U.K. Houses: A (Not So) Peedie Rant

A new boiler has been installed and I now have heat. Heat, glorious heat. And hot water. Imagine! This is living.

But I have a few bones to pick – certainly not with my cousins who have moved mountains to turn this house into a show home in time for me to move in, or even this house specifically, but with British houses in general. Brits just seem to make some things more complicated.

Let’s start with the laundry, shall we? I now have a wonderful, brand new, working beautifully, installed washing machine. Yay! Still don’t understand why I can’t just choose the length of time that I want, or the water temperature that I want, which bugs the hell out of me – I wonder if Brits even know what it’s like to have a washer that’s not fully programmed with a dozen different cycle/time/temp presets – but on the whole, I am happy, happy about my new washer. Of course, I’m not crazy about having baskets of clothing & linens sitting around the kitchen on laundry day (’cause that’s where they keep the washers here), and this time my dryer is out in the garage. Tucked in a back corner, looking 40+ years old, and just generally kinda creepy. The last two houses also had their laundry quirks; it just seems to come with the territory. The assumption here is that I will hang most of my laundry outside, which is fine, except for two things: (1) towels never dry as soft on the line as they do in a dryer; and (2) it’s Scotland so it rains six days out of seven. Viv told me there’s indoor racks somewhere in this house; I just haven’t found them yet, so am reduced to using the line and running outside as soon as I notice it’s raining (usually 10 minutes too late to save my knickers).

Heating. I have lived in three houses here: the first had slow-acting in-floor heating, the second had inadequate forced-air heating, and now I’ve got a boiler with radiators. So far, this is the coziest, yet most complex. As well as a central programmable thermostat (just like at home), each radiator has its own adjustable knob. I’m not sure how these two components work together – will have to get Viv to explain it to me. But the real treat? The day after the new boiler was installed, at 5:45 a.m. someone started playing ping pong in my front hall. I woke to the sounds of a ping pong ball being hit back and forth. Nooo, of course it wasn’t, that’s silly – it seems that radiators make all sorts of interesting noises as the pipes fill up; each morning is now a different ‘alarm clock’. As well as table tennis, I’ve been woken by what sounded like a bathtub overflowing onto a tile floor (I don’t have a bathtub), a clicking noise like a cicada (I thought it was my tinnitus at first), and this morning? the sound of a puppy with its head caught in the banister. Who needs a classic iphone ringtone at 6am when you have radiators? Oh, and it seems I have to learn how to bleed the radiators too. Uh huh. (But I’m warm. Did I mention that I’m warm?)

Why do Brits hate screens? Or are they afraid of them? Maybe no one has shown them how they work? This house, like my others (in fact, like any UK house I’ve been in) doesn’t have screens. What this house has huge picture windows that my uncle built so they could see Tinto Hill from any room; it has a stunning new front door, gunmetal blue with a frosted window; and it has these massive bi-fold glass doors onto the back garden (think French doors that open reeaal wide). But not a screen to be seen. Why? It’s not because they don’t have insects (believe me, Scotland has insects). Sunday morning was so nice I opened the living room windows. Next thing I knew, a wasp the size of a parakeet was swooping around my head. I miss screens.

Showers. Okay, these are the bane of my existence. I never have problems at home; whether at a friend’s house or in a hotel anywhere in North America, I can always work the shower. Not here. And I know it’s not just me; twenty years ago two friends & I needed a tutorial from the Pimlico hotel owner on showering, and my friends from Minnesota & Oxford concur – shower controls are all bonkers. Well, my cousin has installed a lovely new bathroom here: sleek new fixtures, grey tiled floor, and a lovely big walk-in shower stall with both a handheld wand and a rain-head shower – the room looks lovely. Now, think about this: when you get into the shower at home, you stand off to one side, turn the shower on, and wait maybe 10 seconds for the water to heat up before stepping into the stream. But we’re in new territory here; once the boiler was installed, it was time for my first shower in several days (don’t ask, a girl does what a girl has to do), so off I went. Okay. The shower controls are on the far wall, the water takes a good 30+ seconds or so to warm up, there are the two shower heads, and I have never used the controls. So I did the obvious: I took an umbrella into the shower with me for my maiden voyage as it were. We avoided scalds, ice-flows, and I figured out how to turn on only one shower head at a time. Ta-da!