue to get around pretty well!

More bus adventures – we decided to take home from the city centre the 205 bus which stops directly in front of our house! Not bad except by the time we were looking to come home after dinner it was almost an hour wait at Picadilly Square: about 10 other buses for 192 (wherever that is, it’s pretty popular) and many 200’s for Hyde Road also coming.

Wednesday

Wednesday
The phone works !! We found it to be turned on about 6 PM or so and immediately called the States – to NYC where Iva is visiting H&E and the quality was just as if we were calling next door ! Amazing and really great – and I think only about 12 cents a minute; not bad.

Back to the Comet Shopping Center – on the #7 bus out there : it was the end of school and hordes of kids in their black pants or skirts, black jacket, which shirt and varieties of black plaid ties all of the place – it was an Abbey Hey school and a large one. Some of them got on our bus and weren’t disruptive at all.

Got the TV, DVD player, microwave and hot pot at Comet