People can get very confused when you go off-script.
Yesterday took me back to the dentist. Not for the root canal this time, but for a general 12,000 mile service. The assistant, knowing I was British, asked me how I like New Zealand.
After five and a half years, I'm used to that question. But I still don't know quite what to say to it. I equivocate.
"At least the weather is better than England, huh?"
I look out at the concrete-grey sky, the leaves carried by the bitter winter wind across the car park, the runoff from ten days of rain that has left much of the country underwater. I think of late May/early June in England.
"No," I reply firmly. "I haven't been to England in the past week, but I'm pretty sure the weather right now is better than this."
It catches her completely off-balance. The impression I get is that in all the many times she's had this conversation before, nobody has ever said British weather is better than NZ.
2 comments:
'Tis, 'tis. Last weekend your b.o.b. was here, went down to the beach for a swim and came back within the half-hour complaining bitterly. Not that it was too cold to enjoy but but that you couldn't get to the b.. water for for all the damned barbeques on the beach.
You should have come here instead of having luxuries like teeth!!!
I just followed your link to all the ghastly weather you have been having. It seems to be your whack of what I missed last November by the simple expedient of paying my first visit to N.Z.
Maybe there is a moral there! I hope you are not in danger of beeing flooded. You could always camp on the top of One Tree Hill! - your local Mount Ararat
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