What I am currently loving in no particular order:
1. The fact that I don’t currently live in Atlanta, Georgia, because it is a physical impossibility for me to refer to it as anything but “Hotlanta,” a phenomenon that would no doubt lead to my speedy and thorough ostracism were I a resident of that presumably fair city.
2. The fact that our local Costco stocks giant bottles of Pace Picante sauce, which, in addition to being the Best Salsa Ever even when its competition is not limited to a vaguely ketchup-like sauce flavo(u)red with a tiny little baby toenail of chil(l)i powder, inspires many conversations with myself that go like this: “‘This stuff’s made in New York City!’ ‘New York City?!’” to Stephan’s perpetual delight.
3. Shirley Temples. My love for ginger ale runs deep, so much so that I refuse to acknowledge this “Canada Dry” of which you speak. Seriously, Santa Cruz-brand ginger ale : Rolls-Royce :: Canada Dry : Ford Pinto. Not to worry, however: we recently discovered the Bentley of ginger ale: Fever-Tree brand. SO GOOD and SO BRITISH and practically good for me. I’m fervently wishing for its rampant success in the US.
4. The insight into Uncle Arthur’s Bedtime Stories* that living the UK has so generously provided.
Remember the little girl with malaria who threw her quinine (tonic water) out the window and got so sick that her parents decided her near-death experience was punishment enough, denying Uncle Arthur his beloved motif of drawing a curtain around subsequent events? Turns out that the gin and tonic was invented solely to make quinine more palatable for colonial Brits (so can we really blame her?).
Remember when we all learned a Valuable Lesson about hospitality and self-control through the cunning use of the “FHB (family hold back)” code? Makes a lot more sense in the context of post-War rationing (not to mention “The Hollow Pie,” the tragicomedic story of a small and greedy boy whose family conspires against him to teach him a Valuable Lesson about gluttony).
Add in the occasional coronation, royalty visiting wounded soldiers, and discussion of “And When Did You Last See Your Father?” and it’s practically a British history.
* Uncle Arthur, aka Arthur S. Maxwell, was a British Seventh-day Adventist author whose beloved “The Bible Story” and “Bedtime Stories” series grace the homes of every SDA home with children, and many a doctor’s waiting room. Extra points are awarded for the shorter and younger “Bible Stories” (“clip-clop, clip-clop, went small donkey’s hooves”) and that one series (“Storytime”?) with the arguably best cautionary tales of them all: stories about little boys who didn’t listen to their parents and would do things like a) fall out of the door of the moving car, b) get stung on the eye when watching a bee through a hole in the garden wall and after being patched up with some bluing from mom, immediately do it again on the other eye, and c) go on the shady and forbidden carousel that eventually spins wildly out of control before flinging all of the children off by sheer centrifugal force. Of course Uncle Arthur was kind enough to never visit corporal punishment on the poor children who had already learned their Valuable Lessons via physical pain or formidable public humiliation.
