Whether of Not the Weather will Stop Me.

After a month of dithering I finally got round to renting a London bicycle or Boris Bick, named after their creator: the blonde mop for hair, conservative, etonian Major of London Boris Johnson who enjoys shouting 'Lefty Tosser' at members of the Occupy movement (Take note Neil Kerwin). The weather played no small part in my decision, specifically the prospect of rain. Now, the stereotype that it always rains in England exists because it is true... just not as true as you think.

Warmth and sunshine, reminiscent of the family reunions I attended during the English summers of the 1990s, greeted me my first week in England. Next week however (when a lot of my friends from American University arrived), clouds and showers turned umbrellas inside out and London's uneven pavements into small ponds for ducks to swim in. Sadly, my nice long umbrella wouldn't fit in my suitcase (some things have to get left behind) and the cheapest umbrellas cost around £13. Forget that. One thing I'm glad I packed was my very heavy and windproof Barbour jacket with pockets that are bigger on the inside. Even if my hair got wet in the torrents of rain my body remained dry. It receives the Charles Merrick's endorsement (As well as the endorsement of Charles, Prince of Wales). Seeing the best of the English weather and the worst has lead me to draw some conclusions.

Firstly is the fact that rain in Britain is frequent, but is on and off. By that I mean when it rains, it rains, but very different weather follows when it's over. That may mean a 20 minute shower followed by sunshine or it may mean a week of sun gets replaced by a week of rain within the space of a few hours. The sun didn't appear for an entire week at one point and on another occasion this week no clouds were visible. As I write this blog the top of The Shard is completely obscured by cloud, but it still hasn't rained in three days. However, that could literally change at any moment. When it rains, it rains, but it doesn't more often than you think.

The other observation I have made regards my potential relocation here upon graduation. People recommend you spend a winter in a country you want to live in if you hate the cold (and summer for people who hate a very hot/humid climate). The thing is, the Gulf Stream that keeps Great Britain wet also keeps it much warmer than it would otherwise be. I mean, the country is on the same longitudinal plain as Canada and I know Boston is colder than London right now. Whilst I might have to give up a lot of snowfall, I do know that even if the temperature dropped a few more Centigrade (Which is a better system than Fahrenheit) I would be fine... partly because it isn't very cold, but mostly because it is stylish for posh men to wear jumpers (aka sweaters) under their sports jackets or put on three piece suits. This isn't a declaration that I will move to Britain later in life, but it is worth noting that it is possible to enjoy riding a Boris Bike in November and probably in December as well.

P.S. As I wrote my second to last sentence it started raining...great.

Being a Member of the Bourgeoisie

Those of you who know me know I am a capitalist and espouse the ideals of wealth and sophistication. In America that proved easy, sitting cross legged on a chair in a tweed jacket smoking a pipe reading a respected newspaper. In England, that image doesn't really come easily because practically no one does that publicly and you come across as an eccentric dandy with no place in this world or Tory Toff that the lower classes get angry at. You may find a man in a tweed jacket reading a newspaper, but that normally happens in Internet cafes nowadays that does not befit a member of the bourgeoisie. The fact is that Britain is not made up of cigar smoking, posh sounding, rich, wine tasting, members of the bourgeoisie. Most people in Britain are beer drinking, foul mouthed, fag smoking people who get drunk down the pub. These are all stereotypes so please take them with a grain of salt, but can be applied to the population at large. That said, just because the sophisticated bourgeoisie don't appear in public doesn't mean they don't exist. And tonight I found one of their unsurprising hideouts: The theatre (with the r before the e because that is the correct spelling).

Tonight I managed to grab a ticket for Hedda Gabler at The Old Vic Theatre with my godmother (Don't judge; family friends are important and provide free bubbly). I enjoyed the play itself and won't bore you with a review of that, but rather the atmosphere. Members of the lower classes could be found in their T-shirts, but never mind them; I was nicely dressed in a button down shirt and peacoat, a nice red paper poppy in my lapel. And when the lights went down I couldn't see them anyway. The fact remains I was not the only well-dressed person and all the staff were very sharply dressed to remind people that theatre is a cultural thing to be subsidized so the rich can enjoy it for less at the expense of taxpayers. Those were the days, when the rich governed in their own interest (I'm not saying those were the good days, just the old days). But there were also bars at The Old Vic selling overpriced drinks with nice tables and a posh, sophisticated atmosphere. You could even buy drinks for intermission before the show started that would be on a table waiting when you came out at half time. And I'm not talking about fattening pub beer, but wine and champagne in nice glasses.

I had been worried with only pubs and cafes in sight that the bourgeoisie would be gone from Britain. I knew the ideal Bourgeoisie Britain was gone (if it had existed at all), but I had been hoping for some vestiges of it. Fortunately for me, the world of wine tasting, well dressed, posh speaking people isn't dead, just hiding, only opening its doors to those with means and connections. If I do come to Britain in the future, it will take time, but I'm sure I'll find my way into Bourgeoisie at a theatre bar.

Culture Shock Part II: Chocolate

It has been a couple of weeks since my last blog post mainly because I've been busy with an essay and learning a new citation format. And in my last Culture Shock blog I talked about how the Americans did something better than the British and now need to rectify that. With this blog I hope to kill two birds with one stone.

 

One of the more tragic things about leaving the U.K. at the age of three was that I couldn't eat Cadbury's Chocolate, one of the best, if not the best, massed produced chocolates in the world. Now that I'm back I spend between £0.70 to £2.00 every day on Milk Bars, Twirls, Flakes, Crunchies, Wispas and a few other bars. And the simple fact is that they are better in every single way to the stuff I've been eating in America. To start there is the cost. A Twix Bar set me back $1.25 in the States if I brought it from the vending machine or a CVS store. Here a similar sized (and better tasting) Twirl Bar costs £0.70 ($1.13). Sometimes the phrase you pay less for lower quality isn't true. And that cost is including the 20% sales tax (Provided chocolate isn't under the VAT exemption for food) so really it's $1.13 English chocolate vs. $1.37 D.C. chocolate. That pays for itself in one working week for a chocoholic like myself.

 

The only complaint I really have about the chocolate itself involves the vending machines, which keep the chocolate bars refrigerated to stop them melting. If you eat chocolate then you know it tastes best when a little has melted onto your fingers. So whenever I buy vending machine chocolate I have to put it somewhere warm and wait. TORTURE! However, behind this agony lurks a reassuring fact. The first is that chocolate actually melts at room temperature so companies add a sort of wax so the chocolate keeps for longer. Clearly Hershey adds a lot of the stuff to their chocolate, which sits on store shelves for days on end. Cadbury must use some, but the chocolate sells faster here and when it doesn’t; it gets refrigerated in a machine. Any other complaints I have centre around me and how because I am no longer a child my heavy consumption of chocolate will affect my waist line and probably increase the acne on my face. But I blame my parents for that one (But they are the ones paying for my trip here so I can eat chocolate so they're still great).

 

So in comparison to U.S. chocolate the U.K. is better in both price and quality. A friend once said that Hershey is good for when you want a cheap but bad thing like a McDonald's hamburger. But why would I want a McDonald's hamburger if I could get a restaurant hamburger for less than the McDonald's one? Americans just don’t make good chocolate. The only good thing to come out of the American company Kraft buying Cadbury (A tragic moment in history) will be if they successfully launch the actual stuff in America (not the Hershey made stuff that sells for $2.37 plus tax in the states).

On that note an economics point (You knew this was coming). I have observed that the British don't really mind who makes their stuff or provides their services so long as they do it well. We don't mind Indians making their cars and Germans making our trains because they are good at it. However, we do mind Indians with thick accents providing help over the phone because their accents can make them hard to understand and we certainly don't like Americans making our chocolate because Americans are rubbish at it.

So, to my friends in the US I have this to say. When I return to the US I will have in my possession several bags of English chocolate. Get some before I give all the chocolate I don't eat first away.