Counting on it
When I was at school, which is quite some time ago now, your school year related to the number of years that you’d been in that particular school. So, when I first turned up at West Lea Infants School, I was a 1st year. And when I left the 3rd year there, I went into [...]
Pancake day
If there’s one foodstuff that Americans always have a tendency to ask me about, it’s black pudding. Few people can actually comprehend that the British eat it, for a start. As I’ve said before, The Special One hates the idea of the stuff although if you ask me, it’s difficult to understand what problem people [...]
n EnglishWelshman">I smell the blood of an EnglishWelshman
I’ve never liked having things stuck in my arm. When I was a kid at school, I once fainted after having the BCG (anti-tuberculosis) vaccination. To be fair to me, I didn’t faint straight away at the sight of the injection. Instead, I went back to my physics classroom, sat on my high stool and [...]
Aroma therapy
Even though New York subway carriagescars are probably twice the size of their London equivalents, don’t be confused into thinking that there’s plenty more room for commuters to be carried home in comfort. Most trains are packed to the gills, and the rails are placed too far apart to avoid being thrown headlong down the [...]
The universal language of rudeness
I love a good sandwich, and no trip to the UK is complete without a visit to Pret-A-Manger to grab a BLT or posh cheese’n’pickle sarnie. Standing in the queueline to make my purchase earlier this week, I heard the woman two people ahead of me ask for a coffee and a croissant perfectly normally, [...]
Are there dollars in your pocket, or are you just pleased to see me?
When you’re a Brit exiled in America, it’s difficult to avoid the fact that the dollar has about as much value as the Zambian kwacha. For a start, whenever your friends come to visit, you have to endure the tales of how they spent sixteen straight hours shopping, and bought two pairs of jeans for [...]
London, England
Travelling to the airport on Monday, my taxi driver asked me whether I was from London. Distracted momentarily from a state of perpetual nausea caused by the constant stop-start motion of driving down Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, I replied that although I was actually on my way to London, I actually originated from the North-West [...]
Send us victorious
My attempts to immerse myself into American life continue apace. This week, I took The Eldest to his (and mine) first NBA game when we travelled to the ‘world famous’ Madison Square Garden to see the New York Knicks take on the Charlotte Bobcats. To say it was a clash of the titans would be [...]
