I was talking about infrastructure. Roads and motorways are better developed along the west coast than the east. Consider the main road from London to Edinburgh: it’s basically a dual carriageway that sometimes turns into a motorway for 10 mile stretches and other times turns into a single carriage road north of Newcastle into Berwickshire. Compare to the M6-M74 along the west coast into Glasgow. Similarly, the roads into London from East Anglia are basically glorified dual carriageways for most of their length, with the A1(M) and M11 having two lanes until you’re just outside London, and East Anglia itself have no real motorway other than a short stretch of the M11 from North Essex into South Cambridgeshire. Also, the roads around London: where to start? The Dartford Crossing would never be tolerated by Mancunians, and Manchester as a city has a very effective motorway system in contrast to London’s. A city of 6 million+ people has a single crossing across the Thames on its main motorway with a series of tollbooths directly placed on the other side? What the fuck?
Allow me to jump in here. Not really. Mostly you think about driving more and look at the signage. If you notice that things like the speed limit sign is way on the other side of the road, well, you might not be where you should be! I had the occasion to drive a left hand steering car there and it was much more difficult that drive a RHD car made for those roads.
I actually had some trouble getting back into driving back in the USA. I didn’t ‘think’ about driving, assuming that I knew what I was doing, and found myself on the wrong side of the road a couple of times until my brain was reset. I also got into a car a few times only to see the glove box instead of steering wheel in front of me. :smack:
If walking around look BOTH ways a couple of times before crossing a street. Evidently there have been some tourists who have looked one, wrong way only to step in front of a car. London even had warnings at pedestrian crossings about this.
Not in recent history. Taps are connected directly to the mains. The cold tank in the loft is used to feed the old types of copper cylinder boilers without drawing water directly from the mains and therefore affecting water pressure. So, historically, you probably didn’t want to drink from the hot tap, but these days most people have combi boilers anyway, which don’t require either a copper cylinder heater or a cold tank in the loft and all taps are connected directly to the mains.
Oh, my wife’s family is originally from East Anglia too - they just had the sense to live on Ely.
I think that may be an overstatement. Newer houses or updated systems will probably use a combi, or a “system” boiler and do away with the old “tank in the attic” arrangement, but a large proportion of houses are still configured the old way. My house is 1980s and everything except one tap in the kitchen comes by gravity from said tank. Which doesn’t have any “dead birds” in it, but I still avoid drinking from it.
I had those damn’ mixer taps ripped out when the kitchen was refurbished a few years ago. Poxy things.
Ah, Ely-- wonderful place – and, where Hereward the Wake reputedly did his stuff.
“Note for Americans and other aliens: Milton Keynes is a new city approximately halfway between London and Birmingham. It was built to be modern, efficient, healthy, and, all in all, a pleasant place to live. Many Britons find this amusing.”
and
“Neither [Heaven nor Hell] claimed any responsibility for Milton Keynes, but both reported it as a success.”
-Pratchett/Gaiman, Good Omens
Better than in Romance language countries, where C is hot and cold is F (although C-H exists too I’m sure).
What does “to let” mean though?
This is apparent within the US as well. Crossing into California the road gets immediately and visibly worse.
I can’t remember ever seeing pickpocket warnings in the US but many European countries have signs all over (not sure about London).
It’s called the high rising terminal? And it’s seen as an Australian/SoCal thing normally?
…?
Heathrow is however the work of Satan.
Things are a lot closer and you can go through several countries in the same distance that it takes to reach the Canadian or Mexican border for many people. And your trip will cost hundreds of dollars and not the thousands it takes to cross the Atlantic.
Does that mean like giant gherkin (cornichon) style pickled cucumbers or like Branston pickle? Either way, I’m hungry now.
Branston. And you’re right to note that international travel comes easier to Europeans, because Europe is lots of small countries right next to each other, and near other large land masses too. Surprising how often people fail to account for that. “Americans don’t travel”, etc.
Milton Keynes was laid out on a gridiron pattern. The experiment was not much liked, and it was not repeated.
If I may also jump in…
My experience was similar to JerrySTL’s. Going from driving in the US to driving or driving in Japan was much easier than switching back to driving in the US.
Actually, adjusting to driving in a city, while you might think would be harder, is actually very easy. All you do is follow the car in front of you. It’s when you get on deserted or country roads that you’re most likely to fall into old ways. I had 1 close call on a curvy country road…
J.
It means “available to rent”.
The last time I visited the UK was decades before mobiles. I had to use public phones a lot. Apparently, there was a certain amount of force needed to get the phone to accept the coin. It was different than the US phones and I’d have to try 4 or five times to get the coin to register. I do remember having to put more coins it if the call went over so many minutes. It was like a movie. And talking to the operator was like talking to someone from Mars. Neither of us had any idea what the other was talking about.
Could not wait to get back to the US. I was a fish out of water. When I traveled around Asia, it was easy compared to the UK.
Oh, and by the way Mr. Barman in London Pub: Yes I do want Ice in my coke!
Ditto. When we were in Scotland I would put my socks on the towel warmer every morning before I put them on.
I was told by an English friend that there’s a form that you submit to your employer when you start employment. And each time you change employment you need to get this form back from them and turn it in to your new employer.
What’s with that form? Does it contain your work history? Rate of pay?
Thanks.
The P45, yes, whenever you leave an employment. It is used by the tax authority to track your earnings and tax paid. It shows what you have earned in the tax year with this employer, and what tax you have paid. There are other such forms, but P45 is so well known that terms such as “getting your P45” are slang for getting the sack.
It means “vacancy” (rental unit available in an apartment building or boarding house).
What?
Is it the “poxy things” part that is unclear? “Poxy” in this context means something like unsatisfactory or annoying. It’s an all-purpose derogatory adjective that can also mean small or insignificant. From “pox”, as in the disease mark.
I know what “poxy” means. (Although the use of a reference to infectious lesions for simple dislike kind of grosses me out.)
My “what?” was an expression of astonishment at the notion that anyone in his right mind would prefer separate hot and cold taps.