England - Day Three

Stayed up late last night and wrote. Felt good. In fact, I read about a lot of writers that go off to hotels to work. I'd much prefer something like this out in the country.

I think it's safe to say that Ephraim's British roots are coming through. Either he's adjusting beautifully to the new time zone or he's horribly jet lagged. This is a child who has, as far as I can remember, never slept past 6-6:30am, most days he's up by 5-5:30am, and here it is nearing 7:30am and he's still asleep. Let's see if this keeps up. This just might be the shock to the system that our little guy needs…

So this morning we played out in the garden area in front of our cottage until Erik arrived with his soon-to-be sister-in-law Emma.

Amy was off on a test for her driver's licence. She has one from back in Canada, but because she drives standard here she needed to get a UK one. And then Erik and I ventured to the care hire to get our car.

Worst. Experience. Ever.

Seriously. First off, we've had this car booked for two months. And one of the main stipulations we insisted upon was that it, obviously, had a baby seat, and that it be installed for us. So we got there, and I confirmed that we needed the car seat. And then the guy told me that they had to go and buy one 'cause the one they were going to give us was broken. Annoying, but fine. Whatever. We wait. An hour goes by, and keep in mind poor Emily is back with Ephraim and I have no way to contact her, so she doesn't know what's going on. So I'm getting annoyed and I ask what's going on. The place they went to buy one from was sold out, and so they went to another. Erg. Seriously? And they kept on say, "Sorry, all we can do is apologize", and I wanted to say, "No. What you can do is plan properly, and give us a discount for this bullshit."

So finally, nearly two hours later, someone pulls up with a filthy, horrible car seat. And they refuse to install it because they installed one another time, the car was in an accident and the child got hurt. Great. So I chewed them out a bit, I was far more restrained than I should have been. Then we remembered that in Erik's car a few towns over there was the car seat he'd used to pick us up in (his sister Alex is coming in a few days, and they have a baby as well, but I'd forgotten that Erik picked up TWO seats). So we decided screw these people. When I went to pay their credit card reader only takes cards with chips in them. No swipes. Can't key the number in. Again. Annoying. Luckily Erik was there to save my butt.

So please, if you're ever in Dorchester, never, under any circumstances, rent from the Dorset Vehicle Rental. They are horrible, disorganized people. And they're idiots on top of it. Okay. Now I can let that one go.

JEREMY FIRST: Driving on the opposite side of the road/opposite side of the car.

This is a weird feeling at first. It's hardest to remember when go to turn, you have to really think about the lane you're turning into. The hardest thing to grasp is the roundabouts. There are some in the east coast, so it wasn't my first experience with them, but they do take some getting used to. The roads here are NARROW. It reminds me of when I first started driving and I slowed down for oncoming traffic out of fear - here you do it out of necessity. Wow. Crazy crazy stuff. And man do they ever drive fast. Considering how narrow the roads on, and how many turns there are in the road, it boggles the mind. Another interesting thing in the country roads are the two-way-one-lane roads. If another car is coming the other way, there are these parts where you can pull over and let them pass. Needless to say I'm feeling more confident after a day of driving, but if wasn't for Erik loaning us his GPS, I'd be driving around still, I know it.

So we spent the afternoon in Abbotsbury, which is where the wedding is going to be held. It's a very cute and quant little village. Thatch roofs and whatnot.

There is an animal farm there where we spent most of the afternoon. Ephraim loved it. Highlights for him were probably laughing at the goats and feeding the roosters.

After that a quick stop in for tea at Amy's mom's place, and then we took back some of the gifts they'll be handing out to guests - they need to have something done to them so we're helping out. I'm being vague in the off chance that someone coming to the wedding is reading this and I don't want to give away the surprise.

Also Amy passed her driving test, and as a present from her mother got a new car! Driving through these small towns it just makes you realize how old this country is, and how, even though our country is extremely young, how we don't keep the old around very much. Half of the villages I've been to where people currently live would be something that we'd have as a re-enactment village at home.

Back at the cottage our little guy had trouble getting to sleep, if you miss the magic sleep window then he gets a tad delirious, so we did what we've never done before and put him into the car and went for a drive. We're only a few miles away from the Cerne Abbas Giant, so we decided to go see it to kill two birds with one stone. No one knows it's origins, however it dates back to Roman times apparently, 2500 B.C., and rumor has it that women will lay on the giant erect penis in an effort to make them more fertile. So there you go ladies - I bet if you fornicate on it, you increase your odds all the more!