Thursday, May 26, 2011

Things I Like - And Don't Like - About England

Some general observations about life in England.

Things I Like
- Adorable little villages amidst green fields.
- Fresh milk delivered to your house.
- Birds singing all the time.
- 'Location, Location, Location' on TV. Kirstie and Phil, I miss you! Why aren't you on HGTV Canada anymore?
- Cute little pubs: at least one per village!
- Dogs in pubs.
- A pervasive sense of marinating in history, every which way you turn.
- People who call you 'darling' when they don't even know you.
- Houses that have names instead of street addresses.
- Fountain pens.
- Friendly people enthusiastically - and genuinely - offering to babysit your kids.
- Little kids with cute British accents.

Things I Don't Like
- Jet lag.
- Carpeted bathrooms.
- Carpeted PUBLIC bathrooms. Ew.
- Stunningly expensive groceries: twice the price for a package half the size. Yowza.
- Separate taps for hot and cold water in the bathroom sink. Scalding or icy: your call.
- Roundabouts.
- Racial homogeneity. Where did all the Asians go?
- Driving standard. (This is NOT limited to England; I hate driving standard anywhere in the world!)

1 comment:

pomomama said...

I'd never even thought about the hot and cold tap thing! but I'm there with you on the carpets in bathrooms (public bathrooms ewww).

As for the racial diversity - whole swathes of the UK are very homogenous white celtic/anglo saxon. I grew up in a village which 100% caucasian, and went to a high school with only one non-white teacher. There is more racial diversity in the bigger metropolitan areas but not so much outside them, even now.