Friday, December 28, 2007

The best place on earth to live


Who needs broadband? Whilst we are at my mum's I am using dial up. Obviously a little slow but not bad. Still effective.

The postman delivered a parcel from Italy this morning. Pia, my mum’s sister, had sent a food parcel, a food parcel containing lots of Italian Christmas goodies. Two types of olives, cartellate (a fried pastry made with wine, shaped and covered in a cooked wine syrup), taralli (a semi sweet dry biscuit), a packet of amaretti biscuits, a large jar of home preserved artichokes hearts and a container of home made chocolates. Mum was genuinely pleased. For her it was a Christmas trip down culinary memory lane.

Harrogate is a great town and even Jan, a confirmed southern softy, says that she could happily live there. It has such a good feel. As you drive over The Stray and into town you notice that all the bus shelters still have their glass walls intact. There is no graffiti, nobody would dare. If you drop a piece of litter here you get flogged to within an inch of your life. No softy, pinko, do gooders here my friends. People behave themselves. OK, so I’m kidding, but it’s a great place to live. Recommended.

Jan is great with my mum, but I get very short tempered over silly little incidents and I admit I shouldn’t. Even after all this time I get very exasperated. For two days I’ve been waiting for mum to reply to our offer to take her out for lunch tomorrow. We’re sitting outside WH Smith waiting for Jan and out of the blue mum said, “OK, let’s go to the Sportsman’s Arms for lunch.”
“Hallelujah,” I said, “It’s only taken you a day to make up your mind.”
Mum said, “But you didn’t ask me in the right way. You have to be more emphatic and tell me that we’re going and not ask me if I want to go”
“What! It’s my fault that you can’t accept a genuine invitation? When we arrived yesterday you said that you had a houseful of food so I was being sensitive to that.”
Silence. I had steam coming out of my ears and mum sits in indignant self righteous silence.

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