Sunday started slowly. Peeling off the layers of sleep & facing the morning. Emily & Samantha are crewing at present so backstage was soon calling them away. I forgot that Sunday only has the one show, a matinee, and was becoming unsettled about how much I didn't have settled for the week ahead. Woman cannot live on tea, couscous & cereal alone, after all. Emily had said on Saturday that she'd take me shopping but when she left, I wasn't sure what time she'd be back & I didn't want to feel like I had to be baby-sat. Kroger at Lombardy Street is within walking distance, about twenty minutes. So I decided to walk.
Here, it's actually okay to walk. Yay! I told Lauren I was heading out & we discussed the best way to get there (straight down West Broad Street, past the theatre & straight through VCU's city campus.)
Plus, there are sidewalks here to help you on your way. Not the devilry I got up to this summer. (It's almost enough to give a man complete peace of mind about letting me, the look right, look left, look right English damsel, loose in the wild city. Almost.)
So I headed out, ready to shop & remembering to look left, look right, look left instead & paying full attention to both the green man & the flashing red hand with its countdown.
Kroger of the summer is a store with two aisles of attraction. Beer. Ice-cream. Done. Kroger of the here & now proved a bit more bewildering in choice. So much choice. (And so much Cheese. I swear cheese just kept on reoccurring throughout the store after my first aisle's glimpse of it.) It was when I got to staring at Town House (the family cracker preference) & was contemplating the Kroger own brand that I heard my name being shouted.
"Nikki!" in a city where only ten people in 204,000 know my name? I turned & found an Emily walking towards me with intent. It wasn't so much an admonishment as a "Why didn't you wait for me?"
She'd returned from the Tavern to the apartment where Lauren had told her where I'd gone & so driven after me so I could Buy More & hitch a ride home. Aw! (Not so cool to walk after all.)
Emily's presence made choices a little less bewildering. Some things are easy to find. Food products which I've eaten before, for example. Chipotle Gouda Cheese made it in the cart without pause. Settled for Kroger's own brand crackers. Deliberated Dunkin' Donuts coffee (once a summer present from Meli, so known to be tasty) for some French Vanilla coffee for less (equally tasty).
(Thought you'd also be interested to see Kroger's equivalent to the orange "Whoops!" stickers. Nice touch, Mr. Manager. Yes I'll take your semi-wilting tasty salad to eat tonight.)
What interested me though was the detergent aisle. It was there I realised just how reliant we are upon branding & knowledge or experience of brand names. I'd muddled through thus far but when faced with shelf upon shelf of bottles, fully labelled but signifying nothing, my mind was at a blank. Where were the Bolds, the Persils, the Ariels of old? Having no knowledge nor experience of the product, I knew not where to start from. In the end it was a toss-up over the Emily recommendation of Tide vs. Downy, both reputable brands. Downy won out for adoptive patriotic reasons. Yes, we judged the bottle by its cover. I just hope my laundry doesn't turn out emblazoned with stars & stripes.
(The dollar whilst holidaying:
Convert to Great British Pounds & think of how little one's spending.
The dollar whilst food-shopping for real:
Ouch. Food ain't cheap here. £5 for a loaf? You kiddin' me?!)
We got back just after six. The Richmond Theatre Critics Circle awards were on at seven. (Also known as the "RTCC" hence "the Artsies".) Scramble for food, scramble for frocks, out of the door, down the alley & one secret pass-code (i.e.: missed call) to Sam to meet us at the door. We were the bad-ass interns: alley-way entrance in through the paint shop, into the lobby & straight up onto the balcony to the tech desk & additional honorary seating. ((What $15 entrance fee? We did at least donate to the bar. Mm, my first autumn's sip of Richmond's local, Legend... Nice.))
The Artsies were fun. Not least because the band on stage were sat right in the living room of Sixties' Selma, Alabama - the Stafford residence. This being the current set for Night Blooms, which I'd seen earlier that day in the November theatre space.
From Sixties' Selma, AL to the modern-day theatre community of RVA:
Sue had said it was more a 'sporting' event than theatrical. By that, she meant the whooping & hollering amongst the different groups. Rocky Horror's lot were particularly lairy. But despite the differences in companies & theatres, it still had very much a community feel & that in itself, is worth celebrating.
I snuck off early after the first In'ermission though. Still feeling somewhat tired from the weekend & wanting some sleep before New Work in the morning.
No comments:
Post a Comment