Prompted by more Bailey ice cream cravings, I set off today after my lessons in LSE (the last one of which was actually quite enjoyable and engaging) to look for a pint - Tesco's only mind you since they have the £2.50 offer (God I love Tesco).
I walked down Fleet Street, half people watching, half admiring the scenery of old city London. I saw lots of lawyers as I bypassed the Royal Court of Justice, and random other office workers taking breaks in small eateries lining Fleet Street. The old city area of London is really quite pretty. However as I turned right on Farringdon Road, the area started to look crappy. Suddenly there was graffiti all over, abandoned office buildings, broken glass and a noticeable absence of any human traffic whatsoever. Right. It was really something like 10m from Fleet Street that everything changed. I suppose such is the ratty tatty nature of London which has really shit and really nice areas in pockets all over the place.
So anyway I went to the Tesco Express at Farringdon, since the one at Fleet Street did not have Bailey's flavour. To my disappointment, the Farringdon one didn't either. I settled for Vanilla, but I still felt quite unhappy as it wouldn't really quench my craving per se. Deciding to be indulgent because I felt a little unhappy about class today (like nervousspeedtalking my way through self-introductions in class and generally being totally social awkward), I wanted to get a Cosmo magazine (laugh, but there is nothing more relaxing than reading fluff - I usually prefer The Sun, but I already bought a copy of that earlier this week). This month however, Cosmo comes with free nail polish. I wanted to get the neutral colour, not some garish pink thing that they also had but the neutral was all out. I settled on some black thing instead, which I imagine would come in handy for halloween.
At the counter, now brooding about how there was no nice nail polish option and no Bailey's ice cream, I saw that Cadbury Roses were on sale for half price. Now this sounds silly but many years ago (1997 to be exact), I went on a tour with my Mama and Yeh Yeh to New Zealand. A goat tried to eat my gloves and someone's dad in the tour group ran around chasing all us children with his 'dragon breath' (condensation from the cold). On the tour bus, there was a box of chocolates and I had one, which happened to be a Cadbury Rose. I remember liking it very very much, and it remained in my consciousness since. Now after 13 years of thinking about that choccy I had in NZ, I decided to buy a box and relieve that time.
As I turned onto Greville Street to walk back, I bit into a random one, caramel. The caramel taste soon became infused with disappointment. It was not as awesome as I remembered it to be. I consoled myself thinking that they were cheap, and I could feed it to Jason, Jon Kong and Steph Yuen who were coming over tomorrow. Or my roommates. Just as I was thinking of ways to finish the lot (I'm not a big chocolate eater), a laughing man called out to me from a car, "Lots of Cadbury Roses are bad for you!"
I felt quite amused and went up to the car and said that they were on offer from Tesco, half price. Then he asked me if I was American (this seems to be a common trend, no idea why) and I replied that I was Singaporean. Then I asked if he wanted one, and he said, "Sure!". So I gave him one and went on my way.
For some reason, that random little interaction cheered me up more than any other self-indulgent item I tried to purchase today.
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