Adventures in Socio-Linguistics!

England and America are two countries separated by the same language - George Bernard Shaw

And an excruciating twelve hour trans-Atlantic flight. - Corene Maret Brown



After many year spent as an apprentice at my mother's knee trying to decipher what the hell they were going on about on Coronation Street, I can usually understand the English folk as long as they aren't mumbling in a broad Oxfordshire or marble-mouthed east London accent. However, as interested linguists will be foaming at the mouth to know, there are several strange lexicographical turn of phrases that haven't made it over the ocean and inevitably provide hilarious verbal hijinks with Canadian visitors bearing the brunt of the ridicule.

The most important thing for visitors to the UK to note:
TROUSERS (United Kingdom) = PANTS (North America)
PANTS (North American) = NAUGHTY BIT COVERS (United Kingdom)

I cannot stress this enough. At no point in any conversation with someone from the UK should you ever say: "God, I can't wait to put some pants on."

My most memorable lost in translation moment was when I was chatting to a co-worker; a charming, mannered Scottish lady of impeccable moral standards.

"I have to go home and tidy my flat," she said.

"Why? I haven't bothered to clean anything in my apartment since the shooting season started. I think we clean enough all day, every day."

"Well, I have a man coming to inspect my flat and I can't have him thinking I'm a slut."

"..."

"Why are you staring at me like that?"

"... That word cannot mean what you think I think it means."

After a long, involved discussion with lots of incredulous stares (on her part) and shrieks of laughter (on my part), we discerned that in fact she was not a lady of negotiable virtue nor was her apartment knee deep in frilly underwear. In Scotland, a "slut" is a messy, lackadaisical woman who doesn't care about standards or how she looks.

And now you know.

Eat your heart out, Calvin Veltman.

Maid Mishaps

I just burnt a hole in my shoe.

A hole in my favourite 15 quid maid shoes.

I was trying not to dishonour my country by freezing to death indoors in the wussy English winter by keeping close to the gas fire (as the link between gas heating and huge explosions when people forget they've left the gas oven on and light a match has not yet been discovered in this country), leaning against the grate with my shoe perched against the metal edge for balancing purposes when after a few minutes of heated luxury, I felt a strange sensation akin to my nylons melting to the skin of my foot.

I looked down and realized that the sole of my shoe was melting. The heat was so intense that it was burning through my shoe and making a full frontal assault on my extremely flammable nylons in a very painful way.

Lesson learned?

Gas Fires: Not Just for Decoration - Actually Producing Heat.

Odd About Town

Things that are delightful & strange about England:


1. "Britvic - Sparkling Ginger Ale" The United Kingdom's answer to Canadian Dry ginger ale. Tastes like water that has lost the will to live. 'Parently after years of murdering their taste buds with deep fried toast and stomachs of various farm animals, they can no longer taste the difference.

And their Sprite tastes like dirt. Literally. I think there were flecks of sod in my can.


2. Light switches switch on and off the opposite way. Flipped up is on and flipped down is off. This would seem to make sense written down but try testing your own light switches at home. See? It's all wrong.

I spent my first few nights in the United Kingdom convinced that electricity was still on rationing as everytime I tried to flip on a switch, I remained plunged in darkness.


3. The bats are vicious, maid seeking missiles which apparently don't have rabies. A fact that people only bothered to tell me once I spent an entire afternoon being chased around screaming by a ravenous looking beast.


4. Bill Bailey.

What I Love About England #17

Enough self-indulgence!

I was walking along the Blenheim resevoir smiling at all the people and their dogs (but mostly at their dogs) when I stopped at the bridge and saw:


Three Men in a Boat!

!!!

Bladon

I've finally worked out that the shooting season is an excuse to enforce Darwin's survival of the fittest on the pheasant population so that only the cleverest, most cunning pheasants will be left.


The best thing for a dreary December afternoon lunch break (other than huddling by a heater) is a short trip to Bladon.


Sights not to be missed in Bladon include the local cholera pump.


The Misanthropist's Lawn.


Drainage Compass where you can choose your own North.


Bladon cemetery is the final resting place of Consuelo Vanderbilt, the ultimate dollar princess, one-time 9th Duchess of Marlborough, object of James M. Barrie's affection, and daughter of the ultimate Psycho Mother.


Alva Vanderbilt used to whip her daughter with a riding crop when she disobeyed, instruct that a steel rod against Consuelo's spine to improve her posture, threatened to murder Consuelo's lover and pretended to be dying in order to force her daughter to marry the Duke.

Her parenting philosophy ultimately boiled down to what she said to Consuelo when she objected to her clothing choice. "I do the thinking, you do as you're told."


Bladon is also the burial place of Winston Churchill: Leader of the free world, Stalin's sassy antagonist, and crap painter.




We've also had our staff Christmas party this week. Alas! There was no flaming Christmas pudding thanks to Health and Safety regulations (Honestly, most of England's holiday celebrations seem to revolve around lighting things and people on fire). But there were exploding crackers full of dorktastic Christmas hats which I am going to treasure forever and ever.

A Walk Around the 'Stock

I decided to take a quick afternoon jaunt, camera in hand, to illustrate why Woodstock is the Most Wonderful & Picturesque Village in Oxfordshire and Would be Perfect if Only it Had a Bookstore and a Wool Shop. And a Japanese Restaurant. And a Library with Better Hours (Honestly, open from 9-1 on a Saturday?) and a DVD Rental Shop.


One of many Woodstock churches. This church is especially notable for the long and involved bell ringing practice they host every Tuesday night where, for the next eighteen hours, the discordant sound of bells can be heard throughout the land by anyone who is trying to get some sleep.


In Old Woodstock, all the houses are charming and covered in ivy.


The ugliest tree in England. Second runner up for the ugliest tree in Oxfordshire county. It was beat out by an upstart, carbuncle-covered spruce in Blackbird Leys.


Alas, this is as far as I got because it started to pour rain and I had to duck inside the nearest tea shop and eat cake.


One of the reasons I love England.

I found these at the Oxford Market for ₤20. A complete 1897 set of Addison and Steele's Spectator nicely bound with little blue ribbon bookmarks. Worth every pence. Also worth the mental anguish of running through Oxford Conrmarket Street, dodging shopping mums with mega-strollers and uniformed youths while stopping to glare at the man butchering "Summertime" on his saxophone all at the same time trying to catch the bus back to Woodstock and shield the books with my jacket from the sopping rain.

Equally as fun as owning them was snatching them from under the nose of the robe-wearing, bespeckled Oxford don who was too weighed down by his own brilliance to chase me once he'd noticed that I'd already gathered them up and paid for them by the time he ended his lecture.

Oh the upstart classes!

The Agony and the Ectasy

That there above is an authentic English morning frost.

With frost! Genuine frosty frost!


Okay, it all melted before 9:30 and melted all over the bench I was sitting on and all over my jacket but this is England, so I keep my expectations low. It was so sad watching the little English people dance about when they thought it was snowing. I didn't have the heart to break it to them that it was only slush falling from the sky and Did Not Count.


I ambled down to the Victoria and Albert Museum (or the V&A for those in the know) to see the Golden Age of Couture, Paris & London 1947-1957 which was horrific thanks to a 1950's educational video showing women how to achieve the "New Look" by crushing all their insides.


Where does your kidney go? Wherefore the spleen? Do all your intestines just rearrange themselves on your head in a stunning up-do?

I also stopped into the see the EXTREME CRAFT EXHIBIT which mostly involved bits of string and ripped nylons nailed to a table...


... Burnt out light bulbs nailed to the wall...


... And paint stained tables and sheets.

I have most of these same exhibits laying around somewhere at home, waiting to be cleaned up. This begs the question: If I throw my garbage in the V&A, does that make it art?


I also made a pilgrimage to Witney to buy some sock wool and check out the first church where my favourite Methodist founder preached his very first sermon.


You guessed it! John Wesley who narrowly beat out Charles Wesley (who caused a street brawl between two worldly women in Georgia) by ducking out of a duel and having to sneak out of South Carolina in disgrace after promising himself to the governor's niece, Sophia Hopkey, who he then ditched after forcing her to promise never to love another (she quickly went on to marry someone with a manlier haircut), he then refused to give her or her new husband holy communion. Cold.


Witney is also home to many comically understated house signs and the only women's lingerie/wool store in creation.


Witney also boasts the law-upholding duo with the most unfortunate surnames in the history of bad lawyer surnames: Stammers and welch.*

*For those who are a bit rusty in their 19th century Wild West gambling terminology, "to welch" is to cheat or rip someone off.


And finally, to wrap up this parade of horrors, the Chapel Barbers.

Unless the tonsure is making an unforseen come back, I think the Bronte Hair Salon is a safer bet.