We are the new village people

We're still figuring out where everything goes, but it's feeling like a house, rather than a storage container with a kitchen. We're living in a village in Oxfordshire that is renowned for, well, a few things that will have to wait for future posts (and, therefore, home broadband). But when I say "village in Oxfordshire", think of an English country village and you've pretty well got it nailed. How you know it's our place. That's one of the things that's struck both Flame-Haired Angel and me: every house has a name. You could easily address a letter to our house name, then put the postcode, and it would get to us. The street address is incidental. And, yes, it's really the old village dairy. Our funny, little narrow entranceway. For those of you familiar with our colossal opium bed -- the only thing that didn't go in and out through the window in Paris -- it came in through the back. One of the few rooms that wasn't still piled with boxes when I took these. The back garden. The wind sighs "quaint" as it blows through the blossoms. The rather uninspiringly functional front view. You'd never guess this place has been around for a few hundred years. The neighbors across the street. That one looks a little more the part. It's an oak-framed house from the 18th century. FHA loves the windows. The person who built this, originally, had to have been pretty well-off to install all that hand-blown glass. Putting our little marble sign to shame, this is the other across-the-street neighbour: the local pub. It's one of those fantastic old pubs that doesn't have poker machines or a big screen TV. It's got a great little bar the locals loiter in up the front, a dining room out the back, and tables in the garden. I promise, it's a complete coincidence that we've moved in directly across the street from a Good Pub Guide favourite. The bustling traffic looking down the street toward the Thames river, which is just beyond the tree line. And the frenetic intersection up the street the other way. The local Tardis. The post office on the corner (also the local shop and gossip font), run by two golden retrievers and a spaniel. I should mention that the sky in these photos is deceptive. Whilst I haven't pasted it in using Photoshop, the blue has been a rarity in our scant 10 days. Indeed, we've seen it twice. No wonder the English turned Australia into a penal colony. What with all that sun, they must have considered it a fiery hell. ..