06.07.04 | Things I Like

In honor of our return to London after three weeks of wedding and holiday, I decided to come up with 13 things I like about London/England as compared to the US.

1. Great coins. I love the heavy feel of £1 coins. Their weight implies a sense of value. Plus, a handful of change can actually buy something.

2. Being able to walk less than a minute to get to a corner convenience store. In the US, you have to drive everywhere.

3. Good public transportation (when it's working properly, which, admittedly, isn't as much as it should).

4. Great free press. There's the BBC, of course, plus at least five major daily newspapers. The car and motorcycle magazines are also superior.

5. Pub names. Anything named the "Dog and Bacon" or the "Spread Eagle" is OK by me. It seems that to name a pub in England, one simply has to think of something that is common yet has nothing to do with drinking beer or socializing. It's fun.

To prove this, I've made up five pub names. Notice how you can take a word from column one and match it up to any word in column two and still have a reasonably viable pub name.

6. In general, people have a mature view of the world. More people read and seem to be more knowledgeable about world events than those in the US.

7. Courteous escalator culture. Standing people always go to the right so that people who walk can use the left.

8. Hob Nob biscuits

9. Old buildings. If you ever tour around London, you'll find buildings with circle-shaped blue placards that indicate that particular building has some sort of historical significance. The building I work in has one -- it was the only building left standing in the old London docks area after the German air raids in WWII.

10. An impressive mix of cultures and skin colours that all manage to get along reasonably well

11. Cottage-industry sports cars (TVR, Morgan, Noble, etc)

12. Europe on your doorstep

13. Getting to use 'bollocks' as everyday conversation