I promise to stop talking about supermarkets at some point. You’d think from my entries that I’ve done nothing but wander round produce aisles from the moment I arrived until now; but I have, honest. It’s just … you know, the little things that make you realise how far you are from home.

And because of this, I am, at present, an advertiser’s wet dream.

When out and shopping, all the things I would usually pick up have changed or disappeared. All the familiar labels; most of the familiar concepts or flavours. Gone. I’m a new-born baby in consumer terms, ready to have all new products and favourites and ideas impressed upon me. I’m therefore an blank page for any passing advertiser to scribble their logo on.

I watch television in awe, repeating the crazy names people give products here, singing jingles. When in the supermarket, I pick things up, knowing I’ve heard of them but not quite knowing why. Mostly because I like the name.

My beloved, who is used to my naivety, susceptibility to suggestion and general detachment from reality, generally knows what will happen.

If we are shopping together, we will talk about things and therefore become rational on the subject.
If, however, I go shopping alone or we split up to cover the supermarket faster and I somehow mistakenly get left with the trolley, some irrational stuff is going to happen and there’s not really any way around that.

It’s not a BAD thing, it’s just a bit of a random thing. And an advertiser’s wet dream.

A conversation at the checkout, if there have been at least several periods where I’ve been left unattended with the trolley might sound like this:

“Swiffle?”
“Swiffle!”

“Plunk?”
“Plunk!”
“Do you know what it does?”
“No! PLUNK!”

“Paul Newman Salad Dressing?”
“He died”
“So you bought his salad dressing? He’s not going to make any money from it now”
“Yes. In memorandum”
“In memoriam”
“Yus.”

“Reeses Peanut Butter Crunch?”
“Yes! It’s sweeties, but also cereal. AND it is a good source of something. Calcium. Or something. Vitaminsomething.”

“Aunt Fanny’s Granola?”
“HA! Fanny!”

“You’ve bought five different chilli sauces.”
“I don’t know what I like anymore. That one has a giraffe on it!”

“Kaboom?”
“Kaboom! KABOOM!”
“sigh”

It’s BRILLIANT. It’s like fantasy shopping in a whole new made-up world, where things don’t really exist but have a silly name as if they do.

And I know that this is really fleeting and silly, and that soon these brands and boxes will be as familiar to me as any I’ve known, and I won’t think about it any more….

But that’s why I cherish this time. And make a big deal about it and want to point it out and write about it and live it. Because the routine becoming remarkable is something we should always note, no? That’s all this blog has ever been about.

And now I have it handed to me. In spades.

(more…)

I promise I’ll talk about something other than supermarkets and shopping, and I will, I’ve been watching WAY too much television and goodness knows I have things to say about that; and the other day I went to a second hand book sale where they offered you a shopping trolley at the door (HA! Mistake! My arms nearly fell off when we had to walk six blocks to the bus stop with the result) and then on Friday night to a Presidential debate party at a local bar (which I then wrote about for work. No idea how that went down, probably as well as a poo in the municipal swimming baths, people hate me when I try and write about things I don’t seem clever enough for) and then yesterday to the baseball and today to our friendly local neighbourhood gay leather street party.

And last night I dislocated my shoulder in my sleep while turning over. I so should have had that operation I was supposed to have 12 years ago but forgot to turn up for. I’ve found something I want to volunteer for, but don’t want to say anything in case they reject me. And I’m doing something next weekend for work that sounds more ridiculous every time I mention it. I’ll tell you later.

And some other things: things that are starting to bug me a bit, things that are wonderful (like one of my favourite people from Iona-days turning out to be about to spending a lot of time visiting San Francisco, coincidentally) and lots and lots of other things.

ANYWAY.

These are things I am going to write about I promise, only I’m also trying to get back into the swing of working, and at weirdy-time-remove, so I am just typing this because it has been too many days I haven’t updated, and I will Every Day This Week, I promise. Cross heart and swear to post pictures of the cats every day if I lie until this really does just turn into a cat blog and nothing else.

But in the meantime, and just on the topic of shopping one more time, it is worth noting that … oh screw it I’ll just put it in a fresh new entry.

Finally! I have discovered what you buy for the person who has everything!

Because even IF they have the toy cars already, they probably don’t have these:

Just think of the fun you could have with these!

You could. Um. Put them on your own car, and pretend you were a giant! You could pose them all over your laptop and pretend you were the prize exibit of a laptop showroom. You could… um … no, I’m out.

I have no idea what these are for. Perhaps they are just “ornamental”. Meaning, of course, not ornamental at all. Meaning objects of complete horror and pointlessness without even going into any dull feminist arguments.

Which is, by the way, the proper use of quotation marks in this context, I believe. Whereas this:

So, what? You mean it’s not REALLY a private party but you’re pretending it is because it’s actually something a lot more sinister?
Is it a euphemism for something?
Or are you just a moron?

Not MY middle of the night, of course. Your middle of the night. Or not. Depending on where you are. Or aren’t. What?

Anyway. I have to watch the Emmys tonight to report back on them tomorrow. For reasons too long and complex and dull to explain (they make my brain hurt a bit), I’m not liveblogging them for work this time, but because I need to get back in practice I’m going to write them up here on this blog as they’re going on - because that way it gets me back in practice, gives me the discipline to keep going because it’s live on the internets, and give me something I can edit into a report after.

Don’t worry, I might make a separate blog for these kinds of things - though most of the proper stuff on the subject will always be over at guardian.co.uk, because I get paid for it there - and if you aren’t interested in TV writing at all, then I advise you DO NOT read on from this point. I’ll put a pretty picture in the post above for everyone else to look at (that’ll be just about everyone, then) - this really is just mainly an exercise I need to do for myself right now.

(more…)

I want to thank you all for the true concern and loveliness you offered upon hearing the news that I was not only homesick, but that my homesick was playing out through the grief when faced with the sudden loss of sugar-free watered-down fruit-flavoured drinks.

Thank you, friends, for your sympathy, and your solidarity.

In addiction, many of you have sought to provide help by seeking to hook my up with purveyors of over-priced expat goods, and while this may be a useful tack for homesickness avoidance in times of dire need (I got sore-tempted by a wedge of pure imported Cotswold - double gloucester with chives and herbs - this evening at Wholefoods, I won’t deny it. But for reasons of cost, lard, and ’saving things till a special occasion’, I forewent it. Cheer my rectitude, friends. And also please stop me from saying things like ‘forewent’ before I skewer myself on one of Dickens’ rolling bones) … hang on, I’ve lost track of this sentence due to overuse of commas, brackets, wine and clauses (as usual), let me read back … ah, yes … I should not succumb.

Therefore I wanted to reassure you that everything is fine, and while my first homesiccup might have played out through a cordial medium, I am now dealing with it as one properly should: with weight, deference, and due reference to proper psychology.

That’s right, I am choosing to properly work through my loss with reference to the Seven Stages of Grief or the ‘grief cycle’ [as developed by a Swiss doctor called Kübler-Ross, who, let's face it, probably wasn't talking about squash at the time because she was talking about the terminally ill rather than soft drinks. Otherwise she would have called it the Seven Stages of Squief. Ot the Squief Cycle. Damn, but that's a much better name ....]

The Seven Stages of Squief
How I lost the squash; I felt the loss; I moved through it.

1. The Shock stage: Initial paralysis at hearing the bad news.
“No. What? There’s no squash down that aisle either? What do you mean? Well where is it? Look again. No, I’ll just wait here.”

2. The Denial stage: Trying to avoid the inevitable.
“Well they must have it at another shop then. It’s not like NO ONE’s going to stock squash, is it? A ha ha ha ha ha. Of course not!”

3. Anger stage: Frustrated outpouring of bottled-up emotion.
“No one?! They just don’t have it at ALL in this country? How can any country exist without. I mean, many many families that make up this great country have originally come from the same place as us, surely they thought to bring squash and try to, you know, instil it? But no. No fucking squash. None at all.”

4. Bargaining stage: Seeking in vain for a way out.
“Well we’ll order some on the internet from one of those expat places. HOW much? Don’t be ridiculous. There has to be some other way ….”

5. Depression stage: Final realization of the inevitable.
“… there isn’t? Oh. Oh bollocks.”

6. Testing stage: Seeking realistic solutions.
“Do we have any wine in the fridge? Oh, well, just some water then, I suppose”

7. Acceptance stage: Finally finding the way forward.
“Oh are you? … Yes, we need some more milk … Both kinds, yes … And can you get another watery filtery thing? And some frozen concentrated juice cans? Oh, and some wine. Obviously. Lovely, thank you…”

So you see?
There IS life after squash and yes, it’s been a sudden loss, and a tragic one, in many ways. But we’re working our way through it.

So thank you so much for your support. As we all know, it’s often not until we lose a loved one that we realise how much we loved them. So thanks for helping work through it … I’m around stage six or seven now. One day, I might even move on to a new loved one.

But trust me, it won’t be Kool Aid.
Or from anywhere that spells ’shop’, ’shoppe’.
It’s just a matter of grammiciple.

It is certainly not a criticism, just just one of those observationisms (and something that keeps confusing me on walks) but…

I appears live in a city with:

a) An awful lot of people who walk around the streets mumbling, making sudden shouting noises and talking nonsense to themselves and

b) An awful lot of people who walk around the streets mumbling, making sudden shouting noises and talking nonsense into mobile phone hands-free kits.

Sometimes it is very difficult to tell the difference between them.
It is a great leveller.
Hurray!

People said, before I left, that the thing that made me homesick would be something completely unexpected; something I wouldn’t even have considered.

Rubbish, I said. I have considered everything. That is one of the great things about anxiety-based depression: no one can ever accuse you of not having thought something through because you’ve not only thought it through, you’ve wasted a hell of a lot of time and energy thinking through every possible alternative scenario, the ramifications and consequences of each and the correct way of dealing with every single one, no matter how unlikely.
It’s brilliant that way. If somewhat time-consuming.

So I thought I had covered absolutely everything. Mainly, I thought, almost everything would be covered by the fact that food-wise, if you can’t get it in at least one American supermarket, it probably doesn’t exist. In this society, choice is paramount and the customer is king. I like this. I was well aware that I wasn’t exactly going to go wanting for my favourite yoghurt, because not only would they have that, but 12 other ones like it, available in fat-free, low-fat, extra-added-vitamin and fibre-enhanced varieties.

Within the first four days I had found in shops within blocks of my house all my favourite staple things (apart from Marmite and Vegemite, which I am working on) and a billion other things that will either replace staple foods from the UK, or just be new ones. That’s great. I am loving it all. Really.

But there is one thing.

Just one thing. Please, dearest US readers, please understand I think your country and your shops marvellous, and your people welcoming and your choices more than adequate. But seriously. You’ve managed all these wonders and come so far and done it all without squash? HOW?

Not squash the vegetable, no.
Squash the drink.
No, not a drink made from or tasting of the vegetable ’squash’. Just squash.
Squash.
*sighs*

It was a huge iceberg of homesickness that hit me at the end of last week, and it was carried on a giant wave of squash.

Every time I walked through the aisles I would be counting things off. Juice, yes, lovely. Fizzy drinks, super, brilliant; every possible kind of fizzy drinks in sugarless form? Super-awesome. Now. If I could just get some squash, then …

…. what do you mean, no squash? It’s fruit or peppermint flavoured concentrate or cordial, available in sugary and no-sugar form, and occasionally with barley. It comes in bottles of a litre or two litres and occasionally bigger (let’s not talk about the litre thing for the moment, we will leave that to another time) and once you have a bottle you can dilute it to taste, but you’ll get pints and pints of lovely refreshing squash out of one bottle and … well, let’s face it, I - no, we - drank a lot of squash. It is easy to carry back from the shops without a car, and it’s just… It’s just. I can’t believe I’m trying to explain why squash should be a reasonable proposition. It just IS.

It’s SQUASH. How can you NOT have squash? This is the state of mind I found myself in after the Nth fruitless (ha!) journey to yet another supermarket where we found things that were vaguely similar (no, Kool Aid is not the same, sadly) that I finally got swept under the wave of squash that had been chasing me all week.

“I just want some lemon squash. That’s all I want” I said to myself, quietly, on my armchair, and started crying.

“By the time the pilgrims reached Plymouth Harbour they must have finished all the Vimto. In 400 years they haven’t managed to replicate the technology needed to create squash.”

I twittered, or something like.

“Is that like juice? We have many good drinks. And all kinds of soda!”

Came the eminently sensible voice of someone on in my twittering community.

“Your juices are unbeatable in variety and quality, and your fizzy drinks are more than a girl could ever wish for. Right now, however, I really, REALLY want some squash.”

I whined.

She supplied me with the quote that tipped me over the edge when she directed me to Wikipedia and its assertion that:

‘It is worth noting that the concept of squash is generally met with confusion when put to North Americans (often to the surprise of UK citizens to whom squash made up a large part of their liquid intake, especially as children). There seems to be no suitable equivalent beverage by which an understanding can be reached.’

NOTHING? I thought. NOTHING? I asked around and no, not in regular shops; not really no. I could import it, I could buy it at four times the price in ’special British shops’ but I didn’t want to. I don’t want to waste money on stupid squash, and I don’t want to waste stupid food miles on squash. I just want - and this is where the argument gets a bit more fuzzy - I just want there to BE squash, because it is a good thing and nice and I know British people are a bit over-squashy in their squashing, but seriously, why not? Why NOT have squash?

And I sat and I wept. I wept for supermarket own-brand sugar-free lemon squash. I wept for home and for the things I knew and felt comfortable with. I wept for my friends and my family, and the life I had built and a community I didn’t have to be shy around. I wept and wept and wept; I wept for the amazingness of everything new and the sadness at having the broken things (but broken and within my comfort zone) left behind. I wept for not knowing how things worked, and not understanding a different culture and its different priorities - not worse, just different. I wept at the overwhelmingness of new sounds and smells and not knowing what brand of coffee bean I liked anymore, but having 500 to choose from. I wept because there is a deluge of wonderful new experiences and I am scared that I am too cautious and shy to enjoy or appreciate them. I wept because I didn’t know when the bin goes out and I don’t know where the bus stops or where it goes. I wept because I am not that great with change, really. Though I am trying quite hard because I want this a LOT, for myself and especially for my beloved.

But I didn’t know I wept for those things.

As far as I was concerned, I wept for squash.

My Beloved woke up from a nap and found me in a little puddle in the corner of my chair, still weeping. He wrapped me up in his arms and rocked me and asked me what was wrong.

It took a few minutes until he figured out I was mumbling “Squash. Squash. I just want some lemon squash. Why can’t they have squash?”.

And then, bless him, he managed to stop laughing for long enough to hug it out of me.

Coming soon, chapter two in the moving continent handbook: the seven stages of homesickness as particularly related to squash.

I HAVE BEEN BREAKING THE LAW!!!

Or at least I might have been. Well, technically. Or if not technically then at least nominally. Or Metaphorically. Possibly.

Anyway. I have mentioned quite recently thatMy Beloved collects small change. Or at least has a problem spending it. Perhaps, I sometimes wonder, he was a great billionaire in another lifetime, for spending anything of small denomination seems below him. Standing and counting out change at the till is for lesser men than my Beloved. Pity them!

Of course, he would say it’s a time-saving device. Which is a dull explanation.

Whatever, he comes home and scatters change like a magic change fairy. Wherever he sits, wherever he lies, wherever - ladies, please cover your eyes - he drops his troos, there shall change be scattered like oats. Little shiny oats.

Which was, you know, ok. Well, no, it clearly wasn’t, it drove me insane. There were at least three jars of one pences and two pences and five pences that I had quietly scooped up and deposited, and anything larger than that I would take when we went shopping together and count out at the till for groceries.

And only occasionally would it tip me over the edge. Only, perhaps, when hoovering, and when every stroke of the big sucky schnozzle was interrupted by me bending over to pick up some change from it’s path. And swear, most likely. Also when picking up clothes from the floor. And plumping cushions. And hanging clothes up (crikey, I sound terribly put upon and domestic, but it was only the pay off for being the person who didn’t have a three hour commute, I promise you) There was a moment of very colourful dust-allergy-fuelled temper-loss witnessed only by Twitter during the move, in fact:

“TUESDAY, 14.56pm: Scooping up laundry sends a shower of loose change flying; someone should feel lucky they’re at work today, otherwise they’d be eating it.”

She said, in typically ladylike fashion.

So yeah. Change. We had it.

We put it in the bank before we left. I sat and piled it up and bagged it and took it down there and it was more than £50 and that was very nice. It bought several bottles of wine to fuel the packing process. Which I drank most of. Obvs; it was only fair.

But still, I had no idea what that change-obsession was going to turn into, once we moved.

See, the problem here is not that the shrapnel is too small to bother with - though no, let me rephrase, the problem here is not ONLY that the shrapnel is too small to bother with - but that the other notes ALL LOOK THE SAME.

I mean, yes, it’s very nice money and someone, somewhere, has had the time saving and logical idea of making almost every single bill look pretty much the same, which is all well and good, but…

They’re all the same size!
They’re all green!
God bless them, it’s very democratic and reasonable - why should one note be more privileged or have highter standing from birth just because it has a higher value or is bigger or prettier or of a different colour?
No, say the federal bank of amerimoney! They should all be equal! They should all be equal and have an equal chance in the world, your wallet etc.

See? it is a beautiful ideology in theory, but when you live with My Beloved?

This means that instead of a one pound coin being the quickest thing to identify and pay with, it’s quickest for him to identify and pay with, say, a twenty dollar note, and then deal with the rest later.

And the problem is that these things don’t clank in the pocket. Or fall out easily. Or throw themselves around the floor the way the others do (don’t worry, we still have also spare change, not so much has changed about us in the last week).

And thus it’s much harder to notice when they go through the wash. Until you reach into the tumble-drying thing to try and work out if it has made your clothes dry to discover they’re not just dry, they’re making crumpling noises. And then you pull out a dollar note. And then another dollar note. And then five dollars. And then another dollar. And then some more dollars.

Basically, I have been laundering money.

You know, like the mafia.

I’m up to $93 so far, and have noticed that the only thing questionably legal about the practice of laundering money is that it makes it smell nice, but harder to fold.

You have to say to the lady in the shop “I’m sorry the money is all crumply, it’s been through the washing machine. And the tumble dryer”. And then she looks at you funny, and then hands you some gum or something from behind the counter because she couldn’t quite understand your accent. And then you have to buy that too, with another crumply dollar.

But that’s not illegal, I don’t think. Just annoying.
Annoying but minty fresh.

That should maybe be the new slogan for the mafia:
“The Mafia - yes, we may launder money; we’re annoying, but minty fresh”

(more…)

*and if not can someone tell the taxi driver we got back from the supermarket yesterday?

I was going to say something much more interesting and informative, but I have had a little collapse of the over-exhausted and slightly poorly kind, and have therefore been asleep for about 24 of the last 36 hours.

When awake, I have mainly been answering questions of a complex and automotive nature as I have experienced several taxi drivers I didn’t like at all over the last few days, and the only way to avoid them AND get to everywhere we would like to be able to get to, apparently, is to do it ourselves.

Yes! I will become a taxi driver!

No, well, I might just try driving around for a bit first, and besides, my visa means I can’t actually take paid employment within these shores, so I’d have to drive people around for free. So maybe I’ll just drive.

Neither of us drive. It isn’t a big environmental or lifestyle statement (although it is a small one, maybe) I just like public transport and have always lived in cities where the need to drive hasn’t been as pressing. However, here it would be useful to drive. So we will.

First, though, we both have to pass the theory test thing before we can take lessons, so I have been practising by taking sample tests all day.

I have discovered some very interesting and enlightening things. When approaching a rail crossing with the barriers coming down, it is better to stop and wait for the train to pass rather than speed up and hope you beat it, for example. Also, when turning left across an intersection into a road where a pedestrian is crossing, you should let them get to the other side before driving straight at them.

I am becoming an expert in all manner of lines, broken and unbroken and of various different colours, and can cheerfully tell you all manner of things about which way your wheels should be facing when parking on a hill, although not what the speed limit is, because no one seems to want me to know that.

My favourite thing I have learnt today, however, is the correct level of anxiety when approaching the top of a hill:

I’m not sure which I prefer, the idea of someone receiving a call at police headquarters from some kind of loon parked up on the side of a slope crying and wailing that there’s a hill and god only KNOWS what might be on the other side but they refuse to carry on over there without a police escort; or the idea of riding roughshod over the hill, beeping your horn like crazy and flashing your hi-beams like a mid-80s laser show. And possibly shouting “Yee ha!”

I chose the latter, obviously.

The first part in a series of guides for new British San Franciscans.

One word that you will probably have heard quite a lot in the build up to your move to San Francisco is the word ‘Earthquake’. People will say ‘Oooh, where they have the earthquakes!’ or “Wow, I heard they’re due a really big earthquake there sometime soon!” or something equally as helpful and entertaining.

And you’ll look at the flats you’re planning on renting from afar, and you’ll discount them with silly reasons like “A flat on the 38th floor, are you insane? I don’t even want to be up that high in a stable landscape” and you’ll imagine all these buildings waving like tall reeds in a hurricane, and wonder why anyone would be so crazy as to build so tall anywhere so shaky to begin with.

But when you arrive, you’ll realise that earthquakes are not so much of a thing. In fact, the cooler you are about earthquakes, the more you’ll fit in here. And it’s not actually that hard, as it turns out. While the earthquakes of your imagination might be all 70s terror films, the real ones are … well..

HOW TO TELL YOU ARE IN AN EARTHQUAKE

While sitting on the floor in your still sparsely-furnished flat, you might be talking about how you can hear the neighbours stomping about in the flat above, and then suddenly there might be a really BIG stomp. And you might be like ‘Jesus, are they having a flamenco class up there?’

And then the building might shake, and you might look at each other like ‘perhaps something else might be happening here’ and then you might wonder whether something else might be happening, like a truck perhaps might have hit the building, but then you realise that there might have been big noises and not just the feeling of the whole building moving one way and then juddering back into place so

HOW TO REALLY TELL YOU ARE IN AN EARTHQUAKE

You look at one another and say “What the fuck was that? Was that an earthquake?”
And then the other person says “I don’t know”, and then you, well …

HOW TO REALLY PROPERLY TELL WHETHER IT WAS AN EARTHQUAKE

You check twitter.

And on searching, you discover that everyone else was reporting an earthquake as well. And that it was about 4 on the ‘jesus christ there’s a fucking earthquake’ scale or ‘richter’, as it might be called, and that that was your very first earth quake.

WHAT A MINI-EARTHQUAKE FEELS LIKE

Not much, at first - you have no warning of it, and then suddenly everything moves, and then moves back again. In a litte earthquake, which is what so many of them are, the earth moves. So what?

The crazy bit, for me, was the feeling that I didn’t want to get up and walk across the room afterward because suddenly I couldn’t trust it to be the one thing I had always relied on it to be: solid.

It had just proved itself to be illogical, movable, shifting. I couldn’t stand up and walk across the room with the knowledge that the other side of the room was going to be in the same place when I got there.

_________________

Nothing fell off the wall (nothing was on the wall, yet) nothing broke, no one was hurt, bothing was damaged.

So I feel fine in saying - from a personal perspective - YAY! My first earthquake went VERY well.

Which is good, because I have an emergency plan and package, I just haven’t had time to put them in place yet.

Still though - when the earth moves for you, let me advise you; it ain’t that impressive. It’s just quite, quite freaky.

I understand that in many ways this is meant to be a sales pitch, but it just sounds quite violent. And hot.

I have these mental images of the delivery boy ringing the doorbell and then shoving the thing directly into your face shouting “EAT IT!!!” before leaving you with a smoking-hot sandwich sticking half out of your gob, confused and suffering 80% mouth burns.

Really, who wants food delivered directly to their mouth?

Unless you’re a toddler?

Or have no arms, of course: but is that then something you would want to pay a delivery food outlet to do for you?

Especially at that heat?

We don’t go in for grand redesigns around here, as you know as I’m too lazy a fan of classic design and the importance of building brand identity. However, as a mark of my move and while I’m somewhere other (here), my lovely seeeeeester has drawn a marvellous new background for my boat.

Anyone reading this post by some fancy ‘rss’ means won’t have a clue what I’m talking about, of course.

But she’s a marvel. And I miss her already.

Staying in a hotel the night before we flew was, can I just state for the record, one of the best ideas in the history of my good ideas. With everything done, packed, thrown away, cleaned and locked up, there was simply nothing to do. We got to the hotel showered, threw away our packing clothes (for one more item might have taken the bags over their weight) dressed in our finest - or at least cleanest) and sat looking at each other, suddenly with nothing to do until the morning.

Well, that’s a lie. We both had some work to do, but that makes us sound not as admirably organised. And the plan had been to go out for a final night’s dinner in London, but tiredness was washing over us, as well as some kind of encroaching lurgy that we were both trying to fight off, and there had been enough saying goodbyes already.

“We should eat” one of us grunted.
“Umph” said the other.
“Should we get room service?”
“Have you seen the price of it?”

This was a problem. Having managed to get a reasonable deal on an over-comfortable bed for the night, I had forgotten that everything in and around the room would be extortionately priced.

“There was a drive-thru McDonalds in the car park, I think?”
“T! We aren’t going to McDonalds on our last night in The UK. We’ll go downstairs to that brasserie thing.”
“Pffff!”
“Brasserie. Not brassiere. You big child.”

______________________

“Ah - that’s not quite right” my Beloved said to the waitress as she artfully swung the two plates down toward the table in front of us “One of us ordered pink peppercorn sauce - the other was a red wine sauce, I think”

“Oh!” said the waitress. She looked briefly at the two steaks in front of her, sitting disconsolately on a mound of chips, both of them with an unidentifiable smooth brown liquid in a bowl on the side.

“Sorry about that!” she said, and crossed her arms, so one steak + bowl of brown liquid got placed in front of me “Of course. I’ll go and get that changed right now”. She put the steak in front of him, removed the bowl of brown liquid and scurried off toward the kitchen … and then came back. She placed a new bowl onto his plate with a flourish. “There you are! Sorry about that!” she said, and ran away, slightly too quickly.

We looked down at the plates.

There was no disputing it - one of them must have been a red wine sauce, one a pink peppercorn sauce. It HAD to be so. We’d had one of them changed so surely it must be so. But on the plate was …

Wait. I have pictures.

“What does yours taste like?”
“Gravy”
“Peppery gravy?”
“Um. Yes. Yes, a bit. Is yours a bit winish?”
“Not really. I mean, I suppose. It’s also a bit peppery. It’s more, you know, gravyish”
“Yes.”

We sit and contemplate our food.

“This is gravy, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“The same gravy. Twice”
“Yesbut. But but… Why did she go and exchange it?”
“Shut up and eat your steak and gravy”

There is silent chewing.

“We should have gone to the McDonalds in the carpark”
“Oh, next time we are totally going to the McDonalds in the car park.”

“Mew”
“MEW”
“Roooooow”
“mew’
“MEAIOW”
“Rooeuiouow”

At least I *guess* that’s what they were saying all on the way over, because that’s certainly all they said for the first hour of arriving in the apartment.

The cats arrived. Both very hot, very confused, very vocal and not remotely dead. I was expecting them to be dead, I can’t deny it. I was so scared.

In fact, when the woman from the firm that was meant to be delivering them called unexpectedly, I was so scared I hid in the wardrobe while my beloved answered the phone (a duvet being unavailable to me at that time).

She rang not to say they were dead, but to say they were on their way. And then half an hour later, they arrived, and they ran out of their wooden crates and suspiciously strode around the flat, shouting, loudly. And panting. And generally looking very hot, very confused, dehydrated and quite pissed off, frankly.

We took them to where the new litter tray was, and showed them the water bowls and the food laid out in the bowls brought from the kitchen floor at home (the bowls, I mean, the ones that say ‘CAT’ and ‘RABBIT’ - see, I told you the fact our baggage wasn’t too heavy was a fucking miracle)

And they continued striding around, drinking a lot and shouting for the next hour or so. And then, at some point, they suddenly became ok with the fact that it was really us and everything was ok. The purring started, and the normal behaviour, and now Widget’s lying on the windowsill behind me, tired from chasing shadows around the room, and Squirrel’s perched on the very tallest thing she can find in the room - which is a two and a half foot tall suitcase, disappointingly for her, as we still don’t have any sodding furniture.

And that’s it. I’m going to have some strawberries and some sparkling Californian wine to celebrate having got here and not having any dead cats.

But I’m done with the diaryising now. Not the blogging, obvs. But the move-diary. The straight forward “And today I did this. And then I did this” because I don’t *really* do that. No, I’m afraid we’re back to the normal tiny stories and observations and musings and things.

Otherwise it’s all a bit un-private. And also I’m quite boring, day to day: “Waited in for a sofa to arrive. It didn’t so I made some coffee and then read the internets”. So back to normal service around here. Kind of.

Kind of normal service, but outsourced to California. And far, FAR more frequent.