For the last week or so, maybe longer, there have been fireworks going off every night pretty much constantly. Tonight is especially bad. Nobody I’ve asked knows of any holiday or occasion that might be the cause, nor anything to do with a sports team, or anything anyone can think of. I’ve heard on the radio that The Man is cracking down on selling fireworks to minors, and there is a large party store advertising fireworks down the street (and many other stores), so my guess is that it has to be because a few kids started shooting them off and now every kid with a quid to their name is madly getting in on this craze. The fireworks craze. Literally from about an hour or two after sunset to around ten or eleven at night these things are going off, right now at about a rate of one every five seconds …and right now at a rate of every second. Some are pretty big. Some would qualify for a Canada Day display in any given town, sad as that is. I don’t get it, and it’s getting pretty old. A week old. And it’s not just in one place. Myra and I came out of the grocery store tonight and they were coming from literally every direction, at distances as close as a block away to a mile away. You’d think they would get tired of this, but it’s relentless. Anyone for an explanation? Could it have anything to do with Guy Fawk's Night tomorrow?

The original point of this post was to display to those at home what a strange place we live in. Sure, England seems all normal (except for constant random fireworks), then you get caught out by, say, most things in the grocery store. It's not like going to some exotic place and finding monkey brains on the shelf. That's different, but it would make sense if it was an exotic place. England is full of pasty white Europeans who like pudding. However, if we did see monkey brains on the shelf here it would be kind of weird, but ok, it's monkey brains. Monkey brain flavoured potato chips, however, would be weird. So, now that I've defined weird in my own terms, observe:



And then there's the Peaking Duck and Hoisin Sauce flavoured crisps, which is my personal favorite, and a half-dozen other bizzare flavours.

And...

...of which I have no clue what it is or why it's called this (assuming it's not what it says it is, of course).

And then this caught my eye right near the grocery store:


...which if it isn't 100% blackface, the lifesized statue on the sidewalk five minutes west most certainly is, without question.

And then this whole 80's thing going on with the fashion here is way out of hand. I don't know what it's like back in Canada, but it's ridiculous here. I would never have thought so many people would simultaneously decide to dress themselves in clothes as unflattering as possible. I’m pretty sure they existed in the 80’s, but I’m positive that mirrors exist now. Sadly, the mirror has fallen into disuse. Does this sound plausible of one standing in front of a mirror: “Hey, do you think this sweater is all loose and shapeless enough, and does my face resemble either Jem’s or the Holograms’?” My money is on no it doesn't, and adding a long side-pony-tail-she-mullet to that massive off-the-hip belt over the shapeless baggy sweater over the tights with the ankle-high peter pan elf boots with heals doesn't make it ok.

Weirdos.