We bad farewell to the Lake District -- Grasmere & Dove cottage would have meant a few more hours'drive & I was nervous enough about my stint of driving on the M6, so I lugged The Oxford Book of English Verse along for nothing, didn't I?
It was about 5 hrs drive down to here -- through pretty grimy Midlands (Lancaster, Birmingham) but these rolling hills & fields are lovely. The house we're staying in is lovely, too, built in the 18th cent, all filled w/ antiques & pictures of a VERY handsome family. Lovely picture of two blond daughters, barefoot, in sleveless black dresses, standing on the grass.
They own some 600 acres and of course the line is they take in B&B guests only out of generosity to share this loveliness w/ them, but it can't be much fun, can it, to have strangers tramping dirt into your lovely home week in & week out? And, I mean, it's not that much money, is it -- total revenue is maybe GBP 400/night or so (max, and there are exps), and I as overpaid dweeb earn roughly that. Of course, I don't live in lovely country-side, do I. I guess that's the point.
The bookstore in town is going out of business. S spent some GBP 20 on maps there, a shocking sum for him, and then spent a further 10.
My bberry revived when I charged it w/o the transformer, and now it's its peppy little self. (altho radio transmission briefly off after I took out the battery).
However, we still have communications constraints, because:
1) S's Estonian-based cell phone doesn't get good reception, so when he calls the states, people can't understand what he says.
2) I can't figure out how to dial UK numbers -- the prefixes we could think of didn't work.
3) I can't figure out how to set up my voicemail box.
The upshot is, S can call me, but I can't call him. Steve thinks I'm technologically inept. I think if he had some normal cell phone I could just return a missed call.
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