When as an Australian, you encounter a sign like the one that (I hope) appears below.
You know not only that you are not in Australia…you are most emphatically in England. Names like Proklington Green, Toddington, Heathers Corner, Rickmansworth, Smelters Meadow, Dunstable, Swithersley Common…tend to reveal something. And of course, it’s possible I am just making up some of these names…but who would ever know?
Apart from the above, some of the differences I have noted include these:
-It’s very green here. New South Wales is not (mostly) so green
England seems to have pastures. Australia seems to have bush.
-The English (and this might just be me, or possibly I am passing a lot of non-English in the streets) tend to not make eye contact. Australians do this more. What does this all mean?
-UK traffic is BUSY and people are assertive in their movements to enter flowing traffic, and yet I hardly hear a horn sounded. Australians, or to be fair and more precise, Sydney drivers, tend to toot if you hesitate a pico second at the lights or anywhere else. I don’t have to ask what this difference means.
-Staying in an old building here means staying in something from the 1600’s. Staying in an old building in Australia may well mean a 30 year old Travelodge.
-There is advertising here in the UK…and maybe we are seeing select parts of the country…
But it really tends to be less obtrusive.
It seems physically smaller…and if attached to a building at all, is often not at right angles to it, or if it is, it is much smaller. Big cheers for the UK I reckon…
And there is other stuff…all revealing about here…and home. And you really could do worse than visit here in the spring.
