Nicole V. The Royal Mail (Round 1)

There comes a time in every person’s life, when the gloves come off. After months, days, maybe even years of suppressed anger and built-up tension, you finally decide that enough is enough. Conjuring up images of Tom Petty you say to yourself, “I won’t back down!”

My day of reckoning came earlier this week. My opponent: the Royal Mail. Not one person in particular, but Her Majesty’s Postal System—that’s right, the entire system (that includes you, too, FedEx)! You may wonder how, in four short months, I managed to seek the demise of an entire sector of the British service community. I can tell you it wasn’t easy, but it’s a battle I’ve been fighting since Thanksgiving Day.

Sometime late November I got the sense that my mom had sent us something. She was dropping very subtle hints, such as “Did you get anything in the mail today?” and “Are you sure you didn’t get anything from FedEx?” Each time I answered, “No.” Aside from a ton of repetitive bills filling us in on all stages of the payment process (even though we pay online) we hadn’t received anything of note.

Finally, on Thanksgiving Day, my mom had to share the big surprise. She’d sent us homemade cookies via overnight FedEx—a special delivery that came with a $100 price tag! The US FedEx worker not only helped her package the cookies, but also assured her that spending $100 on cookies was a justified act of love (I think he works on commission). He had also assured her they would arrive the day before Thanksgiving, already making them two days late. As it was, we didn’t have the cookies or even a note citing an attempted delivery. It was a perplexing mystery I couldn’t solve alone; so I called upon my trusted sidekick Josh Watson and opened the Case of the Missing Cookies.

After some serious sleuthing, we discovered that FedEx had come several times, but our buzzer was dead as a doornail (no pun intended). But if FedEx had come, where was the note? Why couldn’t we find a “We Were Here” message or sign that anyone had tried to deliver a package? Could it be that there was a Note Thief on the loose?

Before I jumped to conclusions and hired Scooby Doo, I called FedEx and asked if a note was left and if not, why? The FedEx rep responded with the following question: “What color is your door?” The question threw me completely off guard and I had no choice but to stammer in response. I wondered if this was a new self-help scheme—the follow up to What Color Is Your Parachute? Perhaps she was taking a few psychology classes and this was her conflict-resolution method.

Sensing my hesitation and confusion, she asked more specifically if my door was gray. Gray sounded right, so I said as much. To this she said, “That’s why we didn’t leave a note. You have a gray door and we can’t leave notes on gray doors—it’s the law.” Was this woman serious? What did she expect me to say to the most ludicrous excuse I’d ever heard in my life? Oh, okay, I see. We have a gray door, so we can’t receive packages. That clears everything up for me! Thanks!

My head was whirling and I was unable to regain composure. If this “law” is real and my buzzer is broken and my package is floating around in a delivery truck, how on Earth do I get my hands on these cookies? I felt like Cookie Monster and envisioned myself raging through London yelling, “Me want cookie!” Those were my treats and, by God, I was determined to get them.

I made another call to FedEx and asked if the driver could please phone me the next time he tried to redeliver. They were aware of my situation and seemed eager to oblige. And guess what? The following morning I actually got a call. A call to say the driver had just come by, but I didn’t answer the door so he left. I held my head in my hands and begged for divine intervention. I felt like reaching through the phone and shouting, “Didn’t I tell you my buzzer was broken?! Isn’t that the reason I asked for the driver to call in the first place?! Do you have a cognitive issue I should know about?!”

Of course I didn’t say any of that. I rationally re-explained my situation for the umpteenth time, trying in vain to remain calm. Desperate to get off the phone with the Cookie Lunatic, the rep assured me that he’d send the driver back in an hour. Two and a half hours later he still hadn’t come and I finally decided to throw in the towel. I’d gone 12 Rounds, fought the good fight, and it was time to raise the white flag. I wasn’t getting those cookies and I had to accept the fact that I’d been defeated.

I left our flat and didn’t return for several hours. I ran a few errands and worked on decreasing my spiked blood pressure. When I returned, I checked the mail (just for good measure) and started to take off my coat. That’s when the most remarkable thing happened—my phone rang. It was a FedEx driver claiming he was at my door! I couldn’t believe the timing of it all. I had to pinch myself to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. He had actually come and he had brought the cookies. It was, by this point, a Christmas Miracle!

After a week of detective work we closed the case, ate the cookies and celebrated our victory—and, in usual fashion, we let out guard down just a bit too soon. Around the time the last cookie had been eaten and all was forgotten, we received a letter in the mail from FedEx. I actually thought it might have been an apology note, a refund or maybe even a gift card toward future deliveries. I excitedly opened the letter to find… a BILL! We owed the British government 30 pounds (re: $45) in taxes for enjoying US-produced cookies in the UK. To review, my mom paid $100 for overnight shipping, yet the cookies weren’t delivered for a week and now I, the recipient, had to pay taxes. I wanted to shout, “No taxation without representation!” and spill tea and scones into the Thames. As therapeutic as that would’ve been, I couldn’t risk getting deported. So I kept my tea in the cabinet, paid the bill, cursed the system and banned all parcel delivery going forward.  

Let’s just say avoiding deliveries for a period of two years didn’t turn out to be a viable solution. Within a month I once again found myself at the mercy of the Royal Mail. My opponent was taunting me, begging me for a rematch, and I accepted. In the words of Rocky Balboa, “Going in one more round when you don't think you can—that's what makes all the difference in your life.” 

To be continued…

Thanksgiving in London

Living outside of your comfort zone is one thing, but living outside of your comfort zone on Thanksgiving is quite another. I woke up bright and early and although I didn’t have to work, Josh did. To me, working on Thanksgiving is sacrilegious and I was personally glad to have the day off.

I figured it was only right to do something to celebrate while I waited for the evening’s dinner plans—at a French restaurant—but I didn’t know what to do with myself. I thought about watching the parade on the computer, but then remembered that while it was 9am in England it was only 4am in NY. The clowns may have been rising, but they definitely weren’t shining. So after posting a “Happy Thanksgiving” message on Facebook and snooping around to see what everyone back home was up to, I went about my usual business.

Even though I know Thanksgiving isn’t celebrated here, I sort of hoped I’d come across some type of acknowledgement for the day, like a turkey decal in a shop window or a Black Friday sale advert. Alas, there were none. In fact, I had to explain Black Friday to a co-worker and she looked at me like I was a heathen. In hindsight, driving to Walmart at midnight and clawing your way through throngs of people for half-priced electronics doesn’t make for the most heartfelt Thanksgiving story.

Flashing back to a few weeks before Thanksgiving, I’d invited another American couple over for a traditional turkey dinner the weekend after the holiday, as I figured our five-course French tasting menu wasn’t exactly authentic. My plan seemed completely doable and just plain necessary.  You can take the girl out of America, but you can’t take the America out of the girl. While Thanksgiving Day may have been anti-climactic, the thought of Saturday’s dinner plans lifted my spirits.

I started the process by researching recipes and interrogating family and friends on their tried-and-true cooking tricks. Though I graduated from culinary school, the Natural Gourmet focuses on health-supportive food that also happens to be primarily vegan. No roasted turkeys or sausage stuffing, and certainly no metric system.

After watching countless episodes of Barefoot Contessa and talking to Thanksgiving pros, I knew exactly how to cook a six-pound turkey at 350 degrees Fahrenheit—but what did that mean to a Londoner? It meant that I had to do more math this past week than I’ve ever had to do in my life. My preparations felt more like homework than cooking. If a turkey weighs 2.7 kilograms and it should cook for 20 minutes per pound at 350 degrees Fahrenheit, how long does it need to cook in a Celsius oven and at what temperature? After many equations and matrices, I learned that the turkey had to cook for approximately two hours at 176.66 (repeating) degrees Celsius. Impressed?

The process went on as such and my head swirled with gram and kilogram and milliliter conversions. You’d think I was mastering the Theory of Relativity with the pages of notes I was working with. Fractions and decimal points kept me up at night and worries of salmonella poisoning sent chills down my spine. Yes, it’s safe to say I was sufficiently and excessively stressed. But it was Thanksgiving and without a parade or Black Friday sales, the least I could do was serve a properly cooked turkey.

Cheese Platter

Despite two weeks’ worth of over analyzing and agonizing, dinner turned out as I’d hoped—fun, festive and full of food and wine. I’ll admit there were blunders, burns and tears along the way. I can tell you that I have blisters on my knuckles from my tiny oven and I had a near meltdown when the grocery delivery service sent me frozen broccoli instead of fresh broccoli. Not to mention that the farm I purchased my turkey from called me the day before to change my order (including the size and type of turkey), which meant I had to redo my entire cooking chart in the 11^th hour. But all mishaps aside, I’m happy to report that by 7:15pm on Saturday evening four friends sat down to a feast of food that served as a little reminder of home. It may not have been perfect, but it finally felt like Thanksgiving.

Apps - forgot to take pics after this point!

This year, I am thankful for the opportunity to live in London. I am thankful for wonderful friends and family. I am thankful for those of you who helped me plan my dinner and those of you who cheered me on along the way. I am thankful for Cindy, Greg and Josh for being my Thanksgiving Day guinea pigs. I am thankful for my blog readers (become a follower by clicking the “Follow” link at the bottom of the page). And for the first time, I am thankful for my former math teachers, who inadvertently prepared me for my first Thanksgiving abroad. I never thought I’d say this, but they were right. You do use math in your everyday life and you won’t always have access to a calculator. Who knew?