Errant Ramblings: Mitzi Szereto’s Weblog

I know, I know. I spent an entire month in America, visiting two coasts (Florida and California), and all I have to blog about is a lousy fifty dollar bill?

Well, it isn’t just any fifty dollar bill. It’s a special fifty dollar bill. Or special to me anyway. Thank god I hadn’t given it to the taxi driver who took me to San Jose International Airport last Wednesday morning. Fortunately, I’d found enough cash on me to scrape together my fare without having to relinquish it, despite the fact that it was given to me for this express purpose. The fifty was still safely folded into one-fourth of its original size inside my wallet when I returned to Fort Lauderdale International Airport and had remained there until…

… a trip to Office Max on Sunday afternoon. I’d gone in to buy some cheap 2 gig USB flash drives (cheap in U.S. dollars anyway). When I went to pay, the cashier told me there was a special deal on some 4 gig flash drives that were even cheaper than the 2 gig ones I’d already chosen. I guess in all the excitement of the moment (and here you thought I led an interesting life) I didn’t pay attention to what I was doing. I reached into my wallet, removed the fifty, and plonked it down on the counter. The fact that I had a $25-off coupon only added to the confusion and pandemonium and before I knew it, I’d given away something that held great significance to me.

When I returned to the car, I suddenly realised what I’d done. I was in tears. How could I have been so stupid? HOW??? Seeing my state, my mother turned her car around and returned back to the crowded parking lot, speeding up and down lanes, ignoring stop signs, and nearly running over several dimwitted pedestrians just so I could get my precious fifty dollar bill back.

I was in a panic. What if it wasn’t there anymore? What if there were other fifty dollar bills in the cash register and we couldn’t figure out which one was mine? What if they rang the police, thinking I was operating some kind of counterfeit scheme or con game? South Florida isn’t high on my list of favourite places, therefore the thought of being imprisoned here held little appeal. Mind you, the thought of returning home to Blighty after being back in the San Francisco Bay Area again held little appeal either. I mean, the only thing I have waiting for me back in England is a broken vacuum cleaner.

I nearly pulled the glass doors out of their hinges in my haste to get back into the store. The cashier saw my panicked face racing toward her from even before I entered. I came to a skidding halt in front of her and poured out my tale of woe – or rather a vastly abbreviated version of it, since there’s only so much Pasternakian tragedy a person can take. My stricken expression must have told her all she needed to know. (Even the guy who’d helped me earlier looked on the verge of tears.) The cashier popped open the register and pulled out a fifty. Is it my fifty? I asked dubiously, hoping she wouldn’t take advantage of my delicate emotional state. I explained to her that my fifty was very crisp and new, and had been folded into one-fourth its original size. She said yes, it was definitely mine, as it was the only fifty in the cash register. And judging from the lack of customers, it seemed unlikely that she was lying to me. I hope not anyway. Christ, even now I’m worrying and wondering. Should I go back to double check?

And will they call the police this time if I do?

They don’t call this country “Blighty” for nothing. It seems like everyone’s always ailing around here, especially me. I get shot of one malady, only to have another swoop down and carry me off in its germy clutches. In the past few weeks I’ve been hit by a cold, followed by what may or may not have been food poisoning, followed by bronchitis (with severe laryngitis) combined with a head cold (that’s still going on). I average something every four weeks now, except for the summers, when I get time off for good behaviour. I shudder to think what would happen if I was forced to join the daily commute in and out of London with millions of germy commuters hacking and coughing and sneezing their way through the morning and evening rush hour. Frankly, I’m beginning to think the plague was never fully eliminated from Britain.

Some time back I was out for an evening in Blackheath with a bunch of Cockneys (I do seem to know a lot of Cockneys, don’t I?) and I was given a most interesting history lesson. Apparently the heath itself – which is a green space situated between some of Blackheath’s village streets – can never be built on. Now let me say to those blissful in their ignorance, the heath itself is one hell of a nice piece of real estate… until you hear that there are plague victims buried there. Oh, sure, there are mixed reports on all this, but when was the last time you saw anyone spending a Sunday afternoon on the heath with a bucket and spade? I mean, would you let your children play there? Er, well… providing you actually LIKE your children, that is.

Now don’t get me wrong – I’m not blaming Blackheath specifically for my maladies! I guess if I were to place the blame on any one particular location, I’d probably have to opt for Eyam, the famous plague village in the Derbyshire Dales, since I’d been there way before I’d ever stepped foot in Blackheath. When I lived in the dreaded north (by that I mean Sheffield, home of the Arctic Monkeys, Sean Bean, and assorted bits of steel cutlery), I spent quite a lot of my free time in Derbyshire, hiking about in The Peak District, only to end up in some wonderful country pub afterward (that really was the whole point of the exercise, if I’m honest!). If you want to know of a good pub in the Peaks, just ask – I know them all. There were very few Sunday afternoons when you wouldn’t find me at some cosy country pub with a pint and a plate of some tasty pub grub. No frozen rubbish there. The food was fresh and often bordering on gastro-cuisine, and there was always room for sticky toffee pudding. One tends to work up an appetite hiking and climbing and teetering about on cliffs, believe me.

I’ve had some very enjoyable experiences in the Peaks. In fact, I’ve even taken some literary inspiration from the area via my short story Bakewell, Revisited originally published in Erotic Travel Tales 2. It’s set in the market town of Bakewell and involves its most famous celebrity: the absolutely divine Bakewell Pudding. Mind you, I’m not entirely certain the Bakewell Pudding’s founding fathers (or mothers) had envisioned quite the scenario I’d conjured up for my story, but…

Anyway, let’s get back to those Peak District jaunts before I get myself into trouble here. I tell you, you haven’t lived till you’ve been right in there among the heather when it’s in its full purple glory. Oh yeah, you’ll have plenty of company buzzing about too, which can be a bit of a challenge. I’d already had some nasty run-ins with wasps on a remote mountaintop in the Greek islands (Epinephine anyone?), so their English cousins were not exactly winning me over – especially when one of the cheeky buggers got up my skirt. And honey, I mean WAY up my skirt. Let’s just say this could have been a la petite mort that would have truly been mort.

I’d probably have to say that one of the absolute highlights of my time there (the Peaks, not Greece) was when I was out one Sunday afternoon with my walking/hiking mate Liz and a couple who were visiting her from France. After a scenic drive, we partook of a brief walking tour of duty along a hilly country lane, which wound past a farm full of sheep bleating and whatever else it is sheep get up to. Indeed, our Frenchman was so inspired by this pastoral English setting that he burst into song, serenading these farm residents with the Edith Piaf classic “La Vie En Rose”. (Oddly, there was no applause when he finished.) We then trudged our way back up the hill to the pub, whereupon he ordered the lamb for dinner. I never quite forgave him for that.

Meanwhile, back to the plague. The crazy thing is, I was never ill this often when I lived in Sheffield – and that hilly city is far colder and much windier than The Big Smoke by a long shot. Perhaps those salt-of-the-earth Yorkshire folk are hardier and not as prone to germs as these spoiled Southerners are – after all, they come from steel mill and coal pit stock. Now I’m not saying the dreaded lurgy never sank its talons into the locals, but I don’t recall anything quite to the extent of what I’m experiencing here. Mind you, it could just be me. In fact, I’m certain of it.

I wonder if someone’s trying to tell me something. Is that a voice in my ear, whispering “Come to California! Come to California!”?

Nah. Guess I must’ve imagined it.

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Well, it’s that time of year again when I’m receiving panicked emails from my mother informing me that yet another hurricane is about to hit South Florida. Seems like only yesterday when this end-of-the-world scenario was transpiring, with wild-eyed rabid shoppers climbing all over each other to lay claim to the last torch (flashlight to you Yanks) on the shelf at The Home Depot, not to mention queuing up to buy petrol for the family car. I well remember being stranded in Glorious Sunshine Land during Hurricane Katrina, the eye of which went right over the roof of my mother’s house, sparking off a psychedelic light show on the power lines that would have put any rave to shame, leaving us with no power for several days – and no air conditioning. If you’ve ever spent a summer in South Florida, you’ll know that this is tantamount to the very worst of CIA torture techniques. It took three days before we could find a hotel that had either electricity or a working generator. My flight back home to Blighty had to be delayed by another week, and I was never so glad to see the glum-faced immigration officers at Heathrow in my life.

Which makes me wonder why people get so worried about earthquakes. I’ve experienced a few during my time on the West Coast. These are the little things in life that keep you on your toes. I mean, there’s nothing like being jolted out of a sound slumber at 5am and having to sprint naked into the nearest doorway (for those of you who don’t know about such things, doorways are apparently the strongest part structurally in a building). With the opening lyrics to “The End” by The Doors playing in your head, you wonder if this is finally THE BIG ONE that everybody’s been going on about – the one where the San Andreas Fault will crack wide open and swallow up Los Angeles. Now I ask you, is that such a bad thing? Just think, no more mediocre television sitcoms or plasticised dim-witted celebrities!

You don’t get warnings about earthquakes, therefore there’s no need for those panicked trips to Home Depot or the BP station. Theoretically you’re supposed to have an emergency supply kit on hand anyway, which includes flashlight, radio, batteries (gotta have them batteries, and I don’t necessarily mean for the flashlight and radio either!), canned food, and a generous supply of water for both drinking and washing (and to help flush the loo if things get really dire). Of course hardly anyone bothers with this. I never did. Guess I figured I’d just get in the car and get the hell out of town.

As it happens, we have earthquakes in England too, though they’re pretty wimpy compared to those butch California ones. I remember being awakened in my bed in Sheffield in the middle of the night, thinking “did we just have an earthquake?”, whereupon I promptly fell back to sleep. The next morning I heard on the news that there had been an earthquake across the Pennines in Greater Manchester. A few broken windows and fallen bricks – nothing remotely along the lines of the 1906 San Francisco quake that nearly destroyed the city or the one in 1989 that re-deposited cars on the upper level of the Bay Bridge to the lower level.

Volcanoes. That’s one thing we don’t hear too much about on our curious little island, though they do exist. Now those can be tricky. I lived in Seattle for awhile, and had a rather oblique view of Mount Rainier from the balcony of my apartment. In fact, I even climbed it once (Mount Rainier, not my apartment building), though abandoned the quest at the halfway mark when I passed some snowboarder who couldn’t have been more than 15 looking on the verge of a stroke as he scrambled back down after only having made it part of the way. Needless to say, I ended up leaving Seattle before any lava came rolling in my direction. Or any more snowboarders.

I guess it’s safe to say that I’d take an earthquake over a hurricane any day. I mean, why get all worked up about something before it even happens? Then again, why not just opt for the quiet life? Aside from random earthquakes, windstorms, floods, tornadoes, strikes, football hooliganism, terrorist attacks, riots, never-ending engineering work on the railways and tube, Chancellors with surnames like “Darling“, and wood lice that somehow manage to get through your front door, life in Britain is pretty peaceful overall.

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