Jelly Babies are what power the Newnham Women's Boat Club. So I have been told. They are small, powdered sugar covered chewy candies with oddly soft centers. They come in a variety of flavors (aka colors) and they have names. The back of the package tells you what to call them and provides fun facts about their individual personalities. As a person who is capable of anthropomorphizing everything, this is a candy which suits me well. It was also the only thing available at the airport boots Sunday morning for under two quida bag, and as I am incapable of flying without engaging in a fair amount of stress eating first, had gotten myself a bag of Jelly Babies, and was picking out all the "Bubbles" (aka yellow-flavor) first when it occurred to me--as it does every time I fly--that I was not only going to eventually die, but that "eventually" could be sometime within the next four hours, and that my death might in fact be preceded by the most terrifying three minutes of my life as the plane fell from the sky.
Logic isn't something I excel at when airplanes are concerned, and the older I get the more it becomes apparent that I'm going to keep flying, and keep traveling, and that flying is really the most sensible way to simply and affordably get from place a to place b and still maintain any semblance of a job. So with t-30 minutes to boarding I moved onto "Bumpers" (aka orange-flavor). I always feel bad eating Bumpers, because Bumpers is the drummer in the Jelly Babies band, and without a drummer, what's a band? Bumpers is also the second best color/flavor and the least sticky of all the Jelly Babies.
Moving on from Bumpers to Baby Bonnie--pink--I kept glancing at the arrival-departure board. Ryanair does not apparently announce their gate numbers until 15 minutes before boarding. This seems to be a combination of hoping that people wont' gather at the gate, and honest-to-god-maybe-actually-not-knowing. We were the 9:10am Stansted, London to Ciampano (rhymes with champion) Rome flight. Two hours, 17 minutes and approximately 4 cups of sugars worth of Jelly Babies stress eating from me standing on the actual European mainland and chalking the number of contents I've had my boots on up to four.
North America was fun. I think. Having been born there I don't actually remember my first day, but I imagine that it was traumatic and engaging. India (asia) blew my mind. Africa humbled me and gave me a good taste of my own uppity-ness and weakness. Europe? No idea yet.
As to whether or not the UK is a part of the European continent proper I have no idea. Maybe? Maybe not? Depends who you ask? Italy? Solidly. For sure. But for a mainland European nation, it reminds me oddly of the center of Guatemala City. Except that here I have no idea what's going on. And it's colder. Than Guatemala. Warmer though, than the UK. To date (in the one day I've been here) we've seen the Colosseum, the Trevi Fountain, the Forum Romanum, the Arch of Constantine, Tajan's Column, The Arch of Titus, The Column of Marcus Aurelius, several musems and a shit ton of tourist shops full of the same magnets (only 1 Euro) and bonafide Italian scarves (made in China).
The list of things yet today before I buy myself another bag of Jelly Babies or Mars Bars at the Ciampano airport in anticipation of my next stress-eating adventure, is enormous.
In the meantime I actually miss my camera for the first time since the little lens on it froze up, and regret dropping my phone---as minus both of those things, I have no camera at all--not a problem in Cambridge, but apparently I like making facebook albums of pretty things more than I'd thought I did. Hopefully since I can't take another photo of a fountain that's been photographed a thousand times, I'll just appreciate seeing the fountain for realzies even more.
Well, as they say here Ciao, and stay away from Big Heart. He plays bass and tastes like cough syrup.
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