Honeymoon Dungeon

This week the Atlantic got bigger. 5 days bigger to be exact, because that's how long it now takes to cross it - and that's if you go in a freight carrier, it's 7 days if you go by cruise (although granted much more enjoyable).

I didn't even know Iceland had a volcano until Friday and now  it's upping my feelings of displacement and I'm feeling the distance acutely. When England is a 7 hour flight away I can kid myself it's easily accessible - should disaster strike I could be home within a day - unless the disaster is a volcano apparently...

Offsetting this Atlantic expansion are the English accents in my dungeon basement.

No, I didn't go out and kidnap English people to quell my homesickness. As of yesterday, Jeremy and I are hosts to a stranded British couple (known vaguely to me and not at all to Jeremy) who are currently wishing they'd chosen Bogner-Regis rather than Boston for their honeymoon (I don't actually know if Bogner Regis is a nasty place, from its name I just assume it is a giant toilet-by-the-sea).

So while they phone Virgin Atlantic every 5 minutes and debate the merits of building a raft  to sail back home, I am taking solace from once more being around people who put milk in their tea and mind their Ps and Qs. People who understand what I mean by 'mind their Ps and Qs' - not because it's a phrase used all that often in England but because they most likely grew up reading Famous Five. People who know what Famous Five is, and who need it explaining that broil means grill and grill means BBQ and BBQ means something we don't really have in England but it's really yummy.

Around these people I make sense (or at least more sense than I make around Americans), and I am even able act as translator, making me feel slightly more adept at this country at the same time. So while the volcano has widened the Atlantic to unacceptable proportions, it has also brought with it a welcome sound of home. I'll forgive it for now - provided it stops with the ash spewing by August, because if it gets in the way of me and my our wedding I'll probably do a little erupting myself.