Joys of not being in the UK

– Shops don’t close at 4. What joy that is! Not having to rush out at 3:30, hoping against hope that you might just slink past the security guard, one minute before the store closes. Once we’re in, we’re safe, as husband says. Not quite, because we have that voice telling you that you need to get your stuff to be billed in 5 minutes time. What pleasure it is, to be able to stroll out and shop when it pleases you on a Sunday evening.

– I yearn for the rains. I never thought that would happen to me. Not after living in a place where it rains all the time. I guess there is truth in the saying,’Never say never’, after all.

– Not having to carry a jacket – just in case it rains or it gets too cold. It’s true freedom, I tell you.

– Getting someone else to do all the housework – what joy! Although I can see it adding to the inches on my waist.

– Being able to call a store and ask for provisions to be delivered home. There’s nothing like it when you are home alone with a sleeping child and urgently need something before the shops close for the day.

Despite all that, I can’t help feel a tiny bit homesick when I read Bill Bryson’s Notes from a Small Island. Especially when he mentions the familiar places like the Yorkshire Dales or Harrogate. It makes me sad to think that I will probably never go on a drive there, on a Sunday evening, just because there is nothing else that we can do.
Or plan for that holiday in Lake District where all we plan to do is relax, and walk around – which never happens, by the way. Both of us can’t just do nothing on a holiday. Or go back to North Wales and hike up to Snowdonia. Or complain about the rains, the never ending rains – that is fun too, you know. But what I miss most is to be able to walk into a store and get a packet yeast, just because I fancy baking some bread.

See, I told ya. The grass is always greener on the other side.