Clara and I packed up five boxes of books and took them to the Post Office, and sent them via surface mail for about £130. At the Post Office, a customer in another line finished his transaction and said to the woman behind the counter, "Have a nice day!" The woman behid the counter said, "I can tell you've spent time in America. Here people just grunt." As soon as the polite man left, the woman behind the counter started mocking him, repeating, "Have a nice day! Have a nice day!" in a voice like a parrot.
I woke up last night at midnight with my heart pounding. Unable to sleep, I went downstairs and found out on the internet about the collapse of the I-35W bridge over the Mississippi in Minneapolis.
In two weeks, we'll be back home in Northfield. This is what we're currently missing back home:
Today at Northfield's own English pub, The Contented Cow, volunteers will pose for a photographic reproduction of Renoir's painting Le Dejeuner des Canotiers (The Luncheon of the Boating Party, 1881). Too bad I won't be there to pose as the redhead in the yellow straw hat. I love Renoir. His Les Parapluies is one of my favorite paintings in the National Gallery.
Starting tomorrow evening, the Northfield Arts Guild is presenting Seamus Heaney's The Burial at Thebes (a version of Sophocles' Antigone) on the stage in Central Park.
1 comment:
Sometimes small details make leaving things behind easier, and I suppose the woman in the Post Office has 'helped'. I have had some of my worst experiences of human nature in the Post Office, both in England and here in the US. I wonder what it is about the place that brings out this negativity?
We are just over half way through A's secondment, but I can empathise about how it feels to start to think about home...
Safe journey.
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