Dear LPG, 

I have been to a few faraway places over the years though now that I am getting older and have no one to go with, I doubt whether I will ever do that again.   It has been a few years since I have been on a foreign holiday, but my suitcase is always ready to be packed just in case.  

I spent a bit of time having a tidy-up session in my spare room the other day and I moved it.  Even though I have not been anywhere for years it was quite heavy, and I decided that a little trip down memory lane would pass a bit of time, so I opened it.

There were clothes that I have not seen for ages.  I came across one bikini that, on many a beach, has been the only thing that kept my modesty intact when I was a very different shape, and so many other items of clothing that only ever got used when I was abroad on holiday.  I found my vanity bag with a tube of toothpaste that I bought in Spain, which looked surprisingly fresh considering how long ago that was, and some hand sanitiser which had gone a bit gloopy.  I wish I had remembered that at the height of the pandemic and, amongst other things, there was also a collection of electricity conversion plugs which got me thinking.

Have you ever noticed how every country seems to have different shaped wall sockets?  I appear to have been to many two-point-pronged countries when I compared my international 7-strong collection of power converters.  I later found myself asking the internet why some countries prefer two prongs while we prefer three and just how many sorts of electricity sockets there are around the world.  While I was there I found an explanation about why our UK ones are so chunky, more stable, and relatively safe.  

Even though accessing this dangerous, invisible commodity, which is costing us more and more these days, wherever we are it is one of those commodities that most of us never really needed to think about until the price started going up, but it would be hard to get along without it now.

Perhaps counting the amount of different electric socket converters you have had to buy is a very significant way of remembering just how many different countries you have been to.  

GA, Bromley 

GA offers her findings … 

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