heading home

[rm]

So it seems like we are leaving the UK today. I find myself, as frustrating as this has been, incredibly sad, as we had started to resign ourselves to being here through the weekend. On the other hand, I'll be back soon -- in July, and then in the fall when Patty comes out here to study in Cardiff.

There are a ton of things about this trip I've not written about yet -- the musicians in the tube (the jazz clarinetist, the 1940s-style cabaret singer, the dude playing a surf guitar version of "Ring of Fire" the day the volcano thing started), our weird adventures at the British Museum, a detailed accounting of all the Indian food we had, my eternal love of Tesco and its gluten-free miniature apple pies, and the walking tour of bizarreness last night that included running into someone who was at Gallifrey One and having to dodge the tour guide's discomfort with the queer elements in Torchwood -- that I promise to get to soon.

This trip wavered a lot between being my story and someone else's. That's a pretty typical experience for me, but the volcano punchline and work stress made it harder to bear in some ways. I think I just stumbled on a joke about fixed points.

Soon we'll be home, and hopefully it'll be easy and safe, although I wouldn't mind one last nod from the ghosts that never were before we find our way out of here. Cardiff, perhaps suitably, seems like several lifetimes ago.

Comments

[meirion.livejournal.com]

A shame we didn't have a chance to meet in person. Hopefully next time.

I know what you mean about things seeming like several lifetimes ago. All my life's been like that since early February. I forget that other people do stuff on glacial timescales rather than instantaneously ....

ETA: Eternal love of *Tesco*? Seriously? Ugh. Sainsbury's would have done you just as well with their "FreeFrom" range without being a monopolistic Walmart-alike!

[rm.livejournal.com]

I went to both, but I liked the gf products I found at Tesco better. I didn't know they were evil! We're lucky not to have Walmart in NYC.

[meirion.livejournal.com]

Tesco seem to be going round Cambridge hoovering up all the corner shops. A town the size of Cambridge simply does not need 15 Tesco stores (4 of which are ginormous)! Oxford seems more reasonably balanced in this regard — OK, my corner shop is a Tesco but there's a Co-op and an M&S also within 5 minutes' walk, and the city centre has two Sainsbury's shops.

(My even bigger problem with Tesco is the quality of things like meat, fish and vegetables.)

[brewsternorth.livejournal.com]

I wonder if Tesco's was among the 'leading English supermarkets' that wouldn't let produce grown in the Rift Valley, but not importable due to #ashtag, be either sold or given away locally because it already had their brand name on it?

[meirion.livejournal.com]

Almost undoubtedly (they are after all the market leader). But it is likely that most British supermarkets fell foul of that.