In't it Grand 'ere?

Reading this (http://whatstringersreading.posterous.com/the-future) reminds me of going to visit my grandma Stringer in the old folks home that she stayed in.  She was a very mean woman (the best thing that they could think to say about her at her funeral was that she was short - seriously "Mary Stringer: she was a short person") and as soon as she got into the old folks home she started plotting and warring and complaining and getting the staff into trouble and all sorts.  She used to hang out with an ex-miner called Fred.  When I met Fred he was 91 and he was huge. Tall, with broad shoulders, when he was in his mining days about 60 years earlier he must have looked like Schwarzenegger. My grandma by this point was about 4' 9". We'd visit my grandma Stringer and sit out in the sun and my grandma would keep it up bitching and complaining and setting my dad against his sister and generally upsetting my mum, and then every now and then Fred would just say "In't it grand ere?"

A lot of the time while I've been in Kansas, I've found myself wishing I were somewhere else, some of the amazing places I've lived - Cambridge, Brighton, Highgate (curiously, not Farnborough, I'm not sure even Fred could like that). But there are a lot of good things about being here in Kansas.  The people on the whole have been really friendly, they are actually more polite than English people, I'm the one who's having to watch my tongue for bad language. OK, so I've been told off for walking on the wrong side of a footpath and for reading a book. I'm getting some very good experience which was what my plan was, about this time last year walking through Regent's Park, when I decided that it was about time to leave Wiley.  And I'm sitting in a coffee shop that has free wifi and a red roaster, just like the one in Red Roaster in Brighton.  Life isn't that bad.

I don't know, maybe this should be my mantra - "I'n't it grand 'ere?"

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