I AM NOT A FREAK

So it's been a few days since I've given an update, so I suppose it's time for a new one.

On Saturday, it was a beautiful sunny day, so I asked Matthew if he wanted to do something. We thought about going to the National Portrait Gallery, but that was indoors, and really, beautiful days are meant to be spent outside. So we decided instead to go to Highgate Cemetery.

Which was great fun. There are lots of people buried there with the word "Comedian" on their tombstones. The only reason this is of note is that it meant that for the rest of the afternoon, any time I made a joke, Matthew would respond with, "They're definitely not writing 'Comedian' on *your* tombstone."

There's a reason British men are known for their chivalrous ways.

Anyway, then we went through Hampstead Heath, which is this huge park known, evidently, for kite flying and gay sex. We had neither. Matthew clearly doesn't want me to have any fun here at all, or to teach me the strange ways of his people.

Around 4:00, we found ourselves on the other side of the park, and hungry, and after we'd ordered tea and scones for two, we realized that we were having a traditional British-type tea *at* a traditional British-type tea time. What made this even more exciting was that there was a pregnant woman at the table next to us picking raisins out of her scone, and after she left, Matthew reached over and ATE ALL OF THE RAISINS THAT SHE'D LEFT BEHIND.

I have nothing to add to this.

We wandered around for a while longer, and found this really nice pub, went in, sat down, and eventually Matthew remarked on the fact that it would figure that a random pub he entered with me would turn out to be a gay pub. I would like to point out that just because I'm a fag hag, that doesn't mean that I am a gay *magnet*.

All right, so I have nothing to add to this either.

There are still cats in my back yard, by the way. And I have found out that Peter is aware that he is notorious now among my friends, and he gets a kick out of it. I have also found out that I am now notorious among *his* friends.

I know this because we have two mutual friends, and last night one of them walked up to me and said, "So...I hear you have very strong opinions about meat."

!

It really isn't that big of a deal. I had simply commented on the fact that nobody in the United Kingdom appears to be able to cook beef properly. If you order a steak at a moderately expensive restaurant, it comes looking fairly grey, with maybe a couple of brown criss-crosses on it if they've felt particularly adventurous. I mean, if these were meals that cost somewhere in the neighborhood of five pounds, I wouldn't expect anything different. But these are moderately expensive meals, and they don't know that beef should be browned a bit.

Even typing this, I'm conscious of how much of a food snob it makes me sound, and whenI was remarking upon this beef phenomenon to Peter, I became increasingly aware of how odd I sounded. And the more I talked, the worse it got, until finally I just shut up, and then he talked at length about how Scottish beef was the only proper meat anyway, and I realized that his beef opinions were even more pronounced than mine, so it's really not fair that I am coming off as the freak here, now is it?

Of course it's not.

Natalie asked me about culture shock, so in a second now I'm going to post something about that, but that's a new topic, so I'll wait a bit.