Housesitting Adventures in England

This summer, I spent an incredible nine days housesitting in England. I met Anne, the homeowner, through my friend Jasmin, whom I petsat for earlier this year in Gökçeovacık. We corresponded through email for a couple of months and she asked me to petsit in Bradford-on-Avon while she was on holiday in Turkey.

I hadn't heard of Bradford-on-Avon, but after a quick Google image search, I was in love.  The town is located in Wiltshire county, about 110 miles west of London.  The population is only about 9,500 people. As my hometown has a thousand less people, I felt right at home.  Although Tecumseh, Michigan isn’t quite the premier cultural destination when compared to BoA.

Downtown Bradford-on-Avon

I’d been to London in 2009 for a hurried, but memorable weekend with my friend Nicole.  The trip sealed our lifelong friendship and begot about a dozen inside jokes, but we didn’t have much chance to experience English culture.

This time around, I was certain that my extensive exposure to British television, living with Clive for a year, and hanging out with my Turkish/English hybrid friends would have me prepared for whatever came my way.

The beginning of my adventure!

After arriving at Heathrow Airport, I took a coach to a town called Corsham.  The bus dropped me off in the little village and I went to wait in a random pub for Anne.  A real English pub.  I was exactly like the guy in “Love Actually” who goes to a typical American bar for some Budweiser.

This was my first time in an English speaking country in over a year and as I was drinking my half-pint of Carling, I realized that I could understand every single person in the pub. In Istanbul, with my limited Turkish, I can easily tune out the conversations happening around me.

At first, understanding everyone was really overwhelming.  I felt like I was intruding on private conversations, even though they were all speaking loudly.  I know it seems dramatic, but it almost felt like I was telepathic.  (This is based entirely on how telepathy is presented on TV shows.) I heard men making bawdy jokes.  The barmaid called a regular customer, “my treacle”.  Thanks to Clive and the countless hours we’d spent watching British television, I recognized a lot of the slang. It was weird and amazing.

Selam, Pippin!

I'm always a bit anxious meeting someone in person who previously only existed in my inbox, but Anne and her daughter Alice (and Alice's tiny daughter Erin) are the sort of people that you instantly feel comfortable around. You’d be hard pressed to find a fault with these three generations of women. Their home was gorgeous and I couldn’t have felt more at ease. 

While the ladies were on holiday, my wards included two sweet dogs and half a dozen chickens. The lovely Pippin is a former sokak köpeği from Turkey. So if I got homesick for Istanbul, I could always recite the days of the week, ask if she had an older brother, or comment on the weather in Turkish.

Hiya, Jake!

Jake is an elderly dog with the spirit of a puppy.  I’ve mentioned before that one of the things I miss most about America are my pets.  Any time I spend with domesticated animals is a pleasure.  It was nice sharing my bed with the pint sized Jake, although I had to check a few times that he wasn’t suffocating under the covers.  

My stay in BoA was a weird vacation/working hybrid, with a few chores thrown in. But when the chores are snuggling with dogs and collecting (and eating) freshly laid eggs, there’s not much to complain about.

One of our lovely morning walks

Even though I was working full time, I found small ways to implement English culture into my day without interrupting my work schedule.  Eating beans on toast for breakfast. Having elevenses. Wearing ‘wellies’ for the dogs’ morning walk on a rainy day. I even ate my meals in a conservatory!  The only conservatory I’d ever been in was during a game of Clue when I suspected Colonel Mustard with the candlestick.  

My workday was accompanied by the soundtrack of unfamiliar bird songs and a backdrop of plants and flowers that seemed to be growing by the hour. In the evening, I tried watching the ‘telly’ a few times, but it turns out a lot of British television is reruns of “Teen Mom” and “Hoarders”.

Behold, my lifestyle blog photography skills!

But I think I might have taken elevenses too literally.  I’d watch the clock in the corner of my computer screen, slowly approach snack time.  10:56...10:57...10:58.  I’d tell my grumbling stomach to calm down and wait another two GD minutes.  When those beautiful double ones hit the screen, I’d jump up, startling the dozing dogs, and head for the coffee and biscuits.

Returning from a rainy morning walk (Please note the authentic wellies.)

My inability to communicate with people in Turkey is completely self-inflicted and I don’t deserve any sympathy.  But, I couldn’t get over how much I loved speaking my mother tongue (however bastardized)  to everyone.  And because they were English, they were too polite not to laugh at my bad jokes.

One afternoon, the doorbell rang and I found a guy with a clipboard wearing a Save The Children t-shirt.

Normally, if I’d seen the same thing through my peephole back home, I would have silently tiptoed away and hoped that the person hadn’t seen the shadow of my feet under the door. But this was England.

“Hi!”, I beamed.

“Hello there.  How are you today?”

“I’m fine.  How about you?”

“Wow.  I’m good.  Thank you for asking...No one ever asks me that.”

“Oh. Well that doesn’t seem very nice.”

“Yeah. Um...you smile a lot.  People don’t usually smile at me.”

“It’s probably because I’m American.”

We chatted a bit about American college football teams and he asked me to save the children, but it turns out (much to the relief of my bank account) that needy children only accept British credit cards.

“Can’t I just give you a fiver?”, I asked trying to show off some English slang.

“No, I’m sorry.  We can’t accept cash.”

“That’s too bad. Good luck, then! I hope you find people with British bank accounts who smile at you! Have a great day! Take care!”

I’m less amiable with most of my blood relatives.

Yum!

Before my trip, I knew I had to be careful about spending. At the time, the exchange rate was 1 GBP to 4.21 TL. Because I'm paid in Turkish lira, the price of everything in England was more than quadruple for me. Yikes! As my lodging was free (Thank you, Anne), I knew that my biggest expense would be food. 

I had planned to sustain myself on the Oliver Twist diet of water and stale bread, but ended up eating like Queen Victoria (and gaining her physique). Surprisingly all the foods I wanted to eat were the most affordable. Many of them (baked beans, pork products, Indian food, etc.) were cheaper than in Turkey. Plus, Anne and Alice very generously let me raid the refrigerator. I may have overindulged in their biscuit supply though.

I enjoyed eating in and cooking microwaving meals, but I knew I had to consume some things that didn't come from the Co-Op. One of the few times I ate out, I stopped by the Grumpy Badger in the city center. This amazing latte and enormous slice of hummingbird cake only set me back £5.20, which is around the same amount I’d spend in Istanbul when you convert it to lira.

£14 for admission, but well worth it

On Sunday, I took a twenty minute train journey to Bath.   This city was incredible. Jane Austen spent a lot of time here and used it for the backdrop of “Persuasion” (which I tried to read beforehand as I felt a connection to the protagonist, a 27-year-old spinster). The Roman baths, for which the city is named, were built circa 70 CE and are still pretty cool nearly two millennia later.

Jump, Russell Crowe, and put our ears out of their misery!

Many movies have been filmed in Bath, including “Vanity Fair”, “The Duchess”, and most recently, Javert’s suicide scene in “Les Miserables”.  I’d only ever seen architecture like this in the BBC costume dramas that my parents watch.  It was strange to see 21st century people walking around in jeans and OBEY baseball caps, when I thought the dress code should include bonnets, top hats, and Empire waists.  Where were the carriages, bewigged aristocrats, and peasants with rotted teeth?

The Bath Abbey was founded in the 7th century, and over the next millennium underwent some major changes, getting a serious facelift in the 1860s.  The place was absolutely stunning, inside and out.  My only problem was with the admission fee, or as the sign put it, “suggested donation”. I take serious umbrage at suggested donations.  You should either say “donations welcome” or list a price.  I always end up paying the suggested amount to avoid feeling guilty and then immediately feel like a sucker.  Grievances aside, it was well worth the £2.50 I paid to visit the abbey.

Anne’s niece Helen lived just down the street (and generously watched Toby, Anne’s third dog with a reputation for riling up the other pooches). She stopped by one evening with a bottle of wine and her infectious laugh.  I liked her immediately.  The following day, she offered to take me to the nearby village of Lacock, which is comically pronounced LAY-COCK.

The tiny village is mostly owned by the National Trust, which sets out ‘To Look after Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty permanently for the benefit of the nation across England, Wales and Northern Ireland’.  It has been used as a filming location for “Pride and Prejudice” (the Colin Firth version), two Harry Potter films, and the current season of “Downton Abbey”.  Economy cars aside, the area really did feel like it was from another time.

Imperative cultural experience

With few exceptions, I loathe seafood, but I knew I needed to try fish and chips.  (I’m very committed to assimilating into a foreign culture, you see.)  I only hoped that my love of fried food would outweigh my disgust for scaled creatures.  I figured that the aptly named restaurant FISH N’CHIPS would be the best place to go.  At £8.95 (37 TL), it was one of my most expensive purchases, so I forced myself to eat everything (except the salad, obviously). 

It wasn’t that bad, until I started to head back to the house.  Now weighed down by an entire cod and a kilo of fried potatoes, the typically invigorating walk up to Anne’s home became the worst 15 minutes of my life.  It felt like the fish had miraculously reassembled itself in my bulging belly and was trying to escape.  It’s a miracle that I didn’t vomit.

Wowee!

Early on, I went to the town’s tourist information center, which was run by senior citizens in tailored pantsuits.  After telling them that I was on a budget, I was handed a small booklet titled “Walks in Bradford-on-Avon”.  Never has a brochure been more applicable to me.  Few things give me as much pleasure as exploring places on foot and BoA gave me plenty of opportunities to do exactly that.  Plus, walking is free!

Completed in 1805, the Avoncliff Aqueduct crosses the River Avon.

I stuck with normal Istanbul working hours, so I finished work at 4pm GMT, which allowed me to maximize my walking time. I was most blown away by the flowers everywhere. Every blossom I saw before coming to England was a weed. Many of the homes were fitted with immaculate gardens and roses the size of your face. 

I think I expected Bradford-on-Avon to be more familiar, like a Downton Abbey/American Midwest hybrid. I was way off. I have never felt so good to be wrong. (Apart from that time when I thought that I had a brain tumor, but it turned out I was just hungry.)

I was completely unaware of the river boat lifestyle before my trip.

One of my biggest pet peeves is when someone who has never been to the US tries to contradict my description of American culture based on an episode of Friends/Big Bang Theory/How I Met Your Mother. This happens way more often than you might think. 

Spending time in England made me realize that I’d been doing the exact same thing. I carry on about all the British shows I watch and demonstrate my vast knowledge of naughty Britishisms. But during my stay in Bradford-on-Avon, I was exposed to so many things I never could have imagined. It was pretty freaking wonderful.

As luck would have it, during my stay, the local actor’s guild was performing ‘Hamlet’ in Bradford-on-Avon's historic 14th century Tithe Barn.  How could I pass on an amateur Shakespeare production in England?  At £12 a ticket, it was within my budget.

Somewhere between Act I, Scene I and Act I, Scene II, I noticed a small insect on the head of a man sitting in front of me.  The bug was slowly weaving its way through his white wispy hair.  I asked myself if it would be weirder to touch a stranger’s head or knowingly let a bug meander around his scalp.  

Did people see me see the bug and do nothing!?  Were my fellow audience members wondering who this sadistic woman was who couldn’t be bothered to gently remove a potential parasite?  I tried to look away and focus on the play.

In 12th grade, my AP English class read “Hamlet” from a book that had the Shakespearean text printed on the left side of the page and a simplified version on the right.  Our teacher, Mr. Klauza, urged all of us to ignore the right-hand column and mumbled something about budgets cuts.  But with lines like “The king doth wake tonight and takes his rouse. Keeps wassail and the swaggering upspring reels”, it was hard to resist reading the dumbed-down, “The king is staying up all night drinking and dancing”.

Back in the Tithe Barn, whenever Hamlet would launch into one of his more verbose monologues, I found my eyes drifting to my right to see how the simple plot of the bug in the stranger’s hair was getting on.  I learned at intermission from the woman in front of me that the head belonged to her husband, Dave. By Act III, the bug had disappeared forever into his follicles. Alas, poor Dave.

The production was excellent, but the open barn got pretty chilly. Halfway through Act IV, I started wishing that everyone would hurry up and die.  By the way, what’s with Shakespearean characters saying, “I am slain” or “I am murdered”?  We would have gathered that from your lifeless body, Polonius.  Just lie still and be quiet, dammit.

I saw people playing cricket!  And they saw me, the classless American, taking pictures of them.  

I spent my final day traipsing around the town, oblivious to the humiliating farmer’s tan burning into my skin. I thought a lot about how great it is to have five senses and mobile legs and was surprised at how much money I saved by utilizing them. My Bradford-on-Avon adventure exceeded every expectation, as you can tell from this loquacious blog post.

I have many people to thank this adventure.  First, Jasmin for introducing me to Anne.  Next, Anne, Alice, and little Erin for sharing their home and pets with me.  Also Helen, for making me laugh and taking me on an adventure. Thank you to my friend Tarık for lending me his camera.  And, last but not least, my boss Erol for letting me do this yet again.