Living Next Door to Austen

The day after moving into our new flat I was happy to find a little shop only a block away.

"Do you have any newspapers?" I asked the shopkeeper.

"No, too old for that, far too much work. Gave it up years ago," was the friendly response. I scanned the place and realised there wasn't much of anything. The guy was so friendly I figured his sole reason for trading at his advanced age was so he could have a chat with the locals about Bath rugby and the evils of chain stores.

"Cool," I replied before buying a jar of jam I didn't need and walking a few extra blocks for a paper.
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So here we are in beautiful historic Bath. This place is great. Georgian buildings everywhere. The architecture is similar to Edinburgh's New Town except, fortunately, Bath has mostly avoided the blight of the Ugly Buildings that scar Scotland's capital (someone please blow up the St James centre). The glaring exceptions being the Hilton (which looks like a Holiday Inn) and the bus station, with its barely breathing mall.

An added bonus of this town is that rather than being half full of neds, it's three fifths full of posh folk with a good portion of the rest of the population made up of students. There are a few chavs (England's answer to neds) making up the numbers but they're all in the Lamb & Lion drinking £1.50 pints - so you know where they are.

Our flat is great. It's just off Great Pulteney St in a Georgian building that once contained expensive homes. The place we're in is fairly sizeable for a one-bedder. Amazing to think it used to be a single room of a townhouse. There are plaques on the buildings around here marking the former lodgings of once or still famous people. I haven't heard of most of them but on one of my frequent walks around the neighbourhood I was happy to find a plaque, about 500 metres from where we live, stating that "Jane Austen lived here from 1801-1806". I haven't read any of her stuff but one of the chicks from the TV version of Pride and Prejudice was pretty hot.