Quaint

quaint: adj. Charmingly odd, especially in an old-fashioned way

The heat and an evening on facebook with a few American friends got me thinking about the quaintness of Britain. It all started with Patrick's observation that windows here do not have screens and there is no area designed for the insertion of one. None, nada, zilch. They pretty much do not exist in any of our rental houses or any house we have visited during the last two years. However comma we have had a veritable heat wave and it's pretty much a necessity to open a few if not all of the windows in the house and definitely overnight. The new-fangled invention called an air conditioner exists, but is not often (read: ever) used nor does it exist in any house I have ever visited. Patrick also noted that it would cost "tens of dollars" to install screens which are pretty much necessary keep out the numerous bugs and absolutely ginormous spiders. I suggested we search for a window with a screen during a scavenger hunt and Carolyn decided that if someone found one, they'd be the winner, no contest. No screens in windows - is this a desire to remain "quaint"?

The discussion then turned to water taps. In our house, like many, we have a separate hot and cold tap in our bathroom sinks - three sinks and the bath itself in our house. The hot tap only gushes steaming hot water; the cold tap only gushes ice crystals (in the winter) and ne'er the two shall meet. The fixtures in our house are beautiful and have all been recently updated (last 10 years) in comparison to the age of the house (1920's). The technology is available because our kitchen tap is a mixed tap just like we all have at home. As Patrick stated: Why run a hot water and a cold water line and not pay that extra $2 to get the tap with the mixer in it? We all enjoy the daily morning face scald, like a sauna I suppose. And all in the name of "quaint".

I stated that in the UK's defense, this is the first summer (of my third) that I have even broken into a sweat for more than an afternoon and the first time I've worn shorts for four consecutive days, but my house is a cave since it's an older house. Carolyn added that in her mid 1700's house, the stone walls really do keep the place pretty cool. I concur. Our thick walls are invaluable but it's still hot on the fourth floor which has one window that barely opens at the top or entirely swings open on its side for Finn, any child or an adult for that matter to plummet to Earth 60 feet below because, you guessed it, there is no screen to deter said child from the inevitable descent. "Quaint".

A few more exemplars of the quaintness we all know and well, don't love: two-foot wide refrigerators with no freezer; a dorm-sized separate freezer under the counter; the lack of forethought to embrace true Mexican cuisine; the lack of ice, ice machines or space to make ice; no outlets except for a shaver in the bathroom - like I will electrocute myself plugging in the hair dryer while simultaneously trying to turn on both taps to get a hot-cold (in America, we call it "warm") water mix... Yeah, quaint.

I do love my experiences here. I mostly enjoy the quaintness that surrounds me because let's face it, this is what we should see in the Oxford Dictionary:

quaint: adj. Charmingly odd, especially in an old-fashioned way. syn. Great Britain