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Muffin’s thyroid medication needed ordering, which prompted one of the phone calls that always astonishes me by its brevity.
56 seconds to be precise.
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That amount of time is usually expended on back and forth greetings:
“Hello, how are you?”
“I’m fine and you?” etc.
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That’s if you are fortunate enough not to get voicemail, of course.
While it’s good and civilized to inquire after the other party’s well-being, businesses are (hopefully) – busy – so time is of the essence. All that nice chit-chat wastes precious minutes.
Business calls are best kept short, but my conversations with the drug store are so brief, they leave me wondering if they happened at all:
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“McCann’s.”
“I need to refill a prescription please.”
“Script number?”
“XYZ, and we get it mailed, please.”
“For a cat?”
“Yes.”
“We’ll take care of it.”
“Thank you.”
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There is still time, isn’t there, for please and thank you?
McCann’s could teach the art of the brief conversation. They use the fewest words possible and it’s the same no matter who answers the phone – which never rings more than twice.
Efficiency. It is rare but it still exists.
Refreshing!
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Cold weather is refreshing too!
It’s not painful when travelling in a warm car and on a day as splendid as this, another short drive was in order.
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After dropping Muffin at the vet on Monday, we drove an alternate route to Greenwich.
If we lived in Greenwich, I wonder if we would find ourselves driving as often – elsewhere?
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With the price of everything expected to rise, we may need to revise our habits, driving less and buying more sale items.
Grant being diabetic and my being vegetarian does not simplify shopping.
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It is ironic that the election was run largely on the cost of living.
While I don’t want go off on that tangent again, a scenario keeps coming to mind that I once believed impossible.
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Conflict between the USA and Europe.
If it were to happen, how could I remain here?
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If it was possible for me to leave, I would already have gone. .. My British passport will expire in September, but I could travel back to England on it.
And then what?
Besides which I could never abandon the cats.
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Unlikely? I would have thought so too.
At the time when I lived with my parents in SE Asia, the area was very unstable politically. I had to be removed from the boarding school in Vietnam because the situation there was deteriorating.
To travel by road from Dalat, where the school was, to Saigon was unsafe because of the Viet Cong, I flew but many less fortunate travelled in fear.
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When things got really bad, I was moved to a boarding school in Cambodia. One of the nuns there was Vietnamese and was shot while making the journey from Saigon. She survived with a paralyzed right hand.
My parents were in Thailand, which had one of its periodic border disputes with Cambodia, leaving me cut off.
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After that, I was sent back to school in England, but twice visited my parents in turbulent Laos.
It was quite usual to hear gunfire in the distance and once it was just up the road. We had to wait hours for the BBC news from London to find out what was going on.
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Unaccountably, the house had a bathtub, albeit without a plug or even warm water.
When I heard gunfire I debated, if it came close, whether I would lie flat in the bathtub and take my chances with the spiders, or merely hope for the best.
Luckily, the only slightly disturbing event was finding a snake in my bedroom one afternoon.
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There was a single shot one night, across the road, but that was just the nightclub owner getting murdered.
Someone presumably finally couldn’t take their abysmal entertainment anymore.
“Roll out the Barrel” on repeat.
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Maybe because my parents never seemed perturbed, I was never worried about political agitation.
As a foreigner, I figured it didn’t concern me, though this was not necessarily true. I remember a Philippino who was attached to the US Embassy being shot dead in Laos, mistaken for a member of the opposition. Or so it was said.
Careless Westerners died too.
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In Laos the government changed so regularly, it was hard to keep track, particularly as one leader was Souvanna Phouma and the other Phoumi Nosavan.
There was obviously a lot going on in that country that one wasn’t supposed to know about. I remember Air America flying regularly over the house. It was noticeable because they always had a door open.
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Travelling back and forth to school, I was often confronted by petty officials, never mind that I was only 12-13.
Yet it was not until I came to the States that I ever felt my situation to be in jeopardy.
The officer scrutinizing my immigrant’s paperwork scowled at me, which is what they all do, but it wasn’t he who worried me.
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It was years later that I expected to be deported and I can’t imagine why the idea even occurred to me.
On my way to class one day, a woman drove through a stop sign and broadsided me, then accused me of damaging her car and took me to court.
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Perhaps it was that by then, my nerves were unraveling over other things, but going to court to face a judge seemed so daunting.
Had the accident been my fault? Was I going as fast as the woman claimed? (“Like a bat out of hell”, she said.) I’d just turned a corner, so it was unlikely.
The lawyer asked me for distances, which I had no way of estimating and I was sure I would be caught in a lie.
Certainly, if the case went against me, I would have had a hard time paying up since I had no funds at all, but deportation? Strange idea, then.
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In the event, the judge took five minutes to read the case, told the woman that left turns from stop signs are tricky, and dismissed it.
Of course, I was much relieved. Yet I felt bad for the woman and her damaged car, as if somehow, it was still my fault.
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Some years after, when it was obvious I would stay in America, I applied for citizenship which seemed the responsible thing to do. If I was to live and pay tax here, I deserved the right to vote.
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If I’d had to renounce the citizenship of my birth, as many have to, I could not have done it.
Although I lived in England for a sum total of less than 10 years, in my heart I have never been anything but British.
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In Britain, I am thought not English. In the States I am taken for a foreigner: “Oh I love your accent.”
It’s strange, not really belonging anywhere. I often wish I did, but in a way maybe it’s easier not having roots.
Though I appear to be fairly stuck, regardless.
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I can think of lots of companies that would benefit from learning from McCann’s!
Thank you, Carolyn, for your fascinating, as always, memories, and beautiful photography!
Joanna
I had to laugh at your prompt phone call. I spent almost two minutes on the phone yesterday just trying to spell my surname (and it’s short – Wiese). If the restaurant wasn’t 390km away, I would have jumped in the car and driven there 😳.
One will probably always want that sense of belonging somewhere … and never mind fitting into a foreign country. Sometimes I think how we don’t fit in the province in our own country where we currently live. Not that it is bad or uncomfortable, but we act and speak differently than the residents of the Eastern Cape Province. The stories about your boarding school days are fascinating – thank you for sharing them with us (as well as your blue sky & white snow fields photos).
House prices might well dissuade you from moving back to the UK. (I almost typed ‘back home’)
A property like your house and surrounding land you show in your photos would cost around £650,000 in Norfolk, ($809,000) and over £2 million close to London. Even our small house in a quiet street in Beetley would currently sell for around £310,000. ($390,000)
The short and seemingly rude phone call is obviously the price you pay for their efficiency in other areas of business.
Best wishes, Pete.
They’re not rude, just – brief!
Apart from the cats, having nowhere to go is the major problem and while BA would pay my pension in England I seriously doubt the current government would honour my social security entitlement, so I would be seriously short of funds!
This time, Carolyn, I managed to read with pleasure your musing on so many subjects! It is good that you are “stuck” as you could not be happy here with so many problems affecting us. Thank you for the photos as beautiful as always.
Joanna