Intermittent Service Has Resumed (With Leaves On The Line)

Well. Back in England at last. Apart from the fact that things are indeed so expensive here that all I can afford to do is to sit very still in a chair with my arms straight down by my sides, things are well.

Apologies for the recent downtime, it's taken me five days to get online properly. Sorry Mum, but you still do live in the dark ages as far as these things go: a dial up line which can only be used after 6pm and which cuts off if anyone picks up the telephone. I guess I have been spoiled by wireless broadband laptoppery for too long.

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I was recently reading Bill Bryson's Note from A Large Incontinent (or something of that sort) which is all about how he found life in America after moving back there from 20 years living in England. My move is clearly much less dramatic, as I can't really claim, as Bill does, that I don't know the British name for things like Band Aids or such like. Plus, moving from a country which has 400 TV channels to a country with essentially only five is much less of a culture shock than the other way round.

The things I have noticed in the first five days since getting back have been rather peculiar.
1) The fact that the Channel Four TV in-between programmes announcer said yesterday And now for Big Brother: be warned the programme contains strong language and God knows what else...
2) The way the mention of putting the kettle on literally turned my mum's carpet fitters into spaniels (idiot grins and tongues hanging out). The British really do have a strong belief that a cup of tea is the answer in every situation.
3) The fact there was NO NEWS yesterday. None. Honestly one wonders why they bother devoting an hour to the news if there is no news to be related. (If you don't believe me: the lead story at six o'clock yesterday was that someone had scratched his name onto the bull statue outside the Bullring shopping centre in Birmingham.) They should do what they used to do on the radio back in the Thirties: the BBC announcer would come on, announce there was no news, and that they would be playing relaxing music instead.
4) the way that the British always refer to the US as "The 'States". I must hereby confess that one of the carpet fitters seemed to think that Canada was part of The 'States too. The other carpet fitter thought that Michael Jackson was just "behaving like a father does naturally with his son".
5)going back to the subject of news, the way that a very large proportion of British news is about minor celebrities who are only famous for getting their tits out. If it wasn't for Page Three Girls, I honestly don't think that our very small country would be able to sustain ten national daily newspapers as it does. Perhaps McKinsey ought to make this point to all the US publishing groups they are currently advising about the dire state of their industry.
6) the impression I have, following a visit to its Walsall store, that IKEA has become the British Wal-Mart. More on this another time.
7) the general fabulousness of the British supermarket. Even the local Morrison's - which in the pecking order in England is pretty close to the bottom, only just above Budgens and the Co-op, has a massive banner outside reading "Fresh Pasta Retailer of the Year 2004". I don't think Food Lion even sells fresh pasta, let alone competes on the national stage.