Me and Em and Nick have been having a very self-consciously English sort of a time

Like if you wanted to show an alien what English People do when they are at leisure, you would show them a little film reel of the last few days. Obviously this isn't what actual English people do. A bad thing is when horrible old men who make a big deal out of maintaining a stiff upper lip in all other situations allow themselves to get all maudlin and sentimental about the England of Days Gone By. That is not a real thing to get upset about. It's like people who don't give a shit about beggars and orphans but get all wobbly and worked up about abused cart horses.
HOWEVER.
The fact remains that we have been having a very cartoonishly English time of it lately, and it has been great. You feel a bit like Peter Rabbit after a while. The other day we went blackberry picking, and then came back and made blackberry pie. And yesterday we went and got a whole lot of stuff for a picnic and went to Leigh Woods, which is full of beech trees and cows and earnest looking people pulling out weeds while wearing big purple tshirts that say NATIONAL TRUST VOLUNTEER, and sat and ate cheese and bread and tomatoes in a field. And then we came back and all had to have cold showers because the boiler packed up, which is quite English in an I Capture The Castle sort of a way.
I Capture The Castle is the book I read when I want to feel a bit better about being such a mouse in a box. She makes being poor feel quite fun and glamorous. It isn't really, but you can almost believe it while you are reading.

Other Books to make you feel better about being such a small scruffs mouse in such a tired old box:
1. City of Thieves (Siege of Leningrad)
2. Cellist of Sarajevo (Siege of Sarajevo)
3. Siege of Krishnapur
4. There must be so many more books about sieges that I can't think of now.