Close your eyes (and think of England)

A few weeks ago I spent a few days visiting the UK. Not so much for the tourist attractions but for the fact that my friend Merel's natural habitat these days is in and around Coventry. Since both of us lost most of our money while vacationing in Italy earlier this summer, we spent our days together watching sitcoms on TV and walking around Coventry and Birmingham wondering which 16 year old girl was and which 16 year old girl wasn't pregnant.... in Dutch obviously, I don't know about Merel but I imagine most 16 year old English girls can probably kick my ass quite professionally, pregnant or not.

Every time I spent some time in England there's a few things that always surprise me, and usually pleasantly. For one thing, I love the way the country side looks. I love the fact that they have Queer as Folk on dvd in practically every cd/dvd store there is. In a really weird way I love how the cars drive on the wrong side of the street (for possible UK readers; yes, it is the wrong side). But mostly, I love the English.

I haven't been in France recently, and the times I have been there I didn't feel unwanted or hated by the reportedly bitchy local French population (then again, last time I was in France I was 5), but I can understand how people might react a little annoyed at tourists. Even in Amsterdam, a city where most people tend to be quite laidback, the police and the people running the public transportation system are usually not the most friendly to tourists screwing something up.

From what I've experienced, not in England. Last year, when I was in the UK to see Zucchero perform in London, I had to travel quite a lot by public transportation (trains, subway, busses the works) and I'm pretty sure that in the three days I was in England I broke every single rule there is. I rode on subways with a wrong ticket, I rode in a train without any valid ticket or pounds to buy one, I payed for a ticket in a bus and then didn't collect it from the machine, I tore my train ticket up after leaving the train but before passing the point where my ticket was to be checked again. I did everything wrong I could do wrong.

Now, if I would have done stuff like this in Amsterdam, no matter how well I could explain what I did wrong and why I did it, I would have ended up with half my years salary in fines and a bunch of grumpy people who work for the railway company bitching at me. Again; not in England. The men and women that checked my (torn up) tickets, answered my extremely stupid questions and helped me understand why my train had been cancelled and how I was to get to the airport in an alternative way while I was completely stressing out, were nice, friendly, and most of all easygoing.

Oh, and they called me 'love' (well, at least the women did).

There's only one problem I have with the English: I don't understand what the fuck they're saying. It's not the language that is a problem. After all, as you can see on this blog, English me fery are good. It's the accents. It took me ten minutes to figure out that the, again awfully nice, person selling me drinks meant "Do you want ice" and not "Do youwnjfksoisisuisdize?". The only reason I figured out what the extremely friendly woman selling me a gigantic potato with even more tuna salad meant when she asked "Ya want batr?" was because she was pointing at some butter with her knive. And people from Brmnghm.... well, they were all extremely nice but god knows what they said to me.

So, in short; people of England, I'm totally in favor of getting you guys to run the globe again for a couple of decades, but could ya please lose the accents???