We fended for ourselves

Fended? Mmm. Doesn’t sound like a word. Anyway, we did a brilliant job of sleeping and may actually be acclimating quickly to UTC. Yay.

We decided to refuse Neil’s help and get on with helping ourselves. We are having dinner with Philip, the band’s conductor, tonight and since actual dinner will happen, I suggested candy for lunch (do you know about candy in the UK? Soooooooo good) but Keith was oddly in favor (favour!)(It came up at lunch yesterday that the recent Wordle word ‘humor’ is not a 5 letter word here!) of food food, so we walked down one block to the Spar convenience store. It’s Valentine’s day (I got a card! Keith told me Valentine’s day is different here – he remembers it and I get a super sweet card that says I am his favorite adventure. Pretty great) so candy was everywhere. I was slowly wandering the store and looking around when a woman said, “Excuse me.” She had a toddler in a stroller and she zoomed past, grabbed a bottle of wine, and hurried to the check out. I wondered if the toddler or the holiday was inspiring her.

We bought a few things to get through the next day or so, then went to the Subway inside the Spar. Since I am afraid of everything, I always make Keith approach people while we are traveling. It makes no sense, because I have to tell him exactly what to ask/say and he has no language skills beyond English, ( I do realize they speak beautiful English here, but often travels involve other languages) but it keeps me safe (usually hidden behind something). I decided that I would be brave in Wales and just walked right up (with a little pushing) and ordered my sandwich. The sandwich artisan gave us the tiniest look when we spoke American – my imagination? – and I wondered how many people from the US just show up at Subway in the small town of Treorchy. Are we an oddity or is it fairly common? If I get any information, I’ll let you know.

Our groceries were pretty standard. Breakfast stuff and digestives and candy. Digestives are sort of cookies. Cookies dipped in chocolate. There are two packages because they are so addictive they are hard to stop eating. I would get zero if I didn’t have my own package. I am not saying I might not binge on some at some point, but I won’t eat them all in the next 45 minutes. We also bought a 2L of Coke, but I didn’t want to admit it. I wanted everyone to think we had changed entirely and could go longer than 36 hours without soda. Then I took a picture of Keith holding a glass of Coke, so that secret failed.

The eggs were just on a shelf. That is the way here. So they are sitting on the counter here. Not in the refrigerator. Weird. Wait a second, I’ll be right back.

I am back. The eggs are in the refrigerator. That can’t be wrong. I wouldn’t be able to find them on the counter anyway.

13 thoughts on “We fended for ourselves”

  1. Julie sister of Kristine

    I love the coke in The wine glass, no one will ever know. I love reading your adventure.

    1. I love how you come up as Julie sister of Kristine! 🙂 Anyone who knows Keith well wouldn’t take a whole second to know it was Coke 🤣 That is definitely his drink of choice, so I had to ‘fess up.

      1. I saw the “glass of wine” and thought, “hmm Keith doesn’t drink.” Now I know it was coke.
        Do I come up as “sister of Julie”? Lol

  2. I love, love, love that fabulous cookies are named digestives. They almost sound healthy, or something that could soothe an upset stomach. Well, enjoy some for me.

    1. Our friend, Sue, asked us to bring her back digestives on our first UK trip. I entirely thought they assisted in digestion – were a medical thing. After we got her some, we tried them. Then ate as many as we could! They come without chocolate, but… we’ve never tried those!

  3. Can you get Cadbury’s chocolate-covered shortbread? Mmmmmmmm. (I made my first post about chocolate, so you’d know it’s really me. 😋)

    I like “fent”! Or maybe there’s a good past tense of “fend” in Welsh. Probably starts with “Llw” and has a y in it somewhere. Inquiring minds want to know.

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