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.
