On Thanksgiving morning I woke up, looked at the time on my phone, and closed my eyes again. Seven minutes to get to my internship. It’s never going to happen. I stayed in my bed for a couple more minutes.
I took a shower and hopped onto Facebook. Good, Gretchen was online. I sent a quick message to my supervisor. “Sorry, woke up late. I’ll be into the office as soon as I can!”
“no worries it happens to the best of us!” she typed back.
Seven hours later I left my internship. A slow day – finished up a spell check and edited a book index.
6:12pm. I took the elevator up to the 18th floor. Frannie, Rachel, and my flatmate Jacque were all inside discussing dinner plans. A few minutes later Annie, barefoot, knocked on the door carrying a plate of baked beans covered with a pot lid. She used the Evening Standard newspaper as a pot holder.
“I thought we could have these for our Thanksgiving dinner too.” Annie pushed the dishes on the counter to the side and set the beans down.
“Oh we still haven’t gone to the grocery store to get stuff for dinner,” Frannie said. “We’re about to go to the grocery store now.” I left my brown boots and yellow coat on. Annie borrowed my black flats.
We left the flat for Tescos, the grocery store around the corner. The sidewalk (or pavement as the British call it) was polka-dotted with gum. The streets were crowded. Men and women in business suits stood outside every pub we passed. A pint or wine glass in hand. Londoners taking advantage of the lack of rain and cold.
We walked into Tescos to the rotisserie chicken section. Empty. Or almost empty. One lonely bag sat on the stainless steel shelf.
I read the tag, “Roasted half chicken.” It looked like a bag of charcoal bones. The five of us surrounded the pathetic thing. Frannie poked it and laughed.
“All right, let’s get it!” Annie said.
“Let’s look for chicken nuggets,” Frannie said.
“We can see if KFC has just plain grilled chicken like at home,” Jacque suggested.
“Let’s check for chicken nuggets first,” Frannie said.
We ended up at KFC.
“Look, doesn’t that look like grilled chicken?” Jacque pointed at the giant chicken burger plastered across the menu. “Just order a plain Rancher burger. We’ll just take the chicken off the bun.”
In spite of our KFC chicken, the five of us did have quite a feast. Mashed potatoes, the best stuffing I’ve ever eaten (I don’t usually like stuffing. This stuff was send down from heaven!), bread, baked beans, rolls, gravy, cider, apple crumble, and chocolate pudding. Afterwards we flipped on the TV (or should I say telly?). Rachel wanted to find a channel playing American football, but instead we found ourselves watching a Parliament debate. Thoroughly entertaining. Thoroughly non-festive. My London Thanksgiving.