Reason 952 to love the British media

I was waiting for my coffee this morning, and had the opportunity to peruse a copy of the Times. Some helpful soul had left it open to the Sports section, and a full two page spread about Andy Murray at Wimbledon. By the time my cappuccino was ready, I had guffawed out loud multiple times. Said article referenced:

1. Jean-Paul Sartre and Huis Clos
2. Waiting for Godot
3. Steely Dan

W. T. F????? This almost makes up for the irritating extra syllable they add to perfectly good words like "oriented" and "commented".

Almost...

Election day

For the second time in as many years, I am watching a major political campaign come to an end. It's been absolutely fascinating, as an American, to watch this campaign, as it is so different and yet somehow familiar at the same time.

First big difference: length of campaign. Unlike the States, where the Presidential campaign basically begins right after the mid-term elections (and therefore lasts about two years), the British elections were announced in February. The campaign is a whopping six weeks long (plus or minus). I cannot begin to express how refreshing this is. Although, I will admit to being very entertained by the caption on the front page of the Metro this morning, referencing the apparent exhaustion of the party leaders (my internal dialogue: Pussies! Have a latte and get over it) after their extensive campaigning. Given that the articles also reference the end of the campaign as being yesterday, I have not much sympathy - in the US the campaign seems to continue on, even after the polls have closed on election day.

Second big difference: campaign? What campaign? Maybe it's because we live in a solidly Conservative* constituency, but this campaign has been invisble. No one puts signs on their lawns**, no one accosts you on the street, there aren't any big rallies. We have gotten a few leaflets through the letter box, but most of those have been from the whackadoos***. It's all very restrained and polite and British.

Third big difference: if you ask someone which party they'll be voting for, they will lie. Well, first of all, you never ask how someone will vote. But if asked, they may tell you the exact opposite of what they intend. Or say they're undecided. Or slam the door in your face. Which makes the polls that everyone keeps referring to more or less completely useless. That, however, is not that different from the US.

Fourth big difference: voting for a party, not a candidate. This explains why the campaigns can be so short - people vote for a party. The public face of that party is the person most likely to be Prime Minister if that party wins an outright majority in Parliament, but they personally are not running. This year's campaign seems to be inducing some cognitive dissonance in the voting public however, as it is the first time there have been televised debates. The rationale behind this in the past was the desire to avoid having the election come down to personalities instead of party manifestos (which are extensive). The debates may have changed the dynamic of the election, but most people seem to have enjoyed them.

Fifth (big) difference: today's Metro include the odds on the parties from several different bookmakers. Hunh?

However, there are a number of things that have been quite familiar, in a kind of heartwarming way. Like "bigot-gate". And the swooning over Nick Clegg, which sounds so much like the rhetoric about Obama that it's a bit eerie. The general consensus is that the likely result is a hung Parliament, which means that some of the smaller parties may end up with quite a bit of influence over who becomes Prime Minister. In any event, I'm finding it quite fascinating, and I will be watching the results roll in tonight with great interest.

* The three major political parties are Labour (current leading party), the Conservatives (aka Tories) and the Liberal Democrats. From the American perspective, they're all Democrats and, in some instances, outright flaming Socialists.
** Lawns, walls, front gardens, what have you. Nobody really has a lawn.
*** the four hundred teensy tiny parties, including Plaid Cymru, the UK Independence Party, the Scottish National Party, the Green Party, the BNP (scary!), etc, etc.

The exchange rate

I can tell I've been here a while, because I've started forgetting to recalculate prices in my head.

This is particularly dangerous when making purchases of things needed, but readily obtainable cheaper in the States. For example, this past weekend we went to the bike shop to get Himself a set of good lights for commuting, and some new glove for me. While we were there, I was encouraged to check out the jackets. Since its been almost a decade since I've lived anywhere with a real winter, this seemed like a good idea.

I found a really nice one, spent a few minutes struggling with the idea of buying a new jacket, and bit the bullet. It's a great jacket - it converts into a vest and is lurid enough to alert even the most unobservant of drivers. In fact, if a driver can't see me while I'm wearing this thing, I would predict they are legally blind and, as such, shouldn't be on the roads anyway.

To try and put this color into perspective I have to share a childhood story about my brother. When we were young (maybe 6 and 8 or 7 and 9), there were a couple of summers when Boston experienced a major infestation of gypsy moths. We were alternately fascinated and horrified by the caterpillars that were absolutely everywhere. My brother and I discovered that if you stepped on one end of a caterpillar, bright fluorescent green guts would squirt out the other end. Truly disgusting, and guaranteed to be a hit with all the neighborhood kids. Of course, my brother went on to collect the caterpillars in old beer bottles filled with water and keep them in his room, but that's another story.

Anyhow, this jacket is that type of bright fluorescent color, but yellow instead of green. Beyond retina searing, and perfect for cycling in a city with lots and lots of traffic. I wore it on a ride on Sunday and was amazed at how much more room I got from passing vehicles, just by virtue of being an insult to anyone with color vision. Awesome.

However, the jacket was quite pricey. £68 in fact, and my thought process when buying it ran something like this: "$68 is a lot of money, but it's a jacket and a vest in one, and the color will be really good, and I don't have a good riding jacket, so what the heck." The only problem here being that it is actually a $112 jacket.

That sound you heard was my little tightfisted Puritan heart breaking. One hundred and twelve dollars for a yellow piece of plastic you can ball up in your fist? My sainted ancestors are spinning in their graves as we speak type. Shocking!

However, if it keeps me off the pavement, it's worth it. Thankfully I can wear sunglasses and not blind myself while I'm wearing it.

Things that I miss and things I don't

Brought into focus by our trip home for a family wedding.

Things that I miss:
Salsa. I know I'm spoiled, having spent the past ten years living in either Space City or the Old Pueblo, but the lack of decent and/or vaguely affordable salsa is really starting to cramp my style.
Along similar lines, I miss Chipotle chicken burritos like you would not believe
Target

Things that I don't miss:
American accents
American drivers/traffic
Sticky summer weather

It was a bit odd to go back so soon - it's only been three and a half months - and I was surprised at how jarring it was. After beings asked how we like living here, Himself said something along the lines of "London feels more like home then Houston ever did", but upon reflection we've agreed that it's not London that feels like home, it's the lifestyle. We live in the city, not the suburbs, and get to walk everywhere or use public transport. For someone who was riding the T by herself at age 11 or so, and used it to get to every single day of high school, this is what I'm used to. And a 5 min jog takes us to a huge green space where Himself can go off running and explore for long enough to wear himself out, which is more like what he grew up with. The girls have embraced the "walk everywhere" mentality, as evidenced by our hiking in Scotland and France, and the fact that today they walked the better part of a couple of miles, interspersed with bus riding.

But people asked what we didn't like about living here. So far there are a couple of things that have been tough to get used to. One is the driving, which we have a pretty good handle on by this time, but there are differences beyond just driving on the other side of the road. The biggest issue is space: the tolerance for close passing/close following/tight quarters is immeasurably higher here then in the States. Roads that Americans would have as two lanes are three here. The drivers here are "better" overall, in the sense that they are much more aware and attuned to what's going on around them (which may be dubious praise given how oblivious most American drivers are). But that's taken some getting used to.

The other, bigger, issue that has taken some getting used to is the constant monitoring of peoples' everyday activities. There are CCTV cameras everywhere, and if they chose to, The Powers That Be (whoever they are) could trace back my every move for at least the last week, if not longer. Most of the time I don't think about it (and anyone who wants to follow me around for a week is going to be seriously bored), but it's omnipresent. My understanding is that this system grew out an attempt to increase bank security, and I imagine was also influence by the Irish-British conflict, but now it seems to be tied in to terrorism. I have a hard time envisioning a scenario in which this kind of constant surveillance would ever be implemented in the United States, much less accepted. So that's been an interesting thing to get used to.

But now we're back, we've mostly readjusted to the time change (boy is it ever easier to go west then to go east!), Boo has started daycare, and Devil starts school on Monday. Which must mean that I'm starting work soon. Yikes!

Boy are we spoiled

I had to get gas for the car this morning. Thankfully after 6+ weeks, the whole driving on the left side of the road thing seems to have been largely worked out, but this was the first time I'd been to a gas station. Two things I noticed:

1) For a country that spends an amazing (to us Americans that is) amount of time and energy thinking about carbon footprints and recycling and global warming, they are missing an important thing on their gas pumps. Namely vapor collars. You know, those accordion pleated thingiemajigs that make it really hard to get the gas pump nozzle far enough in to the gas tank to work? Yeah, don't have 'em here. Or at least, not that we've been able to find. Since we've only had to fill up the car twice, our experience may be too narrow to make gross generalizations, but still.

2) The signs at the gas stations are similar to what you would see in the states, namely two grades of gas (usually diesel and regular) with prices somewhere in the range of 1 pound (I have got to figure out how to do the pound symbol on this keyboard. Soon). So I pulled up and started filling the tank. Imagine my surprise when I looked up after the tank was finally full to find that the total cost was just over 50 pounds.

After I picked my eyeballs and jaw off the ground, I realized that I had been thinking that it was 1 pound a gallon. No, no, no, no...those prices are for litres of gas petrol. 1 pound per litre means $3.80 a gallon. So I just spent $82 to buy 13.2 gallons of gas. Holy crap.

Thank god we only have to buy gas once a month! I think I need to start walking more.

Rooter?

We have already experienced several American faux pas - I managed to use "pants" to a member of the opposite sex to whom I had just been introduced within 48 hours of our arrival, much to my chagrin. But the best culture clash so far has happened to Himself.

He had called to get our home telephone/broadband service set up, and was totally confused as to why the person he was speaking to kept referring to a "rooter".  As in, "that will include your rooter".

Now, the only context in which I've heard the term rooter used involved a yearly gynecological exam, so that probably wasn't what the gentleman on the line was referring to.

No, in fact, he was saying "router" (as in internet router), but he was pronouncing it in a consistent fashion. For example: "route" in the US, at least where we grew up, was pronounced "root". So router would be rooter, right? Except that we pronounce that word the way it's spelled.

Himself finally got things straight in his own mind, and we're now expecting phone and internet service at home.

In one month. Sigh...