I left the house three times: once to get a cab to the airport to meet a friend; once to go to the shop to buy some beer (which I drank most of) and the third to go out to drink more beer, pints and pints of it - pints that then turned into sweat and came spurting out of my face. When I was not performing these small beer-rich activities, I was standing on a ladder, holding my monkey face in front of the air conditioning unit and wishing I'd brought a beer up with me.
It is going to go on for a bit, although at a more reasonable level (i.e. 81, not 93), and so tomorrow I will go back to the country where there is a swimming pool (last seen a month ago in a fucking snowstorm), air conditioning, clean clothes and a slight breeze. And to the country I will take most of the contents of a magnificent care package, brought to me from England by my visitor from his wife, most of the contents of which are shown in this high-quality panoramic photograph:
Bearing in mind that the visitor and his wife are the two people that wrote the best wedding speech ever given, it is no surprise that between them they should be able to smear my tiny kitchen table with joy.
This shit is fucking gold dust. English sweets (that have gone straight into the freezer for fear I scarf down a StarBar in one go); a family pack of Hula-Hoops; 3 (3!!) Guardian magazines; a copy of The Guardian actually given to me on the day it was published; two copies of Private Eye, a copy of The Tippler; a Guardian Guide with LCD Soundsystem in, two English Heritage magazines and a leaflet for a lovely English Garden that I am very much looking forward to visiting, for reasons that will become clear if you a) click on the photo and make it bigger; or b) click here.
Other things in the care package (inc. 2 other Curly Wurlies) included many PG Tips teabags, a family pack of Berocca ("I don't care if it doesn't work, I LIKE it"), and a stack of books as high as the moon. I cannot, dare not, open the Maltesers and have asked the French Canadian veterinary research histopathologist with whom I live to hide them, but the rest I will plough into like the simple-minded media-starved ex-pat that I am whilst The Archers dribbles out of my computer.
Pip pip!
NWM
10 comments:
Waddyoumean "it doesn't work"?
I think it's supposed to make you dynamic, like a top business executive. It does not have that effect on me, even if I eat a whole packet. It just makes me wee orange for 3 weeks.
That is brilliant, especially the naked gardens folk. It's always amazing to me what hippies will get up to if allowed to live past twenty five.
But aren't you monkeys always naked? Why would you be so interested in naked gardeners then - oh, wait. I guess the naked gardeners must be people? And monkeys like to look at naked people? Yeah, makes sense now ...
I used to use the UN supermarket in Vienna, which had two parts, one with cheap booze and fags (properly duty-free, so that gin cost ca £5 a litre) and one with national foods, such as fufu flour, sushi rice and Argie beef. The British corner was, shamingly enough, just Marmite, Weetabix and Walls sausages. Expats long for strange things.
Astonishing! If you swapped out the English Heritage mags for CAR, and the Hula Hoops for Tunnock's Caramel Wafers, you would have my husband's dream care package. Not that any friends have ever brought him anything as splendid.
Star Bars! I didn't know you could still buy those, and I don't even live abroad, I just haven't been concentrating. Does this qualify me for a care package and if so can I have backcopies of When Saturday Comes instead of Private Eye?
You should have moved to Newfoundland instead of Québec. We have both Maltesers and Tunnock's Caramel Wafers here. AND malt vinegar in the chip shops. Clearly, we are the quarantine station for the British. Ease you into the culture shock that is mainland Canada.
I should think those gardeners would be quite skilled, what with having to be far more careful with the sharp implements than most.
I'm not an ex-pat - I still live in the mother country, but I know how you feel about this type of stuff.
I traveled a lot in my younger days, spending months and months away from Britain. Findng a copy of The Times or somthing like that in an airport somewhere was like striking gold. Proper news, even if it wasn't from my preferred publication.
In all my time abroad, I was never lucky enough to chance upon a copy of The Guardian, but I did bump into an Indonesian York City fan, manning a hotel check-in desk in rural Bali once.
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