Clueless in the UK

It occurs to me, as I type, that I don’t actually have the signed lease back in my hot little hands. It is possible that Mr. D’Arcy is scanning the web for blogs about living in the UK, and when he finds my previous entry, will he (1) smile, (2) cancel the rental agreement, or (3) monitor my blog for the foreseeable future to find out about all the mishaps that occur in his property?

Once the lease is signed I think I am going to go into to “Traveler’s Remorse” mode in a serious way. Ironically, it’s because of the awesome party we had at our house this Friday. We had one from noon until 5pm for Madeline and Jason’s classes at their school, and then we had an evening one for everyone else. (If you didn’t get the evite, don’t take it personally …). Here are some pictures that capture the daytime party:

Swimming fun for everyone …

The highlight was the water balloon fight ….

And the humongous slide …

Anyway, I had a great time. It meant a lot to me that everyone came. In our seven years in this house, a house we bought in part because we thought it was a great party house, we have not thrown a serious party like this ever. We’ve had a few families over but nothing big like this. And what a great house it is for that! I never loved our house this much, now that we’re leaving. Typical.

I don’t have any pictures of the evening.

Apparently I had a lot to drink but I really thought it was only 2 or 3 glasses of red and 3 glasses of champagne. But when Uncle Steve left the party with his son I apparently said goodbye to them both, but later I had no recollection of the event. And the next day Steve said, “I don’t think you knew who I was when we said goodbye!” which is amusing if not astonishing. I did have a lot on my mind. Just getting around to everyone was so difficult - it reminded me of our wedding.

Anyway, to all who came, it meant a lot to me that you took the time to show up. At the very least, the fact that you all showed up makes the chances of our coming back from London in the middle of March with the excuse: “Wow - it sure rains a lot!” much less likely. Too humiliating. Had just a handful of people showed up I could have lived with the ridicule.

As far as I know nobody was hurt during the whip demonstration. And I’d like to apologize to the 5 or 6 kids who yelled “Me! Me! Me!” when I asked if anybody wanted to have a try. It pained me to turn them down, but I was sober enough not to want to have to explain to hysterical parents that I wasn’t expecting them to take their eye out, that the worst I had experienced so far was a scar on my inner thigh, a bruise across my face, and a burn/bruise along my right arm. As far as the target practice was concerned, my excuse for not hitting the target was that I could not see my whip anymore it was so dark, and so I didn’t know how to adjust after each attempt. As for the re-enactment of the Raiders of the Lost Ark sequence, I can only say that I am deeply embarrassed that I even went there.

Speaking of embarrassment, if there is one thing I hope to accomplish with this move, it’s finally getting the European cheek kissing thing down. It took months of observation before I figured out that it’s right cheek and then left cheek. Not knowing that has caused me all sorts of trouble in my life, including kissing one of my friends’ mother on the lips. Ugh. Last night I started out OK but then started to lose it towards the end. I apologize for being so inept. The other problem is what to do with my hands. I can’t tell you how many times I have accidentally copped a feel while performing this act. Do they have classes for this kind of stuff, or do most people just pick it up after the second or third try?

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 18th, 2006 at 6:29 pm and is filed under Clueless in the UK. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.