Don't Say Fanny in England Unless You Mean Vagina

It's one of those clever sayings that has become so hackneyed you almost wish it had never been said
at all: "England and America are two countries separated by the same language." Hardy har, George Bernard Shaw. But I do like your beard.

He wrote Pygmalion, so I guess he knows something about the English language. And misogyny.

It's true enough I guess, although I would argue that of the things that constitute differences between the two countries, language is not that big of a deal compared to say, football or hats.

English as it's spoken in Boston no more closely resembles the English of Mississippi than it does of London. And I would imagine the same could be said for the differences between London, Dublin, Glasgow, Wales or even Liverpool.  "The United Kingdom, four countries separated by the same language," seems every bit as accurate.

That said, no one really makes a big deal over an American accent here. One person did tell me my accent was "nice" but I think that was actually meant as an acknowledgment that it could be a lot worse. Like a Texan or something. I have noticed that Londoners for whom English is a second language seem to have a lot of difficulty understanding me. One asked me if I was Australian, which I think indicates that if it's not what you're used to, it all just sounds weird.

One of my biggest fears in moving here is that Miller will develop an affected British accent. And like most of my fears about Miller it's really a reflection of a fear for myself. Namely, that in my Zelig-like desire to fit in, it is I who will adopt some kind of douche-y fake half-British accent - like the one that Madonna picked up while she was married to Guy Ritchie. I've definitely heard some Americans here slipping into some kind of over-articulated hybrid - like actually pronouncing the "t" sound in words like letter or butter. Poseurs.  (Interestingly, the pronunciation of the "t" in those words is variable in England. The upper class accent sounds a "t" while those of the cockney persuasion may omit the consonant altogether.)

I've put Kathryn on accent-supervision duty to monitor for any slip ups.

To help me to resist the urge, I've established some boundaries around vocabulary; words that if I started to incorporate into everyday conversation might put me further at risk. Here are some of them...

Words I will not say:

Chap

Mate

Bloke

Geezer

Innit

Bloody

Bollocks

Shag

Fuck all

Loo

Bum

Blimey

Daft

Quid

Arse

Bespoke

Bugger

Lorry

Telly

Brilliant (excessively - or god forbid "brill")

Cheers (I will say it when toasting but not as random filler or stand-in for "hello", "please", "thank you", "goodbye", and "I agree", to name a few.)

Words I will say grudgingly so as not to be misunderstood:

Lift not elevator

Trainers not sneakers

Trousers not pants

Maths not math

Football not soccer

Cutlery not silverware

Rear-end not fanny (Fanny means lady-parts here. Beware if you find yourself in a conversation about The Match Game.)

Words I am saying more than I used to:

Lovely (Because I've always liked it and it's not considered too prissy here.)

Sorry (Brits say sorry a lot  - sometime in lieu of saying "ouch". BTW, that link goes to a review of an awesome book about English culture. Very funny.)

Words I may not be able to resist:

Cock-up

Cheeky

Wank

Pissed

So that's that. Done and dusted.

Hampton Court Palace and Royalty: I Don't Quite Get It

They have a Queen here. I find it all extremely un-American. They've been at this having-royalty for a long, long time in England and it seems that the locals still aren't tired of it. Lots of European countries had this system back in the day but most of them have either abandoned it completely or have back-burnered their royalty to a status more akin to that of a talent-less celebrity. Not so the case here; the royals are 100% A –list. Americans are a sucker for the royals too. We might not go quite as crazy as the Brits, but based on the news coverage of the most recent royal birth, we have an inordinately healthy appetite for the lives and loves of royalty.

Personally, I've never been too interested in British royalty. My early exposure was limited to the soundtrack recording of the movie Camelot, the Adventures of Robin Hood, which pitted a scrappy outlaw against the monarchical establishment , and then when I was in high school, the marriage of Prince Charles and Lady Diana. I guess I can see the fairy tale appeal of Charles and Diana in satisfying a certain kind of vicarious fantasy-fulfillment for girls raised on Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty.  But frankly, I found the stand-in for Price Charming to be a letdown.

I was casually sympathetic toward Diana during the whole Camilla Bowles/divorce scandal. It seemed like she was a nice enough person who fell in with a bad crowd and then just wanted out.

That fairy tale came to a happily-never- after end with her tragic death – killed by paparazzi. At the time to me it seemed an awful lot of hue and cry over a car accident. About 100 people are tragically killed in car accidents every day in the US and Elton John doesn't phone-in a lyric rewrite for any of them.

And so my confusion remains: What makes the UK royals so special? These are just really rich people who have done nothing to earn their position besides springing forth from the right loins – not any different than Paris Hilton or any other socialite, trust-funder, professional shopper. And yet when they get married or have a baby it’s considered international news.

We went to Hampton Court Palace over the past weekend – one of England’s premier royalty theme parks. It is a pretty sweet crib, beautiful and majestic.

I was hoping to learn a bit about the history of the monarchy – maybe to help me to better understand what’s so appealing about these kings and queens. Well, in case you didn't know, Hampton Court Palace was most famously inhabited by Henry VIII.

Henry VIII is at the top of Kings and Queens I had ever heard of. I did a little research to bone up on Fatty McKillyourwife and a few other famous royals from history:

Henry VIII:

Despotic douchebag, serial murderer and religious reformer – although arguably his interest in single-handedly converting an entire country of Catholics into Protestants was motivated by a personal agenda to swap the used up old wife for a new one with a more likely uterus. That second wife was the famous Anne Boleyn, who he beheaded a couple of years later. He got married again less than two weeks after the head removal to his third wife who later died in childbirth. He waited two years, then married another gal, but had that marriage annulled, married again, cut her head off, then married a sixth time to a woman who to outlived him, and therefore managed to not get her head cut off. (An interesting side note: on one particularly sympathetic website, it’s stated that he “agreed” to the beheading of two of his wives. I didn't know kings were so suggestible.)

Henry VIII didn't just cut off ladies heads and get divorces. He had many “accomplishments”, although several of them could be interpreted as pretty nasty. For example, he started several wars with France. In his defense I think this was just something that the British did as a matter of course for much of their history, so it could just be chalked up to force of habit.

He also increased the power of parliament and took the holdings of the Catholic Church and returned them to Rome. Oh wait, no. He kept them for England, actually. A little Robin Hood action there – steal from the rich and give to the slightly less rich.

Richard the Lionheart:

I knew him as the “good King” from Robin Hood. He is mostly renowned as the military leader of the Third Crusade. OK, I’d say that’s a somewhat dubious claim to fame: religion-fueled aggression against Muslims. In the whole Muslim vs. Christian meme, it’s safe to say Richard’s popping down from Europe to wage war in the Middle East didn't do much to help prevent the subsequent 800 years of ill-will.
   
Queen Elizabeth I: 

She was the daughter of Henry VIII and his first murder victim, Anne Boleyn. So, that’s bound to make for a stable and well-adjusted attitude toward love and marriage. Perhaps not coincidentally, her nickname was “The Virgin Queen”. She got to be Queen after one rival was murdered and she herself was imprisoned by her own sister for a year. Her claim to fame, besides not getting it on, was ruling for a long time (44 years) during the aptly named Elizabethan period, which is well-known for the aptly named Elizabethan drama.

More examples abound of murdering family members, betrayal, persecution of Jews and Muslims and other atrocities on the parts of British royals and yet they remain a fixture of the British culture and a point of national pride. Go figure.

Of course, Americans are no stranger to this kind of selective blindness. After all, we do have a mass murderer on our $20 bill.

I'm On A Boat

We came to Richmond on a boat - an ocean liner called the Queen Mary 2. Technically you aren't supposed to call it a cruise ship (or a boat) but that's what it most closely resembles to the non-ocean liner snob set.

Since my company paid one-way transportation to London, the expense of the trip was offset by the amount of one-way airfare for the three of us. This worked to our advantage since:

1. One way airfare is a ripoff

2. An extra nine-year old in your cabin on a cruise ship is discounted, but 

3. A nine-year old on a plane is full ripoff fare.

I feel like I owe the world an explanation of how taking the QM2 really wasn't some ridiculous extravagance. I'm from Ohio where we aren't so comfortable with excess, but there is no denying that the QM2 is a bit excessive.

For one thing, it's excessively large.

For some reason it doesn't say in this picture, but the black shape is the Titanic.

When constructed it was the largest passenger ship in the world. It has since been eclipsed by several larger ships but it's a whopper by any standard. An ocean liner snob would point out that these larger ships are cruise ships, not you-know-whats. 

Also, it is largely populated by excessively old people. I saw a greater assortment of motorized conveyance than I ever dreamed existed, and while I like older people fine and am generally pretty patient, a horde of geriatrics on scooters can really jam up the buffet.

Which brings us to the most excessive aspect of the QM2: the dining.  There were many options for eating. There are three dining rooms, although your class of cabin dictates which ones are available to you; we were barred from eating at either The Princess Grill or The Queen's Grill and had to make do with The Britannia. (I find the punctuation of these restaurants' names a little suspect. It seems that they've foregone consistency and clarity to avoid the awkward pronunciation of  "Princess's Grill", but in the process have subtly implied that you may have the option of dining on the royal flesh of an heir to the throne.) These spots required some degree of dressing up, from shirts with sleeves at breakfast and lunch to three nights of "formal" dress, when most folks were dressed in tuxedos and evening gowns.

We enjoyed the dressing up. As you may know, we are not that fancy but it was fun to pretend. 

There were also a variety of other face-stuffing options - 24-hour room service, a pub, several poolside and specialty cafes, as well as a Todd English restaurant (NOT included in the all-inclusive inclusiveness).

Saving the worst for last, there was also the twenty-four hour a day binge-fest at the King's Court Buffet. We lovingly referred to it as "The Trough". Here, passengers who could not be bothered to put on trousers gorged on a variety of mediocre fare. Most of the time it was mobbed. We ate breakfast there a few times. It was also fun for a late night snack after the scooter crowd turned in. 

It rarely looked like this.

In addition to the excessive food, there was also an excess of activities and entertainment - dance classes (waltz, tango, samba, cha-cha and line), live music (including the fabulous Juilliard Jazz Orchestra), a casino, board games, planetarium, pub quiz, karaoke, library, Kid's Zone, shopping, hot tubs, deck chairs, pools, table tennis, paddle ball, live shows (a little bit Lawrence Welk-y), afternoon tea, a disco, Canyon Ranch Spa, two performances by a group from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, shuffleboard, bingo, a knitting group, bridge lessons, a series of lectures by the ship's architect to commemorate its 200th Atlantic crossing...

And finally, thanks to my excellent traveling companions, there was an excess of fun. I really had very low expecations of the experience - I wasn't sure if it would be too fancy or too boring or too whatever - but we all had a pretty fantastic time of it.

And at the end, we arrived in the UK. This is Miller, setting eyes on his new home from our balcony on the ship: the end of the beginning of an adventure that none of us will ever forget.

Sex Shops and Chick Peas

My office, Advent's office, in London is in central London in the city of Westminster. More specifically it's on Charing Cross Road near Oxford Street at the edge of Soho.

In London, Soho isn't short for anything like, for example, South of the Hoes. Rather, it has been historically known for being exactly where the hoes are. 

Soho is on the gritty side and has been for a long, long time. In days past it was notorious for skulduggery, thieves and prostitutes. It is the location that Robert Louis Stevenson chose for Mr. Hyde's hyde-out. Allegedly it still has hookers but I haven't seen any; I don't hang out much after work. There are tons of restaurants and pubs and live music venues including the legendary Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club.

Soho also has "Licensed Sex Shops" a.k.a. Ye Olde Dildoe Shoppes. Our office is right above one. 

I've been wondering what the process of certifying a sex shop for licensing would be exactly...

Inspector: Pardon me madame. I'm from the Ministry of Socially Accepted Perversion. I need to take a look around, if you don't mind terribly.

Shopkeeper: Please do. Always happy to comply with the Ministry.

Inspector: Very nice, very nice. Keeping the batteries fresh I see.. Oh no. This will never do. Look at the matted fur on these handcuffs. I'm going to have to write you up for that one.

Shopkeeper: Oh dear.

(The role of the shopkeeper to be played by Terry Jones in drag, of course.)

My favorite thing about Soho so far is the abundance of vegetarian-friendly dining. My favorites are a place called Beetroot (note how they reward the word "beet" with an extra superfluous syllable). Food for Thought - a very hippy traditional vegetarian vibe - and another spot called Hummus Bros. These "bros" have the best hummus I've ever had. They make the staff wear t-shirts that read "Give Peas a Chance". I sort of want one but I'm pretty sure the request would be frowned upon by the skinny pea-ladling hipsters behind the counter. 

I love the chick pea.

Where I Live

We live in London now. Here is a map of London. It's larger than I ever realized.

London is made up of twenty-one boroughs. We live in the borough called Richmond-Upon-Thames. Oddly, even though we live there, I've never heard anyone actually say “Richmond-Upon-Thames”. I don’t think even British people are comfortable sounding quite that British. Within the borough, we live in the town of Richmond. It’s a bit confusing because all these boroughs, towns and cities exist within London.

Several people I've met have told me that Richmond (the town) is the nicest place to live in London. I don’t have anywhere near enough context to agree or disagree with that assessment, so I just sort of nod my head and say, “Oh, we think it’s lovely.” I do know that it's very affluent. When I tell people where I live, they sort of give me the once-over as if to say, "Well, perhaps I've underestimated you." At least until they look at my shoes. It reminds me of when I lived in Mill Valley in the Bay Area - I'm definitely one of the poorer people on my block.

In the relocation division of labor, I was placed in charge of location scouting, school selection and flat acquisition. I turned for help to my friends Chis and his wife Katie. I've known Chris for a long time as a co-worker at Advent – he and his family relocated to London from the Bay Area a year ago. When I came out to London for a visit, they kindly agreed to take me around to see some different areas.

Unfortunately, I got really sick on that trip. I thought it was just a bad headache that wouldn't go away, but as the week wore on it kept getting worse and worse. Eventually I couldn't eat or drink because I was throwing up from the pain. A normal person would have gone to a doctor, but I kept assuming that it would get better. It was just a headache, after all. By the end of the week, I became so dehydrated and sick that I had to go to the emergency room in an ambulance. I was diagnosed with sinusitis. I've never had sinus problems before – I wasn't even stuffed up. They gave me some steroids and narcotics and I was back on my feet the next day. By the way, this was my first exposure to National Health. It rocked. The emergency room was pretty crowded but it was Friday night in a huge city and I was one of the few people there who had not been stabbed. All in all, it was very efficient and guess what it cost me? $0. Three cheers for civilization. More props for Chris and Katie - Chris actually came to the ER to keep me company and then they allowed me to recuperate at their place for the next two nights.

Thanks to this medical fiasco, I didn't get to scout too many parts of the city, and when I did I was mostly staggering around holding my head. (You don’t really stick out too much for staggering around London. There is a lot of staggering per capita here.) After my visit to the ER, Chris took me to see Richmond the next day. We walked up a hill along the side of a park that rolled down to the Thames. It was absurdly beautiful. 

So you can see, we really have Katie and Chris to thank for landing us in this gorgeous part of London. I must admit, however, that when Kathryn tells me what a great job I did finding a spot I've stopped protesting and just accept the credit. Good job, Jim. 

The guy who ate Tony's cereal

"From: James Janisch

 To #London First Floor

 Subject: London Office Newbie Mortification

Hello Co-Workers,

For the past two weeks I’ve been enjoying the delicious Dorset breakfast cereal that our generous and lovely employer, Advent Software, Inc., provides.

Today I learned that apparently this is not the case and that I’ve been helping myself to the delicious breakfast cereal that one of you brings for your personal consumption.

Apparently Advent adopts a “Beer? Yes; Cereal? No” policy when it comes to in-office freebies.

Firstly, to the person whose cereal I’ve filched, please accept my apologies. Secondly, I will be bringing in a few boxes on Monday by way of remuneration. It’s the least I can do considering that you’ve inadvertently introduced me to a fine product.

Signed, a Dorset Cereal fan,

Jim"

My new office, located here in Soho, provides an astonishingly generous collection of complimentary food: coffee, tea, juice, milk in three varieties, almond milk, soda, beer, sweets, biscuits (AKA cookies), fresh fruit. So when I saw the Dorset Cereals in both the 1st and 2nd floor kitchens, I assumed that they were fair game. As we are still adjusting to our new (higher) cost of living, I took liberal advantage - large bowls, on occasion for lunch as well as breakfast.

Much to my surprise, when I reached for a box this morning I discovered that all three were gone from their usual place in the cupboard. There was only a little tell-tale oat dust to mark their passing. My first reaction was confusion. Had they been removed? Had I overindulged and was the office manager sending me some kind of message? And then slowly the suspicion formed that perhaps I had made an error in my assumption that they were among the freebies. Had I committed one of the cardinal sins of the communal office kitchen? Had I eaten someone else's food?

As luck would have it, our facilities manager walked by as I was just considering IMing her to ask whether the cereal that I'd been eating were, in fact, the oats of another. I explained. And then she explained. No, the cereal is not free and yes, I was a cereal snatcher. A muesli marauder. The shame.

Of course the apology was accepted and the offer for replacement was brushed off. But I am afraid that the damage is done and that I will be known here from now on as the guy who ate Tony's cereal.