In my mind

I'm gone to the United Kingdom

A few things have kept Britain on the brain lately. Oh, how I miss it.

The misty, rainy Spring weather has had a familiar effect on the rolling green hills out our windows.

Once in a while, Gillian McKeith beckons me to her show while the kids are napping. I watched BBC's You are what you eat for the first time while Sara and Jared were here. In her show, Gillian takes on obese people and helps them change their lives through healthy eating and exercise. It is rivetingly disgusting. She examines poo, tongues, ears, and belly fat. She comes up with disturbing visualizations of the junk people are putting into their bodies. And then we get to watch the process and results of her 8 week detox diet on their lives. It is motivating. I now eat granola for breakfast, and need to warn my husband that as soon as I find aduki beans, we're eating them too. Regularly.

But the thing that I relish most about this show is just listening to everyone speak. The vocabulary alone is transportive. (biscuits (cookies), fizzes (soda), sweet squeezes (sugary artificial fruit drinks), lift (elevator) to name a few) And then there is the pronunciation of words like herbs, vitamins, aqua, and soy sauce (the announcer guy says 'soya sauce'). Not to mention the inflection that makes their accent so elegant, and the use of the word 'brilliant' to describe just about everything. I miss England. :(

Finally, Sara brought me a special treat--piano music from the score of Pride and Prejudice. Now, I can be Georgiana sitting at the piano forte at Pemberly, or Elizabeth viewing the grandeur of the countryside. Longbourn and Netherfield are as far as my piano. And yet still a world away.