Thursday, December 23, 2004
Berry Christbas
I’m very, very sick right now, and I blame Louis’s couch. It gave me fleas, after all. Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you: my upper body has been dotted with fleabites since I started sleeping on Louis’s couch. Who knows what else was living on that thing? Ick. So now I can’t stop coughing and my sinuses are producing horrible things. Next time I stay with Louis, I’m taking the damn bed.
Laura is meeting a friend for lunch and the rest of her family has gone out to do something fun, so I’m going to spend the day lying down and drinking (water). Also, I seem to be perpetually one day behind on these entries, so let me catch you up on yesterday.
Laura lives in village called Wetton, but it really is just a handful of houses and a pub sitting smack dab in the middle of nowhere. The nearest town with actual shops and businesses and more than 10 people is called Ashbourne, which I got to see a bit of yesterday. There’s a river running through the middle of town, and Laura says every year they have a townwide football game along the whole main street with people born on one side of the river playing against people born on the other side of the river. That’s what kind of town this is. An actual community.
Exhibit B: Some rich guy just moved into the village and to celebrate and meet everyone he rented out the local pub for a night and put £4,000 behind the bar, so food and drinks were free for everybody. That was last night. When we got there the pub was absolutely packed, and EVERYONE knew Laura and greeted her personally and asked her how university was going, etc. I realized these people must have watched her grow up and everything, and Laura has known them her whole life. COMMUNITY. Sometimes I wish I grew up in a small town. But only sometimes.
I spent some time with Laura’s family: her brother and sister, her parents, her grandmother, her aunt and uncle, and their two kids. One of them is only a year old and started crying every time Laura looked at her, which I found extremely funny, although the two of them must have come to some sort of agreement because later the baby seemed very pleased with her.
Okay, I have to cough up some Christmas phlegm now. More later.
Laura is meeting a friend for lunch and the rest of her family has gone out to do something fun, so I’m going to spend the day lying down and drinking (water). Also, I seem to be perpetually one day behind on these entries, so let me catch you up on yesterday.
Laura lives in village called Wetton, but it really is just a handful of houses and a pub sitting smack dab in the middle of nowhere. The nearest town with actual shops and businesses and more than 10 people is called Ashbourne, which I got to see a bit of yesterday. There’s a river running through the middle of town, and Laura says every year they have a townwide football game along the whole main street with people born on one side of the river playing against people born on the other side of the river. That’s what kind of town this is. An actual community.
Exhibit B: Some rich guy just moved into the village and to celebrate and meet everyone he rented out the local pub for a night and put £4,000 behind the bar, so food and drinks were free for everybody. That was last night. When we got there the pub was absolutely packed, and EVERYONE knew Laura and greeted her personally and asked her how university was going, etc. I realized these people must have watched her grow up and everything, and Laura has known them her whole life. COMMUNITY. Sometimes I wish I grew up in a small town. But only sometimes.
I spent some time with Laura’s family: her brother and sister, her parents, her grandmother, her aunt and uncle, and their two kids. One of them is only a year old and started crying every time Laura looked at her, which I found extremely funny, although the two of them must have come to some sort of agreement because later the baby seemed very pleased with her.
Okay, I have to cough up some Christmas phlegm now. More later.
