Looking back on it, my experience at that English wedding in France eight years ago was my first lesson in the power of the enigma in British society. Confronted with a mass of Jimmy Choos discarded and languishing poolside, I felt as inadequate as my outlet mall dress. And yet there was an interest in me that was disproportionate to my to dazzling personality and clothing budget. It was fuelled undoubtedly by the polite upbringing of the guests, but also by the fact that I was from L.A.

Husband had benefited from this in reverse as a Brit in L.A., not least in nabbing me. I admit to the “every Englishman is Hugh Grant” perception I had back when we first met. Imagine my surprise when I arrived in England and learned that Liverpudlians are best known for, well, stealing things (The Beatles aside). There was also an education to be had in the great North / South divide in England. It’s the reverse of the San Fran / L.A. thing, with the South self-proclaiming their cultural and economic superiority.

In the Cotswolds, my American-ness has been a benefit to both husband and me. Despite the rap the states have taken on the global stage, it’s rare enough for an American to take up residence in the Cotswolds that it generates friendly curiosity. Husband in other circumstances could have been a walking target in our rural idyll—a scouse, urban lamb amongst the posh, country lions. Twelve years in L.A. and an American wife threw him a lifeline, even if he still subject to occasional good natured chiding.

Our friend, B., confirms the foreign spouse halo-effect has been active for generations now. He was raised in a Liverpool pub by a single mother and achieved fame as a cartoonist. His success afforded him access to a new, privileged social circle who didn’t know quite what to make of him. The toffs knew what to make of an artist—in fact the word toff once denoted a generous benefactor. But a cartoonist? B. credits his Neapolitan wife for providing the touch of foreign mystique required to throw a social set stifled by their own class pre-conceptions into accepting disarray.

As B. found, the beauty of being an outsider (or by association in husband’s case) in the Cotswolds has been the distancing effect from the rigors of British social strata definition. There is, however, an art to maintaining the enigma, especially when there are so many traps to fall into: where you drink, what paper you take, football or rugby (cricket is assumed).

The venue in which you choose to drink in our Cotswold town says a lot about you, and I’ve therefore decided the best policy is to drink in them all. While I favour the wine bar, I can also choose from a biker friendly, half-timbered pub; a traditional if occasionally tourist pub; an upscale coaching inn; or a concrete block establishment grandly known as the sports and social club, which is convenient when taking in a summer cricket match on the adjoining field.

Papers are trickier. They’re collected from the local bakery, so your selection is subject to public exposure. This is Telegraph and Times country although the bakery stocks a few token Guardians. Thankfully my choice, the FT Weekend, is ideologically vague. It has a whiff of city banker about it, and no one needs to know that I buy it for the Life and Arts section.

On the matter of football (soccer) vs rugby, I’ll start with a saying R. the barman taught me not long after we first moved in: “Rugby is a hooligan’s game played by gentlemen whereas soccer is a gentleman’s game played by hooligans.” I probably don’t need to say the Cotswolds are in the rugby camp. Husband is, however, from Liverpool, home of a legendary football team, and my loyalty remains with the hooligans.

I spent this morning watching husband whip himself into a froth triggered by the fact that he has left his pants (trousers) at home in London. This means he can’t wear his Bermuda shorts walking as he intended to do because then he won’t have anything to wear out to dinner for the rest of the weekend. This means he is now wandering around our beautiful stone cottage stamping his feet and sighing in his best rendition of a 7-year old girl’s temper tantrum bemoaning his lack of appropriate rambling gear.

“I forgot my pants, the weekend is ruined,” he announces. I decide to sit down. This is going to take awhile.

After the better part of an hour, husband has arrived at the rational solution of repurposing his running gear into walking gear. He is now dressed in an orange sweat wicking tank top, black running shorts, hiking boots, gaiters, and backpack. He looks like a gay pumpkin. I of course assure him that he looks absolutely fine, and we are shortly trekking out the back of our cottage.

The Cotswolds are an obvious choice for a second home: easily accessible from London, beautiful scenery, charm laden pubs, and historic architecture. It’s so obvious that it’s almost become obscure. British second home owners seem to be far more enamoured with the warmth and romance of Tuscany, French countryside, or the Costa del Sol thanks to the advent of Ryanair and EasyJet.

I exaggerate a bit on the obscurity point. The Cotswolds are home to a generous selection of the great and good, from Prince Charles to Liz Hurley, and there’s something unmistakably obvious in that. They are also firmly on the tourist map, although tourists tend to stick to only a few of the vast network of villages that make up the Cotswolds. But for an American and a newly repatriated Brit, the Cotswolds is as exotic as it comes. It’s the England from central casting, the one that’s lost in the international melee of London where I hardly recognize the languages being spoken into mobile phones on my daily bus commute. And by this I don’t mean it’s white, although it largely is. I mean the rose strewn cottages and grand manor houses, green hills and sheep, dry stone walls and honey coloured stone, and tweed and wellies, often adorning the great English eccentric holding court in any given pub or inn. I also mean the sense of community and decency. We’ve made more friends in two months in the Cotswolds than we made in two years in London. And on Saturday night we did our best to alienate them all.

We were hosting our first out of town guest at the cottage, MF, an old friend over from New York. Thus far on his visit we had spent a lot of time gossiping at the big table in the local wine bar, the best laid dinner plans forsaken for another bottle of Prosecco. We did manage to get him out for a walk and a proper pub lunch at the Black Horse, but only after a trip to the country mart where he procured a pair of stylish black wellies that could seamlessly transition from Cotswold mud to German industrial techno club (not that I have any reason to believe he frequents German industrial techno clubs).

But the highlight of the visit was our Night at the Races charity event. There had been much discussion beforehand about what a night at the races would be since it was being held in the village hall rather than a racetrack. The consensus between husband and our neighbours who were going with us was that it would be betting on pre-recorded horse races shown on video monitors. We had gotten a race guide with our pre-purchased tickets, each sponsored by local businesses so one could, for example, bet on Lambchop to place in the butcher’s race.

When we arrived at the hall there were a few authentic elements of the race track experience, including a ruthlessly efficient betting setup and a bar. That’s about where the similarities ended. Attendees were seated around a giant central checker board set out in masking tape. Our assigned table was front and center of the checker board so we were on display like some kind of demented bridal party. Stroppy teenagers, three of each gender, jockeyed rocking horse-sized wooden steeds painted in bright colours with mop string hair. Their parents definitely made them do it. A tuxedoed MC called for volunteers to throw the giant fuzzy dice that would power the wooden horses up and back the checkerboard. Husband, no wallflower, was first to throw.

A childless couple and a gay man shaken up with a few bottles of wine can be awfully catty. Well, awfully awful really. Between trips to the bar and the betting tables, MF and I spent much of our time comparing notes on the relative attractiveness of the teenage jockeys, neither gender spared. In retrospect this was probably not a good way to endear ourselves to local parents (we were sure we were whispering, but our perception could have been a wee bit undermined by our blood alcohol content). MF then became obsessed with getting a turn at the dice throwing, an activity that had grown in popularity with each passing race. Elbowing small children aside, he finally managed to secure his position as thrower of the dice in the last race following tense negotiations with the MC on a smoke break between races five and six.

Our true colours only went on full display at the end of the evening when a young man in a wheelchair took the microphone to thank everyone. He was the beneficiary of the evening’s fund raising, which would go to buy a sports wheel chair so he could play tennis. He was confident, gracious and eloquent, so much so that we immediately sobered up in the full realization of what a loving and supportive community we’d so recklessly imposed ourselves on. This man didn’t need our charity. We were far more desperate specimens who could clearly benefit from our own fundraiser to pay for the many hours of therapy we each require.

Through it all our neighbors sat next to us smiling patiently. It’s further testament to the fine people of our Cotswold town that they still speak to us.