Just when I think all is well...

Having spent two months here in Scotland, I am starting to feel as if I have everything under control, and can manage to get by relatively well without exposing myself as an idiot. Then an afternoon like this afternoon comes along to put me back in my place and make me remember that I’m a foreigner in a foreign land after all! The problem started when I decided that I would display my newly-adopted Britishness by preparing a berry trifle for dessert (as a Brit, I know of course that one doesn’t always have to serve pudding for pudding…just like tea isn’t always served for tea!...and a berry trifle makes for a fine British pudding!). So I go off to the grocery store, happily driving my Vauxhall on the left hand side of the road and listening to my BBC Scotland—I even manage to understand most of it enough to smile at the British humor!

While driving, I notice that the car is making a bit of a rubbing sound during left hand turns. I figure this is probably due to my having hit a curb on the left hand side of the road at some point and pulling loose some kind of plastic piece in the wheel well. So I ignore it for the time being and park the car at the store. I do my grocery shopping relatively successfully (sponge cake is called for in the trifle recipe, but I can’t seem to find it in the store, and hope that the madeira cake that I chose instead will make a decent substitute…) then wheel all the groceries out to the car. I put the trolley in front of the car, then go around to the left side front wheel and start to inspect it. I notice that a plastic piece has indeed pulled away from the body of the car, and start to attempt to squish it back in place carefully. That doesn’t work, so I try to shove it in a bit harder, which still won’t work. Finally, I hold the plastic piece in place and bang on it with the back of my fist, Fonzie style, and indeed that works! The plastic piece snaps back into place with a deafening “clomp.” This of course draws the attention of everyone else in the parking lot, and an older man across from me starts to amble over in my direction.

“Whah been blah dar wee they, na?” he says, as I stand up straight. I try to think fast, going through all the possible sentences that he might have used in an offer of assistance, and considering which of those sentences most closely resembles the sounds which he has just made. I draw a blank, but still thinking fast, decide to thank him for whatever he might have just offered.

“Oh, thanks,” I say, “but I think I got it. I think it’s fixed!”

He continues to stare at me, then points down the row of cars, and I see that while I was working on the car, my trolley has rolled across the parking lot and smashed into a curb with such force that the top bag slid out and overturned, and my collection of groceries is now lying all over the pavement. The madeira cake is squished, the British spring greens are now all sandy, and there is a bulb of swede still slowly rolling towards the street. My eyes probably bugged out at this, and I quickly ran after it. I managed to stop the slowly rolling swede with my foot, then gathered everything else together quickly, and swung the trolley around again back towards the car. Unfortunately, the man was still there.

“Well, ben blah thar se not hadda then, right?” he said.

“Sorry?” I asked him weakly.

“We blabity blah blah harda then,” he said, then started to chuckle. I guessed that he was likely trying to commiserate with me, but didn’t rule out the possibility that he was just outright making fun of me, so I could only manage a polite giggle and a few nods of the head as I quickly packed the groceries in the “boot” of the car and returned the trolley. He continued to stand there and watch me, so I nodded an insincere thanks again on my way back, and quickly got into the car.

I’ll give you one guess which side of the car I got into…

As you can imagine, my new-found friend really loved this! Now he was chuckling for real, as he watched me get out of the car, walk around, and get back into the car on the right hand side. I started the car quickly, put on my seatbelt, gave him a little wave, and pulled right out of the spot a little too quickly, and almost ran right into another car coming down the left-hand side of the aisle. The car honked, and I swore, then swerved over to the other side of the road. I didn’t dare look into the rear view mirror to see how hard he was laughing at me now. And, of course, as I drove away, I realized that I had left my pound coin in the shopping trolley!