A trip down to the town centre to post a parcel and do a few other errands, including the eternal, fruitless search for clothes to replace the ones that have finally worn out. What a pleasure it must be, to be the same shape and size as the clothes on the racks!
I eventually returned to the carpark and ... Wow, look at that! This is why I keep a camera in my backpack. Such moments can redeem even the dullest afternoon of riding the escalators in overheated department stores.
10 comments:
Supermarket Trolleys. So what their called over there.Here in the US their called shopping carts.
I do enjoy the difference between the States and England when it comes to the proper names of objects.
Just one of many reasons I enjoy your blog.
Another point: When people ask me why I always carry the camera I just tell them I can't win the Pulitzer without it.
John,
It is an interesting subject -- "two nations divided by a common language" -- and one which I should post about sometime, based on some unfortunate misunderstandings I had in California in 1980! Or maybe I already have, my memory is not what it was.
Yes, Be Prepared... Although prizes for my kind of work are sadly few...
Mike
As regular readers of the comments to your blog will know, there is an excellent blog about this sort of thing, by Lynne Guist, at http://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.co.uk/
PS Does that mean Americans don't have the phrase "off his trolley"?
Zouk,
Never have understood "off his trolley". What trolley do they have in mind, where being on it is to be sane, but off it, um, not? To be on a supermarket trolley is not exactly level-headed, if not exactly mad, either.
I think it's one of those expressions that people appropriate, simply because it sounds folksy. I've just heard Ed Balls say of George Osborne that he was "stitched up like a kipper". Eh?
Mike
Zouk, as far as I know there's not much use of the phrase "Off his trolley" in the US. My sense of the meaning is that if he's off his trolley, he's gone off the rails, and is dangerously out of control. Sounds better than trying to get the entire trolley to derail.
http://www.wordwizard.com/phpbb3/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=18057#p39459
Clarification noted. But the expression probably hasn't been in use in the U.S. since the demise of street cars.
Actually, "street car" is another shibboleth ("A Trolley Bus Named Desire" doesn't have the same ring about it, does it?). I do recall "off his rocker" being extremely prevalent in my youth -- far more so than "off his trolley".
Zouk,
I think I have posted about this in the distant past, but somehow there is an inbuilt bathos about English English -- "get your kicks on the A6 (Luton to Kettering, Kettering to Leicester...)" doesn't have much of a ring, either.
Mike
Billy Bragg did that with the A13 -- to the tune of Route 66, of course -- and someone else has done the A66. Most amusing.
Btw not sure if "street cars" run on rails and are therefore what we call "trams" or are actually trolley buses, with freedom of movement within the reach of the power lines?
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