Spot the spam

I get very little junk email in any of my email inboxes. Really! All of my accounts seem to have pretty good spam filters set up and the occasional spam message that actually makes it through to my inbox is usually very obvious. More of a problem is finding the messages I actually want that get put in the junk mailbox. I have one friend whose messages more often than not end up tagged as spam. Messages from one mailing list occasionally end up there, as do all the messages from one specific business whose mailing list I asked to be added to.

About once every couple of weeks, I go through the junk mail checking to see if there's anything there that I really want before I hit delete. I can usually tell from the sender's address if it's a message I want to keep. This is a good thing, because if I had to rely on the subject line it might not be so easy!

See if you can figure out which of the following email messages in my 'junk' mailbox turned out NOT to be spam!

• Invite to my presentation
• Who called me?
• Apply for your diploma
• Win in Fiesta
• With our watches boring time will go faster
• Do it tomorrow
• Losing wieht [sic] does not have to be tough
• For humping-mania
• Need a diploma? Call us.
• Your social status will grow with a more serious watch
• Book a room and you could WIN a weekend away plus spending money!
• Please think about it
• Did you vomit?
• I'll kill you, I promise
• Nothing can amaze your special person more than a cute watch

Oh, and did anyone else from the UK have battered & deep-fried 'spam' on their school lunch menu? (I remember it was round, not rectangular like real Spam which must have been more expensive!!) I remember not only eating it and enjoying it but putting salt on it! It's amazing I'm not dead of a heart attack already!

The UK explained

My DH forwarded this graphic to me. No idea where it came from originally.

Barely British

UK citizenship test

I failed.

The country fair

When I was growing up, the fair visited town once a year in June. They set up in the town car park and Thursday night was 'trial night'. All the rides were half price. Supposedly this was because they were checking that they were all correctly set up. (I was never allowed/never wanted to go on trial night!) The fair had all the usual fair things - a merry-go-round, waltzers, bumper cars, a big wheel, fishing for ducks, candy floss . . . It was loud and fun and we looked forward to it. Apparently the future of the annual fair is now in doubt because the car park where it was held is about to be lost to a Sainsbury's supermarket.

Around here there is not just one but several fairs within easy driving distance each year. All of them are held at dedicated fairgrounds that are used for a variety of gatherings over the year. The one we went to last weekend is the traditional end of summer event for our family, and many others, as it is always held the weekend before school starts. It is, of course (this IS America after all!) bigger than the fair in my hometown. Perhaps not so much in the number of rides, but certainly with the sheer quantity of other activities! It's a sort of cross between a funfair, Women's Institute show, and Young Farmer's Club event.

I would have said that there was nothing like our local New England fairs in the UK but I bet if we visited the Cheshire County Show nowadays we would find it very similar to the show we went to last weekend. The Cheshire County Show was in somewhat of a decline when I was growing up and we never went to it but it has changed significantly in the past few years. It's just another reminder to me of how long I've been away from the UK and how careful I have to be when speaking about it. So much has changed over there in the last 24 years! The UK I left does not exist any more.