Feed the Birds

I've been here in Cheltenham for two weeks. When I first move to a place where an accent is different than what I am used to, I mentally repeat what people say, in their accent. Not necessarily conversations that I'm engaged in, but random conversations that I overhear. I do this until the accent doesn't seem strange anymore. Like someone suffering from PTSD mentally repeating an incident until the strange seems ordinary. But less traumatic.

I've been here for two weeks and I am repeating internal conversations less and less. And I don't worry about my accent anymore. And I've started feeling confident about taking short cuts, like cutting through the train station on my way to one section of town, saving a good two block walk. I'm not pulling out my well wrinkled town map as much either. I'm starting to feel at home.

It hasn't really taken too much time to feel like I fit in but there have been a few moments that I've felt something inside that isn't necessarily homesickness, but that's the closest word that would apply. It's not for a specific place or person (sorry my dear readers. I acknowledged a long time ago there is a part of my heart that is like the dark, cold side of the moon, where I don't miss people like normal people do.) It's a homesickness for routine, and for things. I miss going to the store and seeing familiar labels. The first week was easy because I was a visitor and on vacation, but now I am settled but don't yet belong.

But I also feel a great sense of relief. The transition to a different city and a different country has been much easier than I had any right to hope for. And has been easier than some of the more recent moves that should have been better. And it's all such a mystery how this year and the next few will play out.

For the photo part of today's introspection I give you The Old Lady and the Pigeons.

Directly off of High Street, one of the busier shopping streets, I spotted this elderly woman and her bicycle, tied down with her grocery shopping. She had some bread that she was tossing out to the birds and as she walked down the ally, the birds followed. Here are two of the photos of their journey. On the right you can barely make out the woman for all the flying pigeons.




















I was on my way to the public library (nothing at all like those in the States!) and thought it would be stalkerish to follow her down the ally, so I continued on the next main street curving off of High Street. A block further, I found another ally and spotted a beautiful church in the a courtyard behind the buildings. I walked down the path and low-and-behold, I found the woman there, bike leaning against the church wall, pigeons flocking all around her. One even sitting on her shoulder. (If you click on the picture to enlarge it, you'll see her at the bottom right.) I tried to be discreet, as if I were taking pictures of the church, but mostly I was just fascinated, and a little sad for, this little old woman. I have a feeling that's going to be me in about sixty years.

As every photo entry seems to have an animal of some sort (and I don't really qualify pigeons as 'animals') I thought I would include this little gem of this dog looking out the window at me. I just think they're funny!