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Shopkeepers of the world unite

August 15th, 2008

I drove mum to Weeley today to do a funeral. Weeley is a village in Essex. There’s a crematorium, and a pub, and nothing else but houses. Well, there was an old guy wandering around wearing only shorts. In that respect, it was like Cambodia, but only in the old-guy-wearing-only-shorts respect, because I came to the conclusion that Cambodia is better than Weeley.

I only wanted something to eat. A year in Siem Reap and I’m accustomed to walking a short way and seeing a shop with a big orange ice box out the front and bags of things you can eat hanging from the ceiling. Weeley has conversely got bugger all except the smell of old beer drifting from the pub over the head of a lone man with a black Harley Davidson. And an old guy wandering around in his shorts. The people in Weeley, and practically everywhere else in this country, have totally failed to open a shop in the front of their house so I can snack when I want to and I’m stuck in a strange village with nothing to do for forty minutes. Most people obviously think they’re too bloody special to be shopkeepers, they’d rather sit inside watching TV.

My landlady in Cambodia opened a shop out the front of the house and ran it with a few of the other ladies from nearby houses, and they didn’t even give a monkeys if they sold anything, it just let them sit on the street where they could pass the time nattering and observing everything and everyone that went past. This was a creche for biddies and neighbourhood watch nerve center as much as a retail establishment.

So I salute the small shopkeepers that are there when you need them, and am going to start looking for a big orange ice box to put outside the front of my house.

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In Heathrow

February 15th, 2008

So I got here early, a maniac getting onto the Piccadilly Line in a personal best time, and now I’m loafing about the place surrounded by bored children and boreder adults, sitting in an overpriced Internet booth-type-thing, a Krispy Kreme doughnut having sunk to the bottom of my gut like a sugar-coated lead weight. I resent eating anything from a place that can neither spell ‘crispy’ nor ‘cream’ correctly, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

I’m thinking about the guy who has lived in Charles de Gaulle Airport for the last ten or so years due to a mix-up with some paperwork, surviving on MacDonalds food and living out of suitcases in the corner of an arrivals lounge, and all of a sudden this doesn’t seem so bad.

The flight is eleven hours and I’m hoping for a few good movies, a quiet seat (so not one next to any babies), half-way decent food and some sleep. I’m already trying to convince myself that I am seven hours ahead, which makes it nearly 2am. I might not sleep too well because I forgot to do the padlock on one of my backpack compartments up when I checked it in, so I keep envisaging the bag coming open and a pair of crocs, two boxes of Yorkshire tea and some fine new pants being scattered to the wind on the runway.

The coin-operated computer is telling me that I should pump more money into its greedy guts in order to carry on using it, which I just won’t do. Time to stare blankly at some souvenir biscuits or try and work out why everyone looks so miserable when they’re supposed to be going on holiday.

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