Bravery in the Chilterns

There is a lot of talk in England nowadays about the failure of ordinary people to take action when they encounter criminal or thuggish behaviour. The newspapers bemoan the way that people avoid getting involved when witnessing abusive behaviour in the street (not like the old days, they cry). Perhaps people avoid involvement because much is made of the rare times when people confront these criminals and are murdered as a result.

Well, today on my train coming home, three horrible young men got on and began swearing, threatening girls, and slamming the wall. People watched out of the corners of their eyes, pretending to be very absorbed in what they were reading or listening to so that they would not be next. The worst of the men reeked of booze and stared me down when I stood up to get off the train at my stop. Here comes the bravery bit: a middle aged woman stood up right next to him, pulled out her mobile phone and took a picture of his face. "What you taking my picture for?" he asked with a threatening sneer.
"I wanted a picture of your pretty face," she said primly.

He blocked the doors for a moment when the train stopped, and I wondered if he would take her phone or refuse to let both of us off, but he stepped aside finally. It is sometimes the people that you wouldn't expect, the unassuming ones, the middle-aged women, who will step up and do the brave thing when it needs to be done. Lady with the mobile phone, I salute you.

Frogger

I screamed when I saw this sign as we drove through a local market town on Sunday.

I wonder exactly how many frog casualties there were before the authorities got together and posted this? Were the streets routinely littered with the fallen corpses of slow and careless frogs
before they took action? And where does one procure such an object?

I'm guessing that cautious motorists now slow down and scan the road for any sign of amphibian crossing, patiently waiting for the frogs to complete their dangerous journey to the other side. Either that, or they stare at the sign as we did, eyes agog.

Yum, it's disgusting!!!

Marmite: a quintessentially English food? I don't remember what first possessed me to try Marmite. It is a thick brown salty slightly yeasty spread. Maybe I thought it would broaden my life experience, like trying drugs or speaking French. It's . . . not bad (to my taste buds). I actually buy it and even eat it sometimes.

Leave it to the English to create an advert that shows people retching in response to the taste of the product they are flogging (see below). Wow! Not only does the smell of Marmite make some people retch, it will even make a beautiful woman lose her sex appeal. Try it!

Merry Easter

This island has some funky weather. Ain't never see snow - not a speck all winter - then spring rolls around, the daffodils are blooming, and here it comes. Merry Easter.

It's always funny to hear the hysterical news reports of wild weather and motorist chaos followed by a description of the snow, not in inches, but in millimeters.

Welsh Cheese

We are having a county food fair in the village over the Easter weekend. It is, as they say, the most fun the village has seen since the war. Large white tents are set up in the park, and camper vans have been parked on the grass since Thursday.

We bought strawberry jam in a bear jar, some soggy Italian olives, and a delicious Welsh goats cheese. That Welsh cheese is some good stuff - I highly recommend. It was almost worth the £3.90 adult ticket to walk through the tents. Oh, I almost forgot about the scraggly celebrity chef who demonstrated how to cook eggs inside meatballs (an appetizer?) before trying to get off with the girl running the dried pineapple stand.

A Hottie

I never used a hot water bottle before I came to England. My mother had a plug-in electrical heating pad for when we were sick. I'm sure that hot water bottles must exist somewhere in the US, but when I was recently describing one to my American friend, she got the wrong end of the stick and thought that it was meant to be drank from, like a thermos.

Today is freezing cold despite the sunshine, so I may get one last use out of my hottie before spring arrives. My husband's mother sometimes warm the beds for her family with hot water bottles in winter, and there's something very comforting about it. Heat the kettle, fill up the rubber bottle, 'burp it', then slip the fuzzy cover on. It is a nice, cheap, immediate source of heat. Especially useful when we lived in a place that was heated by only a small coal fireplace and some electrical heaters (summer was freezing - we moved out before winter came).

The cover, which is furry and doglike, was bought for me by my husband when I was jonesing for a dog. Now that we have a dog, we sometimes leave him with the hot water bottle if he seems cold.

The Sweet Smell

We use these poo bags when we take the corgi out, and what I really love is that their designer has made a real effort. Sure, he's just creating the packaging for little plastic bags used to pick up shit, but he's really run away with it. First the slogan: "Number two bags for your number one dog." It's catchy, yet so accurate! Then we've got a pug wearing sunglasses, whose doggie brain is apparently not too busy thinking about eating or sniffing wee to consider the environmental impact of his feces. Finally, there's the dog in the upper left-hand corner. He makes me feel a little uncomfortable. I'm not exactly sure what's wrong with him, but he makes eye contact with this pained expression. And he's sweating - or panting. I can just imagine the company's CEO: "It's perfect! That's exactly what people want to see when they're buying bags to pick up poo."


So, we're pretty responsible about picking it up, but unfortunately there's this one field where we walk that is absolutely filled with the stuff. This wasn't a problem until recently. For some reason, after months of perfect behaviour, our corgi has discovered the unique pleasures of rolling in poo. At first it just happened once in a while. We like to walk him off the lead, and he was always very responsive when we called him back to us. That is, until he became addicted to diving into piles of the smelly stuff. Suddenly we were powerless. Dog cookies lost their appeal when he was faced with a pile of poo. Horse manure was worse - he would roll until it was embedded into every fibre of his fur. And here's the thing: if we tried to call him away, he would look at us and I swear to God, he'd laugh at us before diving back in.

I told him I wouldn't let him off the lead anymore if he kept it up, and things seemed to be getting better. I carry a little bit of chicken in my pocket to keep him keen, but today, the moment I turned my back, he threw himself to the ground and rolled about, and he just seemed to be enjoying himself so much that I couldn't fault him.