It has been a while.
What, you may be wondering, have I been doing since I fell off the Blogosphere?
I’m tempted to steal a great line from Philip Roth and say ‘growing a penis’. Relax. I didn’t. I gained a bit of weight, but in the conventional way.
I think I just got tired of blogging.
And, truth be told, the joie de vivre of living in England sort of wore off.
Not that I’m unhappy or anything. I’m still having a fantastic adventure. But my day to day life became…well… my day to day life and it didn’t seem really newsworthy or especially funny.
But as shit happens, as they say, and I find myself musing “that would make a memorable blog”, I decided to dust off ‘Oh, to be in England’ and recommence sharing my thoughts.
The cast of colourful characters has changed, along with my spelling. (Curse British Spellchecker! I got a new laptop.) The characters are colorful, which is a polite way of saying ‘strange’.
So, let’s recap in 60 seconds (if you read fast). I’m still doing Tea Lady duty on Tuesdays. I’m still working at the Bookshop on Thursdays and another Bank Manager has a little Jeano doll with pins in it since I do the cashing up. I’m still on the newsletter team at shul and now I’m the synagogue’s Public Relations person. I’m still working for JDavid.
I went on a fabulous cruise to the Med and actually entered Italy on my magical Passaporti Italiano for the very first time. While I was there, I went to Colli a Volturno and visited my famiglia. I went to Brittany, to Calais and to Germany. (No kidding; I went to the G-place and lived to tell the tale.) Anecdote: Dead Jerry was not pleased with that last one. I was minding my own business playing Texas Hold’Em on my computer when one of the shelves in the curio cabinet broke and my menorah came flying out and sailed across the room. I didn’t make that up.
My loyal team and I did our fifth annual Traditional American Thanksgiving Dinner in Aid of Sam Beare and it was another huge success. We raised lots of £’s and $’s.
I hosted my annual Festa di Independenza barbecue, which as you all know, always occurs coincidentally around the Fourth of July, and it didn’t even rain. Of course, I’d borrowed two huge marquees from Hazel—the Weather Service was predicting monsoons. And people even took off their coats! It must have been at least 50 degrees Fahrenheit for about fifteen minutes. The Festa gets bigger every year. I think about 45 people turned up to chow down some Jews (Hebrew National hotdogs) muled in specially for the occasion.
The Americans invaded during the Olympics, and not just the athletes. Grandson Zachary and two friends visited for several days during their High School Graduation Grand Tour. Gee, I have a little house.
I exercised my brain by going to Limmud, Jewish Learning, twice. Once for five days at the University of Warwick in the English countryside and at a one-day program in London.
I’ve seen lots of shows in the West End and locally and been to a couple Do’s at my neighbourhood American Embassy. I made a new friend there and she will certainly be turning up in the blog. Her name is Kandice and she’s a Philly Girl too. How cool is that? She’s an Eagles fan as well (that’s been hard to maintain this season) and we got together quite a few times to watch the game. She craftily steals the signal right from the Linc or wherever and it appears on her TV. Her partner, Nick, was quite appalled at how ladies from Philadelphia curse when Vick gets intercepted for the fifth fucking time.
Speaking of the Eagles, one of my Christmas pressies from Cheeseboy was a book entitled ‘100 Things Eagles Fans Should Know and Do Before They Die’. Although I, personally, have already been arrested at the Vet and kicked out of Texas Stadium that day Buddy Ryan benched McNabb in the third quarter, I’ll share some of the other 98 things in the blog as we go along.
And speaking of the Eagles some more, Kandice, Adriana and I went to see ‘Silver Linings Playbook’ last week in Walton. Kandice and I wore our Jerseys for the occasion. (The people in the cinema had no clue how bloody awful the Eagles are right now.) We got lots of comments and questions. I loved the movie – Bradley Cooper is so damned cute – and loved the Philly scenes. I rang Karen at midnight to gush “remember when we went to visit Dead Jerry and Matt at Har Yahuda cemetery? We had scrapple for breakfast at the Llanerch Diner first? Well, Bradley Cooper and the crazy girl go to the Llanerch Diner in the movie!” She wasn’t real impressed.
Speaking of Scrabble, I’m still playing a lot. Wait a sec. I read that last paragraph. I was talking about Scrapple. Close enough. I play on-line with Scary Fairy and Toots and anonymous people from places like Idaho. And I’m into Words with Friends now. I have another new friend called Ray who comes over to my house once a week from Camberley to play Scrabble. Really. He lives in Camberley. But he doesn’t know the Turd.
My friend Allison died, and Hester, after a horrific battle with cancer. Mike, from the Bookshop, is fighting his own losing battle with cancer right now. Other friends moved away, or drifted away. And after the gigantic row over I’m still not sure what, the Trailer Trash friends have been permanently deleted. But I took their advice and made new friends from the right sort of people.
Well, I think that pretty much brings you up to date on what’s been happening.
Oh, yeah. I did my usual volunteering at the Salvation Army on Christmas Day. And Karen and Cheesy came for our annual Boxing Day dinner. A small complaint: Lou wouldn’t let me make a proper Christmas meal, i.e. Ravioli so we had a ‘British’ one, a Roast Dinner. Ugh. That’s all I’m going to say about that.
However, Cheesy overwhelmed me with a Kindle Fire HD for Christmas so I forgive him about the brussel sprouts. I know I swore I’d never go electronic with books. I’ve sworn a lot of things that I had no intention of doing/keeping. Just add another one to the list if you’re keeping score at home. I’ve already read three books on Chooch (my Kindle’s name).
Anyway, I’m wishing you all a happy, prosperous 2013. Here’s to a great and (hopefully) entertaining year of blogs.
Oh, to be in England 