Christmas Break

I return to the UK for Christmas tomorrow for ten days. I shall not have an opportunity to post during my absence, so I wish you all Happy Holidays (To use the standard US greeting)

City Life

In the UK, the word city has a very specific meaning; it is a town that has been granted a Letter Patent by the monarch granting that town the right to call itself a city. Most population centres in the UK are thus either towns or villages.

Here in California the words town and city have the same legal meaning and a municipal council can choose whether to call the place a city of town. Hence virtually every population centre seems to use the word city to describe itself, including my current home of Fairfield. Nearby Marin City had a population of just 2560 in the 2000 census.

Death by Chocolate

In California you can:
Marry at the age of 18
Purchase a shotgun at the age of 18
Vote at the age of 18
Drive at the age of 16

But you cannot purchase liqueur chocolates until the age of 21.

I am glad that the lawmakers of this fine state understand the importance of candy with a tiny amount of alcohol requires so much extra maturity. No 18 year olds on a Godiva fuelled drive by shooting rage in this state.

Deck the SUV

The US fascination with Christmas decorations continues to astonish me. Yesterday, I saw a 4×4 vehicle (SUV in American) with a Christmas wreath attached to the front grille. I guess this vehicle is not being used off-road on a frequent basis, as the wreath did not look an easy object from which to remove mud. (In this instance the US is just like the UK, the majority of these vehicles never leave paved roads)

Power and Tiles

There are a couple of features in our rented house here in the US that I have not seen in the UK; one good, one bad.

Several of the mains sockets in the house appeared not to work, but after I found several wall switches that seemed to have no effect I was able to figure what was happening. The sockets are controlled from the switches. This allows you to plug in lamps and turn them on and off when you enter or leave the room. This is a lot more efficient than turning on an overhead light, going to the lamp and turning it on, and then going back to switch off the overhead. It would be helpful if the sockets were labeled, so you did not wonder why the vacuum cleaner was not working.

A less good idea, but one which seems extremely common in US houses, is using tiles on kitchen counter tops. While it is easy to wipe the tiles, the grout between them is far more difficult to clean. A solid surface, even Formica, seems a whole lot better. When we come to purchase, we will either avoid homes with tiled counter tops or make replacing it a priority.

The Postman

Unless you live in a flat in the UK, your post is delivered through a slot in your front door. The slot is called a letter box, although it is usually a flap covered slot through which post is pushed and it falls onto the floor.

Here in the US mail is delivered into actual boxes that are outside the house. In the house in West Covina, that was my residence until yesterday, the box was on the front porch. One more step and the postman could have pushed the mail through the front door, if there was a slot for that purpose. I can understand the advantage of these boxes for the mailmen if they are by the roadside at the start of long drives, but in this instance they offer no such advantage over the UK system.

The house which we are renting in Northern California has an even stranger arrangement. There are a set of boxes for the street all placed together. These boxes are numbered, but not in a way that corresponds to the house numbers. If the postman puts mail in the wrong box, there is no way to return to the correct recipient other than to do go round and knock on their door, as there are no letter boxes available. Moreover, there are two sets of boxes and each set starts their numbers from 1, increasing the opportunity for error. The boxes are not at the start of the street, but at the end of the cul-de-sac that seems to offer maximum inconvenience for both postman and recipient. Moreover, there are no slots, each box has a lock. Presumably the postman has a master key and needs to unlock each box in turn to deposit the mail, which again seems more complicated than the UK system.

Change in Title

The more observant among you may have noticed that the tite of the blog has changed from A Brit in LA to A Brit in California; this reflects my move from Los Angeles to the north of the state. Since A Brit in Solano, would mean little to those not familiar with US counties, I have changed it so that it covers both my previous and current location. The URL (web address) remains unchanged.

Golden State Freeway

I have just driven 360 or so miles, in my wife’s car, North up the state of California; most of that distance on a single road, The Golden State Freeway (Interestate 5) I am writing this in a motel in Oakland, waiting to pick up my new car and my wife from the airport.

As a geek Living in Los Angeles one forgets that in addition to entertainment and hi-tech California has a major agricultural industry. California’ agricultural revenue is over twice that of any of the other forty-nine states and is the world’s fifth largest supplier of food and agricultural produce. Driving up the freeway, with the cruise control set at 75mph, brought this fact into stark focus. For hours, all I saw on either side of the road were orchards, vineyards, cattle grazing, and citrus groves; apart from the occasional rest stop offering fuel, fast-food, and vile coffee. Road signs showed the distances to San Francisco and Sacramento, roughly equidistant and counting down all too slowly from 300 miles; no other town seemed worthy of note and nothing that could be mistaken even for a village could be seen.

It is this seemingly endless distances that make flying such a popular option, especially as the seven odd hour drive to Sacramento takes fourteen hours on the direct express train.

Going Native

I think that I remain essentially British in my outlook, but I have detected a few worrying signs of going native since my arrival in the US.

I now regularly drink an “Arnold Palmer”, this is a non-alcoholic mixture of iced tea and lemonade. All but impossible to obtain in the UK, as iced-tea is not available and lemonade is a very different drink. The drink gets its name because it was the favoured beverage of the golfer Arnold Palmer. In common with most soft drinks in bars and restaurants it is served as a “bottomless” drink. This means that your server will continue to bring you endless refills as long as you are at the table.

I am starting to use words like server and beverage when I mean waiter and drink.

If I am driving out before I have finished drinking my coffee I pour the rest into a commuter mug, place it in one of the car’s cup holders and drink on the go.

Yesterday, I felt it noteworthy enough to comment that the people across the street were washing their own car.

However, I still would not talk to a stranger on a bus, train, or plane. I continue to put a U in words such as favoured. I still refer to “The Beautiful Game” as football and not soccer.

Christmas Lights

I wrote a few weeks back on the start of the “holiday” decorations, but the season of commercial exploitation moved into top gear once Thanksgiving had passed. On the evening of thanksgiving the first houses started hanging lights outside and placing animated illuminated reindeer in their front yards. Every shop is now playing nothing but Christmas music, the only exception was a rendition of “The Red Flag” in a Marshall’s stored last week. (For the irony deficient among you, I know the tune is shared by a German Carol “O Tannenbaum”)

In the UK there has been an increasing tendency to add to drape once house in lights, but here in the US it seems that at least half of the houses are ablaze with festive contributions to climate change. I do see some beautifully decorated and illuminated houses as I drive around the local streets, but all too often I feel the need to travel with a thesaurus to supply me with synonyms for the word tacky.