Last night I dreamt I was waiting in a very long line at a British supermarket. There was going to be some kind of dedication celebration later with a kid’s chior or something and so the store was a mess. When it was finally my turn to check out I gave the cashier my “preferred shopper” card and my (US) credit card. She looked at my credit card dubiously and then announced that it was too large to fit in their machines. We haggled back and forth. Finally I offered to write her out a check, which caused her to laugh scornfully.

“Oh yes, you’ll write out a check and then that’s the last we’ll see of YOU,” she said.

“I’m 30 years old, I’m an adult, and I’ve got a check card for Tesco; I’ve written out checks there before and I don’t understand what the big deal is,” I countered.

Everyone in the queue was getting very annoyed and began to urge the cashier to just take my check so that things could just move along.

I awoke this morning thinking about my brief time living in London. The month that I lived on Peckham Road near Elephant & Castle. The flat where I satyed was actually walking distance from a Tesco, and that’s where I shopped. I was dead broke, and as a result the only really economical things I could buy were terribly unhealthy–they were canned, came in hideous red-and-white generic packaging and always had very industrial-sounding names. Like “BEANS IN SAUCE.” “PASTA WITH MEAT PRODUCT.” And they often had three DIFFERENT sweeteners: sugar, saccharine (the English seem to use in everything), NutraSweet. I’ve no doubt that part of why I came down with tonsilitus while I was there was my awful diet.

Yet there were lovely moments. Tea, a rainy sidewalk strewn with autumn leaves, brass railing outside the corner pub.