The first few weeks in a new country have passed rapidly in part because we are staying in temporary digs and still living out of suitcases.
This is not much fun, even though the apartment is more posh than we deserve, and our collective family anxiety level was slowly rising even before Byron ended up in hospital with an asthma attack the morning before he flew back to the states for a conference.
We are now so disheveled that we have reverted to the comforting strategy of singing Chorus songs while meandering about Stourbridge Common.
Though we have no songbook at hand and have forgotten many verses – so we go from a fragment of Union Maid to a snippet of Barrett’s Privateers to a mixed up rendition of Rote Zora. The song I wish we knew all the way through is Ramblin’ Rover but we only retain this verse:
Well there’s many who feign enjoyment
At merciless employment
Their ambition is this deployment
From the minute they left the school
And they save and scrape and ponder
While the rest go out and squander
Roam the world and rove and wander
And we’re happier as a rule….
Back in the temporary apartment we have been entranced by copious lashings of television time. It is in fact amazing to sit here and watch the BBC for hours on end, in part because the quality is much lower than I had imagined growing up on imports.
The regular programming consists almost entirely of tedious reality shows, many of which are based around the theme of real estate. People sell houses. Buy houses. Decorate houses. Renovate houses.
I watch even though I’m not particularly interested, mainly because I haven’t had a television in so long it has taken on the allure of a secret vice.
Beyond the home shows this country is mad for relocation stories – an hour doesn’t pass without some dramatic short documentary about people going off to start a new life somewhere. Though they never seem to have capital, savings, or jobs, which seems rather stupid to me.
Maybe I’m just too keen on stability. Despite my cultural and aesthetic preference for risk and adventure, I always have an infrastructure… or at least a plan.
It is possible that my puzzlement over these shows may have more to do with the fact that I would never want to be a hotelier, takeaway shop owner, or tour guide for rich tourists.