{"id":537,"date":"2007-10-07T09:10:00","date_gmt":"2007-10-07T09:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hobbitsabroad.com\/?p=537"},"modified":"2009-10-31T17:19:55","modified_gmt":"2009-10-31T17:19:55","slug":"random-notes-and-errata","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hobbitsabroad.com\/?p=537","title":{"rendered":"Random Notes and Errata"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are many things I have discovered, many things that I need to tell you. They are in a grab bag of thoughts, mental detritus set aside in a place I think, “Ooh, I should tell someone that. And so here you are and here I go.<\/p>\n

FYI: There is a mail strike going on.The stack of stamped post cards I planned on sending to you are sitting, because I have no place to put them. The card for Ruth, recovering from surgery, the note of sympathy to her husband; the books, the short stories for contests, the manuscript to return to my editor, the gifts for my sibs, including uniquely UK candies (I mean, wine gums. Yet they contain no actual wine? Plenty of suspicious gelatin, though.) — all of these things sitting in drifts around the house, waiting. I’m all for supporting the people against the establishment — Go Postmen! — but right now the strike is filling me with a tiny but growing shriek of “Aaaaaargh!”<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Another small item of information: Envelopes are different here. I haven’t had to use many, as we’ve mainly confined our bills to direct deposit, and our business dealings to telephone and internet, but we had to pick up a couple of envelopes a week or so ago. I looked at them, figured out how they worked, and then promptly tried to only pull down one flap to seal the letters in. No. Pull one pre-gummed flap up<\/i>, pull one flap down<\/i>. Not so hard, but it’s counterintuitive for me, as both flaps are bent down, and it makes me smile every time…<\/p>\n

FYI: There is something to be said for haggis, I’m sure, but not by me. Haggis is one of those obvious<\/i> foods that everyone hears about as a specialty of Scotland and then cringes and rolls around and says “Eeew!” and “Ooh” and vows never to eat. Well, no one minds; people who like haggis just figure there’s more for them, people who don’t can rest easy with their chips. Haggis, I’ve found, is one of those things like turkey at Thanksgiving; unless it’s Robert Burns Day, not many people have it on their everyday menus – at least not here in the city, although it’s on the menu at touristy restaurants we pass. But what we have<\/i> found on many menus – at snack trucks (what we might call a ‘Roach Coach’ in the U.S.) and sandwich shops we’ve passed is the word ‘Bovril” on the menu.<\/p>\n

After saying the words back and forth to each other for a couple of weeks, we finally remembered to look it up while we were thinking about it. It’s a slippery word, it is — Bovril. It reminds me of bovine, and ‘boll weevil,’ all run together. At any rate — we looked it up. And it was Marmite and Vegemite all over again. Only Bovril has some kind of beef extract in it, which can be drunk as (the ubiquitous in British novels) beef tea. <\/p>\n

Now, this is a serious question — I’d like to know why Americans haven’t got a national taste for yeast paste foods. And no, it’s not because Americans make healthier choices – we’re probably twice as salt-addicted as the UK, Australia and NZ and Canada where these things are relished. Is it because of the UK’s link with food processing, or producing war foods? Is it because… ? What? I don’t get it. I really don’t. Bovril. Hm.<\/p>\n

Is it me, or does this coffee shop in Central Station look too much like another one? I mean, do their beans come from Seattle?! <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The other day it seemed that this right-side-driver’s-seat thing had finally sunk into my brain. On the freeway, people merge in nicely. The roundabouts, while still somewhat confusing, are driven by the cabbies with an air of ‘what the heck, just jump in,’ and I think we’ve got the hang of the signaling — mostly. A gentleman has even offered D. the use of his car (dear, sweet, generous and completely delusional Englishman…), and so, we feel it is only a matter of time before we’ll be able to wrestle with and win through the UK roads.<\/p>\n

Maybe one of us will. The other<\/i> of us still can’t figure out from which direction the bus is coming, despite the fact that the bus shelter has an ADVERTISEMENT on one wall, making it opaque, and leaving the other clear to see the approaching traffic. No, she simply steps beyond the advertisement, and scans the road… and jumps, as the buses pull up behind<\/i> her, gears grinding and brakes squealing…<\/p>\n

There are tons of other things I meant to tell you, I’m sure, but they’ll have to wait. The sun is shining, which means I must throw some laundry in immediately to take advantage of the puddle of sun on the living room floor and position my laundry rack in order to speed drying. Air drying leaves all of our towels with quite an exfoliating effect, but we certainly don’t have to iron our jeans and cords anymore!<\/p>\n

– D & T<\/i><\/p>\n


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There are many things I have discovered, many things that I need to tell you. They are in a grab bag of thoughts, mental detritus set aside in a place I think, “Ooh, I should tell someone that. And so here you are and here I go. FYI: There is a mail strike going on.The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hobbitsabroad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hobbitsabroad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hobbitsabroad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hobbitsabroad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hobbitsabroad.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=537"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hobbitsabroad.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hobbitsabroad.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hobbitsabroad.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hobbitsabroad.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}