Even the birds are slower here in Oxford than they were in London. Their bread and meal-worms lie scattered on the path for much longer. There seems to be no avian voraciousness and crowding here. They are in less of a rush and so am I.
My reduced pace is partly down to confusion, like an old person I creep about inside my new home with uncertainty. I know that I do live here, but it seems odd. I have just mastered the problem of two bathrooms; instead of having two sets of towels and guest towels hanging about, I have only one set which I carry from the bath downstairs to the shower upstairs, when I remember to do it. I have also got the heating system 'balanced' as my boiler-man puts it, so that if I forget the towels I do not get hit with a blast of Arctic air when I get out of the shower. The bathroom remains cold, one outside wall running with condensation but I haven't any idea how to tackle that. This feeling of being a hermit crab whose borrowed the wrong sized shell goes on. Perhaps I should have stayed in a flat, on one level, but I wanted to upgrade and now I have to get used to it.
I now know something of what it must be like to live in a mansion or even a palace. This should come naturally to me as when I was three I was told that I had been adopted, from London. This made a big impact, particularly the London bit and for some reason I decided that when I was 'in London,' I had lived with the Queen. I never thought she was my mother, just that I had lived with her. It seemed obvious to me. My brother would make me furious by trying to disabuse me of this notion. Eventually it fell away somewhere, although I had the residue of it by thinking of myself as some kind of princess for years. My brother was also confused though, as for a long time he believed that all babies came by car, from London.
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