Back to England

I'm in a rickety cottage in the English countryside, marveling at how small the rooms are and how they have such different knick-knacks from those you'd find in an American house. The bedrooms contain no people (people seem to be gathered in the common areas of the house), but I sneak through them quietly, opening cabinets and peering at souvenirs on shelves. I note that everyone has a tiny black and white television in his bedroom (I seem to be in the house inhabited by a group of males), and one guy even has a collection of these weird small discs that play music in these tiny plastic music players. I kind of remember something like this back in the states several years ago, but it never really caught on.

A truck rumbles by on the dusty road just outside the window and I think to myself, I wonder if I lived here, if the thin walls would drive me crazy.

Back in the living room, Phil is there with a group of guys I don't know — presumably the people who live in the house. They don't seem British, but perhaps like American ex-pats. I say something to one of them and he insults me and laughs. I defend myself weakly.

Then we're in Phil's crappy car driving on a grassy hillside. The boys are talking about a car sale coming up, and how they're going to check it out. It finally sinks in that I am living in a whole new country now, and not just a whole new country, but a whole new universe.