No Beef but plenty of Bikes!

Before Michael and I look at the sights our habit has always been to investigate the local supermarkets. Around Cambridge there are hundreds of little local stores, privately owned ones with quirky names, Co-op grocers, Sainsburies and Tescos. Yesterday we found a giant Tescos that looked more like a Costco.

We wanted two things - sausages for tea and wool mix to wash our jumpers in.

A product in the butchers

After searching everywhere around the town, including local butchers, poor Michael has had to conclude that for the Leviticus minded in the world, sausages in England are just fond memories. All are pork, Irish pork, Cumberland pork, pork and apple, smoked pork - you name it it has been done to a pig, minced and squeezed into it's own intestines. I'm thinking the vego range is looking better every day.

We had tea at a teetotaller Indian restaurant - with no beef of course. Maybe the UK has been more influenced by the Asian immigrants (so tempting to use the rhyming 'invasion' but so politically incorrect!) rather than the Madcow and Foot'n'mouth. But really who cares if it means you don't have to scrub out a fatty pan.

As for the woolmix, we thought this was going to be another importing business opportunity until at last in the big Tesco we found a variety of brands - obviously the students don't bother to wash their jumpers or maybe using the wrong laundry liquid is how they achieve the half shrunken, stretched look that matches their beirees and sock hats. Perhaps they don't actually want their midriffs exposed to the 4degree highs of spring but ignorance and poverty is causing the fashion for kidney fever?

At the end of the road we are staying on is Cherry Hinton Rd and on the corner is a bike shop, they are every where, so are the bikes. I've only seen a few people in helmets and bikes are left propped up against the many iron fences with no locks. Quite a few of the young girls have big baskets on the front with artificial flowers threaded through the wicker.

One of the hundreds of cycle shops

We haven't managed to find a decent coffee shop yet so in frustration Michael went to John Lewis and bought a Nespresso - I'm sure he'll be a lot happier leaving for work this morning. I won't tell him the fun things I intend to do while he's out earning the bucks!

Reading Still: The Hundred Year Old Man etc ... (Apparently the author thought this was such a great title he had to write a book to fit it - yes I read the last pages early!)
A rollicking 'she'll be right' - Mr Jonasson could be an Aussie.
A few of the great lines so far,
1. 'Allan surmised that it must be a common characteristic of World leaders to invite you to eat as soon as you did something they liked ...' P112
2. After some interesting advice from his parents and a bit of life experience, the protagonist distills this wisdom, '...reliable people didn't drink fruit juice. And he agreed with his mother that you had to make sure you behaved, even if you had drunk a bit more (this usually refers to his fav- vodka) than was wise.' P135
3. '...in general it was unnecessary to be grumpy if you had the chance not to.' P186

From the top deck of the bus

Trinity Lane