The sun finally started to shine today, and England looked like it should look in the summertime: beautiful and crisp and... well... old. Walking down the high street in Marlborough, a tiny little town about 20 miles from here, the sun was streaming through gaps between mismatched buildings that hold secondhand bookshops and posh boutiques, high-street chains and quaint tearooms. I parked beside a stream lined with benches on green grass and filled with ducks. The air smelled of the first week of summer holidays when I was little and much closer to grass-level. America suddenly felt a few thousand miles further away.

The gardener appeared today (I don't know whether he schedules his visits or just appears on sunny days. Probably the latter). I watched him from my bedroom window pulling weeds above the pond, and wondered what he was thinking about out there in the sunshine. We spoke for a while as I set off to the post office -- He told me I had a Southern drawl. I'm sure I'd only said two words to him. Perhaps they were "Hey, there," and therein lies the rub.

The route to the post office takes about 2 minutes, but passes delightful English scenes: the pub and skittle alley, the village school (site of the most miserable year of my life, to this day), and cottages whose thatched roofs you can reach out and touch and whose doors look like they were built for children. Outside the village shop/post office is a chalk-board sign that reads something along the lines of: "Please vote us Village Shop of the year. (Come inside for a form). We won 2nd place last year. We'll never give up until we win (some sort of Churchillian stuff)."

On the way home I picked green plums from the bushes and devoured them, sticky juice on chin.

Gordon Brown, our new Prime Minister, spent last night under the President's roof at Camp David, and today uttered a rallying cry in the Washington Post that stressed Britain and America's shared values.

"Separated -- yes -- by an ocean, we are still united by the streams of history and the strengths of our ideals. Standing together on this foundation we will prevail in the greatest struggles of our times." (Read the rest here).

But beneath all this rousing rhetoric I wonder what the two world leaders really thought of each other.

This from the NYT, after a comment on the Prime Minister's formality.

"There was notably little chemistry between the two virtual strangers, who said they shared stories about their families and what aides said was a mutual love of rugby. They shared two meals face-to-face, a dinner Sunday night and a lunch today that featured hamburgers."

I'd love to have witnessed the hamburger consumption. Do you think they cracked open cans of Bud Light and wiped ketchup on their sleeves?

Oh, well. At least there was no mention of toothpaste this time.

Tonight's BBC offering was the grand finale of The Great British Village Show. Hailed in the listings as "reaching its climax" this weekend, the six-week show finale saw the judges picking the very best tomatoes in the land, the most uniform string beans, the largest marrow, the heaviest pumpkin, and the tastiest strawberry jam. Winners from the five regional shows competed against each other. Prince Charles and Camilla put in an appearance. Winning contestants screamed and cried at winning first place in their vegetable category, while the losers forlornly lamented all the time they'd put into growing, watering, tending, and polishing their onions, only to be beaten by that bloody farmer from Shropshire. "If I never win anything else in me life," said one nervous pumpkin-grower, "it don't matter. This means everything to me, it does."

Ahem.

More photos of the delightful July evening here.

Last night I braved the floods and drove north to Oxford, only to find myself effectively “flooded out.” The only two routes I knew into the city were closed due to the flooding, so I was left to navigate tiny one-way streets off the ring road in the hope of eventually finding familiar territory (or at least a few spires). My goal: to meet Morgan for an evening with MBA candidates at Oriel College.

Not my average night out. But an experience.

The Queen presided over the event, in full robed – if only canvas – magnificence. And there I sat, on a rickety wooden bench at an ancient wooden table, one of three long rows that stretched the length of the vaulted dining hall, surrounded by suited rich men eating a three-course meal by lantern-light. After the meal: the pub, where I stayed sober for the drive and watched the executives around me loosen up over pints of Guinness and a few unmentionable mixtures of liquor.

It was a surprisingly good evening, if a little surreal, and I didn’t get home until 2 a.m. The high point: exploring Tolkien’s dark gardens of Exeter College at nearly midnight, up worn steps and over dark-upon-dark shadows of flying buttresses and invisible cobblestones (in heels, might I add), and then the spires and domes and rotund stone Radcliffe Camera below us in dim lamp light under a star-strewn sky. Not even marred by the drunken students, trousers around ankles, peeing on the fences.

Six months ago, when I arrived in Birmingham, Alabama, for my internship interview, I could never have imagined the moment, six months later, when, after entering the empty Exeter College library and climbing a turret of spiral stone steps, I would be flipping the pages of an annal of history from 1776 with Morgan, searching for a mention of America’s independence, and laughing at the 18th century phrasing. The book was hidden behind others on the very top shelf, and Morgan had to dust it off as he stood on a stepladder amid leather-bound volumes and leather-clad bookshelves. The building had that musty smell that only an old library can have. The bells were ringing in the chapel, and Morgan said I looked at home among the books. We walked back to my car past scantily-clad girls waiting outside clubs. The wind was crisp and cold and smelled of night.

As I stood there in the most expensive skirt I own, with heels and hose and a coat that I’d only been able to afford because it was in the sales, the strangest thing of all to me was the realisation that I actually could fit in with this group of people: these lawyers and doctors and managers and financiers. That I was very easily able to hold a conversation, to be confident, to laugh and engage and give my opinion—or at least a part of it. That a high-powered lawyer would tell me all about his private plane and foreign timeshare and his wish for companionship. That, despite being nothing like most of these men, I was able to fit.

My Dad’s comment when I mentioned this: It helped that you’re a woman. This, of course, changed my perspective somewhat, especially after reanalysing the evening.

On the way home the roads were empty, and a shut-eyed moon was resting its gold head against strips of cloud. I took off my coat and hose and earrings and necklace, unclipped my hair, and turned up the volume.

It’s almost 1 a.m. When my family asks me if I’m over the jet lag, I say yes, of course. What I really mean is that I altered my hours. The mornings are cold and damp and quiet. So are the nights. But at night, in the dark, with long shadows arcing around the room, I can be alone with the music playing. I’d say it keeps me sane, but perhaps it’s self defeating. Or something like that.

"Thought you had all the answers to rest your heart upon
But something happens. Don’t see it coming
Now you can’t stop yourself
Now you’re out there swimming
In the deep"

This last week has passed in a flurry and a blur. I’m still constantly aware of the time across the ocean. 7.05 on a Saturday night. Plates and glasses are clinking beneath the chatter of voices in restaurants. Evening meals before a night out, perhaps. The sun’s still up. It curved behind the thatched roofs outside my window and wound its way across the horizon to Birmingham, Alabama.

"Leave me out with the waste
This is not what I do
It's the wrong kind of place
To be thinking of you"

Last night I went to the pub with my brother and Dad. It’s been a Friday night ritual for a while here, and I’ve missed it. Since I left, a national smoking ban has cleared the air. No old men in overalls with their pipes. All that’s left is a lingering of stale tobacco, which grabbed hold of the carpets and walls and won’t let go. My brother pointed out that cider looks like pee. We both ordered another Strongbow.

"Big wheels keep on turning"

I feel a bit like a stranger here. People talk differently, but I don’t know how I talk anymore. Apparently it depends who I’m with. I am fed up of strangers pointing out that I have a “drawl.” They say it with heads cocked on one side, as if to prompt another specimen of a Southern dialect I don’t really have.

"So let go, jump in, oh well, whatcha waiting for?
It’s alright, ‘cause there’s beauty in the breakdown"

Today I went to the NEXT Sale. The first day of the Next sale. Ask any Brit – particularly the women – about the Next sale, and they’ll nod knowingly, and probably laugh and roll their eyes. It’s a fascinating display of crowd behaviour and of the thin line between humans and animals. The sale begins at 5 a.m. I was there at 2 p.m. Next is a clothes store, and the Next sale seems to always wait for me to come home – at Christmas and in the summer – before it opens its doors to the hoards of women hungry for the “50% or less” guarantee. I’m not quite sure why I do it. But every time I come back convinced that we are a strange species.

"Everywhere I went I was always looking for you
Bright smile, dark eyes.
I’m looking for some peace
But it’s so hard to find"

They hand you a clear plastic sack when you walk into the store, and you dodge around the vultures – beware of elbows – filling it to the brim before competing for a checkout. Some women seem to wait six months to buy their clothes on this day. They’ve scouted the store before the sale, judging what will and what won’t be reduced. For the first few days, the entire store is filled with sale items, technicolor aisles of garments with florescent tags. Changing/fitting rooms are closed, but this doesn’t deter the hungry shopper, who has deliberately dressed down so that she can try on every item in her sack, including the skirts. She stands stoicly before a tiny mirror on the end of an aisle and undresses, dresses, redresses. Don’t touch her clothes; she’ll bite (or at least cuss and hiss). A jacket on, a jerk of the shoulders in the glass: “Aeh, Bazz, whacha fink ov’is?” she asks her fellow hunter. “S’oright,” comes the reply. She slips it off and into the second sack (she has two; she’s enterprising). Next.

People actually bring kids to the Next sale. It perplexes me.

"She lifts her skirt up to her knees
Walks through the garden rows with her bare feet, laughing."

My Mum is on a plane right now, heading across the Atlantic from Colorado to Heathrow airport. Last night, in the pub, my brother regaled us with stories of long haul commercial pilots who sleep in the cockpit or read the newspaper. His instructor told him of one who did an Open University course in the air.

“The thing flies itself.”

"It’s a big girl world now
Full of big girl things
And every day I wish I was small…"

It’s almost 2 a.m. now. 8 p.m. Early diners have settled the checks and are making way for others. Time for a drink on the deck, perhaps, under the dimming sky. Perhaps there’s music playing. Abbotts Ann – this quaint little English village – is sleeping soundly under the cloudy black sky. Time to turn off the music and join them.

"Every heart is a package tangled up in knots someone else tied."

There is no movement outside my window. The purple and green foliage on the trees above the pond is static, silent, as if the wind paused for breath, or for lack of it. The pink-grey clouds against the white and baby-blue sky don’t seem to shift at all. The only sign of life is the chiming of church bells. It’s a Thursday night: bell-ringing practice. Sometimes, across the ocean, sitting on a balcony in the humid evening light with a drink in hand, I think I hear these same bells. They’re barely audible with the windows shut tight. They beckon on Sundays and ring time all day, but somehow they just seem louder on Thursday nights. They’ve become a symbol to me of being back home, in this village, and in this same house.

There are three windows in my room: one double one at the foot of my bed, one triple above the dressing table – both of these draped with long heavy cream-colored curtains and blue sashes – and a tiny arched window in the corner, curtainless and higher than the rest. The same windows that I stared out of at 15, 16, 17, 18. Wishing on stars. The same windows I jumped from—the luxury of being the only one with a ground floor room in this house. They let the sun stream over the bed every evening – evenings which last much later into the night over here. When I leave one open overnight, I wake to the clopping of horseshoes along the street outside -- the street that separates our house from the village pub. Another sound I carry around with me, a little piece of the soundtrack. Outside the double window I can see roofs – one slated and covered in lichen, and the other thatched, with brick chimney and television antennae. Beyond, treetops and the clouds. These tiny rectangles display such English scenes. Even the leaves look British, lush and damp, chilled.

In this still scene, it feels like the world is on pause. The church bells counting down the moments until movement will resume; life will continue. But when I look up and out of the window, the clouds have moved on and the sky has darkened. Still nothing moves.

Trouble – Ray LaMontagne
Kathleen – Josh Ritter
California – Josh Ritter
Shelter – Ray LaMontagne
Empty – Ray LaMontagne
In the Deep – Bird York
The Blower’s Daughter – Damien Rice
Scratch – Kendall Payne
60B (Etown Theme) - Elizabethtown
Speed of Sound of Loneliness – Amos Lee
Baby That’s Not All – Josh Ritter
Hold You In My Arms – Ray LaMontagne
Come Back Down - Lifehouse
Southern Girl – Amos Lee
Delicate – Damien Rice
Chocolate – Snow Patrol
Anna Begins – Counting Crows
9 Crimes - Damien Rice
Reason Why - Rachel Yamagata
Boston - Augustana