I've suspected as much for many years now but last night it was made PAINFULLY clear to me that, YES, I AM BORING!!!
I went to a Southern FM Radio Christmas party last night where there were at least 200 people. I was part of the St. Margaret's / Whiteway Lane Centre group. (One of the moms organized this "Mum's Nite Out" thing and I knew about it 3 months ago and paid for it last month.)
The evening started off a little hectically b/c I was told the time was 7:30 and I was sharing a cab with 3 other women. About 6:40 I'm in my underwear (but hair and make-up done already--WHEW!) and I hear a car horn. "SURELY that's not the cab since we don't have to be there til 7:30," I thought. A minute went by and the horn blew again. "You gotta be kiddin' me," I thought. Another minute or 2 went by and then KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK on my door. "OH, TOURETTES!!!" ("Tourettes" is now my expletive of choice, btw!) So, Roy answered the door for me and I'm now in my skirt with my top hanging off me cuz it's not zipped yet and one shoe halfway on my foot. I can hear Atlanta, my neighbor from across the street, at the door saying, "Does she just want to meet us there?" I shout down, "I'm just putting my shoes on. I'll be right down!" At this point I still needed to do the girl thing of switching purses! WHATEV! It was time to go OUT and have a great night of fun, food, drink and DANCING!!!
I finally make it to the cab and Libby, another mom, is there with Atlanta and me and we start talking about wonderfully funny things. We pick up Claire, the last of our team and head off to the Hilton Metropole Hotel down on the seafront, still having wonderfully funny conversations. We arrive at the venue and we're the only ones from "Mum's Nite Out" there so far but the room has plenty of people in it -- maybe 100 or so. We're greeted with a table spread with a hundred glasses of red and white wine and orange juice from which to choose and, upon entering the main room itself, a professional photographer with a fabulous setup, a bar and tables as far as the eye could see!! The music is pulsating and the lights follow suit.
We make our way to our table -- REWIND!!! The other 3 make their way to the table and I "nip off to the loo" (like that little British expression there?!?) cuz I still have to put on my lips!! With that done, I snake my way through the maze of tables and people to the girls who've found our table and are in the process of swapping name markers cuz they all want us to sit together. It's a good thing, too, cuz whoever put the names on the tables had NO idea who knew who! They had me sitting w/ a bunch of people called the Pecksniffs!! What an UNFORTUNATE name!!! Anyway, our table is RIGHT NEXT TO THE DANCE FLOOR!!! How COOL is that?!?! We stand around our table for a good 10 minutes just talking (probably cuz we're not sure if we should sit yet) and wonder where everyone else is and if maybe I was right to think it started at 7:30, not 7:00 and other such trivial matters.
Time goes by, as time often does, and the others arrive and tables fill up and food is served and a single-earringed-toothless-wonder-of-a-photographer roams around taking pics of people he will later sell to you at £5 a pop and great conversations are had by all and and and... The warm-up DJ is just great fun cuz he's tellin' it like it" T-I- IS!" He's telling people to find their seats and sit down cuz the food service won't start until everyone is seated, right? Well about 5 minutes go by and no one has even shown the slightest bit of interest in finding their seats. The DJ says, "Please find your seats. We can't get started until EVERYONE is seated. If you need a SAT NAV to find your table, mine is in my car. I can't help you", "To the 15 of you on the dance floor, I'll repeat this cuz you may not have cared the first time . . . we can't dance until the hotel gives us the go-ahead so SIT YOUR ASSES DOWN" and stuff like that. Well, 10:00 rolls around and the REAL DJ arrives. The lights go down, the music goes up and the DJ riles up the crowd!!! DANCING HAS COMMENCED!! WOOHOO!!!
Everyone at my table gets up and makes a beeline for the dance floor. . . except me. My friend Neda asks, "Aren't you going to dance?" "I'll wait til something good comes on," I say. I was so full I didn't wanna get up! AND I was tired. AND my armpit was STILL hurting! (My right axillary (armpit) lymph node is swollen and VERY painful! SO, I took some Hydrocodone earlier that day. That stuff could make a bull elephant light enough to skip across daisies!) Several songs later other moms come up to me and try to get me out on the dance floor and my excuse is "I'm guarding stuff!!" . . . Well, I WAS!! Everyone I was sitting w/ just left their purses out on full display for all to see they must be protected at all costs, right? RIGHT?!?
Several MORE songs later, some members of my group are tired and come sit for a song or two and take a breather. "COME ON!! You gotta dance," they say. "I will in a minute," I tell them. Meanwhile, the photos that the aforementioned toothless wonder has been taking throughout the night are being shown on a screen behind the DJ along with some of the music videos of the songs being blasted into my ears by the 10 ton amps 15 feet away. One of them was Whitney Houston's "I Wanna Dance With Somebody" and my eyes are freakin' TRANSFIXED!!! I'm just in awe of the fact that I remember watching this video on MTV back in the day!! Whitney's eye make-up was, like, teal and gold with a RED highlight and she had this mega-permed hair that put all poodles to shame!
Well, now a whole hour of dancing has gone by and I've done nothing but watch said dancing and the funny slideshow of pics and throw-back videos. Some really good music is being played and I'm feelin' like I may get up and dance. Along comes "Sindy Sledgehammer -- EXTRA portly" who proceeds to "dance" her elbow into the top of my HEAD!!! GREAT! So now I have a headache on top of all the other crap. (My head is still sore today!) "SORRY!" she said. "SORRY," as she stretched out her hand towards me with a pained expression on her face to show that she was sincere. I tell you that every time I saw her afterwards I looked at her with slanty eyes! SLANTY EYES!!! Hell hath no fury like the Slanty-Eye-Stare!!!
Still more songs are play and still more and more people try to get me to come dance and still I say, "I'm guarding stuff!" (DANGER!! Deepitude approaching!!! DEEPITUDE APPROACHING!!!) As I sit there for another hour alone at the table with my thoughts (and pain) keeping me company, I look around and suddenly feel completely and utterly . . . empty. There are more than 200 people there, about 20 of whom's facial features I recognize and about 7 of whom's names I know and not one person there seems real or alive to me. "What is the point of all of this," I ask myself. "Why are all these people here at this particular juncture in time and space?" I don't know what's gotten into me. I'm watching all these people dance and laugh and have fun and I'm just . . . just . . . NOT! This seems strange to me b/c I think this is the first time I've been to a dance and DIDN'T dance! Neda said something earlier that evening to me while we were sitting waiting for people to arrive. She said, "I feel like I just don't know how to socialize." I could totally relate to that. I don't know how to be around people in a social setting! I don't know how to "chit chat" or respond to stories people tell me or any of that "phatic communion" crap. I've never really bough into the whole "talk for the sake of talking" crock. If I have something interesting to say, I'll say it but if it's about the weather or what I or so-n-so did today, forget it! I'm just no good at that.
I once went to a 5 Rhythms class and danced "my dance" for 2 hours straight! One thing the 5 Rhythms says is that EVERYONE has a dance and if you don't dance "your dance", who will? Last night I didn't have a dance. That is a rather unsettling feeling.
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Thursday, November 27, 2008
Monday, September 8, 2008
A couple of days before Hannah's 10th birthday we took a trip to London to visit the British Museum. This place is PHENOMENAL!! Not only is it HUGE and GORGEOUS inside, but I've never seen a PERMANENT collection like this one in my life! This place had far more on display from its collection than any exhibition display I've come across! The Egyptian collection was just one of the many fascinating collections they had! They have an entire room (more like a HALL) devoted to nothing but MUMMIES!! They even have several REAL ones on display in various states of unwrap! I took these pics w/ my iPhone so the quality is not the best but pretty good for a phone. (Don't forget you can click to enlarge the pics!)
^^Front and back of Ramses the Great statue.^^
^^One of the MANY stairwells in the labyrinth that is the British Museum!^^ It is very easy to get lost in this place!
^^Sarcophagi.^^
^^Inside one of the outer containers of a sarcophagus.I think it's made of granite.^^
^^Mummy still wrapped and complete w/ its head mask and amulets.^^
^^Inside of another outer container of a sarcophagus. This one's made of wood.^^
^^Mummy unwrapped! Just the feet, though. I have the rest of it somewhere.^^
^^I think this is a mummified bird or something.^^
^^Inside wooden outer container of a sarcophagus.^^
Equally as impressive a collection were the Grecian urns and artifacts! Having studied art history I feel makes me appreciate so much more the sheer genius behind some of these pieces, especially the way they were made!! Just look at the details of these blue glass pieces...
^^BIIIIIIIIIGG horse statue!^^
And OF COURSE the British Museum has the FAMED Elgin Marbles!! They are so beautiful in person! The detail is astonishing and the gallery they are homed in was seemingly built for them. The lighting does them justice!
K, on to the next blog entry...
So, as you may have noticed I have not been very good w/ my blog as of late. I've had a VERY BUSY coupla months!!! SO . . . I will begin as far back as I can!
I gave Roy a haircut (sometime around July 21st)!! I think it turned out pretty well! I downloaded "How to Cut Your Boyfriend's Hair" from WikiHow and got to cuttin'!
BEFORE:
"CUT MY MOP!!!! GRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!"
And 2 HOURS LATER:
^^You can tell I started w/ this side b/c of the sharp edge on the side! I finally figured out what I was doing before I started the other side.
^^THIS side looks FABOO as does the back!! (IMHO anyway!)
Thorid, whaddya think? (Thorid's my resident Hair Guru!) I think I did a pretty good job overall (except for the 2-hour part)!!
K, on to the next blog entry!
Saturday, July 19, 2008
YEA!! I can finally hang up my clothes after 7 months of living outta boxes!! Our wardrobe (closet, ours is a walk-in) was installed a couple weeks ago. It went well. Here are some BEFORE pics to give you an idea of what it looked like w/ our boxes everywhere (don't forget you can click on the image to enlarge it):
As you can see, it was a mess and a pain to deal w/. We worked with an interior designer named Lee who I just LOVED!! He was so cool and very personable. He and I could hang out and have a good ol' time! He's your typical interior designer, waif thin, GREAT taste, opinionated (although not annoyingly so; just enough to get your attention and for you to say, "Hey, maybe it's NOT such a good idea to put orange shag carpet in a Victorian house!"), wears make-up (foundation anyway) and has a boyfriend bigger than he is!! LOVE HIM!!! (I need to call him and see how he's doing.)
Anyway, we have bamboo floors in the top two rooms of the house and we wanted the wood we chose for the wardrobe to be similar in color so we chose Cherry (as they didn't have Bamboo). Lee didn't like that and suggested we go w/ white b/c of the color of our walls which at the time were this nasty close-to-white puke-green/grey color. We didn't really notice how nasty a color it was until we put the white wood sample next to it. We thought that'd be too cold so we decided to paint the walls a different color and go with Birch. It looks very warm and inviting and is nowhere near as dark as the cherry would've been. It looks really good. Here are some AFTER pics:
Yeah, our ceilings on the first floor (2nd floor in US English) have this shape to them to accommodate the room upstairs (Hannah's). The 1st floor ceilings had to be dropped for there to be enough room to walk on the 2nd floor:
So, as you can imagine, all that space was filled post haste and now I have almost no excuses to start getting rid of things. I've already gotten rid of a bunch of T-shirts!! I KNOW, I KNOW!!! None of you thought I'd EVER part w/ a single solitary t-shirt of mine but it has happened!! I suggest y'all start making peace w/ your peeps and telling everyone ya love 'em cuz the end of the world is NIGH!!!! Jodi's gettin' rid of some T-shirts!!! I didn't realize how many freakin' T-shirts I had! Once I folded them all and put them in drawers I had filled 5 drawers, each at least 6 x 3 t-shirts. that's too many. Now I only have ONE drawer and it's stuffed! It's something like 7 shirts deep! (Plus I have another 3 or 4 shirts I couldn't fit in that drawer in another drawer.) OH!! That's NOT counting the 10 or 12 I have hanging up in the closet! I'm a t-shirt whore, I s'pose! BUT, some of the ones I kept are the wHOLY ones I've had for years and years and years and years and... HA!! I bet you thought I got rid of those! No such luck, mon frère! I CANNOT part w/ my beloved Animaniacs or my UNT RAC shirts or any of the ones I've designed over the years. NO WAY!
So, as you can see, I'm quite happy w/ my new little space for my clothes to call home! I'll be writing more very soon as I have a lot of catchin'-y'all-up to do.
Love to you all!!
Thursday, June 19, 2008
That's how I'm feeling today. I've just had my 3rd driving lesson and, although Lee, my instructor, says I'm doing very well, I feel like I didn't do as well as I thought I would today. I KNOW how to drive! I do, but when I get in the car and have twenty-bazillion things to think about in terms of what gear I should be in at what speed, what pedal to press when and such I feel like I know nothing! Breaking is totally alien to me now! I can't just break, I have to clutch-down just before the car stops to keep from stalling and that is such a pain!! Like I said, driving is hard enough w/o having to add all this gear and clutch crap to it! I don't like manuals.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
I was riding home on the upper deck of the bus a coupla days ago and the driver was blowin' and goin' down the road. No biggie. These buses are so tall that occasionally they hit tree branches and there's a racket as the branches scrape along the glass and the sides of the bus. Well, I was sitting in the very front up top on the left-hand side (passenger / kerb side) when the driver must've been too far over to the left and hit a tree branch that was so big it broke the glass right above my head. I had tiny pieces of glass all over me! I got up, moved back a few rows and took this picture.
The crack is in the red square and goes the entire distance across the pane of glass. This is only the left half of the windshield.
I told Roy about this and he told me a story about a similar incident involving another bus recently. The driver hit a tree branch that was so heavy and low that it started to tear off the top of the bus! The people inside were not badly hurt at all, minor cuts and scrapes. BUT a lady waiting for the bus was KILLED by the falling branch! I guess I'll be a tad more picky when it comes to where I sit!
So, on Father's Day (last Sunday) our neighbors India and Hannah rang our doorbell to invite us over to another neighbor's, Atlanta's, for a BBQ. We had a coupla things to do before we could go over but we eventually made it around 3:30 or so. We got there and everyone was out back sitting around the patio table in the garden out back. There were a few people we didn't know but got to as the day progressed. Mick and Marie were there w/ their daughter Hannah. Atlanta, of course, with her daughter Leela and some new faces were there to greet us. Daz, Zav and Monica were 3 people we'd never seen before and the new neighbors Paul and his wife, whose name escapes me at the moment were there as well. Paul and his wife moved in next door to India.
We ate, had good conversation (well, Roy did. I'm too much of an introvert now. Sux.) and maybe met a few new friends. Zav, Roy and I had a good conversation about Photoshop and photography. Zav is a wedding photo'r and is looking for someone to teach him how to get good at Photoshop. Roy of course gushed about my MAAAAD SKILLLLZ!!!!
BUT THEN . . . Mick invited us over to his place (which is just next door) for a game of POKER!!! TEXAS HOLD 'EM, no less!! I've NEVER played poker of any type in my life and Roy hasn't played in 20 years. It was 2 GBP (Great British Pounds) to play. Neither of us had ANY cash at all on us or across the street in our house so Daz was kind enough to lend us the funds.
The players were as follows: Kev (who came later to the BBQ and is a good friend of Mick's and Atlanta's and poker freak), Zav, who's never played before either, Mick, Monica, Daz, Hannah P., Mick's 11-year-old daughter and the 3 of us, Roy, Hannah and me. We were a team since we were newcomers. The game started off well. We won a few hands and learned some of the terminology. Zav was hilarious b/c once he showed the table his cards b/c he thought the hand was over and it wasn't! Funnily enough he was one of the final few at the table!!
Well, we're chuggin' along and we find that we have very little "money" (chips) left BUT we're one of the last TWO remaining!!!! YEA, US!! We have something like 3 GBP left and Mick's got something like 65 GBP!!! So, to keep the game from going on for hours and hours, we just go ALL IN and turn our cards over and let the dealer deal. Low and behold we won that hand!! It was like that until the end!! WE WON THE GAME AND THE POT!!! We got 8 GBP in winnings!! There was a prize for 2nd place and 3rd place got their money back. WOW!!!
So, this is how the gambling addiction begins! :)
Unfortunately, I took no pics cuz I just wasn't thinking! I'm so mad at myself for that! I had my phone w/ me, too! OH, WELL!!
More later. By the way, today is June 18th and it is FREEZING COLD outside!!!!
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
...and car.
WHEW!!! I just finished my FIRST-EVER UK driving lesson!!! My instructor's name is Lee and he said the lesson was a pleasure!! He said I'm doing very well and moving along quite fast! So fast that he took me out onto main roads today! i have another lesson w/ him tomorrow for 2 hours. (I did 2 hours today as well.)
I was really quite nervous about it considering that I've never driven a manual transmission before. It's funny, but I felt like I was learning how to drive all over again. There's so much stuff to think about and remember when driving a manual , , , not to mention the whole "other side of the road and car" thing! One would think that one would have no difficulty judging distances b/w the car one is driving and the curb (kerb in UK English) or another car from the other side of the cockpit but, lemme tell ya, IT'S FREAKIN' DIFFICULT!! I hit the curb a few times and Lee had to tell me to pull more towards the center of the road more than once. PLUS the roads here are SO NARROW!!! It's amazing to think that double decker buses go down them and sometimes 2 abreast!! SHEESH!!
Anyway, I did fine. I take my theory test on the 26th of this month so wish me luck! That's really the easy part. It's mostly just common sense stuff w/ the odd "How many different types of pedestrian crossings are there and how do they differ" type question. (Incidentally, there are a few: Zebra, Pelican, Puffin, Toucan and Pegasus. Zebra is not light controlled and has zebra striped poles and ground markings. Pelican is Pedstrian Light Controlled -- ped pushes button and waits to cross. Puffin is Pedestrian User Friendly Intelligent which automatically senses pedestrians and controls lights for them. Toucan is Two Can Cross meaning both pedestrians and bicyclists. Pegasus is for pedestrians and horse-mounted riders and is just like Pelican only w/ one button at human height and one at mounted rider height. MORE THAN YOU WANTED TO KNOW, I'm sure!!)
Anyway, I'll keep y'all posted as to how things are going. And NO, I'm not working yet. I'm not looking for a job yet either. I've still got stuff to do around the house and preparation-wise before I do any of that.
Later, PEEPS!!
Thursday, June 5, 2008
So, WOW!!!! I just experienced my first-ever 5 Rhythms class. This is a movement meditation practice developed by Gabrielle Roth in the 60s. It is so amazing! The class I went to was a 2-hour Wave class in which you flow from one of the 5 Rhythms to the next in a "wave" fashion. You begin with Flowing, then Staccato, then Chaos, then Lyrical and finally Stillness.
We spent the first 30 minutes in a warm-up where we just got ready to enter our bodies as much as possible. There was very little instruction from the teacher as we moved fluidly from warming up into Flowing. Flowing is circular in motion. The teacher allowed us to find our breath in the beat, the movement and our bodies and then she guided our meditation a bit by helping us to focus on a particular part of our bodies. Other body parts would then join the dance through the guided meditation and we spent a great deal of time "flowing" through ourselves.
Staccato is more percussive and linear in its form. Again, the teacher would guide us at first and sometimes ask us to find a flow to a partner. The aim is just to stay with the partner and experience the Wave together, in a rather empathetic way, not so much to follow their movements -- just to "be" together. That was difficult for me to do at first b/c I kept thinking too much about it. I also would stare at the chest of my partner instead of looking at their face and I kept thinking "This is just like when you play basketball and you're man-on-man: you can't look at their eyes b/c they can fake you out w/ them. Always watch their chest to sense where they will move next." Well, that was all fine and good until I partnered w/ a woman who was a little bohemian child. You know the kind: Buckwheat-in-a-headlock-NO-BRA-in-a-tank-top-BOOBS-JIGGLING-all-over-Tarnation kinda hippie chick. So I had to find another place to look. I think she thought I was staring at her boobs on purpose. I didn't even realize it at first, then after the 2nd or third time I did it I realized she kept looking directly at me. (Rather unusual in this type of dance situation.)
Chaos is where the "ART" happens. This is where the dancer just lets go completely and the soul expresses itself in whatever manner it deems necessary at the time. This is also the most aerobic of the 5 Rhythms. I really lost myself in this one. Time is so inconsequential here!!
Lyrical is neat because this is where the dancer really finds their own style of expression and being. I really liked this part of the Wave b/c I felt like I was really getting to the point, coming to a "realization" or a "self-discovery".
Stillness is just whatever is left at the end of the Wave. This for me was very revealing. I felt many emotions during Stillness. This like the "cool down" part of an exercise. For me, it differed in that emotions had taken on a different meaning. My self-view had become MORE, if that makes any sense, almost like I got a new prescription for my inner eyeglasses, if you will.
The 5 Rhythms is such an incredible experience and I thank my new friend Neda for the opportunity to experience it! She's been dancing the 5 Rhythms for 15 years and she says it really is something useful and inspiring. She almost tears up when she talks about it. Now I know why. I can't wait to have that much experience under my belt! And, YES, you dance the whole 2 hours!! It's really not bad at all! Not like you'd think! If you can find a teacher near you, I'd suggest going! It's really inexpensive!
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
OMG!!! This is just a quick note to say that I'm gonna be workin' out in my garden for the next coupla weeks!!! Roy and I finally had someone come out and tell us what we have in our garden and what we need to do w/ it and also what we can do to change our garden from what it is now to an herb garden/veggie patch!
We went this past weekend to a HUGE gardening center called Paradise Park. This place is sooooo cool! It has all your gardening needs, plants as far as the eye can see, cafes, a children's play area, a nature park and a dinosaur valley in it! It is HUGE, GINORMOUS I tell ya! It was really pretty cool.
Well, we went through the dinosaur and nature park part of it. We didn't eat there cuz they only serve at certain times and we were too late. BUT we did come away w/ 160 liters of ORGANIC Blended Stable Manure . . . and some compost, too. YEA, US!! So, now it's off to weed and feed my garden! More later!!
Love y'all!!
Monday, April 21, 2008
Well, I've been living in England now for 4 months and I feel I've been here long enough to write about how my life and lifestyle have changed since I moved here.
LANGUAGE
I know, some of you are thinking, "Language?!? How can that be a change when they speak English in both the States and in England? Well, certain words are not only spelled differently but have different meanings here. For instance, "pants" in the US can be used to refer to "slacks", "jeans" or "trousers". "Pants" here in the UK means "panties" or "undies". Also, they spell funny here. They don't put 2-"Ls" at the ends of words like "fulfill" and they put "Ss" where "Zs" should be, like in "spiritualise" (see, right there my word processor flagged the word cuz it's WRONG!!!) and "conceptualise". They also say and write a lot of "-ed" words w/ a "t" instead, as in "spelt" and "learnt" which is just infantile in my book. I mean, what's wrong w/ "spelled" and "learned"? With a "t" they sound so harsh, like the word is German or something. (Y'know how German is: no matter what they say it sounds like they're cussing you out!!) And of course there's "Mum" as opposed to "Mom" but really when they say "mum" it sounds very much like "mom" to me.
That leads me to another thing about the language difference . . . I've dubbed a great many of these "fine English speakers" MUSHMOUTHS because when they talk, that's exactly what it sounds like . . . MUSH!!! I can't understand a word some of these people say!!! It is so garbled, almost like they just came from the dentist who put gauze in their mouths . . . everyday. The word "three" becomes "free"; the word "other" becomes "uvah"; words that dare have a "t" sound in the middle of them DON'T anymore so "later" becomes "lay uh". It's crazy. Hannah had a soccer coach (and YES I called it SOCCER, not FOOTBALL b/c the term "soccer" is slowly but surely catching on over here.) who neither of us could understand. Why? Because when you take Mushmouth and combine that w/ yelling simple instructions down a field or a court, not even God could understand that crap! BLECCHH!!!
PEOPLE
Well, the people are ok, not the greatest but ok. The adults actually seem like they know how to be polite and somewhat thoughtful, y'know that stereotypical Englishman mentality and politeness? It is beyond me how they wind up that way. It's like they go away for a while after their "high school / early college" years, get processed through a machine and are all of a sudden super polite, very proper individuals. I say that b/c the kids and ESPECIALLY the teens are the worst I've ever come across in my life! I remember the crappy kids in school growing up and NONE of them were as bad as these little TURDS here!! I HATE the kids in this country!! The younger ones are ok but even they border on Little-Turd-dom! The kids here in this country definitely lead an accelerated life! And we thought kids in the States were growing up too fast! That ain't nothin' compared to here! AND I live in Brighton which is NOT London where the kids are FAR WORSE!!!!!!! Kids in Hannah's class and some in the year below her have cell phones! 8- and 9-year-olds w/ cell phones!! What the cow?!? Oh, and here they have no qualms about kids going to other kids' houses during the week for sleepovers and play dates during the school year! That took me by total surprise!! And they are very convincing with the things they say! No matter what it is they will have you convinced it's the best thing for you and it's perfectly alright w/ their parents. Yeah, kids do that in the US and probably world-wide (where it's relevant, anyway) but these kids here are much better at it. In the states, you KNOW that's what they're doing but here the level of intelligence (i.e. street smarts) and the confidence w/ which they speak is a much more effective and stealthy combo! It's unsettling!
But, getting back to the polite and proper adults, yes, it MUST be true that they got shipped off to some remote part of the Isle of Man and were duly processed into the kind, etiquette-minded creatures I see before me today. The thing about that is that it seems fake to me. When people are "too nice" or "too polite" I get little alarm bells ringing in my head and have to wonder about their sincerity. Of course, I was raised in Texas where people are not so consistent w/ their niceties and it was much easier to tell the "baddies" from the "goodies". Here, at least for me, there is a cultural barrier that makes it a tad more difficult to read people. In general, though, everyone (adult-sized and up) seems pretty nice and congenial.
And the thing we've all heard about the English and their tea . . . it's true! These people love them some tea, boy, lemme tell ya! Their thing is, "Pop over for a cuppa!" I love that! A "CUPPA"! When we first moved in and the movers were unloading the trucks, Mark, the "ringleader", was "joking" with me saying, "Have you got a kettle?" and, once he'd found the mugs, "Hey, Paul, look what I found!! Mugs!! What goes in mugs??!? TEA!!" He was funny although I had a difficult time understanding him at first because, well, the whole MUSHMOUTH thing and also I was so TOTALLY not expecting him to ask me about my "kettle". I don't do KETTLES!! If he only knew to whom he was talking!!! OMG!! As a matter of fact, I'd almost forgotten the difference b/w a teapot and a kettle so when he actually found our TEAPOT in one of the boxes I was a little nervous and perplexed. I kept thinking, "I can't put that on the stove and boil water in it, can I? Is that a KETTLE? I thought that was a TEAPOT!! Maybe it's some strange English dialect that I'm not aware of!" Stuff like that. They were a fun bunch, that crew. I felt sorry for Mark, though. He was the smallest of the bunch, short and slight but he could hold his own. Our mattress is a "California King" I think which means it's really thick as well as a big king. Our bedrooms are all upstairs and our stairwell is VERY NARROW!!! So narrow, in fact, that the designer of the house built the banister so that it could be removed in order to get anything upstairs!! The mattress barely fit through the doorway leading from the living area to the kitchen area which is right where the stairs are.
It took all 3 of the workers plus me helping from the bottom to SQUEEEEEEEZE the mattress up through the narrow stairwell. At one point, none of us thought we'd get it up there. It took us 15 minutes of pulling and straining and crushing poor Mark between the mattress and the wall (and sometimes the stairs themselves) to finally get it upstairs. Luckily it was only going to the first floor (here they call the "second floor" the "first floor" and the "first floor" the "ground floor"). Our house has 3 floors and the ground floor is split-level. The mattress made it in one piece but it was very slightly ripped in a few places. At first I thought the ripping sound was the ceiling about to crack from the pressure of the mattress. That's how tight a squeeze it was! Mark asked me how long we planned on living here and was VERY relieved when I told him for many years! He said he'd keep note of our address and find some very qualified people to come get our mattress OUT!! He was staying clear of the whole thing!!
That's all for now. I have more to say about English life but it will have to wait until later. I have things to get done before the day is out! Love to you all!!!