I carry no phone An aspiring Luddite In a wired world.	Jeff Berry is an early adopter of the Internet and the Web, a late adopter of Twitter, and declines to adopt Facebook. With the death of Google+, he's experimenting with federated platforms . He admins a medievalist Mastodon instance, and can found on the PlusPora diaspora pod. He hates cell-phones.

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Thus Passeth a Week Moving is always a bit of a trial. Moving across long distances doubly so. Moving across an ocean trebly so. (So saith the voice of experience. After all, I've moved three times now: once up the road, once across the country and once across the Atlantic. After that first westward blip, I appear to be trending East.) The first week here in Blighty has been, as one might expect, rather more packed with mundane house-keeping chores than with adventures and riotous living. On this, my fourth full day, I've yet to visit any of the local pubs, but I have been to six different grocery stores, one each day, plus the butcher in the market in York itself. There was Tesco the day I arrived, where I impulse bought a television set; a different Tesco the next day, where I bought some plates and silverware, and the butcher where I bought a lovely ham shank which features prominently in this week's recipe over on the main Aspiring Luddite site; next day, the tiny little Tesco express in the village for mustard and the paper, and a Sainsbury's, mostly because I needed a screwdriver and tape, and didn't find them in the village; then on Sunday, the nearby farm shop, to check out the local goods, where I managed to resist the Yorkshire ice-cream, but not the pork belly; and lastly today, a Cooperative Food because it was near the charity shop - and I was out of cider. May I say at this juncture, that I love the charity shops in the UK? Thank you, I shall - I love the charity shops in the UK. This one, St. Leonard's Hospice, was packed! It is not, I am reliably informed, always so packed, but today was turnover day so the bargain hunters were out in force. That does not mean that there was violence in the aisles as people fought over choice bits like seagulls after takeaway at the beach (a problem at local beaches, says BBC Radio Yorkshire - the gulls not the people). Far from it! In fact, one woman noticed I had a hardback copy of Ian Rankin's Standing in Another Man's Grave (a steal at 2£) in my basket and mentioned there was another copy, identical in every respect - but signed - for the same price. And then she went and fetched it, since she "knew right where it was." I also scored large softcovers of all three "Girl With ..." books, an alarm clock, a steamer (multi-level, no less), and a quite nice corkscrew and wine-stopper set. That last one is important since I bought a bottle of wine at the first Tesco, and then realized a bit later that I had no corkscrew. I do find myself in a slightly odd position with respect to some of these purchases. The bulk of our stuff is coming by slow boat from New York, and should make landfall in England around October 3. As a result, I don't want to spend a lot of money on things like pots and pans, since mine will be here in a month or so. On the other hand, I must eat! Which means I must cook! Electronics are a bit less worrisome, since we aren't bringing any of those, aside from a few computery bits, on account of the voltage difference between the US and the UK. So buying new clocks, kitchen appliances and so forth makes more sense (to us, at least) than buying scads of adapters and step-down transformers. On the other hand, I don't want to just run out to Ikea and buy loads of cheap bits and bobs, not only because it's more fun to see what I can find in charity shops, but also because I'm not qualified to make some of those decisions without my dear wife. And, of course, Amazon delivers. Which brings us to why I need a screwdriver now, instead of next month. The house is quite nice, and I'm starting to get settled in, but it is, of course, a rental which means two things (well, significantly more than two, but two for now): first, it means that other people have lived here who did things differently than I would; and, second, I'm not completely sure how many liberties I can take making it conform to my idiosyncratic desires. The intersection of those is the mailbox. Upon arrival, I was given twenty keys. Now, to be fair, some of those were duplicates, but even so, that's quite a lot of keys. Of those twenty, three would go into the lock on the mailbox, but none would open it. This is distressing, since mail is important. So after I thoroughly convinced myself that I really couldn't open the mailbox, I called the letting agent. It appears that they had two copies of a key which I did not have a copy of, and which looked like it might be a mailbox key. So I trotted on into York, picked up the key, ran a few errands (like the butcher), and returned home. The new key fit into the mailbox, but, yes, you've guessed it, failed to open it. Now, if it was my house, I'd have all the keys for one thing, and if none of them worked, I'd just send for the locksmith and have the lock changed. But I'm probably not supposed to do that. If I'm not authorized, I won't get reimbursed, and I should be able to get my mail, so it really is the landlord's (or letting agent's) lookout anyway, not mine. Even if I did change the lock, I would need to get a copy of the new mail key to the letting agent, so the next tenants don't find themselves in exactly the same situation. So, instead, I needed tape, so I could write a nice note to the Royal Mail, asking them to put the mail through the door slot rather than into the mailbox, which is mounted on the wall right by the door. I also needed a screwdriver, both to finish putting the tv together, but more critically, to take the screws out which someone, presumably the owner, had run into the mailslot to keep it from opening, so that the Royal Mail could actually go through the door slot. I am pleased to report that my plan worked and today I received, on the floor in front of my door, one piece of junk mail, one invitation from the National Trust, and something for the previous tenant. There are a few other quirks in the house, but then what house is without its quirks? And some of the features are quite lovely, although they will require a little recalibration. For example, the conservatory is great - the chairs are included, there's a little table, and it's pleasant to sit in there with a cup of tea and read. However, it's basically unheated, so it can be quite nippy in the mornings - it got down to about 3C the other night. The oven is smaller than I'm used to, but we can get an outdoor grill, which we haven't been able to do for nearly twenty years, which may take up some of the slack. The main thing is that we're going to need to wear more clothes more of the time, lest we shock the neighbors. Let me explain. The conservatory, kitchen and lounge are all on the ground floor, while the bedrooms and offices are on the first (American "second") floor. Our NYC apartment is on the second floor (UK "first") in its entirety, and faced the back of the building. Which means practically no one could see in. Furthermore, we didn't have central air, and we were low enough in a steam-heated building that during the winter the place was also quite warm, so we've gotten in the habit of wearing very little while alone in the apartment - a habit many New Yorkers share at least during the summer months. You see the concern. In the fall and winter, it shouldn't be a problem. In the summer, well, we'll see ... And now for a glass of wine, finally. Luddite'sLog, 9 September 2013 © 2013 Jeff Berry

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