Generally when I meet an American, once they have been politely corrected in their assumption that I’m Australian (honestly! I couldn’t sound less Australian if I tried) they ALWAYS say; “oh I have a friend in England/ I lived there once/ my next door neighbour’s son could point it out on a map”….or similar.  Then they say: “I lived in Moss Side/ Dagenham/ Milton Keynes” or somewhere of comparable grimness. “Do you know it?”

At that point I generally make “mmm that sounds lovely but it’s not very close to where I lived” sort of noises. I’m now of the mind that I’d be best off avoiding the conversation completely. I was thinking I could just say I’m from the Isle of Wight (which from memory is pretty uniformly pleasant). Or maybe I should just invent a small European country to come from. Bet they won’t have family there.

I’ve been here in the land of the large for a little while now, but I’m still amazed at the sheer scale of some thing. Take pharmacies for example…

I’m used to popping into Boots for a couple of plasters or a severely rationed pack of Ibuprofen. There’s not much choice and most of the good stuff even for colds and flu lies hidden behind the sadists at the counter who like to discuss symptoms VERY LOUDLY.

In America, packs of things are massive – you can buy jumbo pots of Aleve, Aspirin, Ibuprofen etc off the shelf. You also are rarely far from a chemist – there seems to be a warehouse sized one on every other block in Florida – presumably to cater for the legions of geriatrics and their complex medication schemes. They really are ENORMOUS. In fact – many are so big that they have drive through (sorry drive thru) windows, presumably so people can pick up their obesity medication from the comfort of their cars.

When you do venture in, you notice that there are WHOLE AISLES dedicated to conditions you weren’t aware were such a problem – I recently counted approx 20m purely dedicated to incontinence, but diabetes generally also has a vast square footage. Then there are the remedies for conditions I had never heard of. Such as Monkey Butt. I haven’t dared investigate exactly what this is for fear of finding out, but based on the other products in the general vicinity it has something to do with friction and/ or moistness. Eeuuuuw.

At the beginning and end of each bridge here are signs that denote the beginning and end of “Bridge Jurisdiction”. I can’t help wondering what exactly the scope of that jurisdiction is. Beyond the upkeep of the structure itself, can the nameless body responsible for it set its own laws, then act as judge, jury and executioner in its own domain. Maybe the bridge jurisdiction includes the ability to perform weddings and bar mitzvahs. What can they do? We need to know.

We know that time is money but Americans seem too busy to actually write out words properly. This leads to all sorts of lazy spelling – such as ax, drive thru, lite, nite and my pet hate “EZ” (that’s “easy” for the uninitiated – *shudder*).

The most incomprehensible examples of all appear on road signs – it seems that every “Twp” (township) has a “byp” (bypass), and the towns themselves are positively riddled with “ped xings” (zebra crossings – or maybe pelican ones). Now this would even make sense if the signs were tiny. But they aren’t – they can manage to write something like “Harrisburg” then the next line is Byp.

I guess we Brits have the last laugh. The yanks might be able to speak the language (sort of) but they’ll never get the hang of the spelling.

This gem was spotted in Northern Pennsylvania in the Pocono mountains today. Words almost fail me…although I think they missed a trick with the logo.

Isn’t it weird that you don’t notice something until it isn’t there anymore? Last week I went back to the UK. It was a visit that was looong overdue and not least of all because I’d started looking at preppy cardigans thinking “ooh that’s nice”. Anyway, what jumped out at me once it was absent was how EARNEST many Americans are. They just take themselves a little too seriously sometimes. So there’s a lot of good that comes out of unwavering self belief – just I think I prefer the British self deprecating approach. I mean, you have to be able to laugh at yourself or you are an uptight prig. Oh hold on…

Clarkson recently captured the difference in a recent  article “… when the first four Brits were sent to the new Top Gun academy in California, they didn’t much care for the “Maverick” and “Iceman” style of call sign adopted by their American counterparts. But their hosts insisted, so they came up with “Cholmondley”, “Dogbreath”, “Alien” and “Spastic”.”

On a wholly different note – we Brits really do have fantastically bad teeth compared the yanks. I had never really noticed before.