alwaysreadthe

I see you worked with my new guy!

I miss the Cadbury x Ritz bars and Mars Delight.

Our cats were free initially and have cost us a damn fortune since. It’s the best money I’ve ever spent. They’re perfect!

I work in a large city centre office two days a week, home office three days a week. When I work from home, I get to go into the garden on my lunch and work on my gardening. It’s an extremely refreshing break and prevents that mid-afternoon slump. I have my two cats for company all day, which definitely helps a more challenging day feel calmer. My wife works from home too and we take ten minutes in the morning together to drink coffee and plan our workdays before we retire to our respective home offices. We’re completely outside of eachother’s business areas so we can sometimes provide a great outsider perspective to one another on a work issue during our little coffee break. I can do little tasks between meetings etc while I’m turning over an idea or problem solving something for work - load the washing machine, answer the doors for deliveries, put away the clean dishes - it helps keep the house tidy, and the repetitive, mindless nature of the tasks seems to help me think through a problem more quickly.

If you provide a list of everyone you have interacted with on a semi-regular basis for the last two years and what their job is, someone in here should be able to identify who on the list could do it for you.

I have asked the “discretionary” charge to be removed on one occasion, about three years ago at Balans No60, because the waiter was inattentive to our table (three quiet women in their 20s) and rude to my wife (rushing her along to the table and tutting/rolling his eyes at her for moving slowly - she walks with a stick). When I asked for it to be removed he demanded to know why and got quite aggressive with us. Sadly, his manager backed him up and also demanded to know why I wanted it to be removed. I said it was because of poor service and they both looked disgusted with me. Once I paid the bill they immediately cleared away our half finished drinks and turned us out without even letting me put my coat on. It used to be a favourite place but I never went back after that. No idea what prompted that interaction. It had always been really nice there beforehand.

I’m about the same - I like an occasional negroni (2.4 units) or two at home on a Friday evening, usually to accompany me making pasta from scratch. When I go out with my wife for dinner somewhere especially nice every couple of months, we usually have a cocktail and a small glass of wine. But I don’t do it habitually. We drink sparkling grape juice at home, make mocktails and the like - went out for a friend’s birthday at the weekend and drank Diet Coke all evening. Kind of horrified to see how many people are regularly drinking 30-60 units a week.

I was sick on a girlfriend’s dog about two months after our first date. Staying the night for the second time ever. I picked up the dog for a cuddle, and immediately threw up on him (16yo blind and deaf shih tzu wearing a little sweater). It happened with absolutely no warning, never happened to me like that before or since. Felt bloody awful having to bathe it off him. Anyway, we’re married now. Little dog forgave me and we were the very best of pals until he passed away last year.

No worries! It can be tricky to navigate language nuances. People of colour, abbreviated to POC, is usually the accepted term. ‘Coloured’ isn’t used now because it’s associated with racist sociopolitics. Non-white is also used, but I understand what you mean - it can be akin to calling women non-men or gay people non-straight, in that it defines the group as being ‘other’ to the ‘norm’.

“Coloured” is considered an outdated and racist term. Best not to use it.

Did your wife try to stay in touch?

Went shopping in Selfridges a couple weeks ago for some smart winter stuff, and admittedly I looked a bit ridiculous - big coat, bobble hat, clutching a bunch of bags, very rained on - but the guy who checked me out at the La Durée concession gave me such an attitude, smirking and rolling his eyes at me. I just wanted macarons for my wife!

There’s an exhibit at the Barbican all about early 00s emo culture this year. I was a little bit later into it (2008-12ish), and I’m extremely grateful in hindsight that I was not permitted to have MySpace or really use the internet much. I **sort** of hate that it’s having a renaissance among Gen Z now and that there are exhibits and documentaries about it - makes me feel far too grown up! I was a bit horrified that one of my sweet little fresh grad students at work recently told me that ‘it must have been so cool to have been there in the middle of it!’ because god knows, there was nothing cool about it at the time! I had part-shaved red hair with dense backcombing (thanks mum for dying and trimming my hair for years…), got shitty piercings (did my friend’s lip with a sewing needle and an ice pop), and almost solely wore black/red or black/purple striped clothing. I did rainbows of Stargazer eyeshadow and thick black liner that made me look like a raccoon clown. I snuck out with my friends to shows full of questionable adult men. And I got bullied pretty solidly at school for it! But it’s also lovely to see it being remembered and acknowledged as a cultural movement. It has a firm place in musical and fashion history. And I do love now going to a Fall Out Boy show with my wife and knowing that even though it looks like everyone my age there works in middle management, I’m secretly surrounded by a bunch of those (former) little feral raccoon teenagers who pierced their own lips.

I think there’s an element of fear to it. I grew up in a working class village - there was some real poverty, and some working-class affluence too. My parents are brilliant, and they pushed my sister and I to work hard. The value of education was drummed into us. Sister has an excellent postgrad degree, is aiming for a PhD, travelled a bunch, owns her home; I work in a professional field where I’m moving up and I’m starting a part-time postgrad, used to live in London working a pretty senior role, busy saving for a deposit. We both have niche hobbies, enjoy holidays in Europe, like reading academic journals. It’s exactly what my parents wanted for us. My paternal grandmother is a nightmare about it though, and she’s not the only one from our village who has taken an attitude (at least with me) about moving up in the world. I think there’s a fear/insecurity that we will start looking down on them once we get exposed to the wider world and we increase our social, cultural, and financial capital. This of course is not the case - our upbringing gave us skills and experiences that are invaluable and we could never think we’re better than where we’re from because part of us is where we’re from. But as we pull back from that hostility from the “crabs”, I’m sure it does create the impression that we think they’re now beneath us, when really it’s that I don’t want to get laughed at for liking cocktails or reading the Cambridge Law Journal.

This has thrown up the memory that one of my secondary school friends’ parents had the same rule, but we all had to eat together and hold hands to say grace before dinner. Then eat in absolutely silence. I eventually concocted an excuse to avoid further weekly dinners.

My wife and I are both quite masculine, and we have very specific personal styles. We’re particular about wearing natural fabrics and fussy about where we buy clothes from - I used to be a tailor, specialised in restoring antique clothing, and I still knit and sew many of our things. Naturally, wife’s parents therefore thought that a polyester frilly skirted coat, two sizes too small, from a Chinese dropshipper, that arrived after Christmas, and is the fifth Google Shopping result if you type in ‘cheap goth coat’, would be perfect for her. I told my aunts & grandmothers that we didn’t want gifts this year - maternal grandmother and aunt got us some nice chocolates instead (yay) whilst paternal grandmother got us matching sparkly heart charm bracelets which we will definitely never wear after the requisite single time she sees us wearing them.

I grew up in a Christmas wishlist family and my wife grew up in a family where they do not-Secret Santa and wishlists are considered ‘cheating’. I buy and am bought for by my mum & dad, sister & brother in law, and my wife, and it’s always something off their wishlist. They always ask for my wishlist. Everyone therefore enjoys their gifts. It’s a good system! My wife, on the other hand, has been bought a Chinese dropshipped polyester frilly skirted coat (she wouldn’t be caught dead in anything like that) purchased last minute and on sale by her dad, who drew her this year and is terrible at buying gifts. My wife drew her mum to buy for, but her mum consistently despises all gifts so wife had to gamble on buying her fancy champagne. My wife’s brother drew me this year and I sent him my wishlist. I think, thankfully, that doing so means we are banned from all future gatherings with her family for ‘cheating’.

They gave you pain relief? Wild. My wife has them fairly often due to a few health conditions and they just give her conscious sedation and a warning that her stomach & throat will be painful for a couple of days.

We have two elderly cats and they’re great. Playful cuddlebugs who enjoy indoor living and garden playtime - midway through making the garden into a paradise of catnip and climbing for them. We never would have been accepted by a rescue place. My wife is disabled, we both work, we have a tiny mostly paved garden, and there’s a B road out front. We got our cats from Reddit! Saw a post from someone needing to rehome their MIL’s cats not long after MIL passed away, but all the local shelters were turning them away. Sent a spur-of-the-moment message, brought the cats home a week later, and they’re now the most incredibly spoiled babies imaginable.