Eb's comments and stuff on Oxford, schools cups of tea and so on

[Simon]

Eb: <<<Wow--I take [tea] mine with both milk and sugar, how do I say that?>>>

Tea, white with x sugars (assuming them to be served by the spoonful or lump).


Eb: <<<It's sweltering, there's no air conditioning anywhere, and yet it was
important for me to have a TEAKETTLE?>>>

It has been slightly cooler the last few days. Tea is nice in this weather,
which reminds me that I need to buy some more soon as I have run out.


Eb: <<<We've visited several schools this week, and at a certain time in the
morning at every school we have to leave off talking with the children and the
teachers and headed to the crowded staffrooms.  They've been trapping us in
there, so now I'm wondering where the children are while just about every
single adult in the school is in one room.  I'm determined to solve the
mystery... and now I am trying to determine when and if Hogwarts staff does
this.  Of course, *that's* a private boarding school, and we've seen what I'd
call "public" schools...>>>

The children get chucked out the way somewhere while the teachers are allowed
to have a relaxing break drinking a cuppa. It is probably not all the
teachers. Some subjects often hide them selves away in distant parts of the
school with their own private tea and coffee supplies (and possibly biscuits
as well). At the school where my dad teaches design/technology they recently
got a new technician (someone who prepares some the tools and supplies for the
lessons) and one of my dad's first comments when they put out the job
advertisement was that the person must be able to make a decent cup of tea. As
you can probably tell he was getting his priorities right ;)


Eb: <<<Another surprise is that coffee drinking is a lot more prevalent over
here than I thought.  Someone fussed at me months ago about allowing HP
characters in my fanfic to drink coffee-- "your American-ness is showing!".
But I've had more coffee this past week than I had in all of second semester
back home (more brew, too, but that's an entirely different tale).>>>

Lots of coffee is drunk over here. I believe that the British drink roughly
equal amounts of the two drinks. I personally only drink tea, but that is
another story.


Ebony said, among accounts of other hilarious adventures in England: <<This is
because this area of the market looks almost nothing like its American
counterpart.  There are four kinds of detergent-- "biological",
"non-biological", "performance", and "colour".  Two kinds of bleach, thick and
something else... I think it's thin, but I can't remember now.  No fabric
softener sheets.  No liquid detergent,  whereas at home a slight majority of
washing soap's liquid.>>

Neil replied: <<<That sounds like a fairly modest selection of clothes-washing
products, but we are talking Oxford and not London, so perhaps the more
entertaining soap detergents haven't made it there yet.>>>

I do not think that is the problem. Guessing that Ebony walked to Sainsbury's
then she ended up in what is an absolutely tiny store that sells practically
nothing useful. I shopped there as rarely as possible, due to the store
usually being packed with customers and devoid of anything to sell (I am not
joking).  I usually used the covered market for fruit, veg and meat (see
footnote below). Then convinced a friend with a car to drive me out to one of
the big supermarkets every now and again to get the rest of the things I
needed.


Footnote:
I was shocked recently to discover that it was cheaper for me to buy one
chicken breast from the Organic Meat specialist in the Covered Market (not
known for its cheap prices) in Oxford than it was for me to but the
equivalent, but non-organic, product in Sainsbury's.




Simon