Kennet Island Hydrant

We may have found a place to live. We have seen the house twice and we like it. Now, the relocation company is talking politely to the agents and the agents are talking politely to the owners and we’re talking politely to both the relo company and the agents and there are just many, many parties and we are all talking politely to one-another.

The people with the house are in a situation similar to ours. They are relocating to Singapore for work. They are leaving at the end of this month. Which means they will be arriving to a new place at the beginning of next month. Like us. Most importantly, they have a dog. A hound-like dog. A dog similar to ours. So it’s possible they understand a dog situation. It’s reasonable to assume they appreciate a dog scenario within a living arrangement.

This all reminds me of a joke:

How many real-estate agents does it take for one American couple with two dogs to find a place to rent in England?

About twenty.

That’s it. That’s the entire joke.

For the last couple of weeks, we’ve been living in a hotel off of the A33, pictured above.  It connects the highway M4 to downtown Reading. We’ve met people like Kata and Dragos and Peter, who have become our friends. We’ve become regulars at their bar in the evening for dinner or drinks or coffee, and at their tables in the morning for breakfast.

When you look south on the A33 from the hotel, you can see a great windmill near Madejski Stadium. It spins and spins in the various painted skies: The cirrus and the stratus and the cirrostratus, the cumulus afternoons.  The pink and the orange 9 pm sunset. The clear blue morning. The windmill seems small in the distance. It seems like something you can easily take. But as you get close to it, you understand its size and its power.

You understand it is not what you thought.

You understand you’ll need a different strategy.

Tonight it is storming. It is the first big storm we’ve seen here. The bright lightning flashes from behind the heavy hotel curtains. The thunder is as if from angry giants. If Honey were here, she’d be shaking and panting. If Rothko were here, he’d be putting his face right up against mine. And those might not be unreasonable strategies.



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