House Call

There is a British tradition of stopping by for a visit with your neighbor which is pretty much a foreign concept for Americans as we do not think it is polite to visit people without calling first to schedule it. Today I went (on recommendation, suggestion and strong urging, in that order, from my mother-in-law) to pay a call to Mrs. Jones who lives in this house named Tudor House. Many of the houses here have names as well as numbers. For example our house is called, Myrtle Cottage. The neighbors across the street are in a house called, The Stoop. It is a lovely tradition I think we should all do. I wonder what we should call our future house! Well, in fact it may already come with a name. The Tudor House is in fact and original tudor house well over 400 years old! The top picture is Mrs. Jones's part of the house and the bottom picture is of the rest of the row of tudor houses called Savages. I am not sure how many houses are in that row, but it appears that it used to include a stable area as well. So the house call is when you stop by (call in at) someone's house completely unannounced entirely because you were walking past or wanted to say hello and have a chat. So I called in at the Jones's Tudor House at around 14:30 this afternoon after running some errands in the town. I was welcomed and invited in for tea and had a nice chat for about 15 minutes until I left to walk back home. This lady is from the church so that's where the connection is, but still I had only met her twice so it felt completely awkward for me, although she seemed to think it was fine. I may go with her next week to help with the mums and Toddlers group in Bishop's Stortford (the nearby town).