The British Experience – Part One

Where were you 10 years ago and what were you doing? Me? I was in England, having just finished this first newsletter to my family and friends back in the US. I was over there for the second time, living for a few months with my future husband, and experiencing a slice of British life within a relatively small community.

I was suffering quite badly from homesickness and my way of alleviating this feeling was to write…and write…and write. In fact, there are 12 of these puppies – some longer than the others. I’m hoping to add each one at regular intervals.

So grab a large cup of your favorite caffeinated drink and settle back for the British Experience (Part One). Unlike the movies you see on TV, this has not been edited for content, nor modified to fit on your screen.

“The British Experience Newsletter….November 1, 1999-Part One

Pip Pip and Cheerio Everyone!!

I have decided to type a sort of newsletter every month to let you know how Richard and I are doing and give a little insight on how it is to live in England.

We have been back one whole month now and things couldn’t be better. The first few weeks I was incredibly homesick and still feel pangs of it now and again. This is such a change for me. I think I miss the American lifestyle first and foremost, and am just now missing family and friends. Jerry will be here November 30th so that will certainly help seeing him. I keep trying to talk all of you into coming over but most of you are afraid to fly. It was only a 6 hour and 40 minute flight over and generally takes 9 hours going home. They serve lots of booze and you don’t even know you are in the air. C’mon over!!

Let’s start with the weather. It has been fantastic. I know everyone thinks it does nothing but rain over here. Well, I can attest to the fact that it doesn’t. Everyday has been sunshine and warm, 60’s mostly. I think we have had maybe 3 days of rain, lasting 5 minutes each day. It does get cloudy most afternoons around 3 pm, but nothing ever happens. It just turns into night. I think the humidity is higher over here which creates dampness, which in turn creates the luscious green hills so characteristic of England. I can remember the first time I was here riding back from Gatwick Airport. There were fields of sheep everywhere and the sheep looked green. I thought it was a different variety as they DO eat little baby lambs over here. Well, I discovered that their coats were covered in green moss from the countryside which gave them a sort of blue/green colour. It was wild. It is the same moss and mold that gives all the wooden things like trees and fences that green cast….makes everything look old, old, old. Anyways, the weather is very similar to Akron except they don’t get very much snow and Spring and Summer arrive about a month earlier than us.

What I miss the most is not being able to drive and WalMart. Driving is beyond my comprehension over here. The roads are narrow as hell and the cars are small so as to accommodate the narrowness. If you can imagine one of our lanes, white line down the middle and cars parked on either side, then you will know what their roads look like. There are a lot of twisty-turny roads and most country roads have huge trees hanging over the edge of the banks with roots exposed. It is not uncommon after a big rain to not be able to go on certain roads cause those trees fall and block the roadway. There have been accidents reported that some cars have been struck by falling trees. Then you have the “politeness” of the British driver. If someone is coming down the road and they are farther down the road then you are, you must slip into an empty space along the road and let them pass. They most always wave a thank you and you go about your route. Can you only imagine this in America? It would be a traffic jam and road rage. I can’t imagine any American waiting for another to go first on the road. It just wouldn’t fly. Yet the British are so used to it, no one blinks an eye.

I forgot to tell you about the roundabouts and Give Ways. I call them “give ups” as you don’t even have to stop at them if you don’t want to. When you enter a roundabout, you go clockwise instead of counter clockwise like in the States. You enter from the left and exit from the left. The tricky part is getting in the correct lane when you exit. I want to automatically go to the right and you don’t. You go to the left hand lane. Over here, making a right turn is harder than making a left because you are already on the left. The rule of thumb is to always have the white center line on your side of the car. In the states, the white line is to our left. Confusing? You bet your life it is confusing. Richard is an excellent driver yet he scares the bejeebs outta me cause I always think he is in the wrong lane and we are going to get hit headon. He zips in and out of traffic, gliding through the “give ups” and hardly ever stops unless he is making a sharp right. Very scary!! There are NO stop signs (very, very, few) and hardly any stop lights….mostly in major cities which we never go to. The uncanny thing is you hardly ever hear of accidents so it must be working for the general populace. And they have the strangest name for their car parts. The trunk is called the boot and the hood is the bonnet. The fenders are called the wings and backing up is called reversing. The turn signal is the indicator and the windshield is called the windscreen. Very odd.

The burning question….does Richard let me drive? He has and learned his lesson from it (laughing here). He gets so nervous about the subject that I just leave it alone. I can drive the car just fine….I just don’t know enough about the road rules to go anywhere. I keep telling him I just want to drive down his road and back but I think he worries what the neighbours will think. Most of them know by now that he has this wild American living with him, so I don’t see what the problem is. They could just stay in their homes and protect their children and pets while I tear up the road….would work for me! Turn about will be fair play when he gets to the States. Hope he enjoys public transportation.

Richard is still working everyday which makes for a lot of lonely days during the week. There is not a lot to do when you don’t drive and can’t go to WalMart or anywhere. They have no WalMarts over here which I find totally unacceptable. They have 3 major grocery stores and little shops. The main grocery store is Sainsbury’s, the store from Hell, pronounced Say..nns..breeze. They shop with trolleys (carts) and it is a madhouse. Get this….every few months they change the shelving so you never know where to look for things. Is that wild or what? As if that is not bad enough, they also don’t carry the same product week to week. For example, if you get Ragu pizza sauce one week, you won’t find it two weeks from now. You would be lucky to find it in the first place as they don’t do homemade pizza over here. The hardest thing for me is not being able to recognize the name brand products. I needed laundry detergent once and told Rich I needed liquid All or Tide. He gave me that infamous look of bewilderment that he does so well and said I had to use Persil. Now, would you want to do your laundry in something called Persil? I just wanted my simple stuff like Tide or All. They don’t carry it, so I had to use Persil. Now, we use Surf which I think we get in the States. It works just fine.

The other problem I have is figuring up my money. They work in Pounds Sterling over here and all my money has to be converted. This keyboard even has the Pound sign on it….get ready…here it comes….£….isn’t that neat? Anyways, when I see the price of something I have to convert it to Dollars to find out what I am really spending. All their paper money is a different size and colour, as opposed to ours which is the same colour and size. They do not have £1 notes, so if you break a £10 you are going to get all this coinage back as change. Rich walks around lopsided on work days from all the £1 coins in his pocket from change from lunch. I have my own little stash of coins in a butter tub on top the microwave. I use it for shopping at Bob Seddon’s newsagency and whenever Dave (from next door) goes around to the “shops” and I need a food item. Rich is always telling me to watch my change. I watch it carefully, except I don’t know what the hell I should be getting back. I never know unless I pick through the coins carefully exactly what coins I have. They have a 1 pence, 2 pence, 5 pence, 10 pence, 20 pence, 50 pence and a 1 Pound coin. It confuses me to no end.

Watching how much something costs is another problem. For example, one time I thought I was making a killing on a piece of Cheddar cheese. It was a nice chunk for £2.63. In the States, $2.63 for a good chunk of Cheddar cheese would not be too bad. However, when I got home Richard converted it for me, and I found out that lousy chunk of cheese cost me as much as a car payment. I was pissed. It actually cost me over $4.00. And wait till you hear this one. I needed meat the day before grocery day and decided I would walk to the butchers in Farncombe. (yes, you read that right..which part didn’t you get? That they have a real live butchers or that I actually walked there? LOL). Anyways, I decided to get a whole roasting chicken, two lemon pepper chicken breasts and 1 pound of hamburger (which they call minced meat over here….so strange). The meat cost me £11.14. When Mandy next door heard what I had paid, and converted for me, I was shocked. I paid almost $20 for that meat. I was ashamed to tell Richard how much it cost, finally did after I cooked it and told him to enjoy the fatted calf made partly of gold. Now I get all my meat from the butcher that Dave knows in Shalford.

Last night I had a meat delivery and I was sooooo chuffed. I really get excited about meat delivery night. This is what I got: 2 lamb roasts (of which I will not partake as I do not eat little woolly lambs), 1 huge beef joint equivalent to a good sized pot roast at home, 3 pounds of minced meat, that is so pure you get NO fat to drain off, 6 marinaded pork chops 1″ thick, 4 sirloin steaks 1″ thick, and a bag of marinaded chicken, cut up in nice sized chucks for fondue. Know what I paid for all that, which will last us over 2 weeks? £14!! That is around $21.00. And this meat is excellent. No mad cow disease for us. No Sirree….just pure meat. You order whatever you like by just telling him five kinds of meat you want, i.e., beef, pork, chicken, sausage, lamb and he throws together a £14 meat package. And it gets delivered right to my door. Can’t beat it with a stick. I also get milk delivered on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday – 4 pints a week – in the cutest little bottles. There is a milk “float” that goes right down the road and makes stops. He also carries butter and cream and juices, potato (crisps) chips. Then on Saturdays I really get a thrill cause my vegetable man comes around and delivers sacks of potatoes @ 70 pence a 5 pound bag, tomatoes still on the vine for 80 pence (I usually get 6 or 7 on the vine) and eggs for £1. All this comes to the door.

Let me tell you about the eggs over here. They come in all different sizes and are numbered. There are no small, medium and large….they are 1, 2, 3’s and HUGE!! You can buy eggs that are laid by chickens that are cooped up and not treated very well, or you can buy free range eggs that someone gathers because the chickens are allowed to “roam the range” freely. These cost more. Most of the eggs are brown eggs. When you read a British recipe it will tell you what size egg you are to use by the number. It is wild.

Since I mentioned cooking, let me tell you how difficult it is to cook over here. They do NOT use measuring spoons. Everything is done by the ounce and weighed. For example, if you read a recipe and it calls for flour, it will say 7 ounces of flour as opposed to 1 cup. I don’t have much trouble with the cup measures, it is the wet measures like butter I have difficulty with. Also, ingredients are not the same. If it calls for sugar, you have a choice of granulated, caster, demerera, brown, powdered, icing, etc. You just have to know what sugars to use with what recipe. Also, they do not have Karo syrup. They have treacle, which is very similar. They do not have Crisco, Coolwhip, Nestles Chocolate Chips, Hershey’s cocoa, cereals that I know, etc. Popcorn is at a premium and can rarely be gotten. Simple things like sauerkraut are gotten in the gourmet food section. Isn’t that funny? Something we take for a given and they have to import it. Poor Richard has had to suffer through a lot of bad stuff to eat because something didn’t turn out. I made a banana cake once that was so heavy it had to be lugged across the floor to get it to the table. I ended up throwing it out to the birds. The poor things couldn’t take flight for 3 days until it digested. The worst thing I ever made I named Bonnie’s Chicken Surprise. It was a pasta casserole that utilized the leftovers in the fridge. Poor Richard ate it faithfully, then in that polite British manner said “It was good, Love, just don’t ever make it again.” I just roared.

Cooking here has improved. Now that I have my meat delivery for the week, I am making one of Richard’s favourites, lamb joint (roast). I will cook it in a bag and he will eat it with mint sauce. I will be having something else, as I don’t do lamb chops. Last night, I made another pan of homemade brownies (US recipe) and sent some off to work with Rich, so he could pass them to his colleagues (co-workers). There he was with his little tinfoil wrapped brownies, trotting off to work. He looked so cute. (Giggling here).

I could go on forever about the differences but think I will save some for next month. I will tell you about British TV, games and the neighbours next time. I will also tell you how we are progressing with getting Rich to the States.

I miss everyone and the American lifestyle. When you are taken out of the normal routine, it is hard enough to adapt. But when you are taken out of your own familiar environment, it is even more difficult. Thank God I have this wonderful man by my side that loves and understands me thoroughly. He makes life worth living and has made the transition so much easier. And, yes, he still makes me laugh from the heart and thrills me to my toes. Every morning I stand at the bedroom window and watch him walk down the pavement (sidewalk) to his car, which is parked in the front of the house, and he waves and mouths “I love you,” and sends me a kiss before driving off to work. He is just so good to me. Who could ever want anything more? And by the way, he STILL brings me tea in bed EVERY morning. Such a dear heart. Then I go and make him yet another surprise meal from Bonnie. (Laughing here). Just doesn’t get any better than this, huh?

Take care everyone. Write me soon as I REALLY love American post (mail). It makes my day to have our postman have to deliver a ton of shit from America. Our postman is in NYC right now. This is the same postman that we scared the crap outta last year when we hung the singing Christmas wreath on the front door….he refused to deliver the mail the next day, waited for us to get in our car and handed it to us. Wait till the man sees the decorations this year.

I should have included my Halloween stories this time around but I am running outta space here. This is going to cost a bomb to send anyways.

Again, take great care and write as I am homesick as all get out. Love and miss you all!!”

Stay tuned for Part Deux.