alexist

British supermarkets are pretty good. There's one thing I hate, though, and that's the whole feel of the produce section. The US is pretty bad with demanding things that look pretty, but the UK is even worse. At least in the US the fruit and veg are generally in open bins. The berries are in plastic packages, and some things (herbs, spring onions, carrots...) are tied together with rubber bands. There will usually be net bags of onions, and sometimes plastic bags of potatoes. And this is at a supermarket--at a greenmarket everything will be in piles or bins, except the berries because they're so fragile.

In the UK, it seems like everything is trimmed and wrapped, all the same size if possible. No looking through the asparagus bundles to see which one has the biggest number of fat or skinny stalks. Leeks and spring onions had the long ends cut off, and the French beans had the ends snapped and were in 200g packs. No poking and picking the peaches--they're already in punnets. Sweetcorn was shucked, cut, and wrapped (though I'm told seeing fresh corn at all is rare in the UK). I think the low point was seeing an aubergine wrapped in plastic. Now, it was a different variety from the usual pear shaped kind, but surely, a sign in front would have sufficed?!

It all felt really sanitized, and took all the pleasure out of shopping for me. The popularity of organic (with its "natural" image) is even more ironic to me now.

I have a shiny new Sony Ericsson K700i ;-)

Number available on request (already available to friends)

Was discussing baggage with someone and ended up on the Virgin website. They say 2 pieces, 32kg each for transatlantic. Perhaps the tickets are confusing, and make the per piece limit seem like the total limit.