An American Redneck’s Guide To The United Kingdom
I recently had the opportunity to spend a little time in Great Britain. I have traveled fairly widely in the past, but much of that was on Uncle Sam’s nickel. Those trips were neither comfortable nor terribly relaxing. This time, it was for fun. As a card-carrying unwashed redneck Southerner, I’ve compiled a few observations about life amidst our more civilized brethren across the pond.
This is me with our sparkly Kia Insect rental car. It wasn’t
actually named Insect, but it should have been.
Driving
Yes, they do drive on the wrong side of the road. And, no, they don’t really care what the rest of the world thinks. That’s actually pretty cool.
There are 195 sovereign nations on planet Earth. Of them, 165 drive on the right. The English feel inexplicably compelled to be different. There are prominent signs on the curbs at pedestrian crossings admonishing foreigners to look right before crossing the road. Apparently, idiots like me witlessly wandering into traffic is a significant problem thereabouts.
Every time I pulled out of a parking lot, I had to remind myself not to drive into oncoming traffic. With the exception of the standard octagonal stop sign, all of their road signs are hopelessly convoluted as well. I did a little judicial Googling in advance to study traffic signage just so I wouldn’t do anything inordinately stupid.
Everything about British roads is slower and smaller than their American counterparts. There is a roundabout to interface two perpendicular motorways about every 37 meters in the UK. The speed limits were generous, but that doesn’t mean squat. We rarely had more than a mile or two worth of straightaway before we encountered yet another accursed roundabout. A Ferrari owner could die of morbid mechanized frustration in this place.
Cars here are absolutely tiny. There are no minivans. I suppose folks with big families just strap their extra kids to the roof. A typical hulking American SUV or a proper pickup truck wouldn’t last a week, even if you could somehow afford the expensive European gas to feed it. British gas is sold in liters. As it relates to European gasoline, a liter seems to be about three tablespoons.
My rental car was a Kia Insect or a Kia Dust Mite or some such. It had four doors but resembled a go-kart or Hot Wheels car than an automobile. That’s just as well. British roads were designed around horses, and anorexic ones at that.
In many rural spaces, the roads are legit one lane. Crossing old stone one-lane bridges is governed by the honor system. If two cars mount the bridge simultaneously from opposite directions, one is expected to voluntarily back up. If the U.S. were like that, the resulting conflicts would precipitate firefights featuring automatic weapons, hand grenades and napalm.
Litter
London is a big, massive smelly city just like any other big, massive smelly city on the planet. My aversion to such rank congestion is the reason I live half an hour outside of an already small Southern town. However, rural Britons really suck at littering.
My own country is breathtakingly gorgeous and incomparably wealthy, yet we toss foul crap out of our cars with wanton abandon. My rural road is veritably carpeted with discarded beer cans and sundry similar detritus. By contrast, in rural spaces at least, the UK was maddeningly tidy. You could safely eat off of the shoulders of their motorways.
There are also no roadside billboards. You don’t realize how anxiety-producing it is to have the three-story grinning visage of some blood-sucking trial attorney peering down at you from alongside the road until they’re gone. The Brits wouldn’t stand for that.
The entire nation is covered in a thin patina of sheep, like billions of them. I never saw mutton on the menu in a British restaurant. I have no idea what they do with all of them. Somebody somewhere has got to be using all that wool. Someplace cold would be my guess.
Many parts of London are both gorgeous and ancient.
However, it can be tough to find a restroom.
Peeing
You actually have to pay to get into many of the restrooms in the UK. I had to go while in Hyde Park and discovered to my profound discomfiture that I needed 20 pence to gain entrance to the public toilets. I actually had three hundred pounds Sterling in cash in my pocket, but the restroom entry machine only accepted touchless payment options. My credit card wouldn’t do that.
Eventually, in desperation, I just climbed over the barrier. As a visiting American, this was not my proudest moment. Every inch of the country is covered by CCTV cameras, so I am quite likely a felon in Britain today without even knowing it. Their cops don’t carry guns, so their threshold of what constitutes a proper crime is lower than ours.
If somebody tried to charge money to use the john in America, the entire facility would, in short order, be covered up completely with a rancid mountain of feces and urine the size of an aircraft carrier. Then some redneck would wrap a tow chain around the place and yank it off its foundation with his Ford F-950 Climate-Cooker 9000 pickup simply to protest. God bless America …
