Kingston

We go to Kingston to return some party glasses at John Lewis.  The parking garages full and we are forced to walk a long ways to get to the department store. Meanwhile I endure a lower form of human being stuffed inside too-tight jeans exposing fast-food derriers, elevated by grotesque brown, worn, high-heeled knee-highs into which trousers stuffed.  The blokes equally horrific and everybody smokes, like, right next to me.  How the population changes outside Mayfair or Knightbridge and suddenly I appreciate why Central London property prices so high.  The thing is, without London, there is .. nothing.  In my Internet days or now, it is easy to get excited about setting up a business in W1, an enthusiasm which deflates proportionally from the Capital. I have been to Birmingham and Ipswich and Swindon and Slough.  Just the name "Slough" makes me cringe. Who would ever risk something there?


So Kingston, which is not all that bad, I suppose.  The city on the majestic Thames, after all, where it offered the first upstream crossing from London Bridge.  The area once occupied by Romans and later a royal residence.  There is record of a council from 838. All good history.  There are two fabulous state secondary schools - Tiffin School and Kingston grammer.  Kingston mentioned in the Doomsday Book of 1086, which perhaps forecasts today: one giant shopping mall.  Visitors drive from near and far for the brands, especially Boxing Day when JL slashes prices by 70% to clean its colon of inventory along with the rest of the holidays bloated High State. The queues all the way to the A3. But why wait for the mark-downs? Today these Brits flush: junk, junk, junk they buy like the instant soup maker or turbo espresso machine. There is an ice crushing thingy and a chrome vegetable masher.  All this crap slammed down on the John Lewis credit card and to hell with our consumer debts. A young cashier tells me the chain has set record sales the last two weeks, "surprising everybody" she gushes.  Indeed.


Yes, today's visit wears on me. The traffic. Lack of parking. Grotesque, damp, housing estates and faux fat Santas with advertisements flashing on their cardboard sleigh. Christmas carols belt too loudly down the main street.  It is just .. so .. American.  I spend the rest of the afternoon indoors, under the covers, reading the Times. Now what is that Tiger Woods up to?


Madeleine: "I still got that thing that I got."
Me: "Can you be a little more specific?"
Madeleine: "I still have that thing that I got."


Eitan, during dinner: "Can I have an after-snack?"
Me: "What is an 'after-snack''?"
Eitan: "It is a snack after dinner but before desert."
Me: "Congratulations. You should start a company with that idea and make lots of money."
Eitan:


Eitan gets a thimble glass and pours himself several glasses of ginger-ale: "Look, I am so drunk!"


Eitan: "Do you still think Tiger Woods is the best golfer in the world?" 
Me: "Yes."
Eitan: "So why is he in so much trouble then?"
Me: "Because he got caught lying to his family and gambling and drinking and smoking cigars and having sex with women he should not have been having sex with."
Eitan: "You mean he smokes?"


Unexpectedly I toss an ice cream bar to Eitan. He: "Gee, it must really be Christmas."