'ello all.
As usual, I'm apologising for being absent once again, but I don't get letters from ANY of you while you are on vacation, so suck it. (except Anna. She writes letters. Sorry Anna.)
Anywhining, I'm in Limeyland with the Limey from July 25-August 11. And can honestly say I needed it. You stay in a city as big as Moscow long enough, and you start to forget what nature really looks like. Of course this is no nature I ever knew. Growing up on the Canadian prairie, you read your little nusery rhyme and fairy tale books, and see rolling green hills, vines climbing everything, cliff faces, bright flowers everywhere, heavy windswept trees, maybe even a few castles and while everything is vaguely familiar, it might as well be Mars for as much as it resembles southern Manitoba.
But it's just all based on southern England. So for me, what is "just like Mary's Quite Contrary's garden" is, for the Limey, "the front yard." That ivy-covered single lane "straight out of Robin Hood?" That's the "a shortcut." And the quaint, colourful townhouses winding up cobbled, hilly lanes at impossible angles? Well, there "should be a post (office) somewhere around here, shouldn't there?"
But he's loving being home and I'm loving a change in scenery. Not to mention hearing "thank-you" from shopkeepers and seeing smiling strangers again. Though believe it or not it actually took getting used to. In Moscow, the British stewardess welcomed us onto the plane with a big smile and a "Good morning-How are you?", and I blankly stared at her for what must have been a full 10 seconds wondering her prioblem was, before remembering that that used to be normal for me once up on a time. Funny what you get used to...
From London we bussed to Wales, to the capital Cardiff, where they shut down the main road on Saturday nights to accomodate all the people out partying. True story. Between that and the beautiful scenery (and our great hosts, Tom, Clare, and the puppies) I can't say enough good things about it.
We are now in Cornwall with his folks, where we attended a family wedding, and are now just chilling out, doing Britishy things. I hope to learn to roll a hoop down a country lane with a stick and get in a pub fight, since so far as I know, that is what the English do. And I'm learning a lot about England, which isn't saying much since until about a month ago I didn't know Nottingham and Locksley were real places. No joke.
The Limey also took me to a pub that used to be a hangout for real live pirates, The Jamaica Inn. What is (maybe) the only hotel in Bodmin filled with the ghosts of swashbucklers, smugglers, whores, and Daphne DuMaurier characters. I guess he knows my love of all things dark, seedy, and yet still educational...
And my mum sent an e-mail about renewing my health insurance. Timely since in just two weeks I have ingested clotted cream, black pudding, Cornish pasties, an array of plain/pastry coated/bacon-wrapped sausages, Yorkshire pudding, Welsh rarebit, and an unholy volume of pints and chips (there, Limey, I finally didn't call them fries.) Expatriate health insurance covers triple bypass surgery, right?...
