Untranslatable: Ants and Pants

Part of being an immigrant to this lovely green land is learning to live in a new idiom. That is to say that you must learn to live in a new figurative language. Should you manage an invite to a barbeque, I cannot recommend highly enough asking a wiggly English child if they have ants in their pants. You will become ever popular with the under-10 set, and the adults will be forced to engage you in conversation.

For those of you who are English and would like to play the game, ants in one's pants refers to a general state of wiggling or impatience for a desired event. If you want to share your own antsyness, you'll want to announce, "I have ants in my pants, and now I've got to do a boogey dance." A boogey is, of course a bogey.

Thanks to the University of Alaska, Fairbanks for the shout out in the alumni news feed.

Biscuits and Biscuits and Scones

We all know about the confusion. When American's say chips, they mean crisps. When Americans say fries, they mean crisps. When the English say American chips, they mean fast food french fries. When the English say American biscuits, they mean cookies.

When Americans say biscuits, they mean the above. American Biscuits are very similar to scones in that they're easy to make, flaky, and often circular. However, American Biscuits are savory where scones are sweet. American biscuits are poor food, where scones require a bigger pocket book.  American biscuits are meant to fill out a meal, where scones are meant to be eaten between meals. Most imporatantly, adding dried fruit to American biscuits is a most disgusting idea, while they're a perfectly acceptable addition to biscuits.

The major difference between the two is the use of creme and eggs in scones, giving them a richer taste and a heavier texture. While I love my scones a little too much, I've been craving American food an awful lot lately.

I've spent the last year telling you all how little I miss from home. But I bought a plane ticket a few weeks ago, and I'll be visiting the States and my family for two weeks this spring. It's been four years since I've been back to the US and just as long since I've seen my family. This event more than anything else in the last five years has led to a generalized desire for the things I cannot have. Later this week, I'll tell you what all I intend to eat while I wander around the streets of America.

More than one child in the West Country is still missing. Among them is James Bubear. It is becoming more and more difficult to keep his name in the news. If you would please, click on the badge above and list your support for his family on the Find James Bubear Facebook page. James is a first year student at my Alma Mater. His family and friends are desperate to bring him home.

Saturdays in March

We've talked about the washing machine and its propensity for growing mold. We've talked about how to keep your front-loader from becoming squidgy with limescale and damp (mildew). We've talked about why we should all be using powder detergents because they have water softener in them, quite unlike liquid detergents. What we have not talked about is the curse of Saturdays in March and household disasters.

Four years ago, on a Saturday, water stopped going down all of our drains.

 Which led to a plumber spending the weekend in our house doing this:

All of which was ultimately caused by the original Victorian down pipe and a hundred years of sludge.

Three years ago, the gas fire stopped making fire but quite happily kept on spewing gas. Luckily the gas was easily turned off, but it still meant waiting for a week day, canceling plans, and spending hours watching the workman fix the fire.

Two years ago the front door lock broke with me inside. Conveniently, the downstairs neighbor was home, and he was able to rescue me before I completely lost it. I far prefer being locked out to being locked in. And for reference butter knives sometimes work better than screwdrivers, except of course where vodka is involved.

Last year the refrigerator just stopped frigerating within hours of both of us depositing fresh groceries inside of it. The new one turned up on Monday at approximately too early o'clock, delievered by drivers who decided not to take the old one away until Tuesday at midday.

Today, this machine made a fantastic impression of a birthing heifer.

 




















It also decided to just hang onto three inches of water after the drain cycle and sprayed me with all of that water when I went to clear the filter. It's Saturday. The housemate has to do laundry tomorrow. She'll be the one on the bus with a laundry bag. I'll be the woman who smells like feet.

Posted: No Visitors or Friends on 27 March 2011

It is census season in the UK. In theory, we all fill in our census forms on 27 March 2011. This means that any overnight visitors on that Sunday night must also appear on our form. The form is long. I have no desire to fill it out on a Sunday night. We've gone ahead and filled in the thing. I do not want to have to fill it out any further. So while I love each and everyone of you, you are absolutely not welcome here on census night.

Thanks for your kind wishes and thoughts. I haven't disappeared, but I have had the sickness bug (stomach flu) and a pile of marking (grading)  keeping me far from the blog. Oh, and the census form made me cry.  I will learn to post well in advance. I will learn to post well in advance.

Bleh

Last Spring

We are still gray sky and blah. Here in Bath, we had short periods of sunshine yesterday. None of them lasted long enough for me to get my trainers (tennis shoes) on and go soak up some vitamin D. I am not really certain why this winter seems to have lasted so long. I've lived through longer, colder, and darker ones--often all in the same year. I hated those too.

I am reminded that by the calendar spring isn't quite here. The vernal equinox isn't due for another seventeen days, and our average temperatures are not that much lower than in a typical year.  And all of the signs of spring are showing their glorious faces. The snowdrops and across the road the forsythia are in full bloom. From the bus in Box, I saw my first lambs of spring. Those last were by all accounts a bit early. Usually the Corsham lambs are the first to catch my eye, but soon the countryside behind my house will be feeding hundreds of them.
 
When I'm done with winter, but winter is hanging on to me, I am given to fits of impulse. In college, I'd fill my car with petrol (gas) and drive until my tank was half empty. I don't miss being a driver, but I do miss driving seventy on my way to wherever I end up.  Sometimes when the gauge hit half-empty, I'd decide to just keep going anyway. It's how I saw a lot of Tenessee, most of Ohio, and more than a bit of Kentucky. It's how I memorized all of the songs on John Mellencamp's American Fool. Petrol was cheap in those days.

When I first started writing here, I didn't tell anyone I knew about the blog. I saw it as a place where I could be whatever version of me I wanted to be. I saw it as a place where I could complain about my family and be uncouth in my wording. Then I started writing things that I wanted seen by the people who have known me for most life, and some of those people started dying. It was then too that something extraordinarily nice began to happen, people I didn't know started reading. I supposed that it was a combination of those two things--the loss of old friends and the meeting of new ones--that made me think that I'd like the comments here to be more of a conversation. But the new Disqus system was most definitely a product of a spring fever induced impulse. I don't know how I feel about it yet. It's entirely possible that I'll change my mind about it this evening. In theory, it should tell you when someone replies to your comments. We'll see.

In the meantime, a friend has kindly offered me a ticket to a reading tonight. I'm off to try to get out of the bleh.

Toilet Doors without Peeping Holes

I don't know whether to post this under Fabulous Things about England or Things That Annoy the Poo(p) out of Me (first installment coming soon). Or maybe I need a series of posts on things my British friends have noted about the United States.

Not so long ago my friend S. mentioned that, while visiting the US, she'd felt awfully exposed in the public loos because of the gap between the loo doors and their walls. I rather suddenly realized why early in my stay I had felt so completely claustrophobic in English public toilets.

You'll have to forgive the poor photography below. Both my friend in the US and I found that it is virtually impossible to get a whole toilet door in a photograph.

US public restroom door #1

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It looks like just a sliver from this angle, but my American friend was kind enough to provide us with a close up as well.

Now imagine you're in the queue with a small child who asks questions.

The Brits have a rather obvious solution to peek-a-boo in the loo.

It's all about hinges.

I think I can add stall doors to the list of ways in which British engineering is better than American engineering.

Fabulous Things About England #26: Shopping Trolleys, Carts, and Buggies

If the NHS, clotted cream, and P.D. James weren't enough to keep me in this country, the shopping trolleys would. In the US, shopping carts--or buggies depending on your location--have two caster wheels. It is not only our obligation as Americans to complain about one of those wheels becoming stiff, or full of hair, or not full enough of oil, but also our obligation not to see the easy solution to the problem.

Here in the UK, they have seen the obvious, implemented it across the country, and then failed to send that solution across the pond. When next the two countries take opposing sides in a world conflict, the UK will win hands down on the basis of shopping trolley engineering alone. That's right, all four wheels on a shopping trolleys are castor wheels. And no, I have never ever run into a friend at the grocery store and had reason to whinge about the trolley pulling in one direction.

I attribute this difference entirely to the O in castor being more wheel like than the E in caster.

The Price of Milk

I am inclined to tell you that I wish I had done better research into the cost of living here before leaving Alaska. I looked at all the obvious indicators before I agreed to pursue the remainder of my education here. A flat would cost me quite a lot more, but said flat would have running water and a nearby bus stop. So if I subtracted the cost of petrol (car gas), insurance, and wear and tear on the Mitsubishi, the cost seemed to even out. The cost of heating would go down, but the cost of water would go up. Even with the two-to-one exchange rate in 2005, it looked to me like my life was about to become significantly cheaper.

I had not counted on the cost of food. Nor had I counted on finding that I could no longer subsist on the cheap canned food that had gotten me through my first year in Alaska. The exchange rate is now 1.6 to 1. The cost of a milk in England is also much easier to come by.

Type in 'milk' into any of these sites to see what the major grocery stores are charging. There are 3.7 liters in an US gallon or 6.6 pints in an US gallon.

Waitrose--www.waitrose.com
Sainsbury's--www.sainsburys.com
Asda (Walmart)--www.asda.com
Tesco--www.tesco.com

If you want to see what your average weekly shop might be in your city you can use the tools at www.mysupermarket.co.uk

Today the average price of milk seems to be about 84 pence per litre, 3 pound a gallon, 5 dollars a gallon.

I'm glad I hadn't been able to do the maths (math) when I began my journey to England. I think I would have been to terrified to come here.

Pickled What? Part II

The grocery store aisles are too narrow for me to get the whole shelf. But that's two rows of beetroot and three rows of onions, all pickled. The yellow jars to the left are Piccalilli. It's apparently widely consumed in the states as well, but I had never seen it before moving to England. Just below that is Pickle. That's relish in American. To the right are bottles of malted vinegar which is proof that the universe loves me. There is nothing better to put on chips (fries), as a flavoring for crisps (chips), or as a replacement for ranch dressing. Ranch dressing is very hard to come by in England.

Fabulous Things about England # 16: Cylinder Hoovers

This is Henry

He's known here affectionately as Henry Hoover; though, he has never been a product of the Hoover vacuum company. The English don't vacuum they hoover. I was raised to love upright vacuums. My mother had a Hoover upright from the time she married my father until we moved to Indiana. That twenty-year-old machine still worked fine. It just wouldn't fit in the truck. When Mom went to buy a new machine she insisted that she wouldn't have a canister vacuum. I don't know why not. Canisters are much more common than uprights in England. I suspect this is to do with tight corners, tiny rooms, ceiling cornicing, and narrow staircases. People here invest in Henry vacuums because they go on and on and on. I've had to settle for my desktop version; he lives next to the penguin on the bookshelf.

Fabulous Things about England # 15: Electrical Socket Switches

Electrical sockets which can be individually turned on and off please me no end. I don't have to go digging under the shade to turn off a lamp. I can glance at the wall to make sure the kettle and toaster are off. And I don't have to unplug the television after every use. I can just flip a switch.

The left hand side is on.

Stoves (hobs) and ovens (cookers) tend to not only have on/off switches on the sockets they're plugged into, but they are also individually fused. This is also the case for refrigerators, freezers, washing machines and dryers. The large red switch here is the fuse to the mircorwave. The smaller red switch is the on/off switch for the outlet. And the microwave can (and should) be turned on and off on its own.

If you've known me for any length of time, you're aware that I am a magnet for unintentional fires. I'm a bit obsessive now about making sure appliances are turned off before I leave the flat. I say this is because I don't want to waste energy, but it's really about not coming home to a burned out flat. I really like being able to tell at a glance that everything is safely off. I did once flip the switch for the fridge by mistake. Oops! But no fire.

Fabulous Things about England # 14

Occasionally, I come across a sign that isn't necessarily there for my safety. The sinks in this seaside public toilet were far too small for my hands never mind my feet.

Since the sign was put up by the local council, it is safe to assume it was placed because people were washing their children in and breaking the sinks.

Pickled What?

The English like their pickled food. A selection from today's shop: Pickled onion, pickled beetroot, pickled gherkins (pickles), pickled red cabbage, pickled walnut, pickled onions, pickled trotters, pickled chicken eggs, picked hot peppers, pickled quail eggs, pickled shallots, pickled baby corn.

5. Gas, Wind, and Petrol

In England, the stuff that you fill your car with is petrol. Gas generally refers to natural gas, which is entirely fair as it's a gas. And the bloating you get after Thanksgiving dinner is called wind. When it won't move, it's called trapped wind.

4. Jam, Jelly, Preserves

The English call Jell-o, jelly. Jam is used to describe both what Americans refer to as jelly and jam. Luckily, its easy enough to tell which you're buying through the glass jar.

2.

Ovens are called cookers in some parts of England, and stoves are often called hobs.

1.

While Americans ask for a one-way or round-trip ticket, the English ask for a single or return ticket.