I'm getting jaded...

Posting these letters to 'backfill' the last two years, and having Iudith here for a visit, has reminded me of how much I've adjusted to living in the UK.

I rarely recalculate costs into Canadian dollars in my head anymore (multiplying by 2.43 is tedious anyway).

I've given up being indignant about crummy customer service, but simply enjoy good service on the rare occasion it happens.

I don't notice Victorian architecture as much, except to think, 'Oh, Victorian, must be a post-industrial-revolution construction'.

(When Iudith and I visited Oxford last month, I could hardly drag her down the street for her wanting photos of this corner or that building, and those were just the Victorian ones, never mind the really interesting medieval and Tudor ones.)

I'm having increasing trouble noticing accents: English accents are beginning to sound normal...but so do North American ones, so it can take me a few seconds to process the clues of origins from a person's speech.

I moan about the cold same as all my co-workers (Canadians' facility to talk about weather came from our English ancestry).

BUT: I still miss snow. I still miss dramatic shifts of seasons, with bold autumn colours and brilliant Christmas-card first-snow scenes.

The village where I now live has a lot of early 20th c. construction, which I'm guessing is just the latest in a long series of settlements on the north side of the Thames from Reading. Most of the interesting bits of Reading are already built over - there's a bit of ruined abbey to see, but most of the centre of town has been paved over, and renamed after the former sites (Greyfriar's Walk, Abbey Lane, Gunsmith Lane, etc.)

The first bridge between Caversham and Reading was built around 1250 - so evidently someone needed to cross between the two communities.

The St. Anne's chapel built on the bridge was a pilgrimage point to visit the relic: the spear point that pierced Christ's side was thoughtfully brought to the chapel by a one-winged angel, according to contemporary accounts. Maybe, since he wasn't going all the way to London, he only needed one wing to get as far as Reading...

St. Peter's parish, Caversham, the CofE church where I attended the choral service on Sunday, has a small scroll framed on its wall, indicating that it was had 'right of presentation' dating back to 1162. It came under the control? direction? of Christ Church Oxford in 15<mumble> after the dissolution of the monasteries, and records before 1642 are uncertain. But it does list the priests(? must check exact term) back to the 12th century, and the rectors from 1920s onward.

It's very cool that enough people have lived in Caversham since Norman times to need a local church beside the river, across the Thames from Reading Abbey. But I don't usually stop to think about it very often anymore; I think more about commuting times, distance to nearest shopping, and council taxes, the boring business of living.