Snowed in for Christmas. In England

The following note from a loyal reader in England is one of many special greetings from expatriate Saultites that SooToday.com will be publishing over the holidays.

If you're a former resident now living 200 or more kilometres away, SooToday.com would be delighted to post your 800-word-or-less message.

It's absolutely free, but the deadline is midnight on New Year's Eve.

For details, click here.

*************************** Its bloody cold in England; I might as well be home for Christmas!

How I wish I was shopping for my gifts in the Sault, where my parents always complained about the crowds each Christmas, but they never had to navigate the heaving throngs of my local grocery store on a typical Saturday morning – it’s like the difference between the Station Mall and the Wellington Square Mall.

And, even if it was out on the outer edges of the car park (er, I mean parking lot) there was always a space to park, enough room to open your door all the way, and even better, for free – a rare find in England.

They also didn’t have to worry about the advent calendars selling out by Halloween (I don’t know why either) but, on the other hand, if our department store only got in 10 of this year’s must-have toy, I’d have another 177 shops to choose from within the same driving distance as Blind River.

With no parking spaces.

And, if like now, a few inches of snow fell, there would not be a rush for canned – or tinned as they say here – goods, backup generators, and road salt as the country quickly ground to a halt.

“How do you Canadians do it over there?” I get asked.

I tell them we hook a snow plough onto our domesticated moose and just get on with it.

The scary part is they believe me – yet they raise an incredulous eyebrow to snow banks large enough to lose the muffler in when you get stuck driving back from Grandma’s house on Christmas day!

Ah yes, how I miss the Sault.

So I send my Christmas greetings:

- To my mom, Lorri Foley, who will be off work over the holidays but still checking her Sault College e-mails just in case.

- To my dad, Denis Dupuis, who will be driving back and forth between “Soo Mill” in that freezing cold white van (Dad – we know you are never at Soo Mill).

- To my stepmom, Bev Luciani-Dupuis, who still hasn’t decorated the tree (have you?) or got all the Christmas lights up.

- To my stepdad, who shall remain nameless as he doesn’t like the spotlight, or Christmas for that matter.

- To my aunts Dawn Massicotte and Wynna Robb who will be cursing my grandmother, Sharon Sherlock, for making them set up that Christmas village again.

- My uncle Derek Sherlock who will be planning an extravagant Christmas feast.

- My sisters, Dan and Shae Dupuis, who can’t wait for the Boxing Day sales.

- And my cousins Jamie and Chris who are hoping for some mail addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Massicotte so they can sue the sender for defamatory statements.

I will be thinking of you all as I keep a stiff upper lip, drinking my tea (pinky extended, of course!) and eating biscuits, waiting for Spam, bangers, mash, and other essentials to be airlifted in by helicopter because I am “snowed in.”

Mom – send date squares.

Bev – send tie plates.

Grandma – keep knitting!

Cheers!

Merry Christmas, with love from Leicester, England.

- Tanya, Mark, and the cheeky monkeys

*************************** Look who else has written to us this year

大家好! Happy holidays from Taiwan! Snowed in for Christmas. In England