The weather has turned from spring to early summer here. The temperatures are climbing, and in the coming week over 30C will be common. Humidity is all going up too. The result of this shift is “pop-up storms”. There generally occur in the afternoon, and cause short but heavy rainstorms. An inch in half an hour is not uncommon. They are very localised – we were at the build site one day and it was bucketing. A mile down the road, it remained dry and sunny the whole time. The storms also cause thunder and lightning, hail and interesting cloud formations
We had our very first celebration of progress this week – on Sunday 8th our friends Alison and David came for drinks on the back deck. A degree of care was required as there are no railings yet, and it is a 12 foot plunge down to the concrete patio below. And it was a bring your own camp chair event, we certainly didn’t have any furniture in residence. We drank a bottle of sparkling Wolf Mountain rose and carefully did not mention David’s prospective new job for fear of jinxing it. Good news, though – he was officially offered the role on Monday. We followed up with a visit to Three Sisters for their wine festival – there were several other wineries present, offering tastings of their wines and ciders.
On Wednesday, we went to Clarkesville, about 25 minutes drive east of here to try out a new (to us) online farmer’s market run by Northeast Georgia Locally Grown. We have been using the Cumming Harvest for some time, but it is a bit further away, and they seem very short of stock at this time of the year. Both these local online markets operate in a similar manner to the equivalent Food Assembly in London – place an order online against the available offerings advertised by local producers, and collect and pay at a central delivery point at a weekly meeting. It is the only way to get out from under the massive supermarket chains and buy unmessed-about food. The Clarkesville pickup point was just next to a charming old Episcopalian church dating back to the early 1800s. It looks like it has been beautifully restored and maintained in a fairly austere style (huge clear glass windows to light the interior and a small belltower above the portico with a single bell). The food on offer at the market was pretty good, too – super strawberries ended up with Lisa-cooked eclairs.
On the Build site
With Builder Bill now back in full swing, things are moving ahead, but somehow it seems rather staccato progress. Chris the tiler was expected to return from Poland this week, which he did, but I suppose he had a backlog to clear from before his enforced trip, so he wasn’t here this week. Milan and his crew were building the railings round the upper deck (to make any further drinks parties less perilous). Tom, WC and Taylor were busy installing architrave. And Alfonso and Juan were back to high-speed bricklaying now that they have more than adequate stocks of material to work with.
I continue to be a bit uncomfortable with Bill’s claims that almost everything remaining will “come at the very end”. Lisa and I have drawn up our lists of what we believe is outstanding and ask Bill to sanity check these, in the hope that he will get the subiminal messages about priorities.
Back at the rental house, our stock of building bits grows and grows. We have to do a regular inventory to ensure nothing is lost in the pile. The UPS and Fedex delivery men greet us with a wry smile as they struggle carrying yet another large carton with a cheery “keeps me in a job”.
Robin’s Thoughts on America
Continuing my intermittent Thoughts, Likes and Dislikes section, here’s my personally opinionated thoughts for this week on life in USA.
Little Differences make a big impact There are a lot of little differences between life in USA and in olde England. The thing is, they are all little, and so over time they seep into your subconscious and they are no longer mentally “visible”. So, before they all cease to be apparent through familiarity, here are a few things which have popped to mind recently.
1) Light switches work in the opposite direction. In England it seems totally logical to push the switch down to turn on the lights. In USA, you light up the room by pushing the switch up.
2) American TV is extremely prudish about bare flesh – to a point. People in extrodinarily skimpy swimwear is perfectly OK, in adverts or dramas. But there are very tight limits. You would be led to believe that American females all sleep in their bras, that there is no such thing as body hair (unless you are a redneck in Duck Dynasty) and even corpses have to be fully covered up. In a drama series, an oil painting of the lead actress as an artist’s model (which was a fundamental part of the plot) was carefully pixelated even though the painting was very small and the far side of a large room.
3) The supernatural is a big draw for books, films and TV. If you believe everything you saw on the box, you would be terrified to go out lest a vampire, malevolent child with bizarre mental powers or a horde of the undead was lurking around the next corner. But there are good angels out there protecting you, too, so maybe it is safe after all.
4) The American idea of a garden is normally a lawn which covers the entire surface area of the garden. Flowers, trees, a veg patch or other plants are seen as an unecessary distraction from a wide open space. The effort of maintaining a rolling verdant sward means that the most popular garden implement is a ride-on grass mower. Quite why there is such importance placed on a wide open space around the house is something of a mystery to me – perhaps it is to get the maximum possible warning of the arrival of zombies (see 3 above).
5) Do not be fooled into thinking that there is a special relationship between USA and UK. Great Britain is seen as a wannabe offshore state. There are two and a half centuries of accumulated superiority over the fact that the British redcoats were kicked out of North America following an unfortunate incident in Boston involving tea (and yet the Americans still can’t make a good cuppa). The only special relationship is with the British Royal family – they Americans cannot get enough of them, and make up for a lack of royal visits with long conversations about Downton Abbey.
6) The Americans measure most things differently. A gallon here is not the old imperial measure we used to love in UK, it is 20% smaller. And a ton in USA is what in my old mining days was called a short ton of 2,000 pounds – none of the fine traditions in England of a hundredweight weighing 112lb. Which leads to horrible complications when comparing petrol consumption in USA and UK – there USA mpg is automatically 20% poorer than the UK figure. Though, given that in UK fuel consumption is now measured in some bastardised miles and litres calculation, I suppose that things are confusing on both sides of the Atlantic.
7) It is not regarded as good manners to get out of your car if stopped by a policeman for speeding. Quite the contrary, you will probably be staring down the barrel of a gun if you do so. Mind you, it is perfectly legal to turn right even if the traffic lights are red against you (so long as you don’t create a genuine traffic accident).
8) Don’t forget sales tax when you go shopping. Depending upon where you are, the price you pay may be 7% or 10% more than the figure on the price tag. In Europe, we have sales taxes (=VAT) too – but at least you know what something will cost before you pick it up! To confuse things, some things are sold at the after tax price (like petrol = gas). If you buy on the internet, you may (or perhaps will not) have a sales tax added to the price. Lisa has become a master at handling this – most of the fittings for the house have been internet shopped in places where no taxes apply – so as well as getting prices massively discounted against local stores, there is no tax (and usually free shipping).
Vive la difference
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