Things I'm Looking Forward To Doing Now That I'm British: Number One

[nanila]

In order to get myself to write, I'm making a list of Things I'm Looking Forward To Doing Now That I'm British, to be posted daily.

1. Lying outrageously about distances. When a British person - especially a Londoner - says to you, "Oh, that restaurant/bar/attraction is only a five minute walk from here," you should NEVER EVER believe them. Take that number and multiply it by two. If you're not fully able-bodied and/or willing to run there, multiply by four. When I was five months pregnant, someone told me - and despite having lived in the UK for years, I believed him - that a place was "a fifteen minute walk from here". It took an hour for me get there.

So I apologise in advance to all the people who are about to get royally cheesed off with me when I tell them that Piccadilly Circus is "a ten minute walk" from South Kensington. Because no, no it isn't. Not unless you're fucking flying.

Comments

[liseuse]

Except in Home City, where we're probably not lying because Home City is the size of a shoebox and everything is basically ten minutes away. People look at us suspiciously when we give answers about distances.

[cosmolinguist]

Hence that saying "In America a hundred years is a long time and in Britain a hundred miles is a long way." It feels like such a long way because you were told it was a short walk.

[nanila]

Ah, but what sort of lies do you tell about the distance from Home City and other Tiny Cities within its orbit? I bet they're pretty good, and involve stories about "It's only 15 minutes on the train/motorway", whilst failing to mention that the train only runs every other Saturday and the motorway moves at the speed of treacle.

[nanila]

Alternatively, because there were the wrong sort of leaves on the track and the rail replacement bus broke down in Farnham (the only exception to this rule being Farnham).

[liseuse]

*whistles innocently*

[oursin]

You can also cheerfully state 'You can't miss it!'

Even though people will miss anything, including the sign saying Euston Station that they are standing under and going 'Euston station? where is?'

[pretty_panther]

Urgh yep. British people have no concept of distance and time. I don't think it helps that we use so many systems of measurements in day to day life. And we are also good at failing to mention that '5 minutes that way' might involve a close off to the side, down a side alley, along a bridge and back up onto a path with a fork in it and no signs. So yeah, a straight line might be 10 mins that way but you can't walk 5 mins in a straight line x__X

One thing USA has over the UK is the whole Block thing. I mean, I'd hate having to memorise the numbers in cities but some British cities are just CLUSTERFUCKS.

[quinara]

But... When you get to Hyde Park Corner you're basically there!

[foxfinial]

Farnham!

(I get excited when people know obscure towns/villages near where I grew up.)

[caulkhead]

Advanced version:give directions to strangers according to what used to be there (I caught myself about to do this the other day: "And you go past the old Eurostar terminal...")

[cosmolinguist]

One of the first things I learned upon moving to Manchester is that House of Fraser used to be Kendal's. I'm so grateful to the first kindly old man who gave me directions involving it, for correcting himself and adding the name by which I'd actually recognize it, because in the almost-decade since I don't think I've ever heard anybody call it House of Fraser; everybody calls it Kendal's.

[majoline]

Whoa, this post is nostagia station. *abruptly misses London like mad*

[pulchritude]

What is this block thing? Like regular residential segments or? I never really understood the concept.

[nanila]

I knew it!

[nanila]

The way I always understood it, in most American cities a block is literally the distance between one intersection and the next, because most of the streets are laid out in a grid system.

The description becomes a bit more fluid in the suburbs. There, you might refer to the entire length of a residential street as "my block".

[nanila]

OH YOU. CHEEKY.

[nanila]

Yes, yes I can. And I will.

My favourite incident of this was being stopped by some very sweet Spanish tourists who were looking for the Natural History Museum. While standing on Cromwell Road.

[nanila]

Yes, exactly! It's entirely possible that the multiplier could only be a factor of 2, if you know the public footpath that goes through a car park and behind the disused water silo.

[nanila]

I always wanted to know if the choice of Waterloo as the original terminus for the Eurostar was a deliberate "Nyah hah" by the Brits to the French.

[nanila]

Every time I come down, I miss living in London. My work schedule is a nostalgia carousel.

[ironed_orchid]

Ha! Yes.

[liseuse]

I do this alllll the time. Sometimes I catch myself, halfway through, and give an apologetic laugh and start again, but I have a horrible fear that I don't catch myself very often.

[kerrypolka]

When St Pancras was about to become the new terminus, the final train from Waterloo to Paris left at 18:12, which was very cheeky indeed.

[nanila]

Usually I try to avoid catching the eyes of lost-looking tourist in South Kensington. At the moment I'm not, just so I can test my skills!

[askygoneonfire]

The problem is when you start believing your own underestimation of distance/time. I am frequently late in Brighton thanks to my - and the rest of the city's joint belief that everywhere in Brighton is a 10 minute walk. It's not.

[pulchritude]

I don't understand how that would be an advantage over the British system? /confused S:

[caulkhead]

There's an urban myth that Churchill insisted that his funeral cortege go through Waterloo just to annoy De Gaulle, who would have to attend.

[nanila]

Well, I can't speak for the original poster, but city blocks in American cities tend to be of fixed length, so if you say something is X blocks away and you have a good feeling for how long it takes to walk one block, it becomes easy to estimate how long it will take to walk X blocks. However, in Britain, the distances between intersections vary dramatically (as do the number of roads at the intersection), which makes it much more difficult to use the block method to estimate how long it takes to get anywhere.

[nanila]

Ahahaaaa. Sounds like the mistake I often make, which is believing the Transport for London journey planner's estimate of how long Tube journeys take. A very bad idea if you need to be anywhere on time.

[pbristow]

In my experience, physical space - and thus the time taken to traverse it - gets smaller the more familiar you are with what's in it. (That's why the universe is expanding: It's getting senile and gradually forgetting where all of itself is. =:o\ )

The journey on foot that takes you 30 minutes the first time may indeed be a five minute walk by the time you know exactly where that little side-alley is, and what the entrance looks like, and how far along Wossname Street the turning for Thingummy Square is (so you no longer slow yourself down by anxiously scanning for it and turning round to check you haven't already passed it), and where the best place to cross the road without having to wait for traffic to pause is, etc.

[nanila]

True, familiarity does decrease journey times...but it's still not a ten-minute walk from South Kensington to Piccadilly circus no matter what route you take!

[pbristow]

I shall take your silence on the matter my Theory of Universal Expansion as constituting Official Agreement By A Proper Space Scientist. =;o}

[boundbooks]

I have learned so much about the UK just from this comment thread. XD