Ten things I find odd about the English, and living in England:
1) The kind of schools where only the very rich attend due to the astronomical tuition and boarding fees are called "public schools."
2) The Monarch can be Jewish, Muslim, or a Jedi, but under the Act of Settlement of 1701 Roman Catholics are banned from the throne. It also laid down that no one married to a Catholic could succeed. So bang goes my plan to marry one of Sarah Ferguson’s daughters.
3) Statistics show that about 25% of Londoners were born outside the UK and there are over 300 different languages spoken in the capital – all of these people are usually to be found ahead of me as I try to buy my ticket at the train station most Monday mornings.
4) Greetings are peculiar. It's not "How are you?" when greeting someone, it's "You awright?". The response to which is “Awright”
5) The Fear factor: Nearly twenty years here and I’m still alive. Sometimes I wonder how? Those first few months, I didn’t think I was going to survive. The city was under the cosh of knife-carrying gangs of feral youth – millions of them according to The Evening Standard – and they wanted your phone and laptop (money is yesterday’s crime). It felt like Harry Brown meets London Town, only I didn’t feel like Michael Caine. Last August, some of these potential tormentors joined the London riots, and funnily enough they didn’t want money then either, just the latest electrical goods and a reason to fight the police.
6) Sadly, no one speaks in Cockney rhyming slang. Other than for the fact that I grew up on Only Fools and Horses, I’d never have heard of terms like Me Old China, You’re having a Giraffe, or Gone for a Burton. You just don’t hear these old sayings. Today, London-speak is encapsulated by one word – innit – a five-letter blip which manages to get parked at the end of sentences instead of a full stop.
7) They are incredibly tolerant. For a country that pretty much every terrorist nutbag grouping (my own country men included) have tried to blow up at some point or other, the English remain tremendously tolerant and very proud of their diversity.
8) There is only one type of lemonade. Ask for red lemonade and you get a blank stare
9) The Guinness in Irish bars really is awful – the only place you will get a decent pint is pub with names like “George the first” or “The Dog and Duck”, never ever in a place called “Timmy Mac Toohills” or the like
10) Cricket
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