Ahh, yes—those cool, rainy summer evenings in Santa Fe! They really are the best. The clouds start to build up in the mid to late afternoon and by five or six the rain showers flirting around the edge of the city—off to the west towards the Jemez mountains or just outside of town in the Sangre de Cristo foothills—get their gumption up and bust a move on the City Indifferent. The tourists wrap themselves in their plastic ponchos and scamper for the portal at the Palace of the Governors or the shops and boutiques surrounding the Plaza. The temperature begins to drop, often by 20 or 30 degrees. The showers usually clear out in a hour or so and, with a bit of luck, my old amigo Jamie Lenfesty and the good folks from Lensic 360 are able to present the summer concert series at the Plaza bandstand or the Railyard without atmospheric impediment.

What can I say? A day late and a dollar short, as usual. Or a pound sterling short, as the case may be. It seems that the good folks at Unilever were well ahead of Your Humble Narrator when it comes to the Marmite/Blob synergistics. Turns out that back in 2005 they launched an ad campaign in which customers at a supermarket start screaming and running for the exits when a gigantic, well, Blob starts rolling and oozing its way through the aisles and down the High Street. That is, until a few observant observers realize that the hideous monster is, in fact, a giant Blob of Marmite. At this point they turn and start launching themselves head-first into the ball of goo. All in good fun you might say, but problems quickly arose when reports started coming in that children were being traumatized by the ad. Some parents reported that their wee ones were not only frightened but were experiencing recurring nightmares as a result of viewing the commercial.

To those who know me or have wasted any of their precious time perusing these virtual pages, it is no secret that I am an unrepentant Anglophile. This goes so far back and is rooted so deeply in my psyche that I have no precise notion of how it got there, other than it probably has something to do with having watched the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1964 (my mother thought they were 'cute'). I have visited London on a couple of occasions and have traveled by rail from the capital up to Edinburgh and back, but my firsthand experience of Great Britain is woefully limited. Despite being fully aware that it’s completely absurd, my mind has long harbored a ridiculously romanticized fantasy version of Blighty in which everyone outside of London lives in a picturesque village or small town equipped with a cozy pub and a few small but well-stocked family-owned shops run by stout, apple-cheeked men and women of jolly disposition. The general populace reside, one and all, in split-timber houses with thatched roofs and well-tended gardens. No one locks their doors and everyone gathers on the village green to participate in a calendar of spirited proto-pagan rituals that chart the course of the seasons. Having watched most of the seemingly endless episodes of Midsomer Murders I am also well advised that most, if not all, of these charming hamlets harbor a few scheming murderers patiently awaiting their moment of ascendancy. Somehow or other, that only adds to the appeal.