Notable Notes Worthy of Noting

Since I have literally just returned from the UK a few hours ago, I am now in the mood to fire off some thoroughly tested observations about the lovely place and its people from the point of view of a non-British person. Some of these anecdotes may or may not be surprising to you if you are a person of British persuasion.

So here we go.

British people, or at least the ones I’ve encountered in the last three and a half weeks, will never start a conversation by asking “How are you?”; rather, they ask “Are you alright?” – It took some getting used to for my mind to stop thinking, “Yeah, why wouldn’t I be?!”

Also, the bathroom light is typically turned on by a pull-cord. Odd.

The toilets sound like monsters wanting to devour you when you flush, and I’m pretty sure you could flush just about anything in one of those bad boys.

If you buy a power converter from Wal-Mart anywhere in Canada, it may blow up and set fire to the place where you’re staying.

If you don’t like your food ground up and put into pie-form, don’t go to the UK. Also, they eat way too much bread for any one group of people, considering that if you don’t eat your food in pie-form, you can eat it as a sandwich if you prefer.

I had not been able to go 2 hours without hearing someone utter the phrase “bloody hell”.

Fuel costs are outraaaaaageous! - I don’t know why they don’t riot or something. Sorry, too soon.

People will drink all day long, and not just on weekends.

They have ‘crisps’ where we have ‘chips’ and their ‘chips’ are our ‘french fries’ and they have prawn cocktail-flavoured crisps.. So wrong!

When they ask you if you want ‘bangers and mash’, it’s okay, they’re just offering you sausages and mashed potato, apparently.

They have a guy who goes around in an ice cream vehicle that plays a tune to let residents know that it’s ice cream time.

People’s expressions soften considerably when they find out you’re not American.

There are sheep and cows and horses just standing around.

Wherever you’re going, there’s a train or a bus or a combination of both that will take you there.

People drink tea all day long, just continuously re-filling their cups for hours on end with no break.

The bank notes are different sizes. 20’s are big, 10’s are smaller, 5’s are smaller yet.

There are restaurants that will NOT serve you gravy, no matter how much you beg.

Dress/shoe sizes are different from US or Canadian sizes, though nobody ever seems to know what the difference is.

When in a train station, or an airport for that matter, there will always be the token late guy, who has to run for his train/plane and pushes everyone else out of the way. Also, there will always be the blonde girl, who insisted on travelling in reeeeeally nice clothes and is constantly pulling on them and struggling to stay up on her 6-inch heels.

In Canada, our Subway has the ‘$5 foot-long sub’ meal deal, whereas in the UK, it is 5 quid for a foot-long sub; and since 5 quid is worth more than 5 Canadian dollars, the UK residents are being ripped off. :P

Nearly every building in the UK is made of brick. For a building to be built of brick here, it would have to be a very very important building.

Sitting on the wrong side of the car, going down the wrong side of the road, isn’t *that* hard to get used to. It actually feels pretty normal pretty quickly.

If you call a taxi company, and ask them to take you to a Holiday Inn, they will take you to the wrong one, and then leave you there to realize it’s the wrong one, and then you have to call them back and get them to come and pick you up again and take you to the right one, which they will not be able to do without first taking you to two other wrong ones in the area, even though you beg them to use their GPS to find the right one.

I’m sure there are other profound differences, but my wee brain is just too tired at this moment to process any more of them.

All cheekiness and sarcasm aside though, I had a really great time visiting the UK, and have tried to take all differences in stride as opportunities to learn and experience a new way of going about things.



Bye for now.