Tied up in Notts

Lest anyone think we fell off the planet, an update. I can't possibly tell everything, as we have been on sensory overload, but here are some quick bullets on our first days in Nottingham:

• Our cottage is very cozy, more spacious than we had anticipated. It's a little odd moving into someone else's house -- especially when the "someone else" is a series of my faculty colleagues, a different family each year, going back decades. Everyone has left something here, so we want for nothing -- we just have to find it. Our contribution, I think will be getting rid of some nasty old carpet. The house has a beautiful garden (which Mary has already adopted by expanding the vegetable plot). The view of the garden from our bedroom window is below. It's long and narrow (ours is the part between the hedges, the rest is the neighbors).
  
• We have a cute little Toyota to drive. However, driving in the left lane in city traffic is a harrowing experience and extremely stressful. I concentrate so much on driving that I can't navigate. My predecessor rides shotgun and tells me where to turn, but having gotten somewhere I could never get back, because just keeping the paint on the car has required my full attention. I've driven in the UK before, but out in the country. This is different. I bought a couple of magnetic "Learner" signs to put on the car, which is supposed to warn other drivers that this car may be about to do something stupid.
• Navigation is a challenge in itself. No one laid out this town, it just occurred haphazardly. There is no such thing as a straight road running North-South or East-West.
  
• Good Lord! but we have a lot to do before the students arrive! At some level I knew this, but it is becoming reality now.
• Brits are extremely friendly and helpful people who are very curious about Americans. This is not a tourist area, so many people here have never actually met a real, live "Yank." If our American accent is overheard on the street or in a store aisle, it's very common for people to "chat us up," ask where we're from, tell us about their cousin's daughter who lives in North Carolina, or whatever.
• There are probably more people of Indian or Pakistani descent in this neighborhood than of native British descent. Our welcome dinner was at a very good Indian restaurant. The proprietor came over to the table to ask how we liked the food, and asked if we'd been here before. I said, "No, but we've had Indian food before." His reply was, "This is not Indian food. It's British food, and we make them think it's Indian."
  
• England is a long ways north. It's midsummer, and so it's still light past 10 o'clock at night, and the sun wakes us early in the morning. But it's not very warm -- it got into the mid-70s the other day and Brits were complaining about the heat. Our neighbor welcomed us to "one of the two days of summer we have each year." Highs in the mid- to upper-60s are typical now, and into every day a little rain must fall. Fortunately, we're told it seldom gets below freezing in the winter, but the days get very short.
• My predecessor has been extremely gracious and helpful in helping us in every way. I don't know what we'll do when she leaves next week.
  

More later.