I had made some suggestions of what I was missing being away from, but my parents surprised me with the sheer extent of the supplies that they brought over from Britain. Here is an inventory, in which I might use some capital letters. Ask about any and all of them if you like.


MORE BISCUITS THAN EXPRESSIBLE IN THIS SPACE! I was flabbergasted at the number of biscuits that they had brought over with them - I'm surprised that they managed to fit in any actual luggage. This bag contains chocolate Digestives and Hob Nobs bought for about a fifth of the market price here, and various things that are completely unreachable like Breakaways, Fox's Crunch Creams and other varieties, and some uniquely Scottish oatmeal-type biscuits.


SOME BOWL-THINGS AND A MONK BISCUIT TIN! These are a late moving-in gift and birthday present for Whitney, who had expressed that we needed a biscuit tin to hold the biscuits I'd made. I can't use it for the current ones, though - they'd melt.


BREAD! Kingsmill, in fact. I used to mock my sister when she was younger for only liking one very specific type of bread. But now that I'm where something as simple as supermarket bread takes a different form, I understand it entirely. You wouldn't think it would be possible for white bread to be different, but compared to American efforts the slices of this are much more substantial, bigger than your hand, and they osmose butter into themselves so much better than any bread I've found here...


MEAT-FLAVOURED CRISPS! Something else unheard of here that people thought I was just making up - toss a cow into the blender with the potatoes and this is the result. I have haggis and beef here, but other varieties include T-bone steak and squirrel.


SIR GOLDEN SYRUP! A treacle-like semi-liquid used in baking, more substantial than maple syrup. I've preserved the full size version of this photograph so that you can see the logo on the bottles - the squeezable bottle has been cutened up, but the brand logo for Lyle's Golden Syrup for the last hundred years has been A ROTTING LION BEING DEVOURED BY BEES.


...SOCKS! And you wouldn't think this particularly exciting, either, but I haven't found anything quite like basic black socks here - either they're thicker, or they only come up to below your ankles and they're weird.

I pine about being three thousand miles away from the nearest branch of Tesco all the time, but I honestly had not realized how much I had missed until all of this was revealed to me.