I Am...For Bath.....

 I love my little village.  My own little Brigadoon, I've called it in the past.   I have fantastic neighbors.  A great pub with colorful souls.   A sparkling brook that trickles behind my house.  And a castle just down the street and around the corner.

Did I mention there's A CASTLE.

As a kid I definitely thought about living in a castle.  I mean who doesn't?  I think most little girls think about it at some point.  Living in the castle with their handsome prince wearing a big pink pretty, pretty princess dress and the world is perfect.  

When you're nine.

My adventure in England has taken a wide variety of twists and turns.  I started out in The Little Cottage on the Estate.  I currently live in The Little Cottage in the Village.  

And I plan to move to....The Little Georgian Flat in the City. 

I'm like Laura Ingalls Wilder's modern day English ex-patriot equivalent.  

The reality of a being single woman in her late 30s in a small village has been impressed on me more and more lately as people who have been important in my life this past year have slipped away, only to expose the holes in the theory that life in a village is perfect.  It is perfect.  If you're retired.  Or raising kids.  Or a poet.  Or someone looking to hermit away from life and be a cat lady. 

I am none of those things. 

I fell in love with Bath the first time my friend Les took me there last year.  He took me to all his former drunken haunts in the city, meeting up with a great group of his friends, and within seconds I wanted to live there.  But the idea of leaving my little haven, the place of respite I'd found after the craziness of first arriving here and having everything thrown into chaos, was a difficult one to stomach.  

But as the days have moved on, I've realized that life in Nunney doesn't change.  It's lovely.  As always.  It's friendly.  As always.  There are always people to chat to on the street, always friends in the pub to share the day's events with, always company for a cheerful supper.  

But, like Brigadoon....not many other people come here.  

To be fair, we do have a good amount of visitors.  Walkers who come to explore the trails of the Mendips.  Parents who bring their young children for an educational day out for the 20 minute walk around the castle.  People from neighboring villages venturing "out" for the evening.  Men who work for the quarries that come and stay at the pub for a night.  Some even become semi-monthly regulars.   

But the village, the core, the people you meet daily, the people who you know and who know you, stay the same. 

I grew up in a small town, an island, and thought I would embrace small town life easily as it was something I'd known and loved.  But nostalgia is a different thing from reality. 

The reality is Nunney has become my British home town.  The place I can go to and know in my heart that I'm welcome.  Step into the gossip should I choose, step out of should I not.  I know the people and the dogs, the houses, the roads and the trees.   

But it's time to fly the coop.

I love my hometown of Bainbridge Island, Washington.  Like Nunney, it's an idyllic place, perched just across the water, a 30 minute ferryboat ride away from downtown Seattle.  In the twisted turmoil of trying to figure out where I belonged, knowing I didn't belong in Nunney but not really knowing where I was supposed to be, I thought, "Bainbridge." 

But that would be the end of the story. 

I'm not ready for the story to end. 

And the reality, as I said recently in a conversation with my mother, was that after the magic wore off of being "back home" again, what would I be doing there?  Where would I be?

I have lived in New York.  I have lived in LA.  And there were reasons I left both.  In some ways both were too big for me.  Too much.  Nothing you could get your head around and embrace.  Nothing tangible.  I want to know when there's a new restaurant opening in town...I don't want it to be one of 200 new restaurants opening that day....but I don't want it to be the only one that opened that year either.  

Since I first went to Bath last summer I've spent a fair amount of time there.  I've introduced old friends to it.  I've met new friends.  I've fell in love with restaurants and shops and parks and I think I found that place, that singular place, that I've been searching for.

It's not Bainbridge.  But like Bainbridge, or Nunney, I could walk across it in a day.  It's not New York or LA, but like those cities there's something new, something happening every night.  Restaurants and theatre and music and people.   And life.

And so I've notified my landlords, who optimistically are putting my current house on the market to see who else wants to buy this little gem on the brook with the ancient walled garden.  My cottage that is older than the United States.   That has sheltered me.  And protected me.  And now needs to let me go.

I'm looking forward to moving and feel as if I almost belong to Bath already, in a way that I don't think that I've felt I belonged to any city since I left Seattle 12 years ago.   I wonder sometimes if this is what I've been looking for in all the travels and all the years of adventuring.  Stay tuned. 

What's funny is two years ago my brother got married in beautiful house in the village of Porlock, a really, REALLY little but lovely place on the Exmoor coast, looking out over the bay to Wales.  On the way back to London, driving with my sister Megan and her family, who live in Sweden, we detoured for my first ever view of Bath.  As we drove away, remarking on my newly acquired Finnish citizenship, Megan said, "Just think....anytime you wanted to you could live here."

And now...I will.

Dog Years....

Being the owner of an older dog, a dog that was older when I got him, I think I'm much more aware of time slipping by.  More so than friends, family, even parents, though now that I'm farther away I feel even that more acutely.  But for a pet, it's not a gradual change over years, decades.  Sometimes it's months.   I look at Otis and I see, what seems suddenly, salt and pepper coloring trickling into the jet black of his coat and realize that in the best of times I might have 4-5 years left with him.  If I'm lucky.  Talking to his vet today I asked him his opinion of Otis' age and he seemed skeptical about the 9-year-old guestimate.  When I got Otis I was told he was probably between 6 and 8, so three and a half years later I know he's probably between 9 and 11...and while I like to err on the 9 I'm aware that day by day he's getting older.  I hear that ticking clock more loudly and heart-wrenchingly than any proverbial biological one.

Like a parent with a newborn child, if he's not snoring loudly enough underneath the desk I look to make sure he's still breathing.  Unlike a newborn, fragile, optimistic child, this is an elderly animal, well loved, well cherished and, while healthy and nowhere near his last legs, I'm aware that he's gotten to the age where he can just slip away.  My first, and only, family dog, Captain, a beloved Springer Spaniel, passed away in his sleep when he was only nine.  I, however, was only four and a half and only generally realized the implications of what was happening, outside of the immediate sorrow of my parents.  Now, as an adult who's already had to put to sleep two cherished pets, I love the ease of that, the way that Captain slipped away and we mourned him but didn't have to make an anguished decision.  I look at my little Schmo and recognize that when that time comes this would  probably be the hardest decision I would ever make as this little dude has been my constant companion, my friend, my worry when he was ill, my heartache when he was lost.  He's been my partner in crime, the boyfriend when I was in between, and when there was a man, the girlfriend to talk to in the dark of night.

Vets are a funny thing.  I think I'm less picky about human doctors and car salesmen than I am vets.  Because a vet has to understand animal behavior as well as the science.  I've been lucky to find some really good vets along the way, in Seattle, in New York, in Los Angeles and finally now in England.  But it's someone you just instinctively trust to protect your furry pal.  Our new vet, part energetic idealist, part mad scientist, is my new hero as he still believes in fairy tales...well, of the veterinary medicine sort....specifically that we can cure Otis' ear infection.  The ear infection Otis has had for all the time I've had him, despite years of antibiotic therapy.  This vet thinks we can cure it...and that's quite nice after having basically given up.  

I still have days where I look at Otis and I wonder where he came from.  Where was he before me?  Did have have any babies with some foxy Spaniel?  How did he get lost?  How long really was he a stray?  And, most importantly, why did they not come looking for him?  Maybe they did and gave up before he actually came to the shelter.  Who knows.  I'm only grateful that, in the end, they either gave up or didn't care so that I could find him.  And he could find me.   

So I sit here tonight, about to go to bed and expect I'll have a little furry body sleeping with me.  And while I know he likes being near me I'm also honest enough to admit that I know he also just really likes the heat of the electric blanket.   But aware that each moment is precious....I'll take what I can get. 

Let There Be Light....

I just recently spent a weekend in Finland, the country of my mother's birth and, luckily for me, the place that has given me dual citizenship and a passport which allows me to live in England.   I saw family and friends and had a lovely time and enjoyed being in the city, but what impressed me most of all, strangely enough in a country that is dark and snowed in for half the year, was the light.

Yes, light. 

Living in England, people love their gardens.  They love their fireplaces.  They love their pubs.  They love their wine.  But the one thing they have forgotten to appreciate, in a way, is light.

Scandinavian architecture, or at least the Swedish and Finnish architecture that I've been exposed to, is specifically directed to take advantage of as much light as possible that they can bring into their houses.  In countries where there is approximately 5 hours of light a day in the deep winter months, that makes sense.  There is a great book called Living With Light all about how Scandinavian design is intended to use every available moment of light and welcome light into a house.   Be it an old house or a new one, the essential style is the same. 

But in England, with old stone cottages and small windows, it's almost as if the light is something like the cold that needs to be fought against and braced for.  The theory being in a way if you keep the light out, you keep out the cold as well.  While Georgian buildings welcome and rejoice in the light with large, multi-pane windows, they're sadly not in the majority of the houses I can afford to live in.

To be fair, most houses in Finland are made of wood.  And, as my architect cousin Hanna reminded me, wood houses burn.  Apparently the city of Turku, one of Finland's largest cities after Helsinki, almost complete burned in the late 1800's.  My  cottage in England, built in the 1750's of Somerset quarried stone, is of a different era entirely.  So it's unfair to put even relatively modern 1900's standards of architecture and house building as a comparison to that.  But even so, standing in the bright living room of my cousin's 80 year old house or looking through the large panels of glass in my aunt's mid-century home that invites nature in, I had waves of window envy.

Years ago in the States I fell in love with Craftsman style architecture.  A product of the American Arts and Crafts movement propagated by Frank Lloyd Wright and William Morris, its ideals were about a combination of beauty and functionality.  No space was wasted....built in cupboards, sideboards, closets.  The themes of nature...and being one with nature in the space you lived in...are fundamental.  

And so I find myself in an architecture quandry.  My ideal house would be a Craftsman-style cottage with Scandinavian-style windows and light usage in the middle of bright green England.  

As I somehow doubt many of those exist I better start saving up so I can build it. 

And....might as well save up to build a sauna in it as well. 

That Time Of Year....

Today was a beautiful day in England.  Sunny, warm, clear blue skies, a light spring day teasing you, making you eager for the coming of summer.  As I sat in the backyard beginning to weed away the winter's brown overgrowth, I took a sip of wine and listened for a moment to the sound of the brook tinkling by and thought, for the first time since I've been here...

"Ah, this is familiar."

I have now been in Nunney a year.  A year and two weeks, to be exact, and it's exceeded my expectations and surprised me, as well as challenged me.

This year has been an interesting journey of learning.  Of who I am and who England is.  But also interesting now to look back after a year and see all the things I've taken in, absorbed and made my own, while still remaining who I am and thinking of what is yet to come.  

I now know if I don't want to get harassed I should say "bah-sil" instead of "bay-sil."  I know where Cheltenham and Swindon and Plymouth are on the map, though I still tend to confuse Westbury and Weymouth.  I've had a shandy and a wiskey mac and mulled wine.  I've learned about the curious tradition of British pantomime.  I've learned all about the rules of DEFRA in the U.K. and the USDA in the States.  I've negotiated the bureaucratic hoops of the National Health Service, HM Revenue and Customs, Mendip Council Tax, and the DVLA (driver's licensing)... I've had to learn to drive again...I never forgot but according to the U.K. 21 years of driving doesn't count.  I've weeded and wined and whined...or whinged as they would say here.  I learned it actually doesn't rain all the time in England.  I've had Santa drive by my house on a fire truck and bet on which rubber duck would win the Easter race down the brook.  I know the difference between naff and tatt.  Well, actually, I'm not sure I do exactly but I know the gist.  

Personally I've gained friends, gained a niece, lost a godmother, gained a few pounds, regained a dog, and am in the process of finally buying a car.  I've sat as friends far away have gone through major life trials, unable to physically be there, but reveling in their recovery.  Love and laughter, tears and torment.    

I think if how lucky I have been that the fates brought me here to this village, instead of where all my grand plans were going to take me.  I imagine the isolated year I would have experienced, the sad, poor, lonely soul I would have been in my original little cottage on the estate.  It was an exceptionally lovely setting.  With friends and visitors and a knowledge of the area it would be an amazing place to live.  But my life, my year, my adventure would have been lonely and miserable.  How lucky was I to find that place derelict.  And then how much luckier still to stumble into this charming, quirky, lively little village full of diverse and interesting personalities.  In a way, it's like my own Brigadoon.   

I miss my friends in the States, but those of you who matter to me...and whom I matter to...make sure I know that you are still there, even though you're miles away.   And I do my best to do the same....though admittedly I do make many telephone calls after a few too many glasses of wine.  

But after a year, there's still much to explore.  A car will give me the ability see beyond my immediate village walls, beyond the bus rides, beyond where the train will take me.   As any 17-year-old will tell you a car means freedom.  It means that I can go where I want, see what I want, experience what I want, when I want.  That thought is amazingly exciting.  

I get closer each day to figuring out what I want to do when I grow up.  Someday I'll have to make a decision but until then, I'm enjoying each adventure, each challenge, each curiosity.  There's still so much to see, so much to experience, so much to learn, that who knows where the journey will take me.  

But still, after a year, I walk Otis down the street, around the corner and still, after a year, I look up in wonderment and think...

...."It's a castle!" 

Wait, you speak English?

One of the strangest things I've learned about living in England is that there really is an American English and an English English. And that yes, once in a while you need a translator.

People travel to England because they think, "Well, I could go to France or Italy but I don't have any foreign language skills, so I guess I'll go to England. At least there we speak the same language."

They couldn't be more wrong.

True overall, yes, 90 percent of the language is the same. We conjugate the same (basically). We use the same syntax (again, basically). We even, for the most part, use the same verbs.

But damn, those nouns will get us.

Take, for example, the casual American phrase, "I had to change my pants 'cause I got them dirty while working in the garden." Fairly inauspicious.

Until you remember that "pants" in England means "underwear."

Suddenly, having to change your underwear because you were working a wee bit too hard in the garden takes on a fairly different, slightly nastier tone.

The other day I was wearing a vest. A brown, knitted vest. "Vest" by American standards. And, according the Scotsman I was asking, that would be called a tank top. And the American "tank top?", I asked. "A wife beater?" "That's a vest."

British folk casually throw about words that I think archaic in some cases. Including, in particular, "waistcoat." Waistcoat to me inspires images of Regency-era dandies in brocade fancy vests dancing minuettes. But to my British friend, my exterior-wear down vest would be referred to as a waistcoat. Or, well, another French name that I can't remember. But definitely not a vest.

Vest, tank top, waistcoat.

That's not even getting to the difference between puddings, biscuits, crisps and chips.

Food translation has been one of the hardest ones. Without getting into the grams versus cups issue with cooking, I've found more than once that I don't need "equivalents" for something...I literally need the British name for the ingredient. Any dessert is called a pudding. A cookie is a biscuit but crackers are just crackers. French fries are chips. Potato chips are crisps. Ground beef is minced beef. Cilantro is fresh coriander. Molasses is black treacle. Some reverse translations were needed too. Gammon steak is some sort of thick slice of ham. Not to mention sub-categorizing of food: back bacon vs. middle bacon vs. streaky bacon vs. bacon lardons, for example. They have more versions of regular wheat flour here than I've seen in my life....and what exactly is "strong" flour anyway? Flour fit for superheroes?! And don't even get me started with how many different types of potatoes I can buy in a bag for under a pound. Not a pound in weight. A pound in money.

I will say that I am in love with the dessert called an Eton Mess, but you also could just describe it as berries and whipped cream mixed up with bits of crumbled meringue. In this case, I would say Eton Mess sounds more fun to eat, but only because the nine-year-old in me wants to eat anything with the word "mess" in it.

The funny thing to me is everyone will say, "Oh, you said it our way. Bah-sil, instead of Bay-sil." And if you argue that the "American" way of saying something is correct, it's not just the English who will get on you. Ironically, the Scots, the Welsh, the Irish will all say, "You're not saying it correctly." I try to bite my tongue on that one, but apparently it seems a need for adherence to pronunciation only applies when you're from a different continent. Get a British computer nerd in the same room with an American computer nerd and ask whether the correct pronunciation for a computer relay device is a "roo-ter" or a "row-ter" and you'll be at risk of starting World War III.

Well, maybe World of Warcraft III.

I'm not complaining. But it's been one of the most unexpected and sometimes most intriguing things about living here. Is how much our language has evolved culturally. While most Americans have had fish and chips at some point and understand that fries means chips, we still expect that vest means vest and ground beef is ground beef. Things that are generic and commonplace in our daily vocabulary can still, even in this global landscape, be foreign here in Great Britain. Well, not foreign exactly. But the words have been twisted over time and geography and cultural divides to the point where even if they're recognizable, their meanings are significantly changed.

At least the important things are the same. When I ask for "Cabernet", everyone knows what I mean.

Cabernet Sauvignon.

But I suppose that's 'cause it's French.

Yeast and Flour and Water = Heaven

Tonight my house smells of cinnamon and cardamom....and for me that smells like Christmas.

This evening, for the first time ever, I attempted to make pulla, a Finnish sweet bread full of, you guessed it, cardamom and cinnamon along with raisins and sugar. And while this is something that is second nature to me, as familiar to some people as bologna sandwiches, I realized that in a strange way my perception of it has changed. Instead of being the constant of my youth, the sweet baking aroma of the rolls rising in the oven has taken on the adult perception of a holiday.

Because that's the only time I have been home to smell it.

I've never been a good bread maker. My mother baked all our bread for as long as I can remember, to the point where as 10 year old a loaf of store-bought bread was a highly prized birthday present. Even now dozens of frozen loaves of home made bread litter the large freezer downstairs in the garage in my parents' house.

But all I could bake were hockey pucks.

I'd tried. Maybe I wasn't patient enough. Maybe the water was too warm for the yeast. Maybe I just didn't have the skill, the baking magic that I watched my mother do for, literally, my lifetime. The swirl of the yeast in the water, the salty-sweet-sour smell of the liquid before the flour was added. And the beautiful, crusty, tasty perfection of a over-buttered slice of a freshly cut, hot-out-of the-oven loaf of bread. Nothing, not even sushi or lasagna, can come close.

But last week I took a course on baking. Rosie, who runs a professional cookery school up the street, took pity on a couple of locals and gave us a quick 6 hour session on baking pies and bread. While I can make a pie....and have since I was 9, begging my mom to let me make a mess of her kitchen in pursuit of the perfect cherry pie...bread has always escaped me. But somehow that day I got it. I could see all the little things I had done wrong before. As fragile as an orchid, the wrong temperature can kill the yeast, not enough yeast can kill the bread....but, like an orchid, if you know how much to mist it, it turns shiny and golden and fantastically delicious.

So today, I made a loaf. On my own. Unsupervised. And it was lovely and crusty and tasty and glorious.

Otis even agreed.

And then I got cocky.

I really have wanted to make pulla. The favorite offering of Finnish tea parties...or, well, coffee parties...everywhere...well, at least everywhere in Finland...it was something that I could not consider myself a Finn until I made. With one loaf of regular bread behind me, I decided to take the plunge and crossed the world of cross-cultural cooking equivalents...how many cups in a gram, how many pounds in a cup, how many degrees Fahrenheit in Celsius. And the pulla came out golden brown and beautiful and tasty. If not perfect, at least it tasted right, it looked right and it smelled right.

And the smell...

As I sat in the living room, drinking my chef's...sorry, baker's glass of wine (or two) waiting for the pulla to cool off I kept feeling like suddenly as if it was Christmas. There was no pine smell, even from the little black dog on my lap (who often smells like the tea tree oil used to combat a stubborn ear infection). No candles or trees or elves or candy canes. No jolly red men in suits.

But instead, I realized, I'd unintentionally created Christmas in my house.

I haven't lived at home for about 20 years. I haven't lived in the same state as my parents for over 10. While I might have gone home for the occasional week in July or August, those are times of barbecues and outdoor living. But Christmas, in its cold midwinter, with everyone focused around home and hearth, the cardamom and cinnamony sweet scent of pulla pervades the house and has become, for me, solely associated with Christmas. My home. My family.

And I realize that the ability to recreate that is a bigger achievement than all the biscuits or bread loaves or focaccia I could have baked in my lifetime. I can recreate the smell of my home. My family. Whenever I want to.

I'm no Christmas fanatic who puts up their Christmas lights at Halloween and keeps them up 'til Easter. But the idea that I can make my own house smell like Christmas at my parents' a huge achievement.

It'll never be as good as actually being there....but, if push comes to shove, it'll be a damn good second best.

Today My Prince Arrives...Though He'll Probably Smell Bad

This afternoon I will have a dog again.

It might sound strange to some of you who aren't pet owners, but as someone who's had, for the last decade at least, a menagerie surrounding her, the lack of pet life in the house for the last six months has been a strange, sometimes lonely existence. I've had loaner pets like Lily the tabby cat, Docker the whippet and Murphy the black lab, but occasional pats and walks are not the same as the strange affection you get for an animal that will trample on you in the middle of the night.

But after six months of waiting, Otis arrives. Today.

As I write this, he's on the plane, waiting for takeoff. It won't be fun for him but 12 hours from now it will all be over, fingers crossed, including the vet and customs clearance. And, once again, I will have a dog.

In a weird way, Otis has become a figment of my imagination. So to have him arrive again is as if Prince Charming has popped out of Sleeping Beauty and landed at my feet. Strange and surreal, but hey, it's Prince Charming. Well, maybe Tramp from Lady and the Tramp is a better Disney analogy, but still in many ways it's as if the dog that I received under the Christmas tree when I was four is suddenly coming alive and once again Otis is a real being, like Pinocchio becoming a real boy.

Augh. Enough Disney already.

It's been a long road to get him here, and a financial outlay equal to the worst vet bill, but thanks to some hard working and loving sisters and generous, helpful parents, Otis is on his way.

But those who were around in the last 2.5 years know how much I've fought for this particular dog. As he was attacked in the park by a pitt bull I (insanely) stepped into the fray and helped to beat off his mangy attacker. When he went missing after the gardener didn't lock the gate right and Otis decided to go on walkabout, I didn't give up on him - 3 weeks on I was still putting up posters in Sherman Oaks and posting notices on Craigslist. Sleepless nights and buckets of tears - and after all that I was lucky for the chance to ransom him back. I've paid for two tumors to be removed, attempts to cure stubborn ear infections, haircuts, vitamins...he didn't sleep on satin sheets but I think that's the only thing I didn't pay for.

People can say, "But he's a dog. Rehome him." Which, actually, my mother actually did say when we first heard the original price of shipping him - which, luckily for me, that estimate was $1,000 over the actual $1,500 to ship him. To be fair, I had sticker shock as much as my parents did. But there's something about the magic of Otis that everyone who meets him, who lives with him, who spends time with him seems to understand why he's a special little dog and worth all the expense.

And if they don't understand, they're smart enough to keep their trap(s) shut. At least around me.

Otis arrives tomorrow. Well, today. This afternoon. 12 hours from this moment I'll have my dog again. Not A dog. MY dog.

And what a lovely, lovely thing that is.