Ray and I have come to the conclusion that what foreigners seem to think is the British ability to hold their heads high in times of strife, i.e. the British "stiff upper lip" is really just apathy. When it rains, only about half the folks have umbrellas or raincoats or even hats… The other half act as if it isn’t raining. They don’t cover their head with a newspaper. They don’t wipe the rain off their face. They don’t seem to enjoy the rain falling on them, but at the same time, they don’t seem to be upset that it is raining on them. There is just absolute apathy that it is raining and that they are soaked to the bone. Now, that doesn’t hold true for everyone. Just some folks.

A lot of people here seem rather apathetic to their situation. It seems as though people are happy with just getting by. Maybe that is just a difference between me and the folks I’ve met, rather than a difference between the two countries. But it feels like everyone here is simply working to get enough money for beer so they can get drunk and forget about work. Is your life really that bad? I don’t actually understand, so this next statement isn’t a condemnation of drinking: Do you really enjoy getting so drunk that you cannot remember what happened? If you can’t remember how can you tell if you had fun? I don’t understand because when I drank I never got that drunk. I always remembered everything. The drunkest I’d gotten in many years was Sloan’s 21^st birthday. We were doing Irish car bombs. Mmmm… Tasty! I had many, many car bombs, but I knew when I’d had enough. The point when I asked Ray to take me home was when I almost attempted to hug Dain before I realized at the last second he wasn’t Ray. I instead patted him on the shoulder and found the real Ray and went home. (Ray is still annoyed that I woke up with no hangover. No headache, no vomiting, no nothing.) Anyway, my point is, yeah, I had fun getting drunk and stuff. I know that it was fun because I remember what happened.

I think I went way off from where I started there… Oh well. Anyway – I need to go. We have to go to B&Q and Tesco and do a couple of things in Sutton. I shall write again soon.