From home

[davidn]

I had made some suggestions of what I was missing being away from, but my parents surprised me with the sheer extent of the supplies that they brought over from Britain. Here is an inventory, in which I might use some capital letters. Ask about any and all of them if you like.


MORE BISCUITS THAN EXPRESSIBLE IN THIS SPACE! I was flabbergasted at the number of biscuits that they had brought over with them - I'm surprised that they managed to fit in any actual luggage. This bag contains chocolate Digestives and Hob Nobs bought for about a fifth of the market price here, and various things that are completely unreachable like Breakaways, Fox's Crunch Creams and other varieties, and some uniquely Scottish oatmeal-type biscuits.


SOME BOWL-THINGS AND A MONK BISCUIT TIN! These are a late moving-in gift and birthday present for Whitney, who had expressed that we needed a biscuit tin to hold the biscuits I'd made. I can't use it for the current ones, though - they'd melt.


BREAD! Kingsmill, in fact. I used to mock my sister when she was younger for only liking one very specific type of bread. But now that I'm where something as simple as supermarket bread takes a different form, I understand it entirely. You wouldn't think it would be possible for white bread to be different, but compared to American efforts the slices of this are much more substantial, bigger than your hand, and they osmose butter into themselves so much better than any bread I've found here...


MEAT-FLAVOURED CRISPS! Something else unheard of here that people thought I was just making up - toss a cow into the blender with the potatoes and this is the result. I have haggis and beef here, but other varieties include T-bone steak and squirrel.


SIR GOLDEN SYRUP! A treacle-like semi-liquid used in baking, more substantial than maple syrup. I've preserved the full size version of this photograph so that you can see the logo on the bottles - the squeezable bottle has been cutened up, but the brand logo for Lyle's Golden Syrup for the last hundred years has been A ROTTING LION BEING DEVOURED BY BEES.


...SOCKS! And you wouldn't think this particularly exciting, either, but I haven't found anything quite like basic black socks here - either they're thicker, or they only come up to below your ankles and they're weird.

I pine about being three thousand miles away from the nearest branch of Tesco all the time, but I honestly had not realized how much I had missed until all of this was revealed to me.

Comments

[crassadon.livejournal.com]

Mmm, Fox's Cream. . .

Wait, are those potato chips. . .are they actually. . .haggis flavoured???!? No! Noooooooooooooooooo!!

. . .But I think squirrel flavoured chips would be okay.

[davidn]

Those reactions, I think it's safe to say, are quite opposite from people's usual ones :) And like I just mentioned below... thanks for putting that double meaning into my head, because it had never crossed my mind before you went and tarnished it :(

[ravenworks.livejournal.com]

... I don't know if you're kidding about squirrel. Honestly.

Wait, is the lion actually supposed to be rotting?? I like how they went to the trouble of having him have one eye open on the cuter version XD The initial redesign was a veterinarian standing over him saying "THIS LION IS HEALTHY"? X3

Oh my god, I love those socks. I would seriously wear those on the appropriate days every week... is that what you're planning to do? Had you mentioned not finding good socks, or was that just a bit of luck on their part?

I know how you feel about not being able to find 'basic' things, though. :X Especially when I was trying to populate my condo with the essentials... I've still only found one worthwhile brand of bread, and it's not great.

Also, as a furry, I demand you make a double-entendre about Fox's Creams. Being 'straight' is no excuse! :D

[davidn]

To be precise... Cajun Squirrel! They were part of a flavour-versus-flavour vote, and were the ones with the most attention-grabbing name. For the other animal-related question, the golden syrup logo came from a Bible story, but nobody knows why. I hadn't actually noticed it myself until I tried to look for golden syrup substitutes in America - before, I'd never looked closely at it and my brain had just processed the image as "a lion".

Shamefully, I used to wear day-of-the-week socks strictly by day, but then slowly gave up as individual ones started developing holes and I developed better things to worry about. The faces on these ones really make me want to wear them appropriately, though - and I would if Thursday hadn't gone missing in transit, leaving a gap.

I had mentioned the sock situation, but much like the bread, I hadn't been expected to be taken seriously ;) Didn't you move to the other side of the city? I would have thought it was at least possible to find things vaguely similar over that distance, but we have indeed had to make some substitutions even from our old supermarket before we bought the house...

The possibility of another meaning to Fox's Creams had honestly not occurred to me until you and crassadon both just said it just now. But from now on I will be unable to avoid thinking about it. Thanks a lot to you both.

[ravenworks.livejournal.com]

Okay, so the squirrel thing WAS a joke, just not your joke. ;)

What's the motivation to wear temporally-demarcated socks without the accompanying smileyfaces, though? Man, it's a shame about Thursday... Can they be bought alone? Could they specially ship you the missing pair, so you don't have to resort to sandals once a week?

[davidn]

The sock question is one that I really can't answer. Especially for people with some sort of obsessive compulsive disorder? Or the novelty of them. I don't remember having seen any until a decade ago, and then all Tesco socks seemed to be sold in packs of five with the days of the week on them.

I'm sure Thursday will be in the suitcase somewhere!

[ravenworks.livejournal.com]

But what was your motivation to wear them by day? An unquestioned habit from childhood?

[davidn]

What? No, I... didn't have them during childhood, they were a novelty for me the first time they were bought for me (in university, I think) and it seemed logical enough to follow the pattern exhibited thereon, then I stopped because some point in the evolution of my life caused me to stop caring whether I was wearing socks marked "Wednesday" when it was Friday or not. It may have been getting married. Socks and biscuits, what a thread.

[crassadon.livejournal.com]

Whow, whow, squirrel flavoured chips are actually real?!? I want them! How can I get them!!? Nurraaaaaagggggg!

[davidn]

As I have found out repeatedly since four years ago... like everything good in life, you have to be in the UK to get to it! (And not even then - if what I'm reading is right they've actually been discontinued...)

[crassadon.livejournal.com]

No! Noooooooooooooooooo!!

[kjorteo]

I am somewhat surprised to find something completely ruined by the furry before I even got here.

[davidn]

Biscuit tarnishing was something that I thought was unreachable even for this community... although it had been done by a different American friend before when she pointed out the implications of using the word "splooged" on a packet of Jammie Dodgers.

[kjorteo]

Oh, I'm not surprised that we managed to get even biscuits. I'm just surprised that, for once, it had nothing to do with me! (Although, to be fair, crassadon and ravenworks would have been my next guesses.)

[kibet.livejournal.com]

I was about to mention about the samsopn story until i scrolled to see that you knew it already.

I know how you feel about decent bread, as the standard sliced bread in Ireland is rubbish. At least they make it up with their soda bread though.

I think women have it easy when it comes to clothes. I also think that the reason why men don't buy underwear as often as women and they never need to throw any out as they just one day disintegrate without a trace, is that we are more particular. If we find a brand that suits us, we keep with it as we know we will like it.

[davidn]

It's surprising what you miss - when the basics are changed, no matter how little... that's something you have to get used to. I'm surprised that even as close by as Ireland, the bread is completely different!

[kibet.livejournal.com]

You would think that it would be the same, and I would think it might have been myself if a colleague that did their PhD in the Uk did not comment about the same thing. It is hard to describe, it seems here that they load it with elastic molecules and it does not have the bounce and crumbleyness that the Uk bread has, when it feels like it has been loaded up to survive a nuclear attack and appearing unatural. Ok, maybe it is not that hard to describe, hard to understand maybe but not hard to describe.

[feralmuse.livejournal.com]

Oooh, lovely! I'm completely hooked on Lyle's Golden Syrup after picking it up at a world market here in town.

[davidn]

I'm very glad that it's enjoyed so much by people in this country, as well :) I once found a solitary bottle of it at our old supermarket, but have never seen it here since.