Nebulous Mooch

“The Lowlands,” I said in a funny voice. I was reading the small wooden sign that hung above the door of a house we were walking by. A woman kneeling in the garden looked up at me and scowled. “I didn’t notice her there,” I whispered to my husband.

Houses have names here. I like to say their names aloud as I pass them on the road. Sometimes I get caught.

Not all houses have names. Houses in the countryside are more likely to have names than houses in the city. Watford isn’t the countryside, but there are still quite a few named houses here. I wonder where these names come from.

My husband has a friend who lives in a house called The Red Admiral. This is a particularly funny name to me because the house is white. Maybe it was red at some time.

When we buy a house I want one with a name. I could always name it myself. I think Rupert is a good name. What do you think?

We’re all familiar with the supercenter, those ridiculously large stores that stock anything and everything you can possibly imagine. I’ve never been a fan of these monstrosities.

When I was in college, I went to my first supercenter. They weren’t called that at the time. It was called Harry’s. I’d been shopping at Harry’s for about a year before I realized that they sold groceries there. I’d been going to the store for my clothing needs, completely ignorant of the frozen food section that lay hidden behind the men’s clothing. Sometimes I’m not very observant so I never noticed the people in line behind me with carts full of groceries.

I’d gone to Harry’s with a friend to buy a t-shirt. After a few minutes of sifting through piles of shirts, she said, “I want to buy some apples.”

I thought she meant that after we’d paid for our shirts she wanted to go to the grocery store. That’s not what she meant at all. She walked to the back of the store. There was a whole grocery store back there! Not a few food items, it was an entire grocery store with canned goods and produce and frozen foods.

My friend walked purposefully to the produce section and started picking through a pile of red apples. I was immediately repulsed. “You’re going to eat those?” I asked.

“What else would I do with them?” she laughed.

I just couldn’t get over it. How could you trust food from a store that sells bras? I just couldn’t do it. Clothes and food shouldn’t be sold side by side. I know it’s supposed to be convenient, but it just doesn’t feel right. I never shopped for anything at Harry’s again.

In the UK they have hypermarts. A hypermart is an impossibly large store that never has what I need in stock. I can’t figure out how they have so much and so little at the same time. I tried to buy a bar of soap at one the other day and they only had five choices. How can that be? The store lasts for miles and they only have five different kinds of soap!

If you can’t find something in your local hypermart don’t bother asking the staff because they’re about as lost in the place as you are. One day I went there to buy an umbrella and had to ask four staff members before anyone could tell me anything helpful at all.

I don’t frequent hypermarts because I still have a problem with buying food and clothing in the same place. If I went to them more often I’d probably start to like them. For now I’m all right with letting others have the convenience of one-stop shopping all to themselves.

Just recently I told someone we’d just moved here from Florida and she said, “Why’d you want to do that? The weather is dreadful here. You probably haven’t seen the sun once since you’ve been here.”

“Actually we’ve had some nice weather,” I said. It was sunny and lovely that day. It had been lovely for the past couple of days.

“Oh no,” she politely disagreed. “It’s been raining nonstop. That’s the way it is here–dreadful.”

The English seem to take pride in having horrible weather. Either that or they forget too easily. I’m not sure which.

It’s summer here and the wildflowers are in full bloom. The trees are lush. The sky is blue. It’s perfect weather to be outside in. If we had a yard, I’d be out in it. I probably wouldn’t get much work done though.

I can’t believe that someone took a picture of this and decided it looked okay to put on a flier and slip into people’s mail slots. Does this make you want to eat pizza?

The funny thing about pizza here is that all the pizzas have names. This restaurant has a pizza called Mexican Passion. What kind of name is that for a pizza? All cheese pizzas seem to be called Margherita. What’s that have to do with cheese pizza?

We went to a restaurant once (actually it was a grimy take out place that doesn’t deserved to be called a restaurant) and ordered a cheese pizza and the guy acted like he had no idea what we were talking about. “What? What?” he kept saying and frowning at us. Finally my husband asked for the Margherita pizza and the guy smiled and nodded with recognition. Apparently, you must call the pizza by the proper name when placing your order.

Even though we left sunny Florida two months ago, the electric company insists on continuing to charge us for electricity. I’ve had evidence that I no longer reside in the apartment faxed to them. I’ve spoken to them repeatedly on the phone. Today I got a notice that my bill is unpaid and that they will cut off my electricity. They mailed the notice to England! Isn’t that proof enough that I no longer live there?

The thing that makes it worse is that some of the electricity they want me to pay for was used by Camden Lakes to run the ionizing machine they stuck in the apartment because it “smelled like spices.”

I’ve noticed when dealing with companies on the phone as so as the person I’m speaking to starts saying, “Yes, Ma’am” over and over that means they’re not really listening and they’re not going to do anything to fix the problem.

The name sounds completely made up to me, but I found out that our spidery little friends are called tegenaria deomestica. They’re more commonly known as the British house spider.

We’ve had an interesting time with the spiders this past weekend. My husband and stepson decided to put two in the same plastic container and watch them spar to the death. I was not happy. I don’t like them, but I don’t want to be cruel to them either. When I expressed my disapproval they both said, “We just wanted to see what would happen.” Typical. Later my husband said he felt guilty.

Now that we’ve gotten rid of the spiders, we have to work on getting rid of the ants under the sink and the loud clumsy bumble bees that come through our bedroom vent in the mornings. Bees are such early risers. If they would just keep it down, I wouldn’t mind their morning visits.

Does anyone know what these spiders are? Are they dangerous? Now that we’ve found one, they keep turning up. My husband caught another one today in a container. It’s sitting on the windowsill. They’re quite large. My husband says they’re harmless, but I’m not so sure.

I’m going to be accused of exaggerating, but this is a life-sized photo of the spider that was on the wall in my stepson’s room this morning. It’s now in a plastic container on the windowsill in the living room. “I want to keep this so I can look at it when I get home,” my husband said after he caught it. Then he left for the day. I’ve been keeping an eye on the spider and she hasn’t done much. If I turn the container slowly she hops up in the air. If I put my finger near the wall of the container she lunges at it. If I leave her alone she just sits there. I’ve decided I don’t like her. She’s creepy and obviously can’t be trusted.

What is it about spiders that makes them so creepy? I’ve been looking at this one carefully and I’ve decided that, besides the fact that she wants to chomp down on my finger, it might be the hairiness. Those eight long fuzzy legs are creepy. I wouldn’t trust a person with eight fuzzy legs, why would I trust a spider?

“Just one more picture. Then we can walk,” he says as he kneels on the ground trying to get the camera to focus on a tiny wild flower.

This is my husband’s new fascination. In Florida, it was spiders. The good thing about spiders is that when you’re trying to take a walk, you don’t see that many of them. Wild flowers are everywhere here. It takes thirty minutes to walk ten yards because he’s constantly trying to photograph flowers.

Today he took numerous pictures of dandelions. How many pictures of dandelions do we need?

You can see from these pictures that it’s a lot more like spring here.

I took this picture. Notice how it’s not of a dandelion.