He said people mostly buy them to make tables.
Lovely.
There was the café owner in Lyme Regis. It was raining, I ordered a tea with clotted cream and scones, and as I was enjoying it he started in.
"Me doctor won' let me 'ave it anymore, you know. It'll kill ya, that clotted cream will. Fill your arterials, makes em hard as bone."
Fascinating conversation, this is. I was wondering if I should pay him for his cream tea, his medical advice or his encouragement? Great salesman, he is.
They make a sport of driving here. It goes like this: we will tell you the speed limits when we want you to slow down (say going into a town) but when you leave we won't tell you the new speed limit.
You see, they have the "national speed limits" here, so they don't have to waste money putting up all those pesky speed limit signs.
Brilliant! Save the taxpayers a pence or two on that.
So, what they have instead is what I like to call the "carry on" sign. It is a white circle, black border around it, with grey diagonal lines. It means, in effect, "Thank you for slowing down and not running over our children. Carry on, then."
So... see any problem then? You are just off the plane from the US, or Germany. Is the national speed 60, 65, 70 mph or 110, 130 or unlimited kph? Or is it a secret?
Well, just FYI it is 60 on single carriageway roads, and 70 on dual carriageway. Easy now, isn't it?
The other trick is to get you to a crawl, doing 30 through town, then tell you to carry on, and right around the next bend is a sign that says Reduce Speed Now! It is their version of a caution sign, and you learn to ignore them.
All through the UK they use electric showers.
Brilliant.
Electricity and water. That's a good mix now, isn't it? Fowking brilliant genius came up with that one, no? You pull a cord in the ceiling to turn on the power. Be careful, they look just like the cords that are for the old people, "I've fallen and I can't get up!" alarms. Gail gave a yank on that one by mistake, and the alarm siren went off, proving that works. Anyway, yank on the power, turn on the water, and try to figure out which setting to use. Some are easy: cold, tepid, hot. Others are: cold, economy, high, or, low, medium, high. Perhaps it might say unmarked, scratched-off, ___o___. The trick is to figure out which end of the knob is pointing to the setting. Adjust the other dial between hot and cold, and dance around waiting to see what happens. Setting it up takes longer than the shower itself.
Electric shower.
Beautiful.
Oh, these wild and crazy people in the UK.
There is just a certain je ne sais quoi in all this.