I confess ignorance on many fronts. My misconceptions about things British are the most recent
example. Take “Britain” for
instance. I believed that Britain,
England and the United Kingdom were interchangeable. England, I have since learned, is not Britain – that includes
Scotland, Wales and Ireland, too.
I also imagined England to be a very civilized country, a land where
people queued up, bobbies didn’t need guns, and everything was “cricket.” After all, we got our laws and customs
from them, right? The reality is that burglaries are common, squatters can take
over your home and acting in self-defense can get you a prison sentence. Laws that have been on the books for
centuries remain unchanged; relevance to modern reality be damned. I have been told that vigilantism is a
real possibility.
The society that appeared so civilized when viewed from across the
pond isn’t as wonderful up close.
Life in America, even with all its flaws, is way ahead of anything we
have encountered here.
We also heard that England and the USA were two countries separated by a common language. Well, there are several versions of "English" spoken in England, just as some would say there are several versions of American spoken in the US. Not only do the words have different meanings, some of the accents are so difficult to understand that I might do better in Spanish. As with other places we have traveled, a smile usually helps with the translation and I was totally taken by surprise when a waitress whispered to me, "I love your American accent."
