Coming from that other part of the UK, Northern Ireland, things seemed more or less the same when I came out of the airport terminal. All the road signs are the same, I can look at prices of bottles of coke and spend time considering my purchase instead of thinking “Euros, eh?” But then the differences kick in.
Your bank notes are rubbish, really. Not anything to do with the Queen, its just that the few times I have reason to have a handful of notes in my hand, its nice to look down at the multi-banking splendour of many different tenners or fivers. To see the same face looking back at me a couple of times is a bit drab, if I play around with my notes here I can have the space shuttle fly out of the wreck of a Spanish Galleon. Bit Monty Python perhaps, but I like to have that option.
And England’s quite liberal with booze? I thought that being surrounded by Irishmen, whether or not they want to be called that, I’d be coming down with alcohol. But no, our Tescos has a small corner tucked away with gates to push your trolley through and a member of staff on hand at all times to make us feel guilty about topping up too much. Every small Co-op diligently reminds us that if we look under 21, don’t feel bad about being asked for ID, despite the fact that no small Co-op store I’ve been in sells anything more powerful than mouthwash. Across the water, the wine flows freely with the flora. Walk down the aisles and you can buy milk, wine, coke, English ale, butter and spirits, roughly in that order.
I never realised how quietly we spoke in Northern Ireland either. Perhaps it something to do with how our accent chokes our vocal chords, but to me the average Englisher sounded pretty much how the loud stereotypical American tourist is portrayed in Fawlty Towers. Or maybe that’s just clear diction and an effort to have other people understand you, I don’t know 
One thing that I level straight at Liverpool public transport drivers in particular, do you have to drive so bloody fast? The lean on the buses is monstrous, my sister and I swore the driver took the route through the business park to the airport just to get a few more bends in on the way and scare us lot from out of town. I thought maybe the taxi ride on the way back from my mates seemed fast because I was a bit drunk, after all he was only doing 25. Then I realised that was the rev counter I was eyeing up and he was hitting 50 through the streets.
On the plus side, the shop staff call you “love” without sounding in the least bit patronising and I kind of like that. But it just makes the feeling worse, that everything looks the same but the people are, well, different. Sort of like “Invasion of the Body Snatchers”. Makes a difference from going across the Irish border where the people are slightly more familiar, but everything else looks quite strange, from the funny money Euro notes to the road signs that wouldn’t look out of place in an episode of the Dukes of Hazzard 
Oh yeah, Liverpool, feels quite like Belfast, with a bigger shopping centre and more museums. I’ll probably visit again
