Persimmon

Yesterday we had big, pouring, teeming, drumming, drenching rain. And it was good.

Anyroad, apart from the rain, it's that time of year again, yes! Bard on the Beach. Last night we went to see the dress rehearsal of 'All's Well that Ends Well'. And it was, as ever, most excellent. Even the weather added to the atmosphere, right at the end, the cast were competing with the noise of the heavy rain, which was perfect. My only small reservation was in that it was set, notionally, in Victorian times, and since this play features the King of France, it seemed an odd choice of time period, given that fifty years before, there had been an absolute surfeit of 'Off with his and her head!'s across the channel. Still, mustn't split hairs.

Tonight we ate home grown broccoli and a minuscule amount of courgette. Made me feel ridiculously healthy and happy, which just goes to show it's all mostly psychological.

Sleepy has bought me some potato bags, bags in which to grow spuds. This also makes me ridiculously happy, but first, I must find seed potatoes. Home Depot claims to sell them, but I don't know.... Still, I feel that this quest is going to be most fruitful, in a veggie kind of way.

So, today seemed to be English-as-a-completely-unknown-language training day at Stuporstore. And that may seem like a crass thing to say, but I genuinely bow down in admiration at the sheer determination of some of them. They make EXTREME eye contact and they watch your lips as you speak, which sounds impossible to be doing both at the same time, but maybe it's like photons, you observe them either as waves or particles, depending on how you choose to observe them. The photons, not the checkout assistants. And they still manage to do their bloody jobs! (The checkout assistants, not the photons, although since we can see stuff, I suppose they do too). I got my groceries, with all the coupons taken off. We did have a sticky moment with a persimmon though.
'What is please?'
'A persimmon.' She looks through her list,
'Please?'
'Persimmon,' Perhaps it's my accent, so I attempt something that may or may not sound more Canadian. Blank. I offer to look through her list, we don't even call them bloody persimmons in Britain anyway, we call them Sharon fruit, and Stuporstore has a bizzare habit of randomly deciding to list something by the English name. But then she found it and squealed, causing me to jump.
'Ah, puhsmn Fuyu!;
'Ok.'

In the car park, a man driving a boat starts beeping at me.
'What!?' I scream at him. I'm not in his way, he doesn't appear to be trying to get into my parking space, he is just....beeping. I wave my arms at him. He has what my friend R refers to as a 'crip tag', and she can, because she has one. In my head I am telling myself, 'Mustn't call it a crip tag, mustn't call it a crip tag.'
I wave my arms at him again and he winds down the window.
'Leave your cart there and I'll give you the loony when you pull out of your parking space,' (a loony being a one dollar coin, which we put in the shopping trolley to release it).
'Please,' I remind him, 'and why do you want my parking space, you're right next to the disabled space.' He says he hadn't seen it. Hmmmm. He does an eighty-seven point turn and finally manages to get his boat into the space. I wait for him, it would seem rude to put the trolley back now.
'Oh,' he says, 'I'll get another cart now I'm in the disabled,'
What? Argh. I consider kicking his good leg, but decide against it.

On to the Petrol Station. Back to the non-verbal communication.
'Can you fill it up with regular?' I say, handing over my credit card.
'Fii uu, reglah,' the student watches my lips and makes an attempt at the unfamiliar words. BUT...I got my petrol and my receipt and coupon and yet again, I am impressed.
They're both probably nuclear physicists in some other country.
Not the bloke with the crip tag though. He can speak English and doesn't bother to be polite.
Bloody non-foreigners.