UK Day 1– Notes Made to Self During 24 hour Travel Day from Hell:

• Air Canada is still serving Pasta Dots in a blood sauce and the flight attendants still insist on personally ironing each piece of lettuce before serving it.

• Not all English couples of a certain age are called June and Tony. Some, as seen below,  are called Alfie and Marge, and the rest are Keith and Barbara.

• It is not necessary to eat all the Lemon Drizzle Cake in one sitting.
  
• Remember it is a packet of crisps, not a bag of chips. If asking for bag of chips, do not make face when presented with a newspaper triangle of french fries.
• Do not make rude face of disgust when asked if would like mushy peas with food. Remember some people actually like them.
• Remember not to laugh openly at English village names. The residents of Snidford, Beanacre, and Cludsworth like their village names, thank you very much.
• Add ‘Trevor’ to list of silly dog names.
• If can’t understand accent of man at market, just smile politely, put cauliflower back down, and stick to generalized comment like “Yes, I expect it will” or “ Next Tuesday” or “No,  I haven't but I hope to soon’”. Turn slowly, then run away,
• Consider buying clothing in a colour other than black. There are other colours available.
• Try not to annoy Sat Nav lady in rental car by ignoring her. If she says to go back and forth over a bridge while singing If You Wanna Be My Lover by the Spice Girls before getting out of car and doing a fox dance backwards besides a small stream and then lighting your shoe laces on fire, you must do all of these things or risk being purposefully sent to the middle of a field where your car will be surrounded by a family of angry badgers to whom you will be forced to explain your position on Brexit.
• Do not comment to dog owners that this sign seems to suggest that owners must crouch-walk after their dog while using a spray bottle of  cleaner on what appears to be their dog’s bum as they will likely not see the humour in  this. (The owners, not the dogs. I’m sure the dogs love it…)

• Be grateful for cozy cottage in middle of nowhere even if it did take 24hours to get there.

• Be especially grateful for welcome basket of crisps, lemon drizzle cake, cookies, frozen pizza and half-baked rolls, left by lovely host, as that’s what we had for dinner. (The food, not the host…)

• Sleep the sleep of the dead, until woken by chickens practicing Extreme Clucking and pigeons practicing Extreme Cooing at 5am. Briefly consider going outside in pjs and taping all their beaks shut until at least 7am. Find ear plugs instead and go back to sleep…

Stay tuned for more tomorrow (whenever that is – I don’t even know when tomorrow is anymore I’m that tired. Sorry, knackered. That’s British for tired) including our visit to several Very Old Buildings and the much-anticipated arrival of Travis.

Thanks for reading,

Cheers,

Jane