Sorry sorry sorry

Yes, I know, I said I'd keep going, and I will, seriously.

But things are in a sort of holding pattern at the moment, with everyone scrambling around trying to get connected to a broadband hookup. It should be easy, but we are dealing with British Telecom and the remote (hah! in this country, "remote" means eight miles from the nearest town, a very interesting phenom) rural village.

It's all very complicated and has to do with the future of a hairdressing salon on the Rows in Chester; a two-hundred year-old country farm labourer's cottage (soon to be my abode); a periodically striking postman with a large collection of Simpson's and Dr. Who memorabilia; five squabbling children; a wealthy local landowner busily buying houses in Spain; a less wealthy absentee landlady of a house in Durham but who lives in Kent; and the local Conservative party candidate for the election-that-never-was; his wife who wants her dining room redecorated; and a nice young traddie Catholic girl suffering from "ME" or chronic fatigue syndrome who wants to be a music teacher...

You'd think that having been here only three weeks, things would be fairly straightforward, and it would be, had I decided to carry on to Durham according to plan.

But that was a dull plan, and, as anyone who knows me even via the internet, should have realized by now, I hate dull.

Dull is bad.

Went to Liverpool yesterday and took a stroll 'round the Albert Docks. We had to pass John Lennon Airport, and am happy to report that the expression on Uncle Mike's
face at the sight of His Imagineness plastered on nearly every public surface, was as sour and disgusted as mine.

We discussed with great animation our mutual conviction that the 1960's was the era that ended all good things in Britain and nearly everywhere else. Uncle Mike agreed that the world ended in 1968. Happy to report that we are getting on well and are almost point-for-point of like mind on all but religious questions.

After deciding that Liverpool is exactly as horrid as everyone says (Mike worked there for some years) we ditched the joint and went back to lovely lovely Chester and took a stroll down on the river front, watching the happy Cestrians rowing their boats up and down, sculling and paddle-boating; coots; ducks; mums and dads pushing push-chairs; kids lined up at the charmingly Tudor-half-timbered ice cream stand; leaves shushing... Stopped at the tea shop and took our tea outdoors on the riverside where we talked family-talk.

Heaven.

Still trying to forget the horrors of Liverpool, we wandered up the bank and through the park that is home to a ruined Norman church. The ruins backed on to the standing church of St. John, also of the same period. We wandered about and I thought how lovely it will be when we reposess it for the True Mass when all good things are restored.

Uncle Mike bought a book and I dropped a two-pound coin in the donation box. (As long as they're keeping it up for us to use later, might as well contribute, I reasoned.)

It was a lovely autumnal Sunday. (I've learned that when the weather man in this country uses the term "fine", as in "Monday, 15 degrees in the day time and fine", they do not mean what we mean by "fine" what we mean in Canada. In Britain, I have learned, "fine" means "not raining".

Sometimes it means "sunny" but not often.

No pics, but since I've decided to stay, there's no hurry.

I might even wait for a sunny day.