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S&M Files, Episode 7: December 30, 1999
“Painted with Anti Climb Paint”

A local house is identified by this sign outside. I never had
the urge until now. I can hardly wait for my rock climbing shoes
to arrive.

Fork Up

In Britain, by law, you must pay more to eat in some place
nice.

A patron at a local Grease & Chips shop had to fork out
more dough between mouthfuls. He apparently sat in the “nice”
seats, where he had access to amenities like cutlery, padded
seats and a table at the right height. If he were clever, he
would have perched against the wall on the stools up front with
the rest of the lepers and common scum. I know I would have. Not
good enough for us lepers, hmm?

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S&M Files, Episode 6: December 23, 1999
Extreme Sports

What a cute notion to fly a kite next to the crashing surf.
But these were not ordinary kites. The kites themselves were
little parachutes, and their masters were decked out in extreme
kite wear. The huge contraptions seemed to take great joy in
launching their captors high into the air and then dragging them
across the beach. As I recall, sandpaper is made from sand.

Fortunately, Brighton does not have sand.

Brighton has pebbles.

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S&M Files, Episode 5: December 12, 1999
Perish the Thought

Food must either go bad faster here, or we North Americans are
used to rancid. The roast chicken is labelled EAT WITHIN 24
HOURS. It’s good for up to an hour unrefrigerated. My grapes
almost expired by the time I got home.

On the plus side, food seems to be less Americanized here.
That is, the ingredient list does not take up two panels of the
cookie box. There is also a lot more organic and vegetarian food
readily available. Well, readily if you are readily rich. Grapes
are $6 a pound. It’s cheaper to fly to Spain for $125 and pick
your own.

Our fridge is small. You might know this, but you do not
understand this. It is SMALL. We have two (2) shelves. Neither is
big enough to fit a 2- litre carton of milk at any angle. The
crisper is the size of a very large hamster. I would kill for the
bar fridge at the office.

In a way, it’s very much like camping out. You carefully pack
and unpack your food each time you need some, taking care not to
create empty pockets. You light your stove with a match. You wear
multiple layers of clothing. It’s the West Coast Trail X 2.5.

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S&M Files, Episode 4: December 6, 1999
Food and Being English

Indian Pizza. Not surprisingly, and more to my delight than
Michelle’s, Indian cuisine is prevalent here. The local Safeway
has a complete Indian dinner for two next to the frozen pizzas.
I’m curious to discover what lies in the “ethnic” foods
section.

Fish and Chips. Still waiting for decent fish and chips. The
local shop downstairs seems to believe in a long soak in grease
followed by a gentle warming.

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S&M Files, Episode 3: December 2, 1999
English Life: Housing, Heating, and Happiness

Now that I’ve been in England more than one week, intending on
being a permanent resident, I feel I have the right to make
cryptic, cynical pronouncements about life in England. Enjoy this
humorous and somewhat barbed rebuttal to Stephen’s earlier
comments.

We were fortunate that Stephen’s cousin Julian offered to
put us up for the first two weeks after our arrival here in
Brighton. Of course, if one is to believe Stephen’s account of
Julian’s apartment, perhaps the offer wasn’t all that fortunate
after all. Myself, however, being made of far sterner stuff than
Stephen, I found Julian’s apartment to be perfectly fine for a
cheap place to live. Now, you might not think that a £600/month
place is a “cheap” place to live but, given the housing situation
here in Brighton at the moment, and the fact that Julian has a
3-bedroom, 3-storey house, £600/month is almost reasonable. Cheap is
what enables us (and Julian!) to save so splendidly on heating.
After all, if the heating doesn’t actually function, then you can’t
spend a fortune on electricity attempting to use it, right? Cheap
is also what enables us to almost never have to vacuum. When the
carpet throughout the house is the colour of dirty sand, you just
don’t easily notice the dirt on it. Ahhhh! The luxuries of
the bachelor apartment!

For a cheap place, though, it has large windows everywhere,
single-paned to be sure, but large windows nonetheless. The walls
and ceiling even bear evidence of recent painting too. What more could a
bachelor ask for? Cable, mobile phones, PlayStations, VCRs,
stereo equipment, and sound editing equipment apparently. The
sandy floor in the living room (or lounge, as the locals
refer to it) is festooned with high-tech music equipment, two
televisions, a PlayStation, and a digital equipment cordless
telephone (DECT phone). This is very amusing when you consider
that the actual inhabitants of this flat spend far less time
here than we do. Maybe they’ve figured out how to use this
stuff remotely?

I hope that the picture I paint of Julian’s flat is neither too
contemptuous nor unflattering. I rather like it except for the heating and
the carpet. I had secret plans to sell all of Julian’s stuff and just take
over the place in order to solve our housing problem. I figure that any
place that is not home to more than 20 species of bugs (unlike some other
places in which I lived) is a fine place to stay. Any place where the roof
doesn’t leak into the walls is also a fine place to stay. Any place where
turning on the microwave doesn’t interfere with television reception
because of ‘noisy power’ is a fine place to stay. If you manage to not
have all these problems in one place then you’ve found a fantastic place to
stay, even if it doesn’t back onto a ravine!

For some reason, completely unfathomable to me, Stephen decided that
finding a place of our own in which to live wasn’t that high of a
priority. After all, what can you do with your own personal place:
open a bank account, have proof of address to get cell phones, have a
place to forward your business calls to, have a place to put all
of your stuff coming by container from Canada, have a place to
sleep after your relatives boot you out on the street? Those don’t
sound all that important, right? Well, apparently they weren’t
to Stephen but luckily I convinced him that we absolutely needed to
find our own place to stay as we could only stay with Julian for
two weeks and then with Anna, a friend from Sussex University, for
the month of December.

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Last night I dreamt of toilets, toilets and toilets and it’s all Eingang’s fault.

Some time back, bemoaning the lack of trees in our neighborhood, we adopted a couple of stray Christmas trees and lured them back to the flat. (They were lost on the street and it was either that or take them to a shelter or, well, firewood.) Luckily they came with their own pots full of dirt.

These Christmas trees relate to toilets in a way you just don’t want to know. Hang in there.

One of the trees blossomed under our loving care but the other sadly was losing its lust for life. We thought perhaps it had been affected by salty ocean spray. You see, when I found it, it was taking a not-so-thoughtful sojourn to the sea-side.

The Ein had a cunning plan. We would wash the tree. Not only would we wash the needles, but we’d, um, wash the dirt and rocks in the pot. And to make the poor distressed tree even happier, we’d kick his brother out of his nice pot where he was happily thriving and trade pots.

“You’ll kill both trees and plug up our septic system,” I pointed out. I had my doubts about the ‘cunning’ in the cunning plan.

“Maybe everything will be OK, ” she beamed, “and we’ll have lovely, lush trees!”

Maybe.

Well, we washed the tree, the pot, the roots. Despite our best intentions most of the dirt and crap seemed to disappear out of the tub. And now the toilet makes funny noises every time we flush.
You see, our toilet, being a late installation doesn’t flush down. It flushes up. A little pump valiantly lifts all the water and stuff over the wall. Normally it goes “whirrr whirrr whirrrr” combined with a satisfying “grump grump grump” of stuff being pushed up and over.
Recently it started going “whirrr whirrr whirrr” with not so satisfying addition of more “whirrr whirrr whirrr” followed usually by “whirrr whirrr whirrr”

Flush!
Whirrr
Whirrr Whirrr
Whirrr
Whirrr
Whirrr Whirrr Whirrr
Whirrr
Whirrr
Whirrr Whirrr Whirrr Whirrr
Whirrr Whirr
Whirrr Whirrr Whirrr
Whirrr Whirr Whirrr Whirrr Whirrr Whirrr
Whirrr Whirr Whirrr Whirr
Whirrr Whirrr
Whirrr Whirrr Whirrr Whirr Whirr Whirr Whirr Whirr
(wheeeze)

“Perhaps we could suggest to the landlord that the pump isn’t working so well anymore”, Michelle suggested last night.

The last tenants who did this had the pump taken apart and it was found to be clogged with several hundred condoms! We’re not quite certain how he explained this. “Condoms? I have no idea how all those condoms got there! What kind of guy would flush a condom?”

I have visions of the pump being opened up and us having to explain how it came to be covered in pine needles.

“Maybe it wouldn’t be covered in pine needles,” Michelle suggested optimistically, “Maybe it’s covered in rocks!”

“Pine needles and rocks?, ” we would say, “in our pump? No we haven’t been flushing dirt and rocks down our toilet. Of course not. What kind of idiot puts dirt and rocks in the toilet. And we, of course, haven’t been washing Christmas trees or anything like that in the toilet. That’s just silly. They would go round and around when you flushed.”

Of course, if they asked us if we were dumping rocks and needles down our bathtub we’d have to ‘fess up and it would be the end for the adventuring S&M.

The dream? Oh, of course. After a conversation about this right before bed I proceeded to spend the night dreaming about an airplane flight where each window seat had its own toilet conveniently placed at about elbow height into the wall. The toilets were used as a kind of messaging and transportation system. You shoved an object into the back of the toilet next to your seat (at convenient elbow height) and it would be magically transported to one of the other toilets for retrieval. A very classy airline.

I was debugging Michelle’s toilet and was having trouble getting the Hot Wheels car suitably in the back of the toilet. It was clogged with thick mud, rocks and shit. So to speak. As I was up to my elbow into the muck, trying to place my Hot Wheels car, it occurred to me this transportation system may not be too popular with the ladies. Just another crappy airline.

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S&M Files, Episode 2: November 27, 1999
Continued Price Shock

Hearing price shock from me is not surprising. What is surprising is how it continually sneaks up and waps me upside the head.

Mini Doughnuts: Remember those little doughnuts that float about the deep fryer on little conveyer belts and pop out fresh and hot at $2 bag or 3 / $5. Well, surprise! The Toonie-sized wonders are here for a reasonable pound note ($2.60). Oh wait, that’s £1 for 3 donuts. Count them: 1-2-3. Ha! Ha! Three little donuts. For those that can’t afford that kind of extravagance they can be purchased *singly* for a mere 35p (86¢).

Coke: Needing my fix, I hit the local Safeway and found cans of Coke on sale. Say, that’s pretty reasonable: a pack for about $4.50. Safeway normally discounted a 12 pack to $4.00 back home. It wasn’t until I tried to pick it up that I found out it was a 6-pack.

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S&M Files, Episode 1: November 24, 1999
Introduction

England is well… England. The stereotypes are all true.

Little lanes
Wet weather
Tiny shops
Small cars
Outrageous prices
Little red chimneys
British countryside
All those silly Monty Pythoners everywhere. Two on the corner. One
serving me at the store. Two figuring out how to hire a shopping cart.
Help! I’m stuck in a skit.

It’s like an overdone Hollywood set brought to life.

Flew in from bright sunshine and fluffy into a slow descent into wet and
drizzling. Welcome to London, Stephen Dodd.

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