CRIMINAL ACTIVITIES

     Living in a large city like L. A. you come to expect a dollop of criminal activity.  I had a car, the same car, stolen twice.  Husband was mugged on the subway.  Living skid-row adjacent Husband and I were privy to lots of shenanigans.  Husband's computer was stolen from our living room while he was out on a ten minute errand. 

No Shortage of Police

 One morning at around six am, I glanced out our window to see an impressive act of multi-tasking in the parking lot below; a gentleman with a prostitute and a crack pipe; using both simultaneously.  Police cars raced down our street frequently and helicopters hovered overhead. Houses have alarms and bars.  Some people have guns tucked away under their beds.

     I expected no crime out here in the country.  Certainly not in our immediate area with its population of about 705, drawn from three little villages.  Our village has no shop, so there's nothing to hold up.  There's no cash machine, so there's no swiveling head, hunched-shouldered protecting of pin numbers.  Some people here don't even lock their doors.  Deluded... all of them. 

     We purchase our eggs from a stand by a house in plain view of chickens pecking contentedly in rich soil across the road.  We took our half dozen, and went to drop our one pound twenty in the ceramic bowl that acts as the 'till', instead we found a note.  Our money dish has been stolen, it said, please deposit your payment directly into our mailbox.  

Scene of the Crime

Husband and I looked at each other aghast.  Theft!  Here? We couldn't believe it.  We felt violated.  We put our money into the mail slot and hurried home through the fields, crestfallen.

     Suddenly our verdant outpost was not the pristine paradise I believed it to be.  A by-product of urban dwelling is a vague alertness to potential danger, a little inner antenna that prevents total relaxation.  I'd released that defense mechanism here.  One swiped money dish and I was back on high alert.  

Droves of Danger

     In my mind, ramblers on otherwise empty lanes and droves became potential muggers.  It didn't matter that they were pensioners dragged along by corgis.  A non-descript windowless van became the transport for kidnappers, though who would want to kidnap us and why is a mystery. 

     "Maybe we need a guard dog," I suggest to Husband, "We could borrow our friend's vicious hound, Beastly."

Beastly and Bits of Burgler

Kidnappers?  No, it's just 
the neighbours.

     Out of our window we see several structures.  One is an old farmhouse, another is a 17th century barn turned spiritual center (remember, we're in the Vale of Avalon).  There is a light on in the farmhouse every single night.  It is as reliable as the sunrise.  Then one night, there was only darkness.  Odd, I think.  A second night.  No light. On the third day I call Husband to the window.  "Look!" I point at the police car parked in front of the house.  "He's been murdered," I announce, looking solemnly across the field.  Fourth day the light returns and I have to focus my paranoia elsewhere.

     I shake my head at the foolishness of unlocked bikes leaned against a fence by the cricket field, left with the expectation they'll still be there when the school bus dislodges children at the end of the day.  In a nearby village a woman bakes cakes and puts them in a giant red and white polka-dotted cupboard.  Customers pick a treat, and drop coins in a plastic container.  "You'd have thought she knew better," I say to Husband, recalling the egg dish caper.  The sound of kids playing up by the Hood Monument on a sunny Sunday become vandals screaming.  

The Cakehole

Trouble at the Hood? No, Just Husband.

     









     
     We find dog poop outside our front gate.  "That was no accident," I search our hedge-lined country lane for the culprit.  I become obsessive about locking the door.  Two boys stand on the road trying to cajole Penny the Peahen down the drive to the gate.  I go out, hands on hips, a warning to these pint-sized Pea-nappers. "You've got to be vigilant," I tell Husband,   "You're crackers," Husband says. 

     We're in town one day picking up provisions and I spot it... my vindication.  I grab a copy of the Central Somerset Gazette from a nearby stack.  "Ha!" I announce to Husband.  "What?"  Husband sighs. I point to an article.  "See... " I  hold it up for him to read. A headline states in bold letters; THIEF HID HOT FOOD DOWN PANTS.  

Hot Pasty

 http://www.centralsomersetgazette.co.uk/Glastonbury-shoplifter-caught-stuffing-hot-food/story-20829060-detail/story.html

     Seems a drunk twenty-five year old staggered into a grocery store, and stole oven fresh piping hot pasties and sausage rolls, then stuffed them down his trousers for safe keeping.  He might have gotten away with it, but two bottles of wine he stuffed down there to accompany his meal smashed on the ground.  Two weeks later the same felon was caught putting a pair of bolt croppers down his pants; surely even a drunk man must realize the potentially life-altering repercussions of this act.  

"See, it's a crime wave," I tell Husband.

"Darling, I think you're losing the plot," Husband says.

LEARNING THE LANGUAGE

     Relocating to another country should involve learning the local 
language.  In England they speak English... so we've got that covered. 
Except it's the accent that everyone covets.  Who doesn't love a proper English accent!  

Chronically English Madge

Born here, I left too long ago to retain mine.  I'm certainly not going to adopt it now, like the kid I knew in high school who returned from a three week stint in London with a full-on British accent, or Madonna.  Some people seem to absorb it just flying over UK airspace.  Not me.  I can't even say 'cheers' without feeling like a pretender, as out of place as a badger in the Mojave.  I have one holdout from childhood... I say toe-mah-toe, Husband always ridiculed me for it.  He says to-may-toe.  Over here everyone says it my way.  Husband had to back off.

     Husband and I speak in a pitch different than our British friends.  
There is a musicality to their speech, the words lilt at the end of a sentence, like they are full of joy and possibility.  When they say 'good-bye' on the phone, there is a pleasant upswing on the second syllable, like parting is such sweet sorrow.  When Husband and I speak in our flat dull tone we feel like knuckle-dragging Neanderthals, only a few syllables away from a grunt.  We stand out like sore thumbs.  It's different in London where you're surrounded by every language imaginable.  Here, we're the only aliens in the village.

      The British are extremely polite and everyone knows it's rude to stare, but when people hear us speak, they do stare.  Unspoken questions traipse across creased foreheads.  'What the bloody hell are you doing here,  talking like that?'  Everybody knows who you are, even if they haven't met you, which is sometimes kind of nice.  Like being a bizarre celebrity because of an unfortunate speech pattern.  In the market towns we frequent we have become familiar oddities; our flat voiced cadence is our calling card.

Why Do You Talk Like That?

Try to Ignore Them.  I do.

     

    








     
     England has many dialects.  You can travel from one end of the country to the other and encounter vast differences in vernacular.  People from all over the UK live in Somerset but it's the local West Country dialect that I love, with its hard S's that almost sound like Zeds and rolling Rs, so that Somerset sounds like, Zomerrrrzet.  It's like living amongst pirates.  I think of Long John Silver and Robert Louis Stevenson.  It takes you to an imagined world  of adventure and swashbuckling.  I want to head to the nearest coastline, and find the cave where the gold doubloons are hidden.  

Could You Please Direct us to 
the Gold Dubloons?

You're Sure He Said This Way?

     Only problem is, sometimes, when the accent is really heavy, we aliens are lost without translation.  You can only say 'pardon me' so many times before you become an irritant.  We smile and leave a conversation clueless; we'll never find where the buried treasure is.   Given instructions by a farmer we cannot understand, we nod dumbly and head off happily in the wrong direction.  He watches us go, a word bubble forms over his head, 'Village Idiots,' he thinks.

    

An Idiot in the Village

     Language isn't just words, it's also intonations and attitudes, the unspoken.  There are rules for discourse here.  Husband and I don't know them all quite yet.  In fact, we barely know any.  We have learned it's rude to ask too many questions.  That restriction goes against every instinct I have.  I'm an inveterate question asker.  I ask more than most.  Lots of questions.  Irritatingly so.  Some people like it, it shows you are interested in them, others don't, perceiving it as prying.   

     Husband and I like to chat with people we meet.  We strike up a conversation with a man on a moor and I ask why he's harvesting thistle?   Because the seeds are good for his budgerigars… duh.   I ask the farmers what kind of cattle are those?  Can a limousin really clear a five foot high metal gate?  Is it still too wet to plant?  How long until the levels drain?   How often do you have to re-thatch your roof?  How many miles is it to Burrow Mump?  When did Saint Wulfric arrive in Haselbury Plucknett?  What's a faggot? (A traditional food made of offal)   

Faggots and Peas

      As we pass on our perambulations we look at people and say hello and smile.   They avert their gaze to the flock of birds overhead.  Is that an Iberian Chiffchaff or a Pied Flycatcher, I ask?  

Why Do You Talk Like That, 
Said The Iberian Chiffchaff?

Sometimes people just narrow their eyes and say , I don't know.  Other times they are surprised and happy to answer questions not put to them before.  We can't help it, we're curious though apparently extremely impolite and irritating Canucks.  

     
     Another thing we've had to curtail is our unbridled enthusiasm.  People here are much more reserved than we.  But we love it here... perhaps deliriously so.  Like true aliens, we are discovering a new world.  The sky is so blue!  The air is so clean!  The lambs are so cute!  The grass is so green!  The rain is so wet! 

Why do you talk like that?

     Often we sound positively giddy.  Last week at the Wells' Market Husband was thrilled to find his favorite baker had his favorite chocolate cake.  "My husband has been dreaming of your chocolate cake!"  I exclaim loudly, a slight tinge of lunacy in my voice.   The baker blushed red, and looked down at her feet.

Go to Wells for the Chocolate Cake

Forget the Cathedral....

  

     And so we continue to roam the moors and frequent the villages, insulting or startling the population every time we open our mouths.  But that's okay, because, as Canadians, we're also masters of the word, "Sorry."

    

THE RAIN IN SPAIN FALLS MAINLY IN SOMERSET

Self Portait

     I was used to no weather in L.A.  Warm, warmer, windy, dry, drier; used to the sound of the skin crackling off my bones during the Santa Anas.  Used to wistfully wishing for rain,  perhaps a little fog, anything with some moisture in it ... even June gloom... gone by noon.  I love rain.  I missed it.

  My shrivelled skin yearned for an El Nino or La Nina or a whatever; any meteorological fluctuation delivering H2O.  I was dehydrated, a cranky prune.  Rivers shrank.  Crops suffered.  In January Governor Jerry Brown officially declared a drought emergency.  This is the driest California has been.... EVER... seriously... EVER... at least since records were kept.  By then husband and I relocated to the land of life-giving moisture... England.   Be careful what you wish for.

     

Another River Behaving

A Gorgeous River Behaving

     We are in Somerset, surrounded by the Levels; low lying moors, once covered by water.  Through the centuries they were drained to create prime pasture land.  The Romans, some Monks, and finally 17th Century Dutch engineers (when you've got a flooding problem, you always call the Dutch) helped make the area habitable by creating a network of drainage ditches.  Now the place is criss-crossed with them, and with beautiful picture post-card rivers and streams. These fertile wetland moors are dotted with hills.  In bygone times one of them was thought to be Avalon, the island of Arthurian legend.  We are in a very beautiful and mystical place, living happily ever after.... until... 

Arthur Slept Here

Mystical Husband in Glastonbury

      











     The wettest winter.... EVER... seriously... EVER... at least since records were kept, so says the news.  People tell us it's never like this, like they're somehow personally responsible for the inclement conditions.  We tell them we like the wet; that we were parched for too long.  They look at us like we're crazy.  

     Every week brings a new storm, fog, gale force winds, and torrents of rain.  Fields where those killer cows maliciously grazed (see the killer cow blog) are now lakes; the cattle moved elsewhere.  The sheep from the field next door disappeared... just disappeared.  One morning they were there, that afternoon they were gone.  Not victims of alien abduction, but ferried away to drier land.  Penny the peahen is shed-bound.  Only the birds spiraling to 'catch the wave' of an updraft seem thrilled by 60 mph winds.

Fogged In Sheep

Peahen In Hiding

     To the amusement of many husband and I remain car-free.  We walk everywhere, at least we used to walk everywhere.  'Everywhere' is now covered in water.  Our perambulations have shrunk.  Recently we walked to the farmhouse store for some fresh local veg.  Plodding through the sopped and spud-less potato field, I hooked my wellie in a bramble springe and took a header in the muck and slop.  

Overflowing River Parrett

Grazing Land Meets River Parrett

     Now we use the bus. But even buses cannot go where they used to.  We went to Langport on some errands this week and found the River Parrett no longer a river but a lake threatening to encroach on the town.  Sandbags everywhere.  The normal bus route was aborted because of flooding beyond town.  The military were brought in to install pontoon bridges to nearby villages 'islandized' by the rising waters.  

     Someone borrowed a boat from our neighbour to travel the flooded fields nearby.  Good idea.  Forget the car.  Amazon UK carries the Intex Explorer K2 Kayak two-person inflatable canoe with oars and a pump for just a hundred and thirty pounds.  We could paddle to Portugal in that thing.  Then the police warned people to stay off the roads unless their trip was absolutely essential.  Does a driver delivering a kayak to a house on a hill qualify as essential? Maybe, since this last weekend all train service to the area was cancelled due to flooding and landslides.

    

Suicidal Humboldts

     Relentless foul weather is bound to have an effect on the collective psyche.  People suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder, feeling low because of perpetual wet and gray.  I don't have it yet, I was fried by the sun for so long, I am still happily rehydrating.  The wet doesn't bother me.  I still like the rain.  Not so for the poor Humboldt Penguins at the Scarborough Zoo in Yorkshire. Humboldts are natives of the Pacific Coast of Peru and Chile.  They're used to sunlight.  There isn't much of the stuff around.  A general malaise settled over the group, one the disheartened penguins couldn't seem to shake.  They are currently being treated with anti-depressants.     


     The Levels have been flooding since December.  Prince Charles, a feverish environmentalist, popped down last week to take a look, and pledged personal funds to help flooded farmers. He was overheard saying:

  "There's nothing like a jolly good disaster to get people to start doing something. The tragedy is that nothing happened for so long."
        Shortly thereafter, like the voles and other rodents flushed out of their natural habitat by the storms, Lord Smith, the head of the Environmental Agency, appeared, having at last realized something was amiss in Somerset.  David Cameron popped in for a look-see, though he neglected to mention exactly where he'd be, fearing his photo-op would be sunk by angry residents.    

A Vole

    
     

Lord Smith

     
     











    
     It's incredibly sad.  Fields farmed and houses lived in by families for 
centuries have been abandoned. This past weekend promised more evacuations due to rising water.  New flood warnings.  Gale force winds.  There is simply nowhere for all this water to go.     
 

Fog Marching Towards Us

Stormy Sunset

  

On Its Way

    The weather is certifiable.  The room in which I write this blog has two windows: one faces north, the other south.   A couple of days ago there was a torrential downpour from an ominous slate grey sky lashing against the south window. 

And So Is This

Out the north window, blue sky and sun shone on a patch of snowdrops and crocuses poking their heads out of the soil.  Meanwhile, it's so unseasonably warm  that confused daffodils have started to bloom.  

     
     In the midst of everything intrepid farmers carry on, as evidenced by an  announcement over the weekend in the British Farmers Weekly.   After a long search they had finally identified Britain's Sexiest Farmers, a photogenic pig farmer and a gorgeous blond agricultural student, both from flooded Central Somerset.   
 
     Anything bringing attention to the situation is good. I write, no longer dehydrated in Los Angeles, but soggy in Somerset next door to the most fetching farmers in all of the UK.   

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2014

     Well, 2013 was dramatic; an extreme year all around.  This is my first blog of 2014, my first blog in quite some time, and hopefully the first of many.  A lot of traveling.  LA to UK to Canada to UK to Canada to UK to USA and back and forth and back and forth... follow the bouncing Leszczynski.  

     I said goodbye to the Pink Cottage and the Peahen for four months to help my father after my mother passed away in Toronto.  He is a heartbroken, cranky, irascible widower.  

Goodbye Peahen

Hello Toronto

      Returning to a family home left many, many years ago is a psychologically disturbing experience.  I cannot begin to catalog the Victoria Falls of emotions wrought by that situation. Interesting and educational to be with an aging parent, a real life-lesson.  Returning home after a mother's passing was sadly another.  Maybe, as time passes dribs and drabs of this journey will make it into this blog, but not quite yet.

     Toronto was eye-opening on many levels.  Reconnecting with old friends, some not seen since high school, was a mind bending joy.  But, a continuing source of endless entertainment was the Rob Ford Show, also known as the nightly news.  Rob Ford is the mayor of Toronto; a behemoth of a man with a ruddy red face and a formidable drinking problem.  In November he famously admitted to smoking crack, but excused it by announcing he'd been in a drunken stupor at the time. 

    
     His antics made the American late night comedy shows and the UK news. Canadians cringed, one eye open to see what he would do next, hopefully spontaneously combust.  He cursed, made disgusting sexual comments,

Mayor Ford is a wacky guy

knocked over a councilwoman in the Toronto City Hall chambers, hung out with crack dealers, and with each new transgression it became apparent his boisterous personality knew no bounds.  Most of his mayoral powers were stripped from him, but he clung to his office.  A large number of his supporters remain loyal.

     Rob Ford grew up near and still lives close to my father's house.  One day I took my dad to the doctor.  On the way home, five minutes from our doorstep, I noticed news vans parked on the side of the street.  A corpulent man gestured wildly on a snow-covered front yard flanked by thuggish security guards.  It was Rob Ford.  I wanted to stop.  I wanted to take a picture, shoot a video, something... anything.  I have no idea why I was so excited to see a fool in person.  'Oh my god', I cried out.  My nearly blind, nearly deaf father looked out the opposite window, unseeing, bewildered by my outburst.  "Why do you have to drive so fast?" was his only comment as we crawled past the mayor at thirty-miles an hour. 

Downed power lines

Frozen Yogi

     
     







     The Rob Ford Show went on hiatus as he tried to behave himself.  He was replaced by the Ice Storm, precursor to the Polar Vortex.   Never been in an ice storm before.  It's a beautiful terrible thing, breathtaking to look at, as long as you don't have to go anywhere.  Trees are encased in thick ice, and their limbs, unable to stand the strain of added weight, snap off, often into hydro electric lines, taking out the power.  The week before Christmas 300,000 residences were without power... in minus 17 degree temperatures.  Merry Christmas. 

     My sister arrived to take over helping my father.  She and I hiked on icy snow through a landscape of crystal glazed trees reflecting colours like prisms in brilliant sunshine.  We froze our rears off.   

Frozen still-life

 

Everything frozen

One day we went out in the car and found the fuel gauge on zero.  We pulled up to a gas station, and my sister went inside to pay.  I went to pump gas.  The gas tank cover was frozen solid.  That morning we'd chipped away the ice sealing the car doors closed, and marbling the front and rear windows, but the rest of the vehicle remained a four-wheeled ice cube.  Some guys at an adjacent pump came over with tools to chip open the gas flap for us.

Frozen sister

For a moment we were flattered by their gallantry, until we recognized that in winter wear we were merely Michelin Tire people, not women.  It was strictly a mercy thawing.

     I left for England the day after Christmas.  Arriving at the tail end of a storm the plane was buffeted wildly on landing.  Husband, already in the UK, had informed me there would be no rain, but intentionally, mercifully, neglected to tell me there would be gale force winds.  My friend Jane met me; surprisingly prompt since her car had been stolen that night and she only just discovered this heading out the door to Heathrow.   It was so good to see her and Lord Jel. 

Flooding in Somerset

Rose absurdly blooming

     Husband was waiting in the country with the Peahen, tending to the Pink Cottage.  Two days later I was there too, gazing out over the sheep in the field next door and admiring a rose bud blooming absurdly in December.  Another two days and I was battening hatches again, watching the sheep gallop up the hill as the water levels rose, listening to the BBC report that sections of Cornish coastline were crumbling from wild winds, and following news about flooding on the Somerset Levels.  

     Penny the Peahen sleeps in the upper reaches of a conifer in the garden.  The wind was whipping that fir tree around like a bucking bronco.  We prayed she wouldn't be flung across the property like an Andy Murray serve.  But Penny is a resilient old bird, and every night, through wind and rain, she remained, and remains, successfully secure in her treetop boudoir. 
    

Hello Peahen

 
     The Pink Cottage is on a hill, a hill now surrounded by lakes dotted with sheep one step away from demanding life preservers.  Inclement weather aside, it's wonderful to be back.