Other Crap

"I should like to purchase a bit of cheese".

• Before I worked in the U.K., I used to think that Monty Python's cheese shop skit was absurdist humor or maybe just pure silliness. After all, no such thing could actually happen in real life! Silly me. The typical isolated American. When I got to London, I realized that the skit was actually social commentary. I worked at the Shell Office on the Strand, and was putting in some weekend hours when I went to a nearby "sandwich shop" (that's what the sign said). This shop was within about a block of Charing Cross Station and Trafalgar Square, so it was not a deserted part of town. It was a Saturday, approximately at noon. The shopkeeper let me keep looking at the menu and ordering things he was out of, until I got ticked off and said, "look, just tell me what you do have, and I'll choose one of those." You guessed it. The things he did have did not actually include any sandwiches! That's right - not one sandwich in the sandwich shop. We virtually re-enacted the cheese shop sketch, This is a completely true story, with no exaggeration of any kind.
• (There was an explanation, sort of. He only sold sandwiches for the work crowd on Monday through Friday. He had a different menu on weekends for the tourists, which basically consisted of coffee, tea, sweets, and scones. That made some sense, although he might have told me this before I recited the entire menu aloud.)