Final Off the Record – Same and Different

Aside from my blog I’ve been collecting some photos and making some  personal notes along the way. Some of the following random reflections are inspired by the notes or by conversations I’ve had with my family in the car as we travel from city to city. Ultimately, my child’s assessment of the UK : “same as Australia, and different”. I have to agree. I offer a couple of reflections below.

The number of summer daylight hours has been extraordinary – and unexpected. Daylight begins around 4am and it is not fully dark until around 11pm. This has made for some interesting attempts to put a child to bed who usually only settles down after dark.

After working hard to encourage my little man to wear a helmet when riding his bike, the first thing he observes is that cyclists generally don’t wear helmets in the UK.…

Driving in unfamiliar places certainly hightens your awareness of the things around you. One of the most visually distracting aspects of driving has been the cars parked on the side of the road. I am very use to all parked cars facing the same direction that I am driving. But in the UK cars can park facing which ever direction they like…

The only time all cars park in the same direction is on a oneway street. It is when you notice all the cars are parked headlights facing you that it clicks - I’m going the wrong way. The other tell tale signs are locals waving both arms madly in the air, and big red double-decker buses flicking their lights at you as they begin to consume more of your windscreen…

On driving, roundabouts can vary in size from regular four way intersections with a white circle painted in the centre, which I must admit it took all my will power not to drive straight through the guts of…

all the way up to massive intersections with three or more lanes, traffic signals, and forests or even office blocks built in the centre…

Add to this the fact that road signs are subtly different and at times difficult to interpret… what does the warning sign “humped pelican” mean? The messages from the locals are much clearer…

Speaking of cars, in the UK car doors automatically lock after the driver begins the journey. I’m yet to work out the benefit of this. Is it because Brits have a propensity to jump from moving vehicles, or are there more car jackings over here?

Withdrawing cash at the point of transaction, for example, at a supermarket is called “cash back”, where as we generally know it as “cash out”. Oh, and supermarket staff sit down on gas lift chairs at the check-out, and you generally pack your own groceries into bags. My partner had an interesting  interaction  with an English check out operator last week when attempting to purchase the new Greenday album (marked 18+). The checkout operator asked my partner to show identification to provide she was over 18 years of age.… something that amused me to no end, but has not happened to my partner for over a decade and a half. Maybe Australian customers look younger, or people look different from the seated position…?

On the issue of music, I noticed that many hotels now display certificates confirming they pays fees to the recording artists (or industry) for the music they play in the public areas. I thought this was a fair and reasonable act, but several of the hotels only played the same limited number of songs… one hotel had a selection of four instrumental pieces, most of them were movie themes from movies starring Kevin Costner…?

I shouldn’t laugh at my partner’s shopping experience, because I was accosted by an octogenarian in a restaurant last week. Sitting quietly waiting for our meal to arrive, an older couple on walking canes shuffled past our table, only for the lady to stop look at me and declare, “I know you”. I smiled and replied, “Um, maybe, maybe not, I’m from Australia”. The lady initially refused to believe me, “No you’re not, you’re the taxi driver from down town, what’s your name?”.  I looked at my partner, and smiled again. I’ve become incredibly conscious of my Australian accent, and in large groups of locals I can actually hear myself beginning to sound like Steve Irwin. But obviously not to this lady. I declared again, “No, seriously, I’m not from here”. The lady still un-believing, called out to her equally aged partner who had now made it to the safety of an outdoor chair and was lighting a cigarette. He waved her off and she ignored his non-response to continue her interrogation of me. I seriously considered including the word “crikey” in my next statement to her, when the lady finally accepted that I was not her local taxi driver. “You’ve got a double! My, my, you’ve got a double, wait to I see him next”. I accepted this with more smiles, and the lady wished us a good evening and shuffled off to join her partner. Over the course of our meal we observed the couple share an entire packet of cigarettes – in fact there was so much smoke coming from their table just outside the door that we had to move tables to get away from the second hand smoke. There was another benefit to this mid-meal relocation, I managed to remove myself from the eyeline of the older lady who continued to turn around and nod and smile at me. Aside from these rare events, I can declare the locals in every corner of the country we have visited have been friendly and helpful.

Finally, trader’s have the right to refuse to cash legal tender, like the GBP50 note. This actually became a problem in the first couple of weeks as I had used an Australian bank to exchange money prior to departure and they had issued me with 50 pound notes. Once in England, I began having trouble using them as smaller shops simply refused to accept them. I initially thought that this was because the value of the note was too great for their till/float. When it kept occurring I asked, “Is this legal tender in this country or not?”. To which I received the, “It is just company policy not to accept 50’s”. Later at a Laundromat I read on the wall that 50 pound notes were not accepted because of the large number of counterfeit notes in circulation. I looked at the notes remaining in my pocket and could not see anything wrong…

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~ by jerrimfellow09 on June 11, 2009.