Potatoes are not vegetables – Cultural woes part one

I bought a cheese and vegetable item from a shop the other day. I did not find any vegetables in it. It was full of potatoes, which are perhaps classed as vegetables on this side of the Atlantic. Nutritionally speaking, I don’t think this is true, and certainly they do not constitute a ‘green thing’. A green potato would be scary. Food here has thus far been both fascinating and terrifying. I can’t find good peanut butter to save my life, nor can I track down the eggs in the grocery store (even venturing so far into the meat aisles that I feared for my soul), and I know there are eggs there because a) it’s huge and b) the guy next to me in the check out line had eggs. I want eggs! Really, I just haven’t had the chance to explore Tesco’s as much as I would have liked. This isn’t my fault. Remember how we used to think that Provigo on a weekday evening was crowded? My god, things here really are smaller. This monstrous store has been jam-packed, given that it is move-in weekend, and I have never seen anything quite like it in my life. It gives me the ‘get in and get out’ willies. The produce section is half the size of what I am used to and everything comes in plastic packages. They don’t recycle much here at all, no plastics and no cardboard or card… I am going to cry when I throw away all the things I knew could be turned into new post-consumer products for you and me to use. I think, perhaps, the grocery store has a secret bag recycling depository somewhere, and I am going to make a friend and try to find out. I also went to the drugstore (chemist) to find some necessities. Of course, as at the grocery store, everything is crowded and everything is different. It takes me twice as long as it should to track anything down, because I don’t know what anything is. I can’t find the soap I am used to, a decent toothbrush for anything less than twice what it should cost at home and god forbid that I should want something unscented to bathe with. I have no idea where to go about buying a foamie for my mattress, some carpet for my floor or one of those handy adjustable shower-curtain rods that you can just wedge between two walls above your bath. Have I mentioned the bath? Now I’m not a princess, really, and I’ve lived in scary places, but I do like a shower. I like the idea of a shower. The water pressure, the feeling of it all dripping down over your body. Its nice, its lovely and it makes me clean. I don’t have a shower. I have a bathtub with a spray nozzle attached to it. And the temperature is inconsistent. I can have a ‘shower’ by kneeling, holding the nozzle above me and hoping that I don’t soak the bathroom in the process (hence my desire for a shower curtain rod and accompanying curtain). Really, what one needs is a friend to shower with, and to take turns hosing each other off. Now that’s an idea, if I could only find an acceptably attractive individual to get in on the idea. The bright side of all this is that I can actually take the most environmentally friendly showers ever, it being necessary to turn off the water between rinses. Perhaps used one fifth of the usual shower-water, and while I don’t feel as clean as I’d like, and might resort to showers at the gym, I feel pretty clean on the inside. It kinda balances out my dirty meat-aisle soul.

PS: I still have no keys.