The World in Britain

I’m kicking off my very tardy first-ever Reading Blog entry with a general list of completely unrelated observations I’ve gleaned during my time here.  They may not be particularly useful or insightful, but I endeavor to amuse.

1.  English weather can change at the drop of a hat, but if you do not have an umbrella, it will rain all day.

Not that an umbrella will be at all useful to you in the case of a rainstorm. You’re best option is a very warm raincoat and- most importantly- some kind of boot. The umbrella is more of a talisman. If you have it, you won’t need it, if you need it, you won’t have it.

And let me take a moment here to say something about English rain, because it is different in some hard-to-define ways. First of all, it doesn’t pour down like a proper thunderstorm. It’s more like a heavy, persistent drizzle, like it’s too polite to go all-out and pour buckets, but it’s also not going to let you get away dry. It is also very cold. Not an icy or bitter cold, but a very permanent one.  The kind of cold that settles into your bones and makes you think you will never be warm again. Ever.

2.  Bridges makes me miss the Randolph College dining hall.

And it’s not because of the food. Believe or not, the food’s not that bad. It’s hardly fine cuisine, but it’s very edible and sometimes it’s even good. It’s a little bland, sure, and it certainly not good for my waistline and self-esteem, but I also don’t have to cook it myself. No, it’s not the food… it’s the lines.

Do you remember in high school/middle school how you had to stand in line with a tray and shuffle along, receiving spoonfuls of unidentifiable mush in various shades of brown? In my high school, the line used to wrap all the way around the dining hall. The first day we stepped into Bridges, it gave me rather unpleasant flashbacks to my sophomore year.  Now I don’t know if it’s just bad design or some  bizarre shrine to the grand institution that is standing in line, but Bridges seems to be designed to make the whole food-acquisition process as obnoxious as possible.

3.  The Brits will almost always be willing to offer you directions.

This is because there are no signposts. I am not lying. If you’re very lucky there might be a little plaque nailed on a brick wall somewhere identifying the street you’re on. Odds are it will be about six inches off the ground, where even someone as short as I am won’t notice it. Maybe I just have terrible luck, or maybe Americans feel a compulsive need to label everything and I’m just spoiled. Also, cities here seem to have been designed not on a grid pattern but more of an ugly spiderweb or broken glass pattern.

The good news is that, as the title says, the Brits are very understanding and willing to offer directions and advice. A woman in Portsmouth offered Nick and I directions before we’d even asked for them. In London, our bus driver had to pull over and ask for directions to the Globe. Just today, in fact, a very kindly professor helped me find a bafflingly distant part of the HumSS building known as “the Tower.”

And finally…

4.  A hot cup of tea is the most wonderful beverage in the world. Nothing will ever convince me otherwise.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 21st, 2009 at 8:26 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.