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.

President or prime minister and a head on a stick

There was controversy over here in the USA recently regarding the Game of Thrones TV show, when it was revealed that a latex head raised on the end of a stick used during a battle scene was in the likeness of the former president, George W Bush.  I found it difficult to understand the outcry, given that the show is just a silly fantasy and there didn’t seem to be anyone actually seriously advocating the beheading of GWB.

I tend to forget, however, that in the US, the president is not just a political leader, but also the head of state – so in that sense, in UK terms, he is more like the prime minister and queen combined(!)  That is why the US president gets far more reverence than any UK PM (at least face to face).

Barak Obama - The current President of the United States

I’ve been trying to get my head around the US political system ever since I got here, which isn’t all that easy as the US system is pretty much unique and generally unlike any other.  I find it difficult to think of any other democracy in the modern age that combines the head of state and political leader role.  More often it’s only done in autocratic dictatorships like North Korea, or Nazi Germany(!).  Modern democracies typically have a ceremonial president, or a monarch to perform symbolic duties – there are exceptions, such as France, where the president has real political power, but nothing quite like the US.

My wife tells me that she thinks that at the time of American Independence, they were so concerned about monarchy, or an alternative power base appearing against the elected president, that they avoided having a separate head of state altogether and combined the roles, which would make sense, I guess, given the historical circumstances.

I guess there are two elements to think about when it comes to whether a country has a president or prime minister: do you have a presidential or parliamentary system? and do you have a separate head of state as well as a political leader?

Presidential or parliamentary?

The US system is designed to be more consensual than a parliamentary system.  The president generally has less political power than a PM and the system relies on a large amount of cross party co-operation.  There are far more checks and balances than in somewhere like the UK, which tend to slow things down, but are meant to stop extreme, or rushed laws etc. being passed.

A parliamentary system, such as the UK’s, has confrontation built into it.  The government is meant to pursue its own agenda and everyone else does what they can to oppose it.  In most circumstances, however, the PM leads the largest amount of elected members of parliament, so he can push through pretty much anything he likes in a vote – all he needs usually is the backing of his own political party.  There are also less checks and balances than in the US system.

The US system has been getting a lot of criticism recently.  The problem is that there is deep political polarization between the main parties and so the old consensual politics has been breaking down, bringing the whole system into disrepute and even crisis at times.  Americans tend to blame their politicians, or the opposing political party to the one that they support, for not working together.  If you are used to a parliamentary system where confrontation and polarization are built into the system, however, like myself, you can sometimes wonder about the sustainability of the US system itself, however, in the modern age. 

The UK Houses of Parliament

Apart from struggling to cope with polarization, another downside of the US system is that it can be very slow moving because of all the checks and balances.  Things like financial crises, for example, can happen very quickly in the modern age and governments need the ability to react quickly.   

Critics argue that the opposite is true for the UK parliamentary system - although the system is capable of moving very quickly, there is more danger of a radical agenda, or ill thought out laws being pushed through.

Americans tend to be very protective and proud of their system.  It was set up at the birth of the US and is very much tied up with the whole sense of national identity.  The UK (or maybe I mean specifically England in this case?) has been through various systems, including absolute monarchy, republican dictatorship and parliamentary (not to mention tribalism and foreign rule) in its long history, although it’s true to say that there has been some form of monarchy for much of that time, certainly since the Norman invasion.

It has to be said that the US was a much smaller country at the time of its setup, however, both in terms of physical size and population.  Plus it was far less diverse.  I get the feeling that relying on a degree of consensus and co-operation between the political factions was much easier back then.  Having said that, the US political system has largely functioned well enough throughout most of its history (the Civil War being the big noticable exception).

(What is also a matter of concern is that the modern political polarization seems to be splitting along similar geographical lines to the old Civil War divide, with the old Confederate States generally going one way politically and the old Northern States going the other – but that’s another story!)

President or monarch?

Queen Elizabeth II

I am pretty much out of step with most of my fellow British countrymen in that I am a republican and not a monarchist.  About 20% of Brits are republican, according to the latest surveys.  About 30% were republican when I was a kid back in the 70s, so I think we can safely say that the popularity of the monarchy has gradually been growing – probably in part due to the personal popularity of Elizabeth II, the current queen (the recent jubilee celebrations being a reminder).  I think a lot of Brits also enjoy having the monarchy as a quirky British thing, plus they see it as a source of continuity.

I can understand some of the monarchist arguments against republicanism in the UK.  What would you replace it with? is the question most often asked.  Who would you end up with as the new, elected, republican elected ceremonial president?  Some ancient and dull politician?  Some frivolous celebrity like a popstar, or TV chef?   

All in all, though, I just find the monarchy system more than a little archaic and I don’t particularly like being reminded of a time when we were ruled by kings and queens, even if nowadays they are essentially toothless.

4 Armadillos, 1 rattlesnake, and a big tennis match!

For over a year the only armadillos in Florida I’ve seen have been squashed flat on the road.  I know that they are around because they leave holes in our ‘yard’ (that’s back garden in UK speak) where they regularly root around overnight.

Then last week, our neighbour across the way, ‘Stoner Santa’ (his real name is Jim, but we call him Stoner Santa because he’s an aging hippy with white hair, big beard and a pot belly) caught an armadillo in a bucket.  He told me that he was going to release it into the wild but showed me it first.  They are funny little creatures.  I was disappointed afterwards that I’d not had the opportunity to take a photo, as I didn’t have my camera or even my cell phone (that’s a ‘mobile’ in the UK) with me.

But as luck would have it, this weekend my wife and I came across four young armadillos rooting around just a few feet from us in some local woods.  I was able to take both photos and (woohoo!) some video footage (see below).

The armadillos weren’t my only wildlife first either.  The hot Summer sun seems to bring all the ‘critters’ (UK = animals) out into the open and a couple of days ago I had to take a detour to avoid a rattlesnake in the road.  They are fatter than your average snake and have a more dangerous bite.  It was just around the corner from our place.  I wanted to go back and take a snap (I had my camera with me this time) but a redneck family in a truck got there first and were poking the snake around.  I decided to continue on my way.

***

Away from wildlife, I have been continuing with my tennis.  The team I play for are close to winning our local league – we just needed to win 3 out of our final 5 matches.  2 of the matches were played on Monday.

One of them was our team captain, Scott, playing singles.

The other was Erik and Clay playing doubles. 

Unfortunately, we lost both matches(!)

That means that we now need to win all 3 of our final matches on Saturday.  Wish me luck, as I am playing doubles that day for the team!

US beer vs UK beer

I like to believe that I deal with all the weighty cultural issues in this British expat blog and what could be of more import than the relative merits of British and American beer?

The first thing that I would say is that the almost universally negative image of American beer that exists in Britain (and Europe too for that matter) is certainly too simplistic.  (The negative image is summed up by the old Monty Python joke: “American beer is a little like making love in a canoe.  It's f**king close to water.”)

The problem for American beer is that the only brands that you tend to see in the UK are the awful ones like Miller Lite and Budweiser (Anheuser-Busch).  These really are bland, watery beers.  Like in the UK, however, the better American beers tend to come from the smaller, local breweries, rather than the leviathans.  (To some extent, the US has similar problems with beer as the UK did in the 60s and 70s with aggressive major breweries [with crap beer] trying to muscle out the smaller and medium-sized breweries [with good beer] with the intention of creating local monopolies.)

Because of the localized nature of brewing and the size of the US, plus my own admittedly limited experience, it would actually be ridiculous for me to even attempt to give a comprehensive major overview, so instead I will just settle for giving my personal experiences of living in north-central Florida. 

My favorite (big brewery) US beers that I drink regularly here in North Central Florida:

 

Shiner – brewed in Austin, Texas is easily my favourite that I've found.  It has a strong and distinctive taste.  When I used to visit Florida, I couldn’t believe how dirt cheap it was in the store.  By the time I’d moved here, however, they’d bumped up the price!  They only sell Shiner in certain US states and luckily Florida is one of them - I was disappointed to find that I couldn’t get hold of it up in New York.

Blue Moon – A Belgian-style wheat beer which is very palatable (despite being a Coors product!)  Belgian-style wheat beers (think Hoegaarden) seem to be fairly common here nowadays (I believe that US breweries started making witbeers about 10 or 15 years ago), but German-style, tarter wheat beers are generally rarer, it seems.

Sam Adams produce reasonable beer and I enjoy some of their selection packs - some of these beers can be a little gimmicky but it’s fun to try them.

Yuengling is for me just on the right side of the line between the watery American beers and the good ones in my opinion.  I will drink it sometimes, however, because it’s often cheaper(!)

Most British/Irish beers are relatively specialist in the US in my (limited) experience.  The most commonly available ones in the bars and stores where I am are Newcastle Brown Ale and Harp, which seems a little bizarre to me, as these drinks were common in the UK back in the 70s and 80s but have largely waned in popularity. 

The best British beer, the real ales, aren’t really available in draught form, which is a pity, but no surprise.  You can get a limited but reasonable range in the bottled section – although the US tends to put everything into small (approx 300ml?) bottles, which still irritates me a little.  I still find it strange seeing a US miniature, differently shaped version of the iconic Newcastle Brown Ale bottle and there is something sacrilegious about seeing hefeweissen sold in bottles below 500ml in size (although you can buy the ‘proper’ German 500ml bottles in the specialist stores!)  ;-)

European beers are also fairly widely available in the US in my experience and I drink a lot of Becks Dark, Warsteiner, and Heineken here.  I have also found a couple of outlets locally that sell my all time favourite (more specialist) European beers, which tend to be from Germany*, Belgium, and Central Europe.  German hefeweissen will always be one of my favourite tipples.

Cider

Cider isn’t a beer, of course, but it’s drunk in a similar way, so I thought that I would give it a mention.  I actually love cider as a refreshing alternative to beer and having cheap, available cider is something that I miss here in the US, especially when you’re on a limited budget (cider is often the cheap drunk’s tipple in the UK!). 

From what I gather, cider wasn’t particularly common in the US (compared to the UK) until relatively recently.  Now it’s easier to get hold of, but the ciders tend to be the big Irish brands that are advertised to be drunk over ice, such as Magners.  American ciders often seem to be sweeter and relatively weak, compared to the stronger and drier British ones, in my experience. 

Scrumpy style cider is pretty specialist in the US, although it’s difficult to imagine that it doesn’t exist in a rough form somewhere in the USA? 

The good news is that do sell Strongbow on draught in some bars of the bars around here – hurray!

*German bars are quite possibly the best place in the world for drinking draught and bottled beer, in my opinion.  Mainly because they are scrupulous when it comes to storing their beers at the correct temperature.  This is why Germany is generally known to be the best place for drinking draught Guiness methinks (even better than Ireland, ironically).  The sad and slightly strange fact is that in places like the US and Britain, bars will quite often undermine a great beer by storing, or serving it too cold or too warm in my experience.

Identity crisis?

One tends to think of the immigrant/emigrant experience as being one of cultural difficulties and social adjustment, but as Eve expresses in her recent post at Queen’s English, the personal and emotional impacts of moving to another country can in some ways be greater. In fact it’s no exaggeration to say that one’s entire sense of self can be challenged to a surprisingly large degree.

The thing is, as psychologists have pointed out, our sense of who we are to a large degree relates to memory. So suddenly having nobody around us who shares any of the major experiences from our previous life can be unnerving and troubling from an emotional point of view. Often when we meet up with old friends in our everday lives, we will reminisce about events from the past and the people that we’ve known, both good and bad. It backs up and reasserts a sense of who we are.

I must admit that one of my favourite fantasies when seized by bouts of homesickness is just to be in the pub with old friends. People who know me, understand where I coming from, get my sense of humour. They’ve done some of the same things as me, met some of the same people, and lived in the same places. (I sometimes yearn for my previous access to affordable health and dental care too, but that’s another matter!)

Of course, one can’t allow oneself to be too much seized by nostalgia. It is easy to slip into the trap of romanticizing one’s homeland, if you’re not careful. There is nothing worse than the sentimental expat barfly, crying into his beer. Plus for me personally, I have been through some not dissimilar experiences before – leaving home and going to university in another part of the country, for instance. I have also known many people in the UK who’ve come to live from other places. It sometimes seems like half the world is hopping around between countries nowadays.

Given the pressures, I can understand why some emigrants return to their homeland within a year, or university students drop out before the first term has finished, but that isn’t really my style, and nor is it Eve’s, I would venture.

Kendal Mint Cake

One thing that my mother brought over to Florida at Christmas, which was very popular, were some fresh supplies of Kendal Mint Cake.  Mint cake is a form of confectionary made in my home town, for those who don’t know.  Although it’s called “cake” it comes in the form of a bar and has a harder, more sugary texture than cake.  It is also very minty, as its name suggests.

Anyway, my wife loves the stuff and although you can buy it here in the US, you have to order it via someone like Amazon and it’s expensive when bought that way (although I believe there are some slightly cheaper sources on eBay).

I actually worked in a mint cake factory one time as a summer job during my teenage years.  My main job was to break up broken mint cake bars into bite-sized chunks and put them into gift boxes.  There are three mint cake factories in Kendal: Quiggin’s, Romney’s, and Wilson’s.  I worked at Wilson’s.  The guy who ran it was called Andrew, but he was also known by some of the staff as, “Young Mr Wilson”.  His father, who was retired but still dropped by sometimes, was called, “Old Mr Wilson”.  Old Mr Wilson was the son of James, the guy who founded the Wilson’s brand back in 1913 (they would’ve probably called him “Ancient Mr Wilson”, were he still alive!).

There are three main types of mint cake: white, brown, and chocolate coated.  The colour and texture of the mint cake is decided by whether white or brown sugar is used in it.

Some of the mint cake my mother brought us

 

If you say that you are from Kendal to someone in the UK, they will sometimes mention Kendal Mint Cake.  Mint cake is also eaten a lot by mountaineers and artic explorers around the world, as it is a concentrated source of glucose (plus the mint clears your sinuses!)  Kendal Mint Cake has been taken up Mount Everest by Edmund Hilary and across the Antarctic by Sir Ernest Shackleton.

Here ends my lesson on my home town’s most famous confectionary.  But remember, if you ever come to Florida via Kendal to visit us, bring us some mint cake!

 

Jack Dee is EVIL!!!

Why am I living in the USA?

Why am I living in the USA?  Well, there are 2 main reasons why I left my home in the North of England and made the big hop across the Atlantic:

1. For love.  I met my American wife online.  We weren’t in a dating site, we just bumped into each other on the social networking site, MySpace (remember MySpace?).  Although webcams and email are great, at some point one of you has got to make the leap, so that you can both live in the same country.

2. For the adventure.  My feelings about the USA are pretty mixed, I love some things and don’t like others, but despite, or maybe because of the ambivalence, I do find it a fascinating and exciting place.  When my wife and I decided that we would be married, we had a choice of her (and her daughter) coming to England, or me going to the USA.  We decided on the latter, mainly because I felt my life, although chugging along perfectly well, had sunk into a bit of a rut.  I relished the idea of doing something completely different, even if that meant risks in terms getting work etc.  (You only live once, right?)
   

Will my wife and I stay in the US forever?  I don’t know.  I do know that my wife would like to travel at some point.  Having become a single parent relatively young, I think she feels that she has delayed a lot of things, so that she can bring up her daughter successfully, and at some point she would like to spread her wings and go other places.

I have no intention of living anywhere except the US for the foreseeable future.  But now that I’ve made a big move once, the idea of doing it again at some point, no longer seems intimidating.  If my wife had some pension money coming in and I could secure a relatively reliable source of income from internet, it might be tempting to live somewhere like Thailand for a while, where the cost of living is currently about 20% of what it is here in the US.  (Okay, the Thailand idea is a bit of a pipe dream, but not an unfeasible one)

In the distant future, nobody knows how things are going to pan out, especially with the world economy being how it is.  As things stand though, I don’t know if I would want to stay in the US when I was older.  From what I’ve seen, old people can have a challenging time in the US, if they’re not wealthy.  The draw of the UK with its National Health Service and social infrastructure might be too tempting, plus I think my wife would be interested to live in the UK at some point.  But we’ll see.  That’s a long time into the future.

Religion in America

I normally try to avoid religion and politics in my blog, but from time to time, I enjoy the challenge of trying to sail it through choppier, more unpredictable waters.

The power and influence of religion in America was certainly a jolt to the system when I arrived here from the UK.  I already knew that the US was a much more religious place than the UK of course, but even so, it is still quite a culture shock.  I am not sure how much the shock is compounded by the fact that I am not at all religious myself (I would generally describe myself as an atheist).  It was certainly fascinating to read (British expat) Iota’s blog on the subject of encountering US religion, and it made me appreciate that aspects of the experience of coming here may well be quite different for those who are Christian, as she is.

Religion generally plays a very quiet and low key role in the UK, but here in the USA, religion is big and brassy and most American people are very up front about telling you all about their religion and beliefs.  I know that Iota found this approach refreshing, but for me, I must confess that I can find it awkward and I can easily end up smiling and nodding vaguely, as people tell me at length about Jesus and their experience of being saved, or whatever.

The language here is different too - in the USA, if someone is having problems, say they are sick or something, people will talk about praying for them, or ask people to pray for them.  It some circumstances, it can just be a turn of phrase, of course, but even so, it is one example of how the American language contains more religious overtones.

Another difference for me is that religion in the USA nearly always means Christianity, certainly down here in the South, anyway.  Back in Britain, where I was working and living in the inner cities most of my adult life, Christianity was just one of many belief systems: Islam, Sikhism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism etc.  But here in the US, there is a general sense that Christianity is the big one, certainly down here in the Deep South (although there are multiple different Christian denominations and sects, of course).   

As a non-believer, I often get the sense that being Christian is perceived as the “norm” here and that many Americans generally see atheism (and to some extent some of the other religions aswell, such as Islam) as being more than a little bit suspect.

There is a social respectability that is accorded to those who attend church and pronounce their faith  and values here too, which hasn’t really existed in England for a long time.  What I mean is that you are perceived as being more upstanding and moral by some if you publicly subscribe to being a Christian.  I guess that is why politicians and public figures here pretty much always have to play up their Christian credentials, which is almost the opposite to the UK, where Tony Blair was constantly trying to play down his Catholicism.

One of the peculiar paradoxes about religion and politics in the USA is that essentially it is a secular country (enshrined in the constitution) with a very religious population, whereas Britain (also paradoxically) is officially a Christian country (The Queen is head of state and head of the Church of England) but the population aren’t particularly religious.

I guess I should point out in conclusion that despite me not generally being a big fan of religion, I do strongly believe that people have the right to believe whatever they want.  I am generally a live and live kind of person.  Some of the more conservative Christians here in the US seem less tolerant than me, however.  I have developed a lot of compassion for the plight of gay Americans since I’ve been here, especially those who live outside of the big coastal cities, who can have a particularly difficult time, it seems.

Things that I do and don’t miss about the UK

Every British expat blogger at some point has to write the what-I-miss-since-I-moved-away-from-Blighty list.  It is obligatory.  So here is mine.

Do Miss

Hot cheese and onion pasties (especially on a cold, rainy day).  Hot pasties don’t feature a great deal in sub-tropical Florida.  I have yet to find a branch of Gregg’s.

Affordable dental treatment.  My dentist warned me in sombre tones about the US being absurdly expensive for dental treatment and the standards of treatment being very variable.  I didn’t believe him until I got here.  Some treatment is well over ten times what I paid on the NHS in the UK!  Crazy.

Walking places and catching a train.  I’m completely car dependent where I am living, which is a far more common situation in the US generally, as the towns and cities are often spread out thinly.  I really miss being able to walk to the shops, or back from the pub, and being able to choose to go on a train somewhere.

Hills and mountains.  It’s very flat in Florida.  Climbing up at Otley Chevin or gazing out over the mountains of Cumbria does have a big appeal, although I do enjoy the swampiness here too, but in a different way.

Beans on toast.  Although you can actually buy Heinz beans in the English Section at one of the local supermarkets, so maybe I should do that!  I love it that they have English food section sandwiched in the “ethnic” area between Indian and Chinese, like we are somehow exotic!  Much of it’s the crap food British people ate back in the 1980s, though, stuff like tinned treacle puddings, but I guess the older Brits must buy it?  Or maybe I am just a snob about food?  Both are probably true!

British politics.  American politics is just screwed: playground arguments that pass for a debate, a divided political class who hate each other, a stagnant and archaic political structure founded 200 years ago that can’t cope with the modern world and makes the British system look almost modern… Okay, maybe not quite, but the situation isn’t good!

Don’t miss

The British weather.  Although the sun in Summer can be oppressive here in Florida, I hate those weeks in Britain when it never gets light and just keeps on raining…

Rude store staff.  I hate it when you are stood at the checkout and the person who is running your stuff through the till is talking to one of their mates and ignoring you.  That doesn’t happen so much in the US.  I find it embarrassing to be British sometimes, when I see how rude some of my fellow countrymen can be.

Tea drinking culture.   Tea and the rituals of making and drinking it are revered in the UK, but I’ve never cared for the stuff, so I don’t miss it.  Give me a mug of coffee and I am happy.  Or better still, a beer!  Not all American beer is crap either.  Only about 2/3 of it.  There are actually some great American breweries and failing that, there is plenty of Continental European stuff to buy too – although  the Americans do insist on selling European beer in small bottles, for some strange reason.

Marmite (yuck yuck yuck!)  Why do British expats go on about Marmite? 

The British royal family  I have never been a big fan of the Royal Family, although I did have fun watching the Will and Kate wedding, I admit.  Actually, when I think about it, there’s actually probably *more* coverage of the Royal Family over here than there is in Britain!

British Celebs that I really can’t stand, but they also moved over here, so it feels like I can’t escape from them!

Russell Brand

The Beckhams

Piers Morgan

Anglophilia: Americans Love the English

I was told by numerous Brits and Americans before I came to the USA that the Americans love the English.  But I didn’t quite believe it until I got here.  Here is an extract from a conversation with my next door neighbour, which is pretty much transcribed word for word:

“Where are you from?” she said.  “You sound foreign!”

“England,” I replied.

“Where?”

“England!”

“Italy?”

“No, England!”

“Oh, England!  I love your accent!  I’ve always wished that the pilgrims had kept their English accents after they got off the boats and we didn’t speak like we do now - you know, with the American accent…”

Okay, the neighbour is slightly dotty, but her general sentiment has been expressed to me over and over since I started visiting US and then living in the USA as a British expat.  Basically, the Americans love the English, and the English accent, although ironically, many Americans can’t locate my own Northern English accent until I tell them where I am from -  I’ve been asked if I am from Australia or Poland many times.

US and UK mugs owned by my wife and I

I guess I should be pleased, but I do find it a little disconcerting sometimes.  I have never been to another country like this.  As an Englishman, I can travel a short distance to parts of Wales, or Ireland, and find people who dislike me because of my nationality and what they perceive it stands for.  Across the Channel, there are French and Germans who will mutter behind your back when you’re at the bar about the “bloody English” (or sentiments to that effect), thinking that if they say it in French or German, no one in your group will understand them.

(Digressing briefly, I once did a similar thing in Berlin, Germany.  There was some awful music playing in a café where I was eating with a German-speaking English friend.  The barmaid had previously been conversing to my friend in fluent German, so I assumed she was German.  Although many Germans speak reasonable English, I was still confident that she wouldn’t understand me when I described the music to my friend as “dross”.  Imagine my surprise when she bellowed at me in a broad Ulster accent: “This music is not dross!  I picked it myself!”)

Anyway, back to Anglophilia, or rather, moving on to its opposite: Anglophobia.  The truth is that there are many negative stereotypes of the English around the world, but these are probably the main ones:

1. The English are arrogant and consider themselves to be superior to everyone else.
2. The English are duplicitous and they play mind games with people (especially when it comes to politics).
3. The English are at best cold and aloof, and at worst, downright cruel, especially with their humour, which they use to berate people that they don’t like.

How true the negative stereotypes are is a matter of opinion, of course, but Americans don’t generally buy into any of them in any significant way, in my experience.  Quite the opposite, in fact, they have all sorts of positive stereotypes (I can feel a little embarrassed sometimes, because I feel sure that I won’t live up to expectations!)

Britain does generally do a good job of projecting itself abroad.  Possibly too well, I sometimes think.  I remember being back in Blighty and working with immigrants from places like India and the West Indes.  They would sometimes tell me how naïve their views on Britain were before they moved there.  They thought that everyone lived in big houses, either in beautiful old cites resembling central London, or in rambling green countryside, and the British people were very polite and civilized.  In reality, of course, lots of people live in grotty inner cities with grey suburbs and the British people can be a pretty surly and miserable bunch at times (unless they’ve had a few drinks in the pub).

There is a tendency in the US culture to look for simple truths and to some extent there is a tendency to split the world’s countries into goodies and baddies, or white hats and black hats, as they say here.  Americans generally prefer cultures that are similar to their own.  I remember reading a survey that showed the American public overall feel most positive about the Canadians, closely followed by the Brits.  I do sometimes feel a little sorry for the peoples that are designated black hats though (generally those people in arab and muslim countries).

Anyway, having said all of the above about Anglophilia, one question still puzzles me: If the Americans are so positive about the English, why does every other American movie seem to cast an Englishman as the leading bad guy?  ;-)