Sandwiches and a Cross-Dresser
Well, bless your little hearts. It's quite warming to drag my butt over to the Cambridge Public Library and discover y'all hanging out in the comment section.
It's sunny and warm this morning, but it's supposed to rain very badly later. For the last two days it looked like it was going to rain, but it didn't. I take my umbrella everywhere, just in case. My life in England. My umbrella has a duck's head, by the way. This is the mark of a good umbrella, not how much it keeps the rain off. Since, you know, none of them really do that. They're just a Comforting Illusion.
I had a big ol' plan about food while traveling, which involved eating everything they gave me at breakfast, then for the rest of the day basically subsisting on a sandwich, in order to save money. This is not working out. Not because the sandwich isn't enough, cause it's just fine -- more on that later -- but because I can not actually eat all the breakfast. I did the first day, and I thought I was going to die. I was unable to eat anything else at all till after three o'clock, I was so full. This would be good for the saving money part, but it makes me unhappy, so isn't a good idea.
So the next day I had them cut back on the breakfast. Still. Couldn't eat it.
Same the next.
This morning I broke down and told them to give me the Continental breakfast -- and that turned out to be a lovely surprise, cause it's where they hide the fiber, and is all about the apples and the strawberries.
We'll see how this works.
As to the sandwiches: Something has happened to English sandwiches in between 1977, when I first came here, and today, which is where I am now. In 1977, I bought some sandwiches -- again, this was a money-saving move -- and I was Not Impressed. If a sandwich was billed as being a "tomato and cheese" sandwich, that's what it was. Period. No frills. Very occasionally, butter, if you'd discovered some elegant sandwich making place. And this is the home of the sandwich! It was as if things hadn't really moved on since L. Sandwich ordered his meat to be put in bread so he could hold it comfortably.
But nowadays, you go by the Sainsburys or the Boots -- you don't even have to get fancy here -- and discover bacon, lettuce and tomato with excellent mayo, very tasty and filling; or prawn and rocket with lemon mayo on poppyseed bread, to die for; or parma ham with olives and basil mayo, also well worth buying.
Excellent money-saving dinner.
I had a little shock with the dessert, though. One of the things I love about English grocery stores is that you can buy little individual desserts. So I bought one -- it was lemon puff and raspberry pot. That was its name. Well. It turns out that besides the excellent lemon puff and raspberries, one is also buys the pot. Which was not disposable plastic. No. It's a little glass dish.
This has caused me some confusion. Should I buy more of these potted puffs, so as to collect a set of the little dishes? Then I'd have to drag them around or mail them home. And they are, after all, glass. Should I throw it away? Well, really. It's a glass dish. I could leave it in the B&B -- maybe they'd like it.
It strikes me as being just the right size for shirred eggs, though. Maybe I'll buy some more.
But really. Why have they sold me this glass dish? All I really wanted was a bit of dessert.
Anyway -- the point of all this hoohah, which is me reading manuscripts, is going pretty well. I did indeed get to collect my early 17th C. crossdresser -- however, it looks to me like this was all a slanderous rumor, though probably SOME sort of naughtiness was going on. In the list of the things her father got fired for as schoolmaster of Ely, the things that counted were 1) he would only let in students if they paid bribes; 2) he wouldn't teach from regular school books but insisted on using his own, which were, the letter says, "fantastical"; 3) he wouldn't keep track of the boys but either stayed in his rooms all day or left town entirely, going god knows where. The part about his daughter dressing in men's clothes, and getting the boys to dress up in hers, and bringing in townspeople at midnight for dancing -- with the said boys in women's' clothes, I gather -- has been crossed out and labeled "this was ceased." Which means, I think, that the allegation was withdrawn, not that she did it for a while and then stopped.
Also. (This part will be difficult for the softhearted) -- I broke down and collected the guy who roasted a cat in the chancel in Ely. I'd been thinking -- nah. No evidence of dramatic activity here. But then I realized -- if I've successfully argued for the inclusion of the guys who got drunk and pretended to be ghosts, or the guy who took off all his clothes and walked around the chancel, calling it a play, how can I leave out the guy who roasted a cat?
Cause maybe he was a psychopath, or maybe it was a political/religious statement, but maybe it too is on the edges of entertainment.
I am ABSOLUTELY sure, however, that it is NOT one of the ancient customs of our pagan ancestors. Don't even start with that.
That and morris dancing. Us medieval dramatists get tetchy.
It's sunny and warm this morning, but it's supposed to rain very badly later. For the last two days it looked like it was going to rain, but it didn't. I take my umbrella everywhere, just in case. My life in England. My umbrella has a duck's head, by the way. This is the mark of a good umbrella, not how much it keeps the rain off. Since, you know, none of them really do that. They're just a Comforting Illusion.
I had a big ol' plan about food while traveling, which involved eating everything they gave me at breakfast, then for the rest of the day basically subsisting on a sandwich, in order to save money. This is not working out. Not because the sandwich isn't enough, cause it's just fine -- more on that later -- but because I can not actually eat all the breakfast. I did the first day, and I thought I was going to die. I was unable to eat anything else at all till after three o'clock, I was so full. This would be good for the saving money part, but it makes me unhappy, so isn't a good idea.
So the next day I had them cut back on the breakfast. Still. Couldn't eat it.
Same the next.
This morning I broke down and told them to give me the Continental breakfast -- and that turned out to be a lovely surprise, cause it's where they hide the fiber, and is all about the apples and the strawberries.
We'll see how this works.
As to the sandwiches: Something has happened to English sandwiches in between 1977, when I first came here, and today, which is where I am now. In 1977, I bought some sandwiches -- again, this was a money-saving move -- and I was Not Impressed. If a sandwich was billed as being a "tomato and cheese" sandwich, that's what it was. Period. No frills. Very occasionally, butter, if you'd discovered some elegant sandwich making place. And this is the home of the sandwich! It was as if things hadn't really moved on since L. Sandwich ordered his meat to be put in bread so he could hold it comfortably.
But nowadays, you go by the Sainsburys or the Boots -- you don't even have to get fancy here -- and discover bacon, lettuce and tomato with excellent mayo, very tasty and filling; or prawn and rocket with lemon mayo on poppyseed bread, to die for; or parma ham with olives and basil mayo, also well worth buying.
Excellent money-saving dinner.
I had a little shock with the dessert, though. One of the things I love about English grocery stores is that you can buy little individual desserts. So I bought one -- it was lemon puff and raspberry pot. That was its name. Well. It turns out that besides the excellent lemon puff and raspberries, one is also buys the pot. Which was not disposable plastic. No. It's a little glass dish.
This has caused me some confusion. Should I buy more of these potted puffs, so as to collect a set of the little dishes? Then I'd have to drag them around or mail them home. And they are, after all, glass. Should I throw it away? Well, really. It's a glass dish. I could leave it in the B&B -- maybe they'd like it.
It strikes me as being just the right size for shirred eggs, though. Maybe I'll buy some more.
But really. Why have they sold me this glass dish? All I really wanted was a bit of dessert.
Anyway -- the point of all this hoohah, which is me reading manuscripts, is going pretty well. I did indeed get to collect my early 17th C. crossdresser -- however, it looks to me like this was all a slanderous rumor, though probably SOME sort of naughtiness was going on. In the list of the things her father got fired for as schoolmaster of Ely, the things that counted were 1) he would only let in students if they paid bribes; 2) he wouldn't teach from regular school books but insisted on using his own, which were, the letter says, "fantastical"; 3) he wouldn't keep track of the boys but either stayed in his rooms all day or left town entirely, going god knows where. The part about his daughter dressing in men's clothes, and getting the boys to dress up in hers, and bringing in townspeople at midnight for dancing -- with the said boys in women's' clothes, I gather -- has been crossed out and labeled "this was ceased." Which means, I think, that the allegation was withdrawn, not that she did it for a while and then stopped.
Also. (This part will be difficult for the softhearted) -- I broke down and collected the guy who roasted a cat in the chancel in Ely. I'd been thinking -- nah. No evidence of dramatic activity here. But then I realized -- if I've successfully argued for the inclusion of the guys who got drunk and pretended to be ghosts, or the guy who took off all his clothes and walked around the chancel, calling it a play, how can I leave out the guy who roasted a cat?
Cause maybe he was a psychopath, or maybe it was a political/religious statement, but maybe it too is on the edges of entertainment.
I am ABSOLUTELY sure, however, that it is NOT one of the ancient customs of our pagan ancestors. Don't even start with that.
That and morris dancing. Us medieval dramatists get tetchy.
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