"The annual Evening of Cheese event descended into chaos, with many people complaining of not seeing 'a bit of cheese'"
Oh, the Pythons were so wise!!!
I've told the following story before, but this seems the right place to repeat it. I'll give you the short version. I used to think that Python sketch above was absurdist humor. When I lived in London I discovered that it was, in fact, satirical social criticism. While there I went into a sandwich shop (it was actually called "Somebody's Sandwich Shop" in the business name on the marquee) that had no sandwiches. Some days later, I stepped into a florist that had no flowers. Apparently that's how they roll.
This is probably due to the British at the time being, as Cleese's character Basil Fawlty claimed in Fawlty towers being 'bloody socialists.'
ReplyDeleteI'm being serious, this sounds like either a supply problem or some kind of transportation of goods problem.
But it's so clean!
ReplyDeleteThere was a time in the 1970s and early 1980s when Britain was like this - as the result of trade union domination - but, seriously, it's now the ultimate consumer society. Nowadays, you can buy pretty much anything at any time and anywhere. A couple of days ago, I went into a small shop in a village in west Wiltshire and bought a box of good sushi and a bottle of chilled Macon-Villages to drink with it.
ReplyDeleteIt would be hard to find anything, apart maybe from guns and ammunition, in NYC or LA that you couldn't find in London.