2. Another Cup Of Tea

The cabbie who got us a fare at Heathrow from the early morning arrival at Terminal 3, didn't have to tell us how sick he was at getting a local run, instead of the lucrative trip to town with a holiday tourist unfamiliar with English currency.

The look of disgust on his face when I told him the destination was enough. 'Don't know Harrow' he snarled when I said Bessborough Road, and sat glowering through the windscreen as I loaded on my luggage. So I told him exactly how to get there, to let him know that any diversion via Kings X would be noticed. No effort was made to help my wife and I unload when I paid the fare and he hi-tailed back towards the airport without so much as a 'Ta'.

Bessborough Road 2017 (source: www.instantstreetview.com)

So once again, back home, where a happy face is the exception rather than the rule, where goodwill and a sincere desire to helpful and cheerful ain't often seen, where far too many people are only too anxious to rip you off, where you're bloody lucky to find a garage which does a good repair on your motor even though you pay the earth for it, where dogs and horses are held in greater esteem than are children and aged folk, where too many shopkeepers think they're doing you a favour by letting you pay through the nose for sub-standard rubbish they're flogging, where cafes and restaurants dish up junk food in minute quantities and charge for Cordon Bleu cooking, where hunks of plastic wadding and sticks of fried smash masquerade as fish and chips, and where we are ruled by a regime openly determined to create a two tier society in which peasants as you and me will have as much freedom and affluence as did those in Tsarist Russia.

Well, so what. One is apt to look on the black side after being on leave. I don't mean that you're anti-British just because bad things are apparent and stand out after enjoying the good things of a country like Canada.

Not at all, and ten minutes after being indoors I knew why this black outlook was upon me. It cleared as fast as the cinema used to when they played the National Anthem at the end of the picture.

I got the first decent cuppa Rosy Lea down me since I'd left England three weeks back. Great country, Canada, but like all the American Continent they can't make a good cuppa tea. Like gnats pee, it is. Whats more I got charged 25 dollars (about 11 pound*) when a doctor there got a bit of dirt out of my wife's eye. So every place has it's bad things and we're used to ours, even though we don't like them.

I hear it's been raining non-stop since I've been away. Well that's nothing new. Typical British summer. Still belting down outside. I'll just have another cup of tea and get on with the Harrow Post.

NICE TO BE BACK!

* Note:  Nearer £14 now!