Hot tea

We all have bad days. This wasn't even a bad hair day. Just a bad day.

There is just under a week left of the school holidays (and I believe I've mentioned that they are 3 months long here... read my lips... 3 months long...). I have no imagination left. I have no patience left. I do however have two children left. Don't worry, I haven't done away with any of them. One is out at a friend's (hurrah! we've finally done enough inviting round for them to be invited back, hurrah! hurrah!).

Now I know we ex-pats look at Blighty through rose-tinted spectacles. Even so, I do think certain things in my life would be easier if I were back there now. This afternoon, for one. This is what I would do if I were in Scotland. I would go out. I know, I know. It's rained all summer ("summer?" you grunt). You're all sitting there feeling very grumpy and sorry for yourselves. But I would spot that half hour of grey dampness, in between the downpours and the drizzle, and I would force them out. There would be resistance, subversion, complaining, plea bargaining, lost wellies, but I would persist. The rain would possibly have set in again by the time I'd got every one togged up (at what age do they do this themselves without badgering?), but out we would go. The park, the beach, a walk, anywhere. By car first if necessary. I have a friend whose motto for the care of children is this: if in doubt, fling them out. You need to watch her near any open windows, but I do agree with the general sentiment.

I can't do that here. Outdoors doesn't exist in the same way. The neighborhood pool is now open only after 4.00pm, since a lot of the schools have gone back - "school hours" they call it. It's somewhere between 95 and 100 degrees, so the park isn't an option. This is not just me being a wuss. The swings and slides are too hot for the backs of small legs. We've done a short stint in our nice shady garden (back yard... whatever...). That's all the options.

Plan B in the UK would be this: a soft play centre (I said I had no imagination left). They're vile places aren't they? Vile, but we love them on afternoons like this. I would be sitting in a large barn of a building, inadequately ventilated, full of screeching children. The noise level would be uncomfortable for adult ear-drums. The smell of damp socks would pervade the atmosphere. The dust would irritate the back of my throat. 3-yo would bite small chunks of dirty foam out of grubby balls, and then laugh when I told her not to. The third or fourth time, I would say "if you do that again, we'll have to go home" and then instantly regret it. She might do it again. I would be sitting at a plastic table on a wobbly plastic chair. I would have optimistically purchased a cup of tea. It would be horrid. It would be in a polystyrene cup. They would have put the milk in when the bag was still in. The bag would now be floating around, unable to turn the white water a sufficiently encouraging shade of brown. They would have filled the cup too full, so the so-called tea it would slosh over the edge at any attempt to prise a little more colour and/or flavour out of the bag. I would have scalded my tongue (I hate polystyrene cups). I might also have a nasty flabby danish pastry in a sealed plastic pocket. I might eat it to make myself feel better about the tea.

Sounds appealing, huh? Well, that's what rosy-tinted specs do for you. But let me tell you this. I live in a city of 500,000, and there is no soft play centre. Strange, but true. I'll tell you why. Several of the McDonalds and Burger Kings have very small play areas. Very small, but better than nothing. It's a poor alternative, but you can buy a coke (the food is not compulsory, I've discovered) and sit and watch your children as they burn off excess energy. Or write a blog entry. I don't have a whizzy lap-top, so it's just with plain old pen and paper for future transcription. I tell you, this could be a blockbuster about a boy at a school for wizards, if I was in a romantic coffee shop in Edinburgh and not a greasy Maccy D's in a soft-play-centre-free zone in the Midwest.

And the tea? Well, I did give it a try. This was a rather exciting moment, actually. Hot tea is rare to find. Iced tea abounds (hate the stuff), but hot tea is a rarity. So when I saw it on the board, I thought I could redeem the afternoon by discovering that McDonalds' tea is surprisingly good. That would have been a cheering moment. Would have been. If the tea had been surprisingly good. Their coffee is so surprisingly bad that, my first week here, I took mine back to the counter saying "I think there's a mistake, I didn't order a mocha", and the girl said "this isn't a mocha".

The tea thing started badly this afternoon. I asked for hot tea, and the girl simply didn't understand me. This has never happened before. After repeating "hot tea, tea, hot tea" several times, I eventually just pointed to it on the board. "Oh, haht tea", said the girl. I made the mistake of ordering a large. Of course I should know by now. Large is too large. A cup of tea the size of a bucket is not appealing. Then I asked for creamer. I know not to ask for milk, but usually when you have coffee, you get creamer in small sachets. But not in McDonalds. The girl had to go and ask her supervisor, who got a small cup of cream out of the coffee machine. They had never met anyone who liked cream in tea. I don't like cream in tea. They were doing their best though, so I just said "we do in England, or milk, sometimes". It was not looking promising at this stage. I had a bucket of dark tea (good colour though, which was something), and a small bucket half full of cream. My hopes were not high, but they were still there. That was until I discovered that the dark bucket was filled with warm water. Ah well. At least I wouldn't be scalding my mouth.

My final problem. How to dispose of the large amount of unwanted beverage I now had. I didn't like to leave it, which seemed a bit ungrateful after they'd tried so hard to overcome the accent and the milk issues. I didn't feel I should put it in the trash - all that liquid sloshing around in a plastic bin liner could cause trouble. I didn't want to be seen sneaking off to the restroom, cup in hand. In the end, I tipped it down the water fountain, holding it in front of me and hunching my back to hide it and to give the impression that I was bending to drink. Fortunately, we were the only people in the play area at this point. Oh good. I was hoping I would find a "fortunately" somewhere in this story, and there it is.