Back in the UK: Culture Shock!

So I am back in the UK for a few months, after spending a week in New York en route from Florida. 
I also managed to get caught up in the Storm Desmond drama when I eventually arrived back in the North of England (more on that later.)

I had a great time in New York, staying with my old friend Ed at East Northport, near Huntington, on the north coast of Long Island.

Northport, Long Island, New York.

I arrived on a Saturday morning and we had a quiet day eating, drinking, and catching up on people and events since the last time I was in New York, seven years ago.

We went into Manhattan the following day and did poetry readings in the city and then Brooklyn, which as fun.

Ed and I on the F Train.

 

Me and Ed with poetry host, George Wallace outside the Parkside.

Me reading my cheese poem in Brooklyn (photo thanks to Dasha Bazanova)

I had some great time exploring Long Island with Ed, and met up with my old friend, Lorraine, who showed me around the last time I was in New York, as well as hosting a poetry event in Valley Stream.

With Lorraine in Sip This, Valley Stream, NY

I also went into the city on my own and visited the Natural History Museum and the Museum of Modern Art, I loved the dinosaurs and there was a Jackson Pollock exhibition.

Me with Ed.  He had lost a lot of weight by this point and was becoming increasingly aggressive(!)  ;)

I walked through Central Park from the Natural History Museum to the MOMA

Jackson Pollock painting at the MOMA

It's difficult to cover everything during my action-packed week in New York and all the folks I met, but it was wonderful.

All good things come to an end, however, and the time came for me to journey to my next destination, dear old Blighty.  I was travelling to the northwest of England, Kendal, Cumbria, to be exact.
 
Due to heavy traffic, I arrived late for my flight check-in at JFK.  The lady at the desk saw that as personal insult, and was consequently a cow, but I survived (she made me jump through numerous extra hoops just to show her displeasure).  

The subsequent flight to Iceland went pretty smoothly, however.  I was impressed by all the improvements they've made to Reykjavik airport.  It used to look like an old (I think it is a former hangar), now it's like something from an IKEA catalogue.

My flight from Reykjavik to the UK was delayed by 45 mins but nothing remarkable otherwise.

I arrived in Manchester the following morning feeling tired and hungry, but pretty good.  Then I found out that due to Storm Desmond and the intense flooding in the North West of England, there were no trains running north of Preston, Lancashire.  It was a similar story with the coach/bus service.

The storm had flooded out whole areas of some towns, including Kendal, knocked out the power, damaged bridges, roads, and caused mini-landslides.  I was stranded just one and a half hours from my destination.

The options for me were to stay in a hotel in Manchester or Preston; stay with a friend in the area; or get a ride home by car from Preston.

After talking to my parents, I caught the train to Preston.  The station cafe bar was full of stranded people: families; mountaineers; students; businessmen; old people, young people, and others.  I consoled myself with a couple of quality pints of draught dry cider (a relative rarity in the US).

In the end, I was lucky enough to get a lift from my parents from Preston to Kendal, but the journey took twice as long as normal, thanks to the flooded roads.

"The Auld Grey Town" of Kendal at dusk

Culture Shock

A few things I've needed to adjust to since arriving back, both good and bad:

• I got confused by British coins initially, I thought the 5 pence was worth ten, because it is a similar size to a dime.  Kind of embarrassing.
• The roads were unnerving for a while, as I thought we were driving on the wrong side.
• Pleasantly reminded of the low prices of beer in the pubs.  In the US you have to take out a bank loan to go out for a night of beers(!)  Prices are less than half here in the UK and you're not expected to tip on top for every beer too. (Liquor is cheaper in the US, including Scotch whiskey, but that's another story!)
• The English seem so quiet, gentle, and reserved, when you are used to Americans.
•  English customer service continues to improve, although it is still not always great.  America is still the king of customer service.
• Americans think the English are super-polite, but the truth is that it is very variable here.  You can go into a shop or stand at a bus stop and chat to some super polite person, then walk down the street and hear young children call each other f**king c*nts.  Courtesy and rudeness tend to rub shoulders much more.
• Drivers here are almost always way more sane and courteous than Florida, however.
• I'm still a little jet-lagged, my sleep patterns can be erratic at the best of times, but throw in a five hour time shift and things get interesting.

The trip is on!

“For a long while- for many years, in fact- he had not thought of how it was before he came to the farm. His memory of those times was like a house where no one lives and where the furniture has rotted away. But tonight it was as if lamps had been lighted through all the gloomy dead rooms. It had begun to happen when he saw Tico Feo coming through the dusk with his splendid guitar. Until that moment he had not been lonesome. Now, recognizing his loneliness, he felt alive. He had not wanted to be alive. To be alive was to remember brown rivers where the fish run, and sunlight on a lady's hair.”  

― Truman Capote, A Diamond Guitar 

After a particularly challenging period in my personal life, I have decided to embark upon a major trip at the end of November. There may well be a few more legs to the experience but currently only the first two are planned. 

On the first leg, I am going to spend a week in the New York area. I am going to meet up with old friends on Long Island and do a couple of poetry readings, as well as see some sights in Manhattan (I've been there before but there is always lots more to do!). I am looking forward to it. 

I am flying up there. I did seriously consider renting a car and driving up to New York. It would have been great to visit friends in North Carolina and Pennsylvania en route, but in the end I decided that the expense and hassle were a little too much for my budget - part of the problem being making the journey during the Thanksgiving period (I've still not got fully used to the American calendar). 

The second leg of the journey will be an Atlantic flight from JFK over to Blighty (that's an affectionate name for England/Britain, if you're not familiar with it!). 

I'm going to spend some time with my family in the English Lake District, hopefully scale at least one mountain (maybe England's highest mountain, Scafell Pike this time? Although that might be a little optimistic in the middle of Winter, I don't know?). 

 I also want to spend time with my brother and his family down on the south coast of England in the Brighton area. It would be great to visit others too, and maybe even go over to continental Europe if my finances allow. 

 I will be heading back to the USA at some point in the new year. 

Things that I have missed about the UK 

 • Friends and family, of course. 

 • Fish and chips with mushy peas. 

• World class Indian food at very low prices. 

• Cheese and onion pasties. 

 • A creamy, foamy pint of real ale in a centuries old pub. 

• The sweeping hills, mountains, lakes, and dales of Cumbria and Yorkshire. 

 • The dry English sense of humour. It sometimes feels like every other person you meet is a quality comedian in the UK, and the perception that life is more than a little absurd is common. Americans in general take life more seriously and the humour can be less subtle. 

Things I will miss about Florida/the USA 

• All my friends here, who have become as important to me as my old friends back in England. 

• The openness, warmth and friendliness of Americans generally. The English, as we all know, are more reserved. 

• The Florida sunshine and beaches. 

 • The exotic wildlife. 

• My tennis exploits and my tennis comrades. 

 • The space. Lots of space in the US. Everything can seem a little cramped in Europe when you return. Driving is a completely different experience, not so much because of the driving on the left hand side thing in the UK, more that everything feels more pushed in, busier, and narrower. 

• Last but not least, the cafe bar at Lucky's Market, my peaceful little port in a stormy world.

A Fistful of Cents: British Money vs US Money

One thing that any foreigner has to contend with when moving to another country is the currency.

Back in England, we use pounds and pence (not the Euro, as some Americans seem to believe), but in the USA it is dollars and cents, of course.

After living here for three years, I am at home with the notes, or "bills" as they say here, but (probably to my shame) I can still find the coins a little confusing at times.

US Dollars: Public Domain Image via Pixabay

Bills and Notes

I think the biggest difference in paper money is the preponderance of the dollar bill.  Back in the UK, the lowest paper note has a value of 5 pounds, the equivalent to around $8.50 at the time of writing.  A dollar bill is worth about 60 pence in Brit money.

The British pound note, which was around for most of the twentieth century, disappeared in the late 1980s, mainly because its value had decreased and it was far less durable than a coin equivalent.  The bottom line was that it was deemed too uneconomic to produce by the Bank of England. 

The demise of the pound note caused an uproar at the time in England, in large part because the new pound coins were heavier on the pocket than the old notes and you couldn't carry around large amounts of them easily.

Coming to America felt like going back to the old pound note days.  I have to say that the dollar notes are good in that respect.  They are light on the pocket and slot into the wallet easily, making them user friendly.

Designs and Construction

Both countries' notes are pretty conservative in their design, but the American notes are probably more traditional than British ones, in fact, my research tells me that the images on US notes haven't changed since 1929.

That means that the images reflect older values, there are no women on US notes - neither are there any great American figures from the middle or late twentieth century.

The best thing about US "paper" money, however, is its resilience.  That's because although it looks like paper, it is actually made from cotton.  This effectively means that if you accidentally leave your money in your pocket on a wash day, it can go through the laundry and come out the other side with virtually no sign of damage or wear and tear!

A random handful of US coins

Coins

The downside of US money is that there are lots of small and low value coins.  The one cent coin, for instance, is worth barely more than half a pence.  Dropped coins can be found all over the place, because the effort of picking them up is not seen as worth it.

As a Brit, I can find the design of US coins counter-intuitive.  The quarter (25c) is the biggest, next comes the nickel (5c), followed by the dime (10c) - why a nickel is bigger than a dime, I have no idea!  They are all circular with no variation in shape, which doesn't help, although the one cents (pennies) are a different colour.

The long and the short of it is that in practical terms, I tend to avoid counting out the coins whenever possible and stick to using the notes/bills.  That isn't actually all that strange, as many Americans don't use coins much either. 

On more than one occasion, I have received comments about  my (English) wallet, which has a separate little pouch for storing coins.  That is pretty normal where I am from, but apparently a quaint eccentricity for some Americans, who are more likely to store their coins in pockets, or loose in hand bags (or "purses" as they are typically called here!).

Dollar Coins

Despite the bill being the norm, every now and then, you will come across a dollar coin.  These have an emotional, nostalgic value, as "silver dollars" were the norm before paper money in the US and are far less common.

I actually got given an old dollar coin as a gift one time, which was a nice thought.

There is also apparently a two dollar note, which was issued for the bicentennial in 1976, but I have yet to encounter one.

The Future?

In some ways, a comparison of money seems like a moot point in that paper and coins are inevitably giving way to credit and debit cards and other forms of electronic transaction.

Electronic payments, as well as credit and bank cards work a little differently to the UK, the security is a lot slacker, for instance, but I guess that's another story!