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Today I went to the butcher as I often do, but this time I said out loud, “I just love coming here! We don’t have neighborhood butchers where I come from.” We probably do, but I just never noticed. They said, “Yeah, you just have super markets, right?”
Anyway, here when you go in and ask for 1 pound of chicken thighs, and they ask, “On bone or not” and you say “Not”, they debone it right in front of you. And then if they end up short they go to the fridge to get a whole chicken for some more thighs … there’s something nice about that, in a sick, meat eating way ;-)
They asked me what I do for a living and when I told them I am a programmer one of them asked me what I thought of Windows Vista. I told him I thought it was a complete waste of time (complete rubbish, as they say here) and once I switched to a Mac there was no way I was going to spend any more of my precious time fighting Windows. Turns out he agreed. He just bought an Intel MacBook Pro, just like mine, and he loves it as well. Last night I download a fan control app so I can set my fan speed manually, and it makes such a difference. I mentioned it to him and he said he’d check it out. The next time I went in there he was recommended open source software for me for ripping movies into iPod format, but I already used the same software (handbrake) for ripping DVDs into H.264.
There’s usually 3 or 4 guys in there. This is the “happy to talk about technology” guy. There’s also “grumpy rude” guy, “likes to hit on ladies”old guy and “really young, really polite, but a wise-ass” guy as well.
Anyway, it’s the little interactions that you have which make a place, which gives a place a feel, which makes you feel a little more connected. A few years ago (after Bush was re-elected, actually) I was lamenting the modern life style, which for us meant driving all over the place, dropping off kids, picking them up, doing things with them, but never letting them out on their own, and then coming back to the house, pressing a remote control button and driving into the garage and pressing another button. Outside interaction was a rare event. Here it’s all the time, whether it’s on the train or TUBE, a bus or walking in the street, or going to the local butcher. It’s about interacting with people, and every time I have a pleasant interaction I feel happy inside.
I suppose it’s not unique to London but it is my first experience in a place like this, a big city. One of the unexpected parts of the whole experience has been the fact that I am routinely woken up at 4 or 5 in the morning by the sound of birds. It’s enough to drive you bonkers!
Another picture of the first snow of the year:
Since then it snowed another time, this time a few inches. (I am having a hard time getting WordPress to let me have bigger images. I’ll get there … I created the world’s simplest WordPress plugin to solve the problem of thumbnails …
Cheers!
