Tea Addiction Breeds Dangerous Crackpot (Redux)

This piece was originally posted on August 22, 2006. The stove was ultimately left behind on the trip to Ireland, but had it been taken along, it would have worked admirably!

Next month Jose and I, along with my mother, will embark on a 10-day bicycle adventure around Southeast Ireland. We have everything we could possibly need--panniers, maps, raingear, first aid kit—but what we don’t have is tea. My mother and I take our tea intravenously, and in the four years or so since Jose and I have been together, he has gradually come to satisfy his own caffeine addiction through the more genteel traditions of tea drinking. The dilemma, therefore: How to get a steaming hot mug of tea in the middle of the Wicklow Mountains? Enter the alcohol stove.

When Jose first handed me instructions on how to make your own alcohol-burning stove out of two Heineken cans and a penny, I dismissed him as a dangerous crackpot. He’s full of good intentions, but the dirty work somehow always falls to me. Yet, somewhere in my subconscious, the idea tapped away at the long-dormant engineer in me, until last weekend I found myself wielding a steak knife and hacking away at a beer can like some lunatic inventor.Within a couple of hours, and without inflicting serious injury on myself or anyone else, I was the proud owner of an alcohol penny stove.

Stepping out into the backyard, armed with a camping kettle, a can of denatured alcohol and my stove, I felt like a pioneer setting out into uncharted territory. Yes, I could have driven to REI, plunked down my credit card and bought a super-lightweight Pocket Rocket, but I am 21st Century Woman, a trailblazer following the lead of those great British explorers: Scott of the Antarctic, Sir Walter Raleigh and Mary Kingsley. I am a rebel.

Admittedly, it was with no small amount of trepidation that I poured in the fuel and struck the first match. In fact, it was with so much trepidation that I had Jose pour in the fuel and strike the first match. Even rebels and trailblazers need a sidekick; Hillary had Tenzing, Lewis had Clark. And after all, I’m a rebel, not a fool.

To my astonishment, it worked and ten minutes later, we were sitting around the dancing blue and orange flames sipping freshly made, piping hot tea. I was so impressed with myself I went on to fix the screen door that had been torn and hadn’t closed since we moved into the place two years ago. And it was with a certain sense of satisfaction that as I pulled the last corner of the replacement screen into place I, 21st Century Woman heard the vacuum cleaner whir into action inside my house, with 21st Century Man at the helm.


Want your own alcohol stove? Click here for instructions.
Thanks to Mark Jurey for his excellent directions.

'Ay up, Lad! Tha' Dun't Se Much Does Tha?

This post is one of my personal favorites. There have been so many occasions when Jose and I were out doing something that we wish Sid could have been there for. He truly was one in a million.

This piece was originally posted on April 21, 2006.

My husband, Jose is a pretty gregarious sort. He’s witty and interesting and therefore easy to take out in public. So when my mother and Sid, my late stepfather came here for Christmas the first year we were together, I was looking forward to them meeting him, and being suitably impressed.

“Awright, Ozie,” said Sid, shaking Jose’s hand warmly. I had spent the past several months coaching my mother over the phone to get her to pronounce Jose as Ho-say and not Jo-zee. Although I convinced them that the J was pronounced as an h, no amount of cajoling could get either of them to put the emphasis on the second syllable, and the letter h had never been uttered from Sid’s mouth in his life.

The four of us sat around and made conversation. Sid soon made himself feel at home and started in on some of his stories. He told the one about the day he drove home in fog so thick he couldn’t see the front of the car’s hood and ended up driving down the sidewalk. What he actually said was along the lines of “Fog wa’ that thick, I coont see’t end o’t’ bonnet. Nex’ thing I know, I’m on t’ causeway.”

I laughed and my mother gasped in shock, I think more in surprise that he’d survived as long as he had. Jose however, sat there staring blankly at Sid. I caught his eye and grinned, trying to pull him into the conversation, but he just gazed back at me. I frowned. This was no way to make a good impression on your future in-laws. He could at least put in a little effort to join in and endear himself to them. Perhaps, I thought, now he had seen where I descended from, he had changed his mind about our future together. I was slightly worried, but frankly, even more upset with him for being so rude.

It was somewhere in the middle of one of Sid’s stories about his long time friend and cycling partner, Billy, that the penny dropped for me. Jose didn’t understand a single word that Sid was saying. That disassociated frown on his face was in fact a look of concentration. “He may as well have been speaking Chinese,” he said to me later that night.

It was Churchill who once said we are “two nations divided by a common language.” How right he was. After 13 years here my once strong Yorkshire accent has softened considerably. It’s now what most of relatives would describe as “posh” and the rest would say is definitely American. Still, there are times that no matter how hard I try I cannot make myself understood. My greatest challenge seems to be in ordering water in a restaurant. I say war-ta, but what I need to try and say is wodder, or wawder, or something like that. It’s virtually impossible. Another favorite is the old Khakis/car keys, which apparently to my husband’s ears sound exactly the same.

Jacques Chirac allegedly stomped out when it was suggested that a meeting be conducted in the language of business, i.e. English. That’s all well and good if everyone around the table speaks the same version of English, but even in England you only have to travel to the next county to hear English spoken in a different dialect and with words unique to that region.

Perhaps we should all learn sign language, but even that has its issues. It would be all well and good until someone asked for two of something and caused the British delegation to leave in a huff.


In Memory of Sid
July 27, 1932 - March 18, 2004
It were 'ilarious.

Over the Hill or Just Under the Weather Again?

This post was originally published on November 29, 2005.

With all the recent advances in medical technology, we’re going to be living longer than ever. Great. This means we’ll have twice as many cranky old people to deal with. Don’t get me wrong, I have the greatest respect for the elderly, in fact I think they are one of this country’s most underutilized resources, but boy, they’re not half grumpy sometimes.

My husband just turned 50. Now I realize that 50 is hardly geriatric, but lets face it, it’s one foot in the social security line and the other on a banana peel. And he’s already in practice for waving his cane at the neighborhood kids and yelling, “Get the hell off my lawn, ya dern varmints!”

Out of fear of his impending sulk, I respected his request to not throw an extravagant surprise party complete with full mariachi and a roast. Instead, to celebrate this milestone, we drove around the neighborhood at 20 miles per hour with the left turn signal on. It would have been a perfect night out for him, had it not been Halloween weekend and the local police had not chosen our street to set up their semi-annual sobriety checkpoint. I was driving, so I slowed the car and rolled down my window ready to convince the officer that we were clean and sober. We had both had a glass of wine with dinner some five hours earlier, before seeing Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit and then going grocery shopping – another wild Saturday night out. As it turned out, I needn’t have worried. They took one look at my husband’s salt and pepper hair and waved us on. In hindsight, perhaps it wasn’t the hair that convinced them that we were of little threat to anyone’s safety. Perhaps it was the beaten, downtrodden, “Oh, shit, I’m almost dead” look my husband has adopted since he reached the half-century mark. Since his birthday, my beloved has developed the following symptoms: delicate stomach, chronic headache, tingling in two fingers of his left hand, insomnia and general muscle and joint pain. He also appears to have shrunk be at least an inch and a half. Psychosomatic? Surely not!

As if he wasn’t feeling sorry enough for himself, he received a very real reminder of his continued demise--a letter from the AARP. This wasn’t his first--the AARP marketing dept are way ahead of the game—but this one offered him a free desktop calculator with big color-coded buttons “so you don’t punch in a wrong number and mess up your checkbook!” He tossed the letter on the kitchen floor and stomped on it, thus reducing his mental age by a factor of 10.

Needless to say, he was feeling pretty down in the dumps about the whole thing. To cheer him up, I pointed out that in only five more birthdays we would be able to eat at Denny’s for half the price. For some strange reason, he wasn’t amused.

Miserable Marvin, Parking Poop

This was the first ever post on Post from the Colonies. It appeared on October 6, 2005 and was also my first and thus far last foray into poetry. I give you Miserable Marvin, Parking Poop

What ever happened to Lovely Rita, Meter Maid? We seem to be stuck with Miserable Marvin, Parking Poop.

We are fortunate enough to live in one of those beach cities that afford its residents clean air, breathtaking vistas, and one street parking space per ten residents. Please don’t ask why we don’t just park in our garage or driveway – when our tiny beach cottage was built, back in the 30’s, parking here just wasn’t an issue. Couple with this the obsessive cleanliness of our city public works department and we’re left with two days each week, when either one side of the street or the other is out of commission.

My husband and I regularly do the Friday morning shuffle, when, bleary-eyed-- coffee in one hand, newspaper in the other--we realize that one--or both---of our cars is illegally parked. There then ensues a frantic search for our keys and if time permits, a change from robe and slippers to some more appropriate outdoor attire, followed by a mad dash to our cars to perform an elaborate ballet of three-point maneuvers and illegal U-turns before Miserable Marvin appears, right on schedule at exactly 8:00 a.m.

Unfortunately, we don’t always make it. In fact we’ve had so many parking tickets in the three years since we’ve lived here, I’m considering asking the city to erect a statue to us in honor of our philanthropic contributions to the community.

Now, I know that Marvin’s just doing his job and I’m sure it’s a thankless job—I mean, imagine going to work everyday and having NOBODY pleased to see you—but really, does he have to be quite so crabby? When we beg for absolution for our parking sins, we don’t really expect him to wink and say, “Just this once, then, but don’t tell anyone.” I mean, rules are rules--we know that. But he can’t see the slightest humor in seeing two people who look like they’ve just crawled out from under a hedge, flying down the street in their pajamas faster than Linford Christie? He doesn’t crack a smile, not even an apologetic shrug; he just twangs the windshield wiper on top of the ticket and without even making eye contact, climbs into his truck and goes off in search of the next victim.

So, Marvin, this poem is for you:

Ode to Miserable Marvin

Oh Marvin, poor Marvin,
Your lonesome heart is starvin’
For someone who will say,
“Boy, you really made my day.”

But there’s no-one understands
That the City ties your hands,
And the nature of your work,
Is what makes you such a jerk.

Oh, if folks would just obey,
They would have a nicer day.
But the lows to which they stoop,
Are what make you such a poop.

So this law-abiding slob
Says, “Go on and do your job”
And I’ll add without reserve,
“We all get what we deserve.”

Post From the Colonies Takes a Holiday

Dear Loyal and Beloved Readers,

I've just started work on a new book. As is the way with such things, my mind is filled with character development, themes and plots, not to mention frantic attempts to be witty. As I'm pretty sure none of you wish to hear the ramblings of a dazed and confused writer, I've decided to give PFTC a short break. For the next few weeks I will be rerunning some favorite posts and perhaps giving some of the older ones from the early days the chance for a revival.

Whether you're a long-time follower or a new reader, please feel free to request posts that you particularly enjoyed and I will be happy to accommodate.

I hope you'll enjoy some oldies but goodies and I appreciate you bearing with me during this addled time.

Bloggingly yours,

Lisa