TELGEN NEWSLETTER 1.0: August 28, 1998:

Dear Family and Friends:

Here's the first of a series of notes that we'll be sending along to all our friends back home in America while we're residing in lovely England. It's a way to keep you up to date on how we're doing, what we're doing, when our B&B is available, etc etc. Thanks to the many of you who've been writing or e-mailing to keep in touch; we appreciate the continuing contact with all our old friends.

So, what's it like living in England? This is a question many of you have been asking, so I'll try to hit the high points:

Our home: Housework stinks! Not that we liked doing it any better back home, but it's a little more complicated here. For instance, the laundry machine has to heat its own water, so it takes over an hour to wash a very small load of clothes. So you have to do laundry at least two or three times a week. Our downstairs has hardwood floors, which are very lovely but devilish to keep clean. So sweeping/mopping twice a week, or maybe an attempt with our "vacuum," which is very feeble compared to the ones back home. Our house also has less storage space than we're used to, so we have to keep things picked up—except for David's train set, of course. On the other hand, the area here is lovely. Since the neighborhoods are over fifty years old, there are lots of mature trees, bushes, and shrubs, and everyone has a garden. In our back yard, we often see pheasant or grouse wandering around, and Bill once saw a fox trotting down our street at night. We're only ten minutes' walk from the tube station to London, yet our neighborhood is quiet, peaceful, and rarely travelled. Our neighbors seem very friendly, although we haven't met many yet as it's vacation season over here.

Shopping/Eating: We've found most everything we need here, although Bill would like to find filter coffee in bigger sizes. Also, if you visit us, bring syrup! We can handle making pancakes from scratch (although we had to figure out whether to use plain or self-rising flour, as baking soda and baking powder are different here), but you can only get teeny bottles (maybe 6 ounce) of real maple syrup here, and they cost over 3 pounds (about 5 dollars)! On the other hand, there's more varieties of tea than you can shake a stick at, and since the supermarket is only ten minutes walk away, it's a pleasant journey to pick up some fresh meat for dinner. Since Diane has lots of free time now, she's been doing a lot of experimenting with cooking—so don't feel too sorry for Bill, complaining that the food here is lousy. That's just in most restaurants—at home he's eating very well. Speaking of restaurants, the few that do happen to be kid-friendly (and this seems to be a recent movement) have really boring menus, so we don't eat out too often. But we've found a real mall, not 15 minutes from us, there's a Costco nearby, and there are several new "superstore" type places around, so we can find most everything—although, of course, at British prices, which means if it cost a dollar back home it'll cost a pound over here.

Driving: Driving on the left is really no big deal, once you figure out how to track your car on the right instead of the left. What's really the trouble are the teeny tiny British roads. And we could even get used to the narrowness, I think, except for the way people park on the side of the road. So in many places what was a nice, two-lane road is turned into a crowded, one-lane road by the rows of parked cars on either side. There's also the problem of figuring out where you are. Almost everyone has a very detailed atlas of the area, because it's very difficult to figure out where you are. That's because the names of roads keep changing. For instance, I can walk for fifteen minutes on the big road near our house and see the name change from Green Lane to Northwood Way to Hillside Way to Potter Street to Pinner Hill Road. So you can imagine how much fun it is to find your way to a place you haven't been before.

Television/Entertainment: Bill made this observation: how come you see all these wonderful British programs brought to American television (on PBS or A&E), but while you're living here, the television is so awful? There are five broadcast channels and about twenty more available on via subscription satellite service. They carry many American programs, but how they choose them is beyond me. You can watch "Star Trek" (various incarnations) and "The Simpsons" every day, but also "The Nanny," "Jerry Springer," and "Married with Children." They carry American dramas like "The X-Files" and "ER," but seem to be one season behind. British programming has lots of documentary shows, many soaps (which are in the evening, not the daytime), and their own comedies and dramas, of course, which I haven't gotten into yet. Don't talk to us about sports programming—real football season is about to start back home, while all that's on over here is what they call "football"soccer.

So that's life in England in a nutshell. On a more specific front, Bill is enjoying his job and has travelled to Sweden, Poland, and Germany already; Diane has set up her home business (freelance writing) and is typing away; and Davidwell, he's four and a half, so he just started school! He rides the bus every day and goes to Pre-Kindergarten at the American school twenty minutes away.

Cheerio!

Diane, Bill & David Telgen