The Tale of the Marvelous Journey – Part 4: Step Cottage

Friday morning we awoke more refreshed, although I think I had a horrible headache. Everybody ended up napping at different times until about 2 p.m.

The cottage was pretty cool. At first I was afraid that Steve wouldn’t like it – but I think he was not liking anything on Thursday. It was not a good day for him. Friday brought a new perspective and he was a little more “ok” with being in England for 6 months. By the end of our stay in the cottage, he was going on and on about how much he liked it.

It is called Step Cottage. It has 3 bedrooms, 1 bathroom, kitchen, dining, lounge, and a little laundry room with a washer/dryer. Not a washer and a separate dryer, but a washer that is also a dryer. It took FOREVER to wash and FOREVERMORE to dry. We finally gave up on drying and hung stuff out on the line.

The cottage sat about 10 feet above the road. Not on a gently sloping hill, mind you. It was about 10 feet above the road and 10 feet beside the road. Lots of pretty flowers and fat happy bumblebees. There was no place to turn the van around, so we had to back down the sort of steep driveway into the narrow lane and head away from town before we could turn around and go the right way. But that’s later.

Friday morning it was chilly enough to want the duvets (du-vays) off the beds and on our laps in the lounge. Nice fluffy comforters. They use a fitted sheet and a duvet here. The cover comes off and you wash it like you wash a top sheet. It is pretty cool. Mom commented on the pheasants she saw in the field across the road. Later in the day when the cows come wandering back up, we can hear them eating across our tiny little road, but we can’t see them. They are about as high up as we are, but there’s a hedge they stand behind. We can hear them chomping, but can’t see the closest ones.

So back to the cottage: it is 2 stories, but there’s either a step up or a step down to almost every room. The beams are exposed and are dark – it makes me think of a cottage. The biggest room is downstairs – 2 twin beds and a ginormous fireplace. The fireplace isn’t being used for fires anymore. Instead there is a chest of drawers sitting in it. The lounge has 3 wing chairs, and electric fireplace, a settee, a little TV, and a payphone. Not a payphone like we imagine – it was plastic and sat on a little table in a corner. The dining room had a nice big table and 6 chairs. The kitchen was galley-type and had some appliances. The fridge reminds me of a big dorm fridge. The freezer was the same size, but it was in the laundry room.

Upstairs were the 2 other bedrooms – one with a double bed, the other with a twin – and the bathroom. It had a long tub, not very wide, though, and a hand-held shower that didn’t work too well.

And yes, Terry, the separate hot and cold spigots are a huge pain! It’s hard to wash hands when hot is coming out of one side and cold is coming out of the other.

So Friday we went into Reading and ate lunch at the exotic Subway joint. Sub sandwiches were easy and not very confusing. After we ate, we got our cell phone. After we got our cell phone, Steve checked in with Andy – his contact over here. Andy invited us over to lunch on Sunday. More on that in a later post.

After lunch and wandering around the shopping area a while (both inside and outside), we went to the grocery store. I think I wrote about this experience earlier. It was nice to see normal food.

I drove back to the cottage from the store. It was my first experience driving. Not too bad, but Steve kept fussing at me for being too close on the left. I don’t think he was taking into account how close I was on the right, too. I just ignored him. But we made it home and from then on, I became the primary driver for a week after that.

That night, Caleb slept 14 hours. We were all amazed at this! For lunch I roasted a chicken. There is truly comfort in familiar food. I think this familiar food went a long way to help ease Steve’s mind. Plus he said this was the first meal he ate since we got to England when he was hungry. He was eating earlier because he knew if he didn’t, he’d feel worse. This made me feel better – to know that I was caring for my family in a constructive way.

Mom called Dad and talked for a while. They set up a calling schedule – every other day at noon our time (6 a.m. his time).

After our chicken lunch, we braved downtown Reading traffic again. After more than one wrong turn, we found a parking garage, parked, then found the library. That was when I made my first blog post from England.

When we were done at the library, we went down the street to the Oracle mall and ate dinner at…….Chili’s. How anti-climactic. But it was nice to have chicken fajita quesadillas.

We decided after dinner to go to the other grocery store in northern Reading – Tesco. I have found my “happy place.” It is a huge grocery store with other stuff like Super Wal-Marts or Super Targets. I was so relieved to find this store. Not just to find it that day in the van, but to know it was there. I didn’t know if any Wal-Mart-type stores existed over here, but they do. In fact, Wal-Mart owns and operates another chain of stores over here called Asda. The Asda we went to a few days ago was scary. It felt dirty and reminded me of an H.E.B Pantry grocery store. There’s another Asda in another part of town – I’ll go see it before I write the chain off completely.

Join us next time for “A Truly English Household”…