Summer Time

Nothing written for four months, and now two posts in one day. It's just, you see, the title of my last post reminded me of Madness' performance at the Queen's Jubilee concert, and then that reminded me of the Jubilee celebration we attended in our new village, which reminded me that maybe I should write something about this exciting summer. After all, everyone else is.

The days are long here in the summer. Today is 16 hours, 32 minutes and 51 seconds long. The day of the summer solstice will be 16 hours 38 minutes and 19 seconds long. I can't sleep with all this light. When I wake up and see that it's light outside, I'm convinced that either my alarm is about to go off or it hasn't and I am going to oversleep. Since the latter is less likely, I lie awake waiting for my alarm to go off. And it doesn't. See, that's because the sunrise is at 4:44 a.m. I have one hour and six minutes before I have to get up. I wish someone would tell my sleepy brain.

But I promised you excitement.

We spent the four-day Jubilee weekend celebrating after a fashion:

• In London on that Saturday to soak up some atmosphere without the wall-to-wall people. 
• In our present village on Sunday to go to a rain-soaked hog roast that I'm not sure was so much spoiled by the weather as by the fact that it was a hog roast. So we bought beer and picked up fish and chips and watched the Thames pageant in our nice dry living room. 
• In our new village on Monday to see a coronation memorabilia display in the village hall, watch a tug of war, and say 'aawwwwww' during the 'dog show'.

Okay, not that exciting. Maybe for the Olympics.

Our House

The last four months must be hanging out with the socks in my house. I have no idea where they went, although time seemed to disappear more quickly when we bought our DVR. Big Bang Theory repeats aside, we really have been busy.

A lot of our spare time over the last few months was spent looking for, and now buying, a home. One blurry Saturday, we looked at six houses. We bought none of them. Instead, we bought the house that kept drawing us back to it.

We first liked it for its setting across from cow-filled fields. Then for the tiny village it was located in, for its 13th-century church and 17th century pub, for its friendly and inviting residents. So why, we wondered, could we afford this house in the country with plenty of space? It must be, we thought, because of its proximity to Gatwick airport. So we went back at different times of day and different days of the week. We asked the locals how they felt about aircraft noise. We event spent the night at a local B&B to find out for ourselves.

The result was our entry into the long and stressful process of buying a house in England, where the buyer spends a fortune on surveys and solicitors before the seller is legally committed to sell you their house (and you to buy). In the end, we will be homeowners again this Friday, the 15th of June 2012.