A Taste Of England Just Down The Road.

A nice interlude on a public holiday.

The day started off with a nice family breakfast at the folks' house. We sat in the garden around two long tables surrounded by a cherry tree, tweeting birds, glorious sunshine and of course all eleven of us. Conversations tended to be sporadic as most ate their food with their head bowed down to pay homage to their smartphone.

Mum is an ace at managing all the meals. I battle to organize a meal for the two of us and take my hat off to mum, for having organzied so many family meals in the last week.

Bob and I said our goodbyes and left for our own little excursion. A trip to Hungary had taken our fancy and with military precision was organized. A shop at Tesco's ( 19 km down the road in Hungary ) and as it was as hot as blazes we took along a cooler bag with frozen blue bricks. How is that for being prepared?

Supermarkets are the same all over the world with of course the local eating habits and produce making up a slight variation. At Tesco's they have a whole section of freshly baked breads and rolls at unblievable prices. A big loaf of white bread costs about 50 cents. Vegetables are also a whole lot less expensive than in Austria and a head of cabbage costs roughly 60 cents.

After careful mental deliberations, I chose a loaf of divine white bread. Only by chance did I notice a woman using a bread slicing machine. They are in every South African supermarket but not in Austria. Oh, it was great fun to use it but only afterward while seeing the thin slices did it dawn on me that the pleasure of tearing into a loaf of freshly baked bread was gone.

Well, as for the rest of the hypermarket...it has hidden treasures, English treasures, in every isle. Be it biscuits, crisps, marmalade, cereals or Irish butter. Not all is that healthy but now and again munching on a digestive biscuit is rather nice and evokes many memories. If only they had freshly baked scones, I would be in heaven...

Even a trip to a supermarket can have nerve wrecking elements to it. Here in Europe one has to put money into the shopping trolleys just like at an airport. People return the trolleys at the end of the shop only to get their money back! When we got there, Bob's euro coin wasn't accepted and we decided to use the blue baskets, albeit with wheels and long handle, to shop. Rather fetching seeing the two of us pulling blue baskets behind us.

We had done justice to our whirlwind trip into the realms of England and suddenly realized at the till that we couldn't take the baskets to the car. Usually one can take the shopping trolley back to the car and we have a big box on the backseat, into which we stack our purchases. Saves the plastic bags. But, now what? The person in front of us was getting ready to pay and Bob had to sprint outside to hunt for a trolley.

The queue behind us was long and irritated already and with seconds to spare my hero wheeled in an empty shopping trolley. All was saved and as the cashier scanned each item, Bob stacked it into the trolley. Apart from a few irritable spousal exchanges now and then over in the sweet's isle, Bob and I like grocery shopping together. Rather amazing, how often the seemingly mundane interludes of domesticity turn out to enjoyable and fun...

Biggi