British Days: A Bad Day

Although London was a nice change for me I was still prone to having a bad day. One day during my stay in London was filled with a series of bad events, and each one was worse than the successor. At work all I did was put records accompanied with stickers, postcards and press releases promoting Fat Records in evelops that would be mailed out to customers. It took me about an hour and thirty minutes to complete this task. After I did this I was told I could leave or surf the internet. They didn't have a lot for me to do there, and Paul, one of my bosses, had told me this the previous week. Putting records in envelops was the only thing they could think of for me to do. I came all the way from Muswell Hill for that! It took me about an hour by tube to get to the office because it was on the other side of London. Now I was going to have to spend another hour of traveling just to get back to my homestay after only spending an hour and thirty minutes at work! I didn't want to feel like I had come all that way for nothing so I stayed around and sent out friend requests for their myspace.com web-site. But eventually I got bored and left.

By this time I was hungry, but I needed to eat somewhere inexpensive. I spoted a Turkish fastfood resteraunt. There are many of these resteraunts in London, and a person can eat a full meal at one of these places for an inexpensive price. I love the chicken shish and lamb shish they serve. I looked at the overhead menue and saw chicken shish. I approached the counter and told the woman behind it I wanted chicked shish.

"Chicken shish kebab?" She asked, not quite hearing me the first time.

I replied that is what I wanted. When my order was totaled it came to about seven pounds, much more than I had anticipated. Maybe the water cost more than I had thought? When I got my order I noticed I not only had chicken shish but I had another sandwich too. I turned around and looked at the man and woman behind the counter. They could tell something wrong.

"I only wanted one," I said.

The woman looked down at the food behind the counter a little frustrated.

"You order chicken shish! Then you order chicken shish kebab!"

I had thought chicken shish and chicken shish kebab were the same thing. I didn't know what to say.

"O. K." I said in defeat. I didn't want to get into an argument. The man behind the counter shrugged his shoulders. I sat in the resteraunt and ate my chicken shish, angry that I had wasted some money.

When I got back to my homestay I went to sleep. I didn't want to think about the days events. I just wanted to be unconscious. When I woke up I went for my routine run in Alexandra Park. The run made me feel better as I had hoped, but my stomach started to hurt after I finsihed. I went back to my homestay to use the toilet. But for some reason it wouldn't flush. Water would fill the toilet bowl but it wouldn't flush; something was clogging the toilet. This was embarrasing! I was reminded of all the times when the toilet overran at my house when I stopped up the stool by accident. One time when this happened the water flowed all the way downstairs. It was a disaster and it was disgusting. My mom had to get get the house dry cleaned because of it. I didn't want that to happen in the Forbes' household*. So I asked Mrs. Forbes if she had a plunger. She asked if the toilet was stopped up. I said yes, and she told me not to worry about it. This did little to relieve my worries. I was in the Forbes' household, and I didn't want to do anything disrespectful. The toilet overflowing would be a nightmare, and God forbid if that happened. So I stayed upstairs and waited for the water level in the toilet to decrease. I was going to try to unstop the toilet myself by flushing the toilet. I was hoping a flush would put enough pressure on whatever was stopping up the stool to go down the drain. That didn't happen, and I didn't want to risk another flush because the toilet just might overflow on that try. I went back downstairs to talked to Mrs. Forbes about the situation. I didn't know what else to do and I didn't want to leave the toilet clogged; it seemed rude of me to do. I could tell Mrs. Forbes didn't want to deal with the stituation. She had given me no answer as to whether they had a plunger and she had simply went downstairs after she told me to not worry about the stool being clogged.

"Is everything alright," she asked.

I told her the stool was still stopped up. We went back upstairs and I can only imagine what she must have thought when she smelled the bathroom. When we got in there Mrs. Forbes must have realized I was worried about this problem.

"Berkley, it's not like I haven't unclogged a stool before! Out!"

And with that Mrs. Forbes went to work to unclog the stool. I went downstairs to eat my dinner in the kitchen. I munched on my food while Mrs. Forbes slaved away upstairs to unstop the stool. I felt awful. This had been my worst day in England. I just wanted to forget about it. After I ate I went to bed hoping to find better things in my dreams and the next day.

*The Forbes family were my homestay.