By Lucy

Days in England: 1

I finally managed to drag myself out of my coma-like sleep at 8 AM on Thursday and Rich had made me an egg sandwich for breakfast. We needed to go shopping sooner rather than later; he had stocked up on tea for me, but not granulated sugar, among other things. He also had a great anxiety about leaving me home without me knowing where the stores or transit are. At nine we headed out.

It’s about a half an hour walk from there to the mall. It’s been noted several times that I walk fast, especially Rich, who walks slowly due to his disability, and the Vagabond, who has a limp. Rich has been making an effort to keep up with me when he really should be telling me to slow down. The walk was nice, despite the cutting sea breeze off the English channel. It might be a full ten degrees warmer than Barrie without a speck of snow in sight, but it does not feel like it! The streets are cobblestone and the tiny houses and little stone patios still seem very quaint to me.

The mall looked like any regular Canadian mall, except coated in British nonsense, like ‘Poundland’ instead of the Dollar store. The first shop Rich dragged me into was a sweet shop, which looks better than any Canadian candy store, because every inch of space is crammed with little jars and packages. Most of them were brands and kinds I didn’t know, although I instantly recognized a lot of them as being name-dropped in Harry Potter. There’s also a lot of anise-flavoured stuff and licorice, apparently they enjoy it a lot. Rich asked me if I wanted anything and I replied “I kinda want everything” even though I don’t usually buy candy. All the American candy was on a special shelf labelled ‘foreign’ which made us chuckle. We left empty-handed.

The next store was the drug store for some toiletries. I noted all the packaging seems to come in smaller sizes than North America – 13 count instead of 28, for example. But then the stores are smaller and have a wider variety of stuff, so maybe it’s a deliberate choice to maintain selection.

We wandered around a bit before going into Rich’s favourite store; the Warhammer store. As is presumably natural for the space marine nerds, the clerk greeted him by name before asking if I am Canadian Lucy. I listened to them chat a bit; the clerk is also on the board of trustees for the nearby Napoleonic fort. He asked if we were going to go on a tour of the tunnels before making the mistake of asking me how it felt to be in a country with history older than my country. Rich dragged me from the store before I could burst into a Hulk rage and remind the white man that he killed thousands of natives to build a monument to his own ego because North America was not empty when he got there!

That did serve to remind Rich that there are three castles/ forts within easy walking distance of his apartment. The first, literally across the road from the mall, is Fort Amherst. Built to defend against Napoleon in the early 1800’s, tunnels were dug into the chalk hills under the fort as air raid shelters during the Blitz.

When we got to the top of the fort, I noticed a tower with a walking path in the distance, so we just kept going. It was pleasant enough with the sun out, sea breeze notwithstanding.

The tower turned out to be an opulent war memorial, which was gated and locked. Seems to me a war memorial ought to be accessible so you can mourn or remember freely, I don’t understand why we couldn’t go in.

There was a big open field to the left of it, so we just kept walking, having no real goal or plan beyond the vague notion that I needed an adaptor for my laptop so I could work on this blog post. We wandered into Gillingham because Google maps told me there was an electronic store, but it doesn’t exist anymore. We were feeling kinda hungry, but there wasn’t anything around that part of Gillingham that tickled our fancy, so we hopped on a double decker bus (climbing to the top and sitting at the front, of course) and went to the Tiger Moth pub.

It was here that Rich made a mistake. Drinks can be precarious for me. I don’t like pulp, and too much sugary fruit juice can set off my guts anyway. I’ve never really liked carbonated beverages, but there are very much not an option with my condition. In North America, iced tea and anything with an ‘ade’ on the end are usually safe options. Limeys drink a lot, however, and it being a pub, most of the drinks on offer were alcoholic. Iced tea didn’t seem to be available, so I selected lemonade. Rich went off giggling to himself and I rolled my eyes.

What he came back with was not North American lemonade. It was functionally just Sprite, which meant it was off limits to me. Turns out, when carbonation made it to the UK, the British people went all in, and everything that ends with ‘ade’ is carbonated. Rich forgot I can’t have any and thought it would be a wonderful joke to come back with something unexpected, which it would have been if said joke wasn’t hazardous for my health. Would that I could. Rich accepted his mistake and ordered me some orange juice, which is starting to worry me that there won’t be any ‘standard’ orders for me.

The mac and cheese I ordered was delicious, a bit of brulee on the top, a nice sharp cheese instead of processed cheddar. I’d order it again. The waitress heard my accent and handed me a card and asked me to leave a review on Tripadvisor. Which is also a good segue into mentioning that I had been muttering to Rich most of the time, because I was waiting for the moment someone guffawed or went “omg a Canadian!” It was starting to be a bit confusing that everyone shrugged and went about their day without commenting on it.

I also noticed they had steak and ale pie on the menu. It’s the sort of thing I remember my mother going out of her way to order the first time around, but as a child I wasn’t interested. Now everything I’ve never had before is fair game, although I wasn’t super hungry. Rich agreed to order the steak and ale pie and eat it just so I could have a couple of bites. It was very good, but I was right that I couldn’t finish the whole thing, and glad the mac and cheese was smaller. The ale was a little sharper and more vinegary than I expected, but then they do put vinegar on fries.

We hopped on another bus to an electronics store. Things in Britain either look exactly like they do in North America, or nothing like North America, and if it wasn’t for the purple colour scheme for Curry’s you could have told me I’d walked into Best Buy and I’d believe you, they look the exact same. We bought two adaptors and walked up the road to Asda’s to buy some food I could cook for myself, since Rich was going to be doing an 11 hour shift the next day.

I got soup, somewhat of a tradition at this point. Pea and Ham is just split-pea soup. Rich told me I had to wait til he was home to try the Scotch broth. I was thrilled that their take on broccoli and cheese soup has Stilton, which reminded me that the Vagabond should be home with his precious Gorgonzola now. I hope he doesn’t eat it all before I get there!

Lost in the Pot noodles is so very, very British! Amused by the degree to which things are labelled “American” here, in Canada British stuff is not usually labelled British to the same degree.

The movie we picked for that evening was the second Guy Ritchie Sherlock Holmes, which it also turns out, was filmed in the tunnels under Fort Amherst! Looking forward to seeing them in person!