• Home
• About
• Contact
• Advertising

Now, having married a brit, I’ve come to learn that ‘alaminyume’ actually means aluminum.

And that ‘youreyenull’, incredibly means urinal though I don’t know why that came up in conversation to start with.

Christmas Crackers as noted before, are not edible.

And of course, everything must be ‘proper’. Fine.

Things I Didn’t Know

1. Tyres -- are actually tires.

2. Clotted cream is just a gross-sounding way to say cream. Or butter. Whatever.

3. Cream tea is not creamy tea.

(I learned this the hard way by repeatedly insisting that I didn’t want tea and when the yummy looking scones with butter clotted cream and jam arrived with the tea, I sadly learned that the Cream in Cream tea is the bloody food for crying out loud and why didn’t I get some too?).

That’s when I learned I didn’t order one. SH*T.

4. Clothes dryers are evidently evil.

Though ironing is not.

I don’t care for this as I desperately wanted to ‘dry’ my clothes mainly in order to restore their fit, secondly to make them DRY.

As custom apparently dictates, one does not dare use an energy-wasting clothes dryer when there is a perfectly good LINE to hang your items on.

It’s not like there’s sun there to dry them I cried.

Rather they get wet and moldy and then ironed which results in baggy tops! (Sorry Jo).

It was explained to me that dryers use too much energy so they avoid them. What about the bloody iron. I don’t have to iron my clothes at home as I TAKE THEM OUT OF THE DRYER IMMEDIATELY UPON COMPLETION. No ironing necessary.

I think that one will just have to remain a ‘agree to disagree thingy’.

5. Tablets. What? The word apparently represents everything from Acetaminophen 200 mg, to Ibuprophen, to sleeping pills, to street drugs. Everything is a ‘tablet’. “Did you take a tablet?” I heard fairly often. Way too general.

6. Baps. Care for a bap? Excuse me, a bat? No, a bap. A nap? No, a bap!
WTF? It’s a burger bun. Can’t it just be a bun?

7. Voltage. After showering at home, I like to fire up the hairdryer and flat iron and tinker with my hair (o.k. I rarely do that as I’m a lazy as* mom who pulls her hair back but go with me on this) in the bathroom utilizing my well mirrored, roomy vanity.

Not so in England. I’m told it’s illegal to have non-shaver outlets in the bathrooms for safety (which I get). BUT, it’s really hard to hunker down in the corner of a room with a tiny hand-held mirror and do your hair.

Oh and my $40.00 electrical converter blew up my flat iron as well as itself so I had to buy a British one. You folks who know the true cost of the ‘real’ hair flat irons (I'll leave out brand names to throw my husband off), along with the nasty as* exchange rate, know I got screwed when having to buy a British one (oh, and a new American one when I returned).

Not So Bad

It’s one place (maybe the only one) where dressing my son like an old man in cute, longer plaid shorts, vests and Aster shoes like other British boys, is appreciated. I didn’t see any baseball caps or sports jerseys. So there.

I found most of the people very nice and I loved hearing “Cheers” for pretty much everything (including the time I tipped the bartender a measly buck for which my mother-in-law grimaced. She advised me you don’t tip if you have to go to the bar for a drink.)

Summary

Though my husband proudly advised me that since I seemed to eat a lot on the trip (nice), that I must now admit that English food is not bland and quite good.

Wrong. I was on vacation; of course I ate a lot.

But unfortunately, I have to say, sorry babe, English food is still bland. And, now I understand the substandard service over there. They really don’t have an incentive to give great service.

We really did have a wonderful time though and wish our visit could have been longer.

Maybe next time we'll even take Julia. Or not.