“What do you miss?” is a question asked by friends back in Britain and also by my new neighbours.
I suppose that the people who ask the question are not really interested in the obvious answers of ‘family and friends’ they are waiting to hear of those small, seemingly inconsequential losses that were unconsidered trifles when in the home country.
For reasons that leave me speechless, some people say they miss food which I would have needed to have been paid large sums of money to eat while in Britain: Bovril, Marmite, revoltingly flavoured crisps, plastic white sliced bread and, in Cardiff a disgusting entity known as a Clarks Pie.
These truly revolting creations are a Cardiff institution http://icwales.icnetwork.co.uk/expats/expats-newsletter/page.cfm?objectid=15527792&method=full&siteid=50082 with dedicated followers some of whom eat one of these delights every day. If you have ever take the lid (or scab as I prefer to call it) off one of these pieces of (apparently organic construction) you will find a congealed sludge of grey slime which is (allegedly) a combination of meat (sic.) and vegetables. The taste is even worse than the appearance.
I do not miss the pies. The pink of SA or Dark of Messrs. S A Brain that accompanied it I do miss. But Cava and Rioja are adequate compensations!
The thing that I miss the most in my language.
Given the jaw dropping awfulness of Spanish television with twenty minute advert breaks, one realises the worth of British Television. There’s something I didn’t expect myself to write! Although having had some experience of American Television in the eighties I did have some low expectations of television free of a licence fee! I am not competent to comment on Spanish radio but there is no way that it could compare with the excellence of the BBC.
Radio is something which I really do miss. I have discovered a classical music station http://www.catradio.cat/pcatradio/crSeccio.jsp?seccio=cm but this is more like Classic fm than Radio 3. I have put all my hopes in an internet radio which should give me access to the BBC in all its glory using the wireless broadband connection.
One lives in hope!
British newspapers are ruinously expensive and I have been looking around for alternatives. I should, of course, be reading Spanish newspapers but, well, you know how it is! I have however discovered (thanks, yet again to Caroline) a freebie magazine called ‘Metropolitan’ and on my own I have found a weekly newspaper called ‘Catalonia Today’ –both of these are in English.
From the latter I have extracted the following which I thought piquant at this time of year as it deals with a view of religions. In a review by Germà Capdevila in Catalonia Today of ‘La vida després de Déu’ by Matthew Lee, he writes of:
. . . the old comparison of religion with people’s lives that says that each century of existence of a religion corresponds to a year of human life. Thus oriental belief systems are already in their thirties, and therefore mature and free, allowing their followers a wide range of freedom and without the need to interfere in their lives. Islam, by contrast, is in full adolescence, with its hormones boiling over, leading it into the fanaticism and calls for the extermination of the infidel that was such a feature of Christianity’s teenage years in the Middle Ages. Christianity meanwhile finds itself at that age in which it seems like a responsible adult but is still living with its parents.
Makes you think!
I suppose that the people who ask the question are not really interested in the obvious answers of ‘family and friends’ they are waiting to hear of those small, seemingly inconsequential losses that were unconsidered trifles when in the home country.
For reasons that leave me speechless, some people say they miss food which I would have needed to have been paid large sums of money to eat while in Britain: Bovril, Marmite, revoltingly flavoured crisps, plastic white sliced bread and, in Cardiff a disgusting entity known as a Clarks Pie.
These truly revolting creations are a Cardiff institution http://icwales.icnetwork.co.uk/expats/expats-newsletter/page.cfm?objectid=15527792&method=full&siteid=50082 with dedicated followers some of whom eat one of these delights every day. If you have ever take the lid (or scab as I prefer to call it) off one of these pieces of (apparently organic construction) you will find a congealed sludge of grey slime which is (allegedly) a combination of meat (sic.) and vegetables. The taste is even worse than the appearance.
I do not miss the pies. The pink of SA or Dark of Messrs. S A Brain that accompanied it I do miss. But Cava and Rioja are adequate compensations!
The thing that I miss the most in my language.
Given the jaw dropping awfulness of Spanish television with twenty minute advert breaks, one realises the worth of British Television. There’s something I didn’t expect myself to write! Although having had some experience of American Television in the eighties I did have some low expectations of television free of a licence fee! I am not competent to comment on Spanish radio but there is no way that it could compare with the excellence of the BBC.
Radio is something which I really do miss. I have discovered a classical music station http://www.catradio.cat/pcatradio/crSeccio.jsp?seccio=cm but this is more like Classic fm than Radio 3. I have put all my hopes in an internet radio which should give me access to the BBC in all its glory using the wireless broadband connection.
One lives in hope!
British newspapers are ruinously expensive and I have been looking around for alternatives. I should, of course, be reading Spanish newspapers but, well, you know how it is! I have however discovered (thanks, yet again to Caroline) a freebie magazine called ‘Metropolitan’ and on my own I have found a weekly newspaper called ‘Catalonia Today’ –both of these are in English.
From the latter I have extracted the following which I thought piquant at this time of year as it deals with a view of religions. In a review by Germà Capdevila in Catalonia Today of ‘La vida després de Déu’ by Matthew Lee, he writes of:
. . . the old comparison of religion with people’s lives that says that each century of existence of a religion corresponds to a year of human life. Thus oriental belief systems are already in their thirties, and therefore mature and free, allowing their followers a wide range of freedom and without the need to interfere in their lives. Islam, by contrast, is in full adolescence, with its hormones boiling over, leading it into the fanaticism and calls for the extermination of the infidel that was such a feature of Christianity’s teenage years in the Middle Ages. Christianity meanwhile finds itself at that age in which it seems like a responsible adult but is still living with its parents.
Makes you think!
No comments:
Post a Comment