Based on our recent trip, some observations …
- Tabloid-sized Newspapers. Britain’s tabloid papers are usually poor representations of journalism. Most are loaded with gossip and speculation. Most are focused on celebrity and fueled by rumour. Most are written with a sensationalism that would make a National Enquirer turn to the copy of The Star and say, “Damn.” But they remain incredibly popular, and I know why. It’s the size. There is just something so incredibly appealing about a newspaper that doesn’t make you elbow the person next to you on the train. On top of that, they’re all in one piece and not in sections.
Thankfully, more legitimate papers have been taking the tabloid-size route in recent years (The Independent, The Times) so even if you don’t want to read about Posh Spice or David Beckham, you can still get your news in a fellow-passenger-friendly format.
- Advertisements for Books. They’re in tube stations, on train platforms, at street corners. In the kinds of spots we usually save for promoting the latest Ashton Kutcher masterpiece, Brits get massive, full-color advertisements for the latest novels. Sure, most of these books are just pop fiction, but it’s a good sign all the same. Reading is fundamental, after all.
- Glass-Bottled Milk. From a milkman. Like Coca-Cola, milk just seems to taste better from a glass bottle.
- Old Men in Suits. You see them on the train or in the Underground. They’re retired, mostly. Maybe they’re on military pensions from service performed fifty years ago. In the American mindset, they have little reason to get all dressed up just for a journey into town, and yet there they are. Good suits, white shirts, neck ties. Some wearing hats that went out of fashion in the US before Kennedy was elected. Most of all, they look proud.
- Costa Cappuccino. Starbucks is good, but Costa is better. When I was there in 2002, I thought I only liked Costa for the corrugated sleeves they put around their to-go beverage cups — it was a texture thing, you understand. But this time, we bought very few coffees on the run. Instead, we’d sit and enjoy and gather up steam for more walking. So I had time to sip and consider and come to the conclusion that Costa is just better. Not sure just why. It just is.
- Free Admission to Museums. You want an educated and aware populace? Let them educate and entertain themselves simultaneously without paying a fee. The most impressive museum in all of London is probably The British Museum. They could charge tourists £5 ($8.60) a head and not lose a bit of daily traffic … but they don’t. Museums in London are free. Special exhibits often cost extra and most museums do use conveniently placed plexiglass boxes to suggest a donation of £3 or so, but an empty pocket or a diminished dollar is no excuse to not go and learn something. So with that in mind … how much is admission to our new aquarium?
- Inevitable Tea. Sooner or later, someone is going to offer you tea. While we all run on a steady diet of coffee, Coca-Cola or sweet iced tea in the southeastern US, it is very rare that anyone is going to go to the trouble of putting a kettle on the stove to make a cup of tea. For such a simple drink, the preparation still resembles a small ritual of boiling, pouring, waiting and stirring. It’s the waiting part that makes it good, I think.
- Doctor Who. If I had never spent so many late Saturday nights in my living room, watching two-year or three-year delayed episodes of Doctor Who on GPTV (WCLP – Channel 18 out of Chatsworth) with the volume down so as not to wake my sleeping parents, would I have developed such a fascination for the UK? And is it any wonder that I just smile like an idiot, knowing that my ten-year-old nephews have become fast fans of the newly resurrected Doctor Who on the BBC?
- Better Bacon (That Isn’t Bacon). We would call it country ham, I think. Whatever you call it, I say it’s awesome.
- Walk-Up Bakeries. On our second morning in Canterbury, we walked through town to St Augustine’s Abbey. I had a map, but decided not to look at it that morning. The heart of Canterbury is a walled city surrounded by a circular road. If north is 12 o’clock, then our hotel was just outside the wall at 4 o’clock. The abbey sits at 2 o’clock and change, so I figured that we could walk from our hotel into almost the center of town, then strike back out just a bit more to the north.
It worked quite well, and along the way, we passed a little bakery/tea shop with incredible little items in the window. We’d just had breakfast — see Bacon, above — so we were determined to come back by later in the day. And we did. Best under £2 treat of the whole trip, I think.
- Internet Cafes. Some are hidden. Some are sketchy. Some are crowded. But they’re all just the most convenient places. The Internet cafe died out (for the most part) in the US years ago, but I think that was because there was too much of an attempt to balance out the ‘net and cafe aspects. The reality is that access to information at a fair hourly rate is the most important commodity. Coffee in any form is secondary. In one place we found in Cambridge, coffee wasn’t even an option. The place was just a crowded store-front of eighteen PCs with one lonely guy at a counter collecting cash.
“How much?,” I asked.
“£1 an hour. You can sit at number 16.”
“Do I have to sign anything?”
“Nah. I see you.”Customer service aside, this is a place that understands just what they’re offering. Not everyone has their electronic life in their pocket — not yet — but there are times when you need to get to that email, find those directions, check that auction or confess your love … like the guy sitting next to me at #15. He looked maybe 15 or 16. English was his second or third language. The large screen resolution made it where I couldn’t help but notice the gist of what he was writing. It was a Yahoo email full of confessional romance. At some point, he stops and asks the guy at #17 a question. “Dezy-ray. Is it like this spelled? Dee-Eee-Ess-Yiii-ray?” The guy at #17 glances over and rolls his eyes, so I lean to look. “Desire” is what he has typed. I give him the thumbs up. “Oh, thank you,” he says with a smile.
- An Unabashed Love of Pop Music. Pop music is only pop music in England. I’m convinced of this. In the US, pop music is driven by what ought to be popular and what radio stations dictate based on the encouragement of public relations firms and ratings scales. Even stations like DaveFM that claim to be the on-air equivalent of someone’s iPod on shuffle are still constrained by genre or time. But UK pop stations seem to have no such restraints, meaning that Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons can be followed by Shania Twain. Shania can be followed by Angie Aparo. Angie can go into Human League. Human League can go to Madonna. Madonna can … and on and on. It is jarring at first, but still pop in the outright sense of the word. Popular music for the populace, because face it … not everybody has the best of tastes and not everybody follows the latest greats, but only the British are unashamed to admit it.
