This weekend I went away to Nicole’s 40th birthday, she’s a lovely workmate, here at the charity.  Also there was Jill, another work pal, who’s just moved here from the USA.  I couldn’t think of a more quintessentially British experience for her than coming to a party in an Arts and Crafts style village hall for a birthday.  We then to add to the blightyness ate a buffet, danced in a Ceilidh, listened to live folk music complete with beards and a fiddle, then went back to the camp fire to sing some more olde folk tales, camped in the rain and then awoken by many, many ducks quacking and one cockerel.  If only Eddie Grundy had turned up.

I had a quintessentially middle class experience when at a festival there was an orderly queue outside the arena before it opened, at 10.31 people ran full pelt, “to the literary tent”, someone shouted, half of the people vered off to the right while we kept on course, someone fell, we didn’t care.  We ran to form another queue of around 1000 people which snaked round and round, but we were in the first 200, yes!  What were we desperate for?  Tickets to see Radio 4 shows recorded live.

Quintessential small town was taking my boyfriend home to meet the folks, popping out to meet my friend Jemma down the Nag’s head and then coincidentally running in to 12 of my school friends, who came to say hello one after the other. He thought I was the most popular gal in town.

Quintessential Rachel?  For my boyfriend’s Christmas present I bought him a canvas onto which you can print a photo of your choice.

Thoughts: “Got a brilliant deal on it, photo of romantic autumnal walk we went on, get in, great present, hold on, bit confused, haven’t uploaded photo, hmm, wait and see”.

Then realised that no I hadn’t bought a canvas, I’d bought a gift voucher for one, that can only be delivered to specific store, 10 days after you order it.  So after three phone calls to said shop to warn them of my arrival and the grave situation on the 15th of December, I arrived at 5.27 to pick up and redeem the voucher to order the actual canvas to arrive on the 22nd of December, the day I leave for home.  It turns out that 3 minutes isn’t enough time to do this, especially when the assistant spends 10 minutes looking then says “I can’t find it and it’s hard to miss, those canvasses are massive”.  “IT’S NOT A CANVAS IT’S A GIFT VOUCHER FOR A CANVAS” I shout, in order to boost his Christmas spirit.  More searching, he finds it the crappy voucher, I say perfect I want to redeem it, pushing the voucher towards him on the counter and have my romantic autumnal scene printed on it, please, then tells me that the machines have been turned off, I say, but I turned up at 5.27 with 3 full minutes of shopping time.  He says they turn the machines off at 5.25.  Yes Rachel does not leave enough time to do things.

What is quintessentially you?

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