The Stranger in Albion

My name is Alina. I was born in Russia, but I live in the UK now. Sounds a bit like the first chapter from an English textbook by Bonk, doesn’t it? Never mind… It only shows that if you learn your lessons well, you can find your way into an English-speaking country.

My sister, who is the author of this blog, asked me to share my experience of life in Britain from the point of view of a stranger. So here we go, brace yourselves!

When I first moved to the North of England 3 years ago, I was surprised how much life here in the 21st century is similar to my childhood in the USSR.

Remember arcades in the park with the machines full of coins? You had to put more in, hoping they will push out your prize money. Remember the machines which were supposed to grab a toy and give it to you but they very rarely did? Well, they are very much common here…

Most people watch BBC news religiously and believe every word they say, like we used to watch news on Channel 1 in the 80s. If something bad happens, they blame Russians, like in the USSR Americans were blamed for everything from behind the iron curtain.

The roads made me think of Gogol, I mean the quote about the fools and the roads. It is pretty much true to life here…

The British still use diesel trains and in some areas a bus runs twice a day: in the morning and in the afternoon…

To cut a long story short, I felt at home straight from the moment I arrived in Albion. However, there are some things which surprised me.

One of them is garden centres. They are massive shopping areas usually outside the town centre which sell random collection of things, everything from furniture to clothes and very rarely plants. If an English person says: “Let’s go to garden centre”, it usually means that they fancy a day out and a cup of milky coffee.

Next thing is tea. Despite the common belief that the English are very refined tea drinkers, they only use tea bags and the loose leaf tea is an item of luxury. You cannot buy it in the every day shops. You have to make an effort and go somewhere, like a garden centre.

The English like cards. They have a card for every occasion: birthdays, christenings, first day at work, get well cards, sorry and thank you cards and the most weird of all: sorry for your loss cards when a member of the family dies. On every of these occasions the cards are being sent and the one who receives them, displays them proudly on the mantel piece (every house has a fire place, which sometimes replaces central heating). You can even get card organizers of all sorts, but you need to go to a garden centre for these.

The English love their pets, but we all know that. What I did not realize is that the pet products are more than popular here and people spend a lot of money on them. You can often see elderly ladies proudly pushing prams… with dogs in them. Doggy prams! And it goes without saying, that every pet gets a card on special occasions (available from the garden centres).

Children here start school at the age of 5 and finish at 18 but even after 13 years of schooling many of them would not know who the Bronte sisters were and what happened in between the death of the last Tudor and Brexit.

People do not read much here, but they watch a lot of telly. TV signal goes through special devices and you can pause a live program, go to the kitchen to make a cup of tea (using a tea bag) and then come back and resume watching. And if you missed your favourite show you can always go back and watch it on catch up (the expression comes from an idea: you’ve missed the program, but you can still catch up with it because it is still available for watching).

The biggest holiday here is Christmas and everybody cooks the same festive meal: roast turkey, potatoes, carrots, parsnips and Brussel sprouts. And then with a full belly they lie on the sofa watching old films on catch up and looking at Christmas cards on the mantel piece (they never forget to count them and make a note who has remembered and who has forgotten to send them).

English people are very dependent on what their neighbours think about them. It is very important to be seen doing the right thing. But what if nobody is looking? Well, it is almost incomprehensible here…

I could go on and on, or I could make a conclusion now. But the point is that there is no conclusion because life flows, things happen and people remain people, even if they buy tea from garden centres and send you a card when you die.