More Marvelous Info About England

Steve is on the phone right now with Dr Bubba. It’s 9.34 p.m. on Tuesday night as I write this. Listening in on this side of the conversation has reminded me of some little things about our life here you might find interesting.

1 – They don’t use ice in ‘fizzy drinks’ in restaurants. I know I’ve mentioned this before, but Steve says it’s because they have to pay for soda refills at restaurants and they don’t want the ice to take the place of the expensive soda.

2 – They don’t have any cups or tumblers larger than 1 pint. Steve is so used to his 32 oz. plastic cups from gas stations, college football games, Rudy’s BBQ, that the refined 10 oz. glasses we have here at the house were cramping his drinking style. So in addition to the beer steins we bought the other day, I found some plastic cups that are 1 pint. So he only has to refill his iced tea 3 times at dinner.

3 – They only use singe quotes over here in literature. See #1 for an example.

4 – Their TV programs don’t necessarily start and end on the hour or half hour. It’s quite annoying. It’s not even on quarter hours. It’s usually on a time ending in 5 or 0. I don’t understand. And there are commercials on some channels, but not on BBC channels. There are 5 of them. And some channels don’t start broadcasting until 7 p.m. I so totally don’t understand their TV system.

5 – Their wall electric sockets are called ‘mains’ and each has its own on/off switch.

6 – Their traffic lights are weird. After green, they turn yellow, then red. But when the light is about to turn green again, the yellow comes on while the red light is still on, then the green comes on.

7 – It’s part of the highway code that you have to set your parking brake when you stop.

8 – Our fridge here is highly unusual. The norm looks like a dorm fridge sitting on top of another dorm fridge, which is in fact a freezer. They’re skinnier and taller than our fridges.

9 – They have no Fritos over here. This makes Steve sad. The only corn chips are Doritos. No other corn chips.

10 – They call Wheat Chex ‘Shreddies.’ We eat Shreddies and Honey Nut Cheerios every morning. They also spell yogurt with an ‘h’ (yoghurt).

11 – We had to register with a surgery (doctor’s office). It took about 3 weeks for us to get in their system. I’m going to call on Thursday to get an appointment to get Julie in for her 6 month shots, so I’ll know more about the surgery later in the week.

12 – Borough councils are like county councils or similar local governing bodies. We fall within the Reading Borough Council. They pay for every child from 3-5 to have 5 half-days of nursery school. We will begin to access this in September for Audrey, but she will still only go 3 mornings. I think they will only pay for 2 hours of the 5 she is enrolled each day, but still – it’s 2 hours of free childcare!

13 – They love their reality shows over here. There are not 1 but 2 (!!) channels that have live ‘Big Brother’ coverage on most of the day each day. At any hour of the day I can turn to E4+1 (strange name for a channel, I know) and watch live footage from their Big Brother house over here. The other channel just has it on intermittently. But still.... And not only that, they have reality shows about families with brats (‘The House of Tiny Tearaways’ – families come to the show’s house and hang out with other families with brats), about finding the next theatre star (‘How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria?’ – looking for the next Maria von Trapp for Andrew Lloyd Weber’s production of ‘The Sound of Music’), about people who spend too much (‘Spendaholics’). The list goes on. I think they’ve forgotten the concept of FICTION. Except for J.K. Rowling.

14 – At a mini-roundabout, if you meet another car coming from the opposite direction and one of you is going straight and the other is turning right (ACROSS traffic - like a left turn at home), the one turning has the right of way over the one going straight. Not like home.

Anyway - I'm off now!