Traveling English

 

As most people who know me are aware, I like to travel.  As I’ve said previously, I often travel alone, especially when I’m going to the UK.

Why the UK? Well, they speak English. And I promised my husband I’d save Australia and New Zealand until he could go for long enough to see them properly.

Okay, according to those who live in the British Isles, it’s probably a misstatement to say I speak English. I speak the American version of English.

We were probably all taught a few differences between British and American English the first time we read a school-assigned book by a British author (if it hadn’t already been translated into American), like the use of ou in words we only use o in (color/colour, etc.), extra syllables in some words (Aluminum/aluminium; specialty/speciality) and car parts (A: roof/B: hood; A: hood/B: bonnet; A:windshield/B: windscreen; A: parking break/B: handbrake; A: turn signal/ B: trafficator; A: tire/ B: tyre)

But there are a good many terms that can lead to some often funny misunderstandings.

The British term for clothing that covers your lower torso and legs is (are?) trousers. While we sometimes use that term in the US, we usually say pants. All well and good except that in the UK pants refers to underwear. So, just imagine the amusement of someone there overhearing two American women discussing not wearing pants to a party, but wearing a dress instead.

Of course, having American TV programs (telly programmes), and experience with American tourists, just hearing the accent would clue them in on what the women meant.

In the UK, you don’t stand in line (or on line for New Yorkers). You stand in a queue, or queue up. Asking someone in the UK where the end of the line is would probably result in at least a momentary blank look.

In the UK a jumper is not a sleeveless dress that is worn with a blouse underneath. (That would be a pinafore, which, on the rare occasion that word is still used in the US, means a summer dress with frills at the armholes.) A jumper is a pullover sweater. The open front kind is called a cardigan (a word also used in the US). Of course, American's don't necessarily differentiate; we call both types sweaters.

One thing to note: never, ever call anything a fanny pack. They call them bum packs. (Does anyone even use them anymore?) Fanny is a vulgar term for a woman’s private parts. It certainly makes one wonder about the British band, the Bee Gees’ song, “Fanny, Be Tender with My Love.”

Pedestrian crossings on the road – picture the Beatles’ Abbey Road cover – are called zebra crossings, and those in the UK generally pronounce that with a short e. (Rhymes with Debra) I've recently been told the animal is as well. I’ve never been to the zoo there. And the letter Z is pronounced zed, except when referring to the band, ZZ Top.

You won’t hear “yeah” as much there, the Beatles notwithstanding, but you will frequently hear “whilst” rather than “while” or “amongst” in place of “among”

Americans are a people of euphemisms, possibly because of the country’s puritan roots, so we will say bathroom, rest room, ladies’/men’s room when we actually want a toilet. I suppose we’ve been trained not to say toilet in public. (Our commercials even say "bathroom tissue" rather than toilet paper.) Not so the British. If you need a toilet, it’s best to just ask directly -- although they do have ladies' and men's rooms in places like airports and railway stations.

I once asked for a bathroom at an older-style B&B, and was shown to a room containing only a tub and a sink. Seeing my confused look, the lady of the house finally said, “Oh, you want the toilet,” and showed me to a different room containing a toilet and a sink (what we would call a powder room or half bath).

While this is not the norm, it’s best to be direct. Of course, if you can’t bring yourself to say the word, they also call it the loo or the W.C.

The British and Irish are amused by Americans using brand names in place of generic terms: Scotch tape (although they call it Sellotape, which is also a brand name), Jell-O for gelatin, and Kleenex for tissues. Americans are confused by the British and Irish calling Jell-O jelly, which is what we often call preserves.

While Americans tend to think the British make words longer than we do, this is not always the case. They tend to say fridge rather than refrigerator and zip instead of zipper. Yes, Americans also sometimes use the word fridge, but zip is always a verb, while the noun is zipper.

Some words are the same in both countries, only with a different accent. For example, garage has the accent on the first syllable in the British Isles and on the second in the US (except in some parts of the East Coast where it has been carved down to a single syllable: Grazh.)

Story has two meanings in the US: something to be read or a floor of a building. In British English, the literary one is story, while a floor of a building is storey.

Pavement in America is the road surface; in the UK it’s the sidewalk. In the U.S., the road is surfaced with macadam; in the UK it’s tarmac. Both are shortened forms of tarmacadam. In the U.S., only airports have tarmac, our word for where the airplanes land.

You’d think we’d all have the same word for newer inventions. Not so. Americans have cell phones. The British have mobile phones (pronounced with a long I) A GPS in America is a Sat-Nav in the UK, and American security cameras are the same thing as British CCTV.

For those only taking a short vacation – called a holiday in the UK – this is probably more information than you’ll need.  Knowing chips are French Fries, crisps are potato chips, a lift is an elevator, the underground or tube is the subway system, "way out" means exit, and the natives want you to think that only Americans go to McDonald’s is basically all you need to know to get by.

If you are spending an extended time in the UK, I’d highly recommend a book called British English A to Zed. It’s a list of British words and their American counterparts, although in some instances, I’ve never heard of what they call the American version, since I’ve only ever heard the British phrase used. That could be due to where I’m from and the fact that I’m only third generation American, so my parents and grandparents were raised with the old-world terms. The book also contains explanations of some of the expressions.

If you go, have a great time. Just don’t call your umbrella a bumbershoot. You’re not visiting the set of Mary Poppins.

To London, to London

 

[ There is a comment section, but no way for me to actually answer questions that are sometimes asked in those comments. I have decided to answer them at the beginning of the following month's blog. In October, someone asked how old I was when my dad died. I was 32.]

My favorite sport is travel. You may say that’s not a sport, but just trying to get through TSA at the airport is a marathon event: the dead lift of carry-on onto the conveyor belt, emptying your pockets and removing jewelry before the person behind you pushes past, and hand raises as you pass through x-ray, all while juggling a ticket and passport. And when you consider that a flight to Europe costs about the same as the basic equipment needed to take fencing lessons (my other sport), I stand by what I’ve said.

While I travel with my husband for vacations to destinations we’ve both never been to, when I go to the UK and Ireland, I usually go alone. His attitude is, “I’ve been there before; I want to go someplace different.”

My take is that there are still so many places in the UK and Ireland that I’ve never seen, I still need to go back.

Our conversation usually goes something like this:

Him: It’s cold there.

Me: It’s warmer there in the winter than it is here.

Him: It rains there.

Me: Surprise, surprise, it rains here, too.

Him: Not all the time.

Me: I spent a month in Ireland, and it rained one day in the Republic, and one day in Belfast while I was there.

But I don’t push the envelope. He knows I like to travel more than he does. He doesn’t mind. I go without him. There are places in the world I refuse to go. If he wants to see those places, he’s welcome to go without me.

You may wonder why I don’t travel with someone else, instead. I have done that. It has its pluses and minuses. On the plus side, you get to discover somewhere with another person and share the experience. Often my friends can’t afford the trip or don’t have the time off from work to go. Others have commitments that don’t allow them to go. Of course, the introvert me also needs my alone time. Traveling with someone else is exhausting.

I carefully plan my trips, and if someone is coming with me, I give them a copy of the itinerary. It isn’t because I have to be in charge. In fact, I ask the other person where they want to go, what they want to do and see. I’m usually met with, “Oh, you know places better than I do. Whatever you pick is fine with me. And when I give the suggested itinerary, they never tell me if they aren’t interested in something I’ve listed. They give me the, “Oh, this is great.”

I don’t like to arrive in a country with no idea what I’m going to do. I did that once, and it was disastrous. I thought the other person had planned that part of the trip. They hadn’t, and as a consequence, we saw only what we could figure out how to get to on foot with our trusty Tourist Information maps.

It is frustrating, though, when you’ve planned events for the day, especially when some include buying tickets (in advance) for a timed event, and the  other person isn’t ready on time. Sometimes we miss the event entirely.  Yes, vacations should be relaxing, but they shouldn’t be boring. And I hate wasting money, especially over someone else’s disorganization. When I was a child, my family almost never went on vacations.  I have worked too long and hard to be able to afford vacations to have someone else treat it like it’s no big deal.

It’s also frustrating, after you’ve done all the planning because the other person won’t participate, only to find they had their own agenda they didn’t tell you about, and spring it on you at the last minute.

I have also travelled with someone who constantly sabotaged me throughout the trip. It reached a point where a foreigner I’d met actually asked me if said person was really my friend.

I mean, really, if you ask me to make all of the decisions, and you’ve seen and approved all of them ahead of time, don’t play games with it. I don’t jam pack the schedule. I have one, or perhaps two things per day scheduled, and the rest of the time is to relax and do spontaneous things. There are even days with no plans.

Maybe I’m just difficult to travel with. It’s hard to see me from the outside.

It’s simply easier to travel alone.

Of course, traveling in general has its own issues.

Unless I’m going to Ireland, I have to fly into London to go anywhere in the UK. This is because there are no direct flights from where I live to places like Wales or Scotland. First I'd have to fly to Toronto, Washington, D.C., Amsterdam (!) or Chicago – which is in the wrong direction.

That means changing planes, which in turn involves collecting my carry on, standing in the aisle for an extended period because people refuse to wait for the row in front of them to get out first. They don’t stop to consider that would be faster.

Instead, the (expletive, expletive) people in the back race up the aisle before the doors are open, and often before the seatbelt light has gone off, in the wrongheaded idea that they need to be the first one out.

This is another reason I call travel a sport. I keep expecting to hear the winner of “first person out” announced once we arrive in the airport, along with medals for first, second and third place.

Then there’s the Olympic race to wherever your connecting flight is leaving from – usually at the other end of the airport – and resettling in another plane for the now at least seven-hour flight.

I’ll pay a bit extra for a non-stop flight, thanks.

Once at the final destination, there is a mad dash so as not to be the last one in line at customs.

Customs is its own special world. I usually arrive in London between 6 am and 10 am. Mine is never the only flight. There are several hundred packed like sardines in each flight, since they moved the seats closer together. Want more leg room? It’ll cost you an additional $80. Care to move to business class? Another $2,000, please. They know at the airport what time the various flights are due to arrive. They come in at the same time every day. There are hundreds, if not thousands of people, mostly sleep-deprived, waiting to have their passport stamped.

There are perhaps 20 customs kiosks, yet never, including pre-Covid, are there more than two customs officials for British and EU passports, and two for the rest of us. Bring a good book and maybe one of those canes that opens out into a chair; it’s going to be a while.

The next leg of my journey is the trip from Heathrow or Gatwick to Central London. After collecting my checked luggage, finding the correct lift to the trains or the underground and purchasing my ticket, the journey is lovely. The trains are clean, well-lit and smooth-riding. They leave often enough that they’re not jammed with travelers.

It’s a nice change after an overnight flight where, unless you’re gifted in being able to sleep anywhere, or wealthy enough for business class, you get little to no sleep. Often the first two hours of the flight are taken up with the noisy prospect of flight attendants offering some form of dinner, and the last hour pretending it’s been long enough since dinner to feed you breakfast. In any case, there’s too much noise – and often crying babies – to allow for any sleep. And four quiet hours don’t exactly provide the recommended good night’s sleep.

From Heathrow, the high-speed train arrives at Paddington station, where I maneuver my luggage – which, over the years I’ve whittled to the size of a carry on suitcase – and whatever small carry-on I have, which usually contains my electronic devices.

I usually spend my first day in London to reacquaint myself with the place that feels the most like home to me. If I’m leaving that night to go to Scotland, I need to take the tube to King’s Cross station. There, I can get the night train to Edinburgh or the train to Hogwarts.

Once at King’s Cross, I can check my bags at Left Luggage, and start seeing the sights I’ve chosen for the day.

If I’m going to Cardiff, Wales, I don’t need to leave Paddington, since the First Great Western train line leaves from Padding to Cardiff. If I am going directly there, it’s usually only a short wait for a train, and in two hours I’d be in Cardiff.

On my most recent trip, I opted to spend a few days in London, and take day trips to nearby places I hadn’t yet seen, as well as a few plays on the West End – London’s equivalent to Broadway.

Staying in London means there’s still the matter of baggage. Most places, check in time is 2 or 3 pm.  Since I arrived in Paddington before noon, I had to deal with what to do with the luggage.

Most hotels and B&Bs will allow you to drop off luggage before check-in time if you’ve made arrangements, at no additional charge. If they don’t, there’s Left Luggage at Paddington for a nominal fee.

I usually try to get accommodations near the railway station I’ll be leaving from, to keep from having to navigate stairs and escalators when I’m trying to catch a train. I’ve learned from past experience that the cheaper places are inconvenient to railway stations going elsewhere, and they usually don't have elevators, so you may have to carry your luggage up a few flights of stairs.

Getting luggage around London is its own event. It’s almost always necessary to take at least one underground train to get from place to place. (This assumes you’re not going to splurge for a taxi, which I have done in smaller cities that don’t have the underground.) I’m adept at minding the gap and getting my suitcases over it most of the time. Most tube stations usually have lifts or escalators to transfer you from different level platforms and to the street level.

There is sometimes a problem when the underground station is quite old and not attached to a railway station. In this case, sometimes there are neither lifts nor escalators, and it’s necessary to take a long stairway, made to seem longer if your luggage is heavy.

I have stood at the bottom of a set of tall stairs, looked up and sighed, gearing myself up to pick up the heavy suitcase and making the climb, pulling myself up the railing while my suitcase threatens to pull me back down.

Fortunately, my experience has shown that Londoners are incredibly generous people. Most of the time, someone on the way up the stairs will see me preparing, and simply pick up my suitcase without a word, and carry it up the stairs, then wait for me to get to the top to claim my bag. They have my eternal thanks.

Of course, on the tube there are signs telling people to give up certain seats to those with special needs, pregnant women and the elderly. While I have never been handicapped or pregnant, apparently people can look at me and conclude I’m a senior citizen. While my chronological age qualifies, my inner self still identifies as 25, so it’s both a shock and a bit of an embarrassment to have someone give up their seat for me.

What’s really difficult is trying to decline the kindness when I will be getting off at the next stop. People take it almost as an affront for this senior to decline the designated seat just because the train will be stopping about the same time my bum hits the seat.

Sometimes people will assist me with getting my bags off the train.

Often, the most difficult place to manage luggage is where I’m staying. It’s really important to check out the finer points of hotels and B&Bs. Some hotels are more like B&Bs unless they’re big name places like the Sheraton or the Marriot.

If you book through Bookings.com or Kayak.com or any of a growing number of such places, you can find out whether or not there is a lift in the hotel. You can also request a ground floor room, but they don’t guarantee you will get one. 

If the booking site doesn’t have that information, they usually have an email address for the hotel, and you can find out that way.

If you really can’t manage multiple flights of stairs with your luggage, you may have to opt for a name-brand hotel which is often – but not always – more expensive than those with more old-world charm.

Once free of suitcases, the underground, walking and taking in the sights are much easier. There is no need to rent a car in London. Aside from the extra city tax when you rent in the city, there are buses and the underground to go anywhere you want within the city, and trains for places outside the city. Walking from place to place is fairly easy.

The usual suspects – Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, Parliament, The London Eye, and Trafalgar Square – are walking distance to one another. Hyde Park, St. Paul’s, The Tower of London and Carnaby Street are fairly quick underground trips from there – just keep your Oyster card topped up.

If you want to be spontaneous with visits to things like the London Eye or the Tower of London, you’ll need to stand in line (or queue up, as they say in London) for a bit. But a quick visit online either to the place’s website, VisitUK.com, Viator.com or Bookings.com, among others before your trip can get you advanced tickets and allow you to skip the queues. And definitely take advantage of the hop-on-hop-off busses. It’s a great way to get the lay of the land, as well as a ride from place to place, if not the most direct one.

Traveling can be exciting, even with some of the drawbacks. Like all sporting events, it’s all a matter of planning, and being realistic about what you physically can do.

The best tip I can offer is make a list of places you want to go, make sure you don’t list more places than you have days for vacation, then cut the list in half, and you’ll be in the right ballpark. Even if you guess wrong and have extra time, you can always add things. Just remember that traveling from one place to the next takes time, too.

 

Muse Clues

 

“You write? It must be really hard to write a novel.”

That’s been said to me many times over the years. I think most people picture someone locked in a small room, ink-stained hands, and pieces of paper wadded up, lying about the room, the writer red-eyed, with hair tangled and standing on end from all the times they’ve run their hands through it in an anxious attempt to find the perfect word.

So, when I say, “Not really; it’s kind of like breathing,” I destroy their image. They don’t know what to do with that.

If I’m sitting and not reading, I’m frequently writing something.

“Where do you get your ideas?”

This is another question I’m asked, especially by those who aren’t so awed by hearing someone admit they write novels.

Often ideas hit at 2 a.m. on those nights when my brain won’t shut down, and old scenes from my life – especially upsetting ones – invade my head, magnify, and keep sleep from being a possibility. Mental rants and things I wish I’d said, morph into a scene, as yet unwritten, for whatever story I’m working on.

Or not.

Sometimes those rants morph into blogs or just something to keep me from falling asleep.

Unfortunately, 2 a.m. to sunrise is usually not a good time for me to write. If I’ve gone to bed, I’m tired. My usually meandering ADD mind is even more unruly than usual, making it difficult to put pen to paper – although I have done it once or twice. Instead, I toss and turn, trying to embed a particularly desirable turn of phrase into my mind to commit to paper the next day, when I can actually hold a pen.

And pen to paper is how I write. I’ve never been able to compose at a computer, I suppose because computers didn’t come into my everyday life until I was in my 40s. Yes, I’d used them before that, but I never had one of my own until then. I can write an email or a paragraph or two, but nothing longer.

Sitting in front of a keyboard doesn’t inspire me. In the dark ages, I couldn’t compose at a typewriter, either.

But whereas a typewriter only had keys and that cute bell at the end of the line, a computer is a dangerous thing, with many enticements: I wonder if I have any emails. Did I do my Wordle today? Is it time to make a click to feed shelter animals? I can’t think of the word I need; maybe if I play a game of solitaire, I’ll think of it – just one game (HAH!)

No, it’s safer to stay with what makes writing come easily: a pen and paper, and the satisfaction that my cursive looks relatively nice sometimes (yes, cursive).

I admit I’m as undisciplined as they come. Add a layer of attention deficit, and it’s amazing I’ve ever finished anything. It certainly explains why, although I started writing at about age 10, I didn’t finish a novel until I was 38. I actually had to put away one I’d been trying to write since I was 18, and decide it was never going to be finished. I started something new. It’s actually more surprising that I’ve written 25 novels and a cookbook.

As I said, I’m undisciplined. I can’t say I’m going to write from 10-12 every day. I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect a writer to work at it from 9 to 5. I write whenever and wherever. I use loose leaf, notebooks, legal pads, paper towels, whatever is available. I actually love writing on C-fold paper towels. I write at a desk, a table, floating in the pool, in railway stations, in the doctor’s office. All are fair game as places to write. (That sounds so Dr. Seuss: I will write on the train, I will write on a plane. I will even write by the Seine. But I will not write on a phone!)

I am your high school English teacher’s nightmare. He or she likely told you writers plan out novels and make outlines. They consult a thesaurus, and have the very best dictionaries. They consider every word carefully, and plot the story climax, leaving heaps of foreshadowing along the way.

My response to that is a carefully-planned eight-letter word beginning with B and ending with T.

I once had to do a research paper at my university for an OT class. Our teacher had us do an outline first, before we even did a review of the literature. I thought that was stupid, since I didn’t know whether or not I’d find the things I thought I would. But it was a good way to organize ideas, and have a sense of the order of the topics.

But even when you do a review of the literature, some books on your list may have only a mention of your topic as an aside, with no useable information.

I assumed we would do a revised outline once we found out what topics were out there. I thought that was a reasonable assumption, but when it wasn’t listed as part of the project, I asked the teacher if I could revise mine, because some topics I wanted information on had not been researched. She said no, that the outline was just a preliminary guide.

So I wrote my paper, and handed it in, along with the footnotes, bibliography, review of the literature list, and the outline (which she’d already graded.) I did get a B for the paper, which was on brain lateralization and handedness (yes, we lefties are always on about that stuff), and she said it was well-written. She also wrote in the comments that it didn’t receive an A because I hadn’t covered all of the topics in my original outline! Apparently, I was supposed to make something up about the things that were not to be found in other people’s books! It makes me understand why some people falsify their data.

It also makes me resist the idea of using an outline unless I write it after the fact.

Perhaps writers of historical fiction, or non-fiction writers use outlines and find them useful. But I’m not them. I find a character – or build one – and chat with them for a while. Then I give them a name, a particular height, hair and eye color, nationality, and other particulars that are only of interest to me as background information. I often make a family tree for them so I know their relationship to the other characters. If I like them a lot, I’ll make them left-handed (because I am). Then I give them a nudge to see what they’ll do.

They take me on their adventures, and I discover their story along the way. I don’t plan anything in advance. The characters tell me when it’s finished.

Yes, I have some idea of what the story is about when I start, but it doesn’t always stay quite where I expect it to. That’s why writing is an art, not a science.

Sometimes I want a character to say some phrase I particularly like. Having a great title or an interesting remark is better than icing. It’s more like cocaine (from what I’ve read).

But some characters aren’t enablers. They will put their hands on their hips and tell me, “I’m not saying that, and if you make me, I’ll make it sound stupid.”

Often, it takes several pages to even reach the point where the character will say the line. And usually, it sounds stupid. Then I have to delete all of those extra pages.

It’s usually best to simply trust the characters.

“I don’t want to be some character in one of your novels!”

That line has been flung at me more than once when someone was angry with me for something I’ve done or said (and never having anything whatever to do with my writing). My response is usually, “You wish!” or, “Not bloody likely!”

I write fiction. I do not use real people as characters. I don’t even base my characters on real people. I find that characters I’ve made up are much more amenable.

Something I actually do when I’m not writing or reading is to observe. I watch people. I pay attention (yes, really!) to situations I’m in or that others are in. I store them in my head for later use. Then I will use the situation, only peopled with my characters, who behave as themselves, not like the people who were in the actual situation.

An example is when my father died. It was obvious to me that he was already dead when the EMTs took him out of our house. He had CHF, and his heart simply slowed to a stop. He went peacefully.

However, the doctors at the hospital worked on him for well over an hour before anyone came to the waiting room to tell my mother and me that there was nothing more they could do.

I suppose because I knew it was coming – or perhaps I was in shock – I felt like an observer in the situation. When the nurse came to tell us, and asked if we wanted to see the body, my immediate thought was, “No, that’s all right. I believe you.” I had seen the arms and legs sprawled as he lay on the ambulance gurney, before they got him appropriately positioned at the house. I didn’t actually say anything to the nurse. My mother immediately said, “Yes, of course.”

So, when they were ready, we were led into the room where his body lay peacefully, dressed in a hospital gown and his trousers. I felt like a video recorder, observing as my mother smoothed his hair, kissed his forehead, remarking on how his head was still warm – which I thought was a bizarre thing to say.

I have never and will never kiss a corpse. I know, other people have no problem with this. The person is no longer there. Frankly I find many of the rituals associated with death somewhat on the grotesque side.

But I watched and the memory of everything about that room and my mother’s actions are etched in my mind. And then I accidentally brushed up against the icy hand and was shocked. She’d talked about his head being warm. His hand was not. I knew from experience that the body hoards its warmth in the core to protect the brain and other vital organs, so hands and feet are the first to lose heat. I simply hadn’t expected to come into contact with that hand.

I used the loss of heat in a hand of someone who had just died in a story, although the other circumstances were completely different.

And I used the hospital scene in another, as yet unpublished, novel.  The person in the same position as my mother in the story had nothing in common with my mother beyond being a woman who had just lost her husband. The experience fit the story. I just didn’t use real people.

While I can’t write the original on a computer, I can edit there. Once I put the written story onto the computer – which in itself involves several edits, I can read and edit, then let the story rest before having another go at editing.

My blogs are edited several times from being put on the blog site and scheduled months ahead of when they go live, until – sometimes – 10 minutes before the blog is available for anyone to read.

So, while I don’t prepare for writing the way my English teachers taught me – and English teachers and lit. majors are often some of the worst writers I’ve encountered – I do have my own methods, even if they’re somewhat scattered.

I mainly write the stories I want to read, but can't find in the library.

I’m sure many, if not most writers have their own method of creating a story that is not necessarily in keeping with what their teachers taught them. You do what works for you, and if it happens to be what the English teacher taught you, all well and good. If it isn’t, that’s okay, too.