and the train conductor says, take a break Driver 8.

being a consummate city slicker (more so than i'd actually even imagined), i find life sans vehicle comfortable, even preferable. after all, i can't parallel park and at the rate we're going, gas is soon to be waaaaaaaay out of my price range. in my world, going carless is a sensible move.

at the moment, however, i am in a vastly different world.

dom and i have spent the last couple of weeks shacked up in the family homestead out in merry olde england. and by 'at the family homestead,' i mean 'way the fuck out in the middle of nowhere.' the upshot of this isolation is that we have peace and quiet by the shedload, we see eighty gabillion stars every night, and the community is small and cheerful. the downside is that we are located, as i said, somewhere out in east jesus, and a good fifteen minute drive from anything that resembles civilization as we've come to know it (i.e., a grocery store/pharmacy/bank/butcher/library). which is not really a bad thing, as those fifteen minutes of distance are what give us the delicious sense of privacy out here. it only becomes a problem when you find yourself, as we have, without a car.

well, no. that's not strictly true. we HAVE a car. a fabulous little red sports car sitting in the drive, which has been dormant for two years, and having just passed its MOT is absolutely itching to get out on the road. we are not permitted by law, however, to drive it. this little problem comes to us courtesy of what i have come to term British Utility Issues. topics which fall under this heading include: the telephone company, the gas company, pipex broadband, midland water, our boiler, and the people behind our motionlessness: the car insurance people.

you see, we were supposed to receive our proof of insurance in the mail last week. until we have that slip of paper, we cannot get our road tax, and cannot get out in the car. as a result, we have essentially been sequestered in the house since tuesday (with time off for those afternoons when we're feeling exceptionally enterprising and willing to tramp several miles across fields to pick up provisions at the farm shop in the next town over). and lovely and quiet and fabulous as it is out here in our little house, it is, quite frankly, wearing a little thin. we have five weeks to plan this wedding, and being trapped out here is not getting it done. we retain varying degrees of patience, dom and i, but i'm pretty sure we're at the end of our collective tether. years of access to the fine public transit system of new york city has left us impatient for being told we can't get where we want to go without a cart, a stern set of hiking boots and an astrolabe.

if i were in the states, i would be inclined to blame the unfortunate delay of our insurance papers on the mail. however, i must say that the royal mail system has been nothing but kind to us since we arrived, and i am inclined to leave the blame elsewhere. at the moment i'm torn between blaming it on the insurance people, postage stamp counterfeiters, jan (brady), The Man, ourselves and kismet.

or possibly British Telecom.