22 November 2005

Life Across the Pond

By Mike Dougherty, McGavacks of Loundoun Associate Professor of Biology
in Canterbury, United Kingdom.

“Bits and Pieces”

- During peak tourist season in London, you’re more likely to hear a foreign language spoken on the street than you are to hear English. During the off-season, just go into a shop.

- Petrol is about $US 6.30 per gallon (£0.95/liter); nonetheless, sales of larger, less-efficient vehicles are growing. The high cost of public transport, especially trains, means a large portion of incomes here are devoted to transportation.

- I won’t even get started on the altogether ridiculous housing costs.

- It’s not the English way to make chit-chat with strangers. I pass the same people every day on my 25-minute walk to the lab, but nobody greets each other. I gave up after the first week when the people I said ‘hello’ to looked at me as if I had just burped.

- Rain every day isn’t just depressing, it’s messy.

- Americans live in much larger homes than do the English. Living in a smaller space limits the amount of junk one accumulates, and the absence of closets means you cannot avoid looking at it.

- Random violence is a serious and growing problem here, as are graffiti and ‘antisocial behavior’ generally. Every issue of the local paper contains at least one story like the following, which appeared in the most recent edition. “Tracksuit yob hits woman: A twenty-five-year-old woman was punched in the face in a unprovoked attack in St. Martin’s Hill, Canterbury. She had been walking along the road just after 11 p.m. when a gang of young men approached her and one hit her.”

- Thanks to an abundance of steep hills and narrow, winding, bumpy roads, I’ve only once managed a bicycle ride with an average speed of 17 m.p.h. Such riding is no good for the ego, but the views are stunning.

- For Americans not partial to President Bush, consider the dilemma facing progressives in Britain today: Prime Minister Tony Blair, a political clone of Bush in almost every way except in his view of climate change, is the leader of the liberal party (Labour).

- The first time I went into a Starbucks here, I thought, “How odd that they price their coffee in dollars.” At 1.60 for a grande drip coffee, the exact price of the same drink in Midlothian, I could be excused for asking the clerk for clarification. Sadly, the price was in pounds sterling. Gulp. I’m glad I don’t drink frappucinos.

- Grad students and postdocs in Britain don’t work on weekends.

- My walk down the hill into town at the end of each day features gorgeous views of the brightly lit cathedral and quite often the music of its pealing bells.

- The drinking age here is 18, and binge drinking is viewed as the primary cause of antisocial behaviour. The government’s response to the problem? Expand the hours pubs can stay open. Starting this week, the new hours come into effect, and townsfolk (who vastly opposed this industry-supported change) will see whether 4 and 5 a.m. last calls reduce the amount of vomit and urine in their streets.

- The reportage in newspapers is more entertaining than its U.S. equivalents. Even in the most-respected broadsheets, such as The Sunday Times, ‘news’ stories are a mix of fact and opinion. Important qualifiers such as “according to” and “claimed” are virtually absent, and non-sequitors are commonplace. And in the tabloids, of course, there are the Page 3 girls.

- Living at 51.4 degrees latitude as winter approaches is interesting. Even in mid-November the sun never gets much higher than the rooftops. Thus, almost everywhere you are in the shade.