Shanarchy in the UK

[shanmonster]

Eeee! I fly to the UK on Sunday! That means only one more weight-training workout until I end up in hotels with questionable gyms. Good thing I know plenty of exercises which require no equipment, hmm?

I'm dreadfully afraid I'll forget something important for my trip. I'm repacking my suitcase tomorrow, and ditching the dresses in favour of more long pants and sweaters. I expect it to be cold and damp. If the weather surprises me by being balmy, well, I guess I can wear a little less. I do hope to take the waters at Bath, of course. It's only proper, especially after reading that enormous paean to The Canterbury Tales, Hyperion.

Experience, though noon auctoritee
Were in this world, is right ynogh for me
To speke of wo that is in mariage;

While I do not expect to gain four more husbands, I do expect culture shock. To those of you who've travelled there from Canada, what are the odd differences I should watch out for? You know, like remembering to look the "wrong" way first before crossing a street?

Comments

[fuzzpsych.livejournal.com]

Be sure to call your pants "trousers". Pants there means underwear.
Also, your fanny is something different.

[shanmonster.livejournal.com]

My grandmother's name is Fanny. Heheheh....

[shanmonster.livejournal.com]

I'll see what transpires!

[elanya.livejournal.com]

For me, one shock that stood out at the time was that all of the snacks were smaller! I actually don't know if that is true anymore (this was, holy crap ten years ago now :o ), but it used to be that the packages of chips (err, crisps, I should say) were about the size of the bags you get at Hallowe'en.

[shanmonster.livejournal.com]

I don't tend to eat that sort of stuff, anyhow. The snack sizes are huge here now compared to what they were in the 70s. The Hallowe'en packages are about the size of the standard bags I remember, and our regular sized snack bags were the jumbo snack. Big bags were still about the same size, though.

[shanmonster.livejournal.com]

They just all came in paper bags, back then, with a hint of foil. They went stale a lot faster because of tears in the paper and such.

[elanya.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I don't eat it *that* often, but in general going in to stores and seeing the different arrays of stuff is a bit of a ...huh... moment. Also, they don't refrigerate eggs in the stores.

[shanmonster.livejournal.com]

Nifty!

I get culture shock when I go to the Asian grocery downtown. They sure do things ... differently.

[sidruid.livejournal.com]

Go see the mushroom! Portobello Rd -- crazy crazy antique market. If I were a steampunk, it'd be heaven. But I'm still using a cloak clasp i picked up there 15 years ago.

[shanmonster.livejournal.com]

Where is that?

[professormass.livejournal.com]

Don't be surprised at the overt racism and classism. It's a bit jarring.

[shanmonster.livejournal.com]

Oh boy.

[tlatoani.livejournal.com]

What are you doing over there? Where are you going?

[shanmonster.livejournal.com]

I'm going on this tour.