I’m pleasantly surprised with the people here in the UK and I’m not just saying that because I spent the beginning of this year in Central America amongst a Spanish community who despises English speaking human beings—the people here are just really cool. I’m from California, I’ve spent plenty of time between LA and DC in my 44 years. I’m a Union man, too, I’ve spent countless hours with tradesmen from across the US and Canada, I’ve met a lot of people in my #life.

Out of all of the places I’ve been and all of the people I’ve met across North America, both Central and South America and, now here, the kindest people are in the UK. They’re the friendliest, most courteous, outwardly helpful and just genuinely welcoming people I’ve met. ‘My sincerest apologies, Tennessee, I thought you’d reign forever!’

I hope you get the opportunity to experience England first hand. But that doesn’t mean our opinions aren’t ponds apart when it comes to a few basic, every day consistencies, that leads me to believe they’re just as logically challenged here as they are kind. Things I consider to be normal such as fashion, “rough,” or passing conversation are anything but normal in the UK and require some getting used to.

Driving.

They drive on the wrong side of the road here and on the wrong side of the car. We’ve been here for three months and it still throws me for a loop each time I enter the ‘passenger side’ of an Uber vehicle, “no way—I’m not driving!” And then I remember the steering wheel is on the other side of the car here. That’s an obvious difference, everyone knows they drive on the wrong side of the road in the UK. But have you ever tried crossing a street on foot while looking behind you?

Backward vehicle traffic forces you to do that. It’s difficult, try it out next time you cross a street. Look over your shoulder, stare at the vehicle traffic behind you and imagine it’s approaching rather than distancing itself from you while proceeding in a forward walk. Continue walking forward while looking backward as you cross the paved street in front of you whose first and foremost purpose is intended to accommodate crossing vehicle traffic—heavy, moving, crossing, vehicle traffic. Try that out next time you’re in a crosswalk, let me know how much sense that makes.

Fashion.

They shop on the wrong side of the department store here too. Fellas wear skin tight pants here and a lot of the ladies wear bellbottom type raver pants that are so baggy you can’t see their shoes. Ladies wear gym pants, you’ll see dresses and skirts, too, often with leggings underneath them but the tightest pants are not worn by women here.

I know what it takes for girls to get into those pants, I’m married to a 10 who rocks tight pants. For those of you who are unaware, there’s a process these ladies have mastered in order to properly insert themselves into those pants, one false move could result in a flesh wound. A 6-pack of Bruce Lee kicks went into those pants, maybe even a round house depending on how #new they are. There’s squatting, kicking, a few duck walks in approximately five yard intervals, stand, squat, stand again, more karate kicks until eventually the buttons make contact and the flesh is sculpted.

Just not on dudes.

Fellas sculpt the veins in their calves and thighs with pants in the UK and the funniest part, if you have a wife who wears those pants, you know it takes two people to remove them—it’s a two person job. Those dudes have someone help them take their pants off at the end of the day—lying on the bed, on their back, feet in the air like dead livestock, “pull!” Sweat pants are tapered, too, even gym pants are tapered here. Socks, just kidding, but you know what I mean, everything that has anything to do with legs—tapered, tapered, tapered. Switches are backward here too.

Light Switches.

All three light switches above are in the Up position which means all three light switches above are in the Off position. Where I come from, On is Up and Down is Off which makes a lot of sense when you think about.

Everyone in the audience would point Up when referring to lights. I’ve yet to see a ceiling fan on the floor, that would be a floor-fan. Lights, more often than not, are above our head. The only lighting at foot level is perimeter lighting or landscaping—both are typically controlled from a location other than the light fixture. If you want to control lights in the UK, the lights that are above your head, if you want the room to light Up by using the light fixture that’s Up above you, flip the switch Down. Repeat steps backward to disconnect the light source—the light above you, Up above your head is still in the Down position which means On. Up means the light is Off, flip the switch Up—the Off position, lights out. Guns are backward here, too, only cops have them.

_{Thanks, Nast!}

My buddy back home sent me that picture. You can’t have guns here, an asinine concept in my opinion and that’s not the worst part. The mentality and general public opinion here regarding guns is worse, it’s alarming. Brit’s aren’t just anti-guns, they’re in favor of some of the strictest control measures in the world and are pro-guns so long as only cops possess them?! A select few sporting rifles are permissible here, so are shotguns but that’s it, handguns are not to be owned by the general public and rifles are for hunting only.

It’s a lot different in the states. Your 18th birthday in the states means go down to one of the corner gun stores and purchase your very first legal shotgun. By the time most of my buddies turned 21, they had a decent assortment of weapons that are both protection and collections. Quite a few of them have full blown arsenal’s to the point I know where I’m going if tanks and helicopters begin assassinating their own people (that never happens).

I’m not one of those collectors, guns aren’t my thing, they never have been. But I’m more comfortable knowing they’re accessible by all of us and not just law enforcement. I think I could get away with saying all of this publicly, without fear of being reprimanded by gun toting officials in England, I just can’t threaten anyone or use curse words—no freedom of speech here.

_Amazon

Freedom of Speech.

That Johnny Cash poster is famous in the states. It’s available for purchase at just about any department store that sells posters—you’ll find it in the slot between Mariah Carey and the X-Men. Children can purchase it, teenagers, doesn’t matter, hang it up anywhere you want. Whether or not you’ll find that poster in the UK, I’m not sure, I’m not certain there isn’t a law against hanging it on your wall, however, the expression itself, “fuck you” while flying a middle finger like that in someone’s face is illegal here—you’ll go to jail for that.

Startling, isn’t it? An F bomb on a blog that hasn’t dropped a curse word for over two years? That’s called freedom of speech—they don’t have that here. It’s called a negative right to freedom of expression under the common law in the UK which means telling someone “fuck you” and sticking your middle finger in their face is punishable by law.

Epitome of opportunistic—my first curse wOrd. I got to drop an F bomb, too, imagine that, out of all bombs I could’ve dropped—that’s my point. I choose not to drop curse words out of respect to the platform (the gate’s open now), not because it’s the law. It’s never been against the law for me to say what I think—that should be worldwide.

You shouldn’t be subject to penalty if you said Donald Trump and Boris Johnson have a tea bagging love affair and jerk each other off in the Oral Office to Kim Jung Hilary Clinton Wu memes, see what I mean? That’s normal to me, not what was said, having the right to say it. You can’t do that in the UK, you’ll go to jail for saying that, especially if you post it on the internet! They have a really strict policy that regulates online speech here.

_Unsplash

Fact—“thugs” in the search bar at Unsplash dot com returns an orange and white feline with a nose like Rocky Balboa. That must be a UK thing, too, gangster kitty’s.

_YouTube

Thugs.

That’s what I expected to find when I typed thugs—figures it’s an A&E special. No thugs in the UK. No gangsters on the streets here, they don’t exist here. We’ve stayed north, east, south and now west since arriving in the UK in June and have been told “that’s a rough area” multiple times. Especially about Hull—we stayed there for a month. Everyone told us “Hull is rough” and our new location, L4 in Liverpool, “it’s rough over there,” they said. Anywhere you can jog at two o’clock in the morning and strangers on the sidewalk say “good morning” and “excuse me” doesn’t count as rough—disqualified!

Private residences are invaded at two o’clock in the afternoon in California, broad daylight, homeowners are gagged and zip-tied while their possessions are loaded, one by one, into the waiting moving van that’s double-parked outside. People are robbed at gunpoint, car-jacked, kidnapped, murdered and worse in California and that’s just LA—not “rough.” Rough to me is the more sinister stuff, I guess, all of those other things are unspeakable, don’t get me wrong, but smuggling crack in infant human carcasses is rough.

Could you imagine being robbed in England? I can’t. It would sound way too cool, they’re too polite here to rob anyone, and who’s going to submit to a robber you know doesn’t have a gun that says ‘excuse me’ in a British accent before demanding your money?

“G’day.. ‘escuse’meh sir, pardon me, I d’maund ye haund ova olive yaw pounds ott twunce, chap, now haund e’tova—c’mon! M’mate needin’er biscuits, yea!”

Cookies.

You can’t visit a website in the UK without accepting terms and conditions, not a single website—none, zero, zilch, every.single website requires you to grant access to your browsing history, “cookies,” before proceeding.

I put cookies in quotations because when I mentioned that to some friends we met here, they didn’t know what I was talking about. We were having conversation about differences between here and there, I told them how weird it is having to accept cookies before we can visit a webpage here.

They said “yeah, that’s perfectly normal, but what are cookies?

Cookies is a record of your browsing history—that accept button you always click. Each visit, browse, click, read you do online is analyzed, recorded and sold at your expense.

There’s a whole bunch of literature available about marketing and how tech gurus develop algorithms designed to track your cookies and then use that web history to generate advertizements specific to your wants and needs.

I’m not saying the US isn’t tracking every.single step we make online, not at all. But they must be tracking us without requiring cookies because back home, when a website denies access until I accept cookies, I just exit out of it and go to the next one—for every 20 sites that allows access, there might be one that requires cookies. You can’t do that here, you either click accept or don’t surf, there’s no way around it.

_Pixabay

Cops.

I’ve spoken with police officers here in England, an actual conversation, they’re really kind like everyone else here. I’ve asked them for help locating the proper train at the station, whose mansion that is with the live orchestra, they’re helpful every time and not intimidating at all. They’ll even continue the conversation until you interrupt them, “sorry, my train departs in three minutes,” just to learn your impression of England and tell you how much they wish they could visit California.

In California, I’ve had my vehicle searched, completely disassembled and left in pieces only to be told “I’ll wait here with my lights on for you while you put it back together” on the side of Interstate 40 because I dialed 9-1-1 to report a small child walking on the side of the road—I ended up being the one on trial:

“What’s your business here?” “Where are you going?” “Reason for going there?” “Who’s your employer?” “Is there anything in your vehicle I should know about?” “Name, age, got any ID?” “Is there anything in your pockets?” “Turn around and face the car, place both hands on the hood.” _{etc etc etc etc...}

In the US, they don’t even look like cops anymore. Those aren’t the same guys who came to my elementary school and taught all of us how to assist elderly people crossing the street.

Distance.

That’s the view from our balcony. I rushed out there to snap that picture because that’s the first sunset we’ve seen since June—the sun doesn’t shine here, that’s another one. Here’s a current image of the same view:

That’s not what this section about, though, see the stadium in the distance? That’s Anfield, a 45,000 capacity football stadium where Liverpool Football Club plays football—the one with a round ball you kick with your feet. When I see the stadium, it looks about 20 minutes away, that’s how we factor distance in the US—time.

Here, distance is measured in length. A local resident doesn’t see the distance to the stadium as time, they see it as a mile and a quarter or 1,000 meters or however far away they think it is—its literal location. We’ve been programmed in the US to schedule our movements, everything from what we’re doing the next four weekends in a row to the vacation we’re planning two years ahead of time to the distance we understand that stadium to be. Everything is factored by time—payday, Friday, starting time, break time, commute time, laundry time. _{etc etc etc etc...}

The distance between now and Christmas is a lot closer in the UK than it is in the US, check this out, Halloween costumes get shoved against the back wall to make room for Christmas and Halloween is still four weeks away. There’s already two aisles of Christmas in this store, they got an early start—September.

Merry Christmas❗️