Bright copper kettles, warm woolen mittens, emails from my sister...
Brown paper packages tied up with string...
You get the idea.
Today was mingin'. This obscure colloquialism, peculiar to the U.K., refers to something nasty, something I won't post in my blog because my mother reads it, but it suffices to say that the weather was lousy - cold, blowing rain.
Luckily, I was to be cheered and warmed by a happy surprise when I opened my email.
I don't have a car, so I walk everywhere. This is a vast improvement over my situation in America, where I do have a car and don't walk anywhere. In retrospect, it seems so strange that when I was seventeen, I wanted a car so badly, a car was freedom. Now, I have a car, and freedom is not having to use it, living within walking distance of work and grocery stores.
Right now, I'm staying at the home of my very, very generous friend Roddy Graham. He lives in a gorgeous, well appointed flat that's about twenty minutes driving from the center of town. There's a bus stop not to far from the house and buses come by on the half-hour on Sundays. Today is a Sunday.
Carol doesn't like buses as a general rule, so when it came time to buy groceries, we walked. It's only a few miles, half an hour or forty minutes. Sneaky Edinburgh made us think it was going to be a dry day, however, and then had the audacity to start raining while we were making our purchases.
The walk back was miserable and wet. I climbed the stairs with this enormous rucksack filled with groceries - and sat down to check my email.
What did I find?
An email from Mara, my sister. She lives in Israel and if you're reading my blog, then you may already have read her blog.
Well, it warmed me to the core. It's always nice to hear from folks and it made me really happy to hear from my sister.
Comments
Hahaha! Funny to think I was sitting here longing for Edinburgh (my weather was, quite frankly, a bit sunnier than yours), and you were there longing for anything but cold, cranky weather... I love you, dude!
Posted by: Mara | February 2, 2004 6:20 AM
I'm constantly posting several months too late. Will anyone see this? Anyway this entry just confirms what a great catch Carol is.
Axioms are mortal,
politics is mortal,
poetry is mortal,-
good manners are immortal
Stefan Themerson "The Mystery of the Sardine"
Posted by: Mark Fojas | March 19, 2004 8:37 AM