Why do US tourists think that Britain=London?

[Kate]

Of course - as soon as I go home for Thanksgiving break and have a ridiculously slow Internet connection, it's uploaded. I'll check it out when I get back to the land of high-speed Internet.

[SepticTone]

Don't lose any sleep over it, Kate.

The vids are infinitely unmemorable.

[davec]

Just watched your split video. Yes, very interesting!

The main thing that strikes me is the old world feel afforded by the architecture and town layout. That's a problem in America--seems that the Iroquois and Mohawks just couldn't get behind stonemasonry as a discipline, even after settling down and living on crop food rather than foragement. (I mustn't speak too directly against that, since most likely I have a lot more of their blood in my veins than I do that of my Venetian namesakes, the Cornaros. All those undescribed John Smiths and Caroline Gibbons in the family tree... you never know.)

And now, so much of America is square-cut suburbs with no large buildings except monster shopping malls, and few trees. Yuck and yuck again. Not to mention, the names of many of these towns, subdivisions, and streets probably sound more Oldde Englisshhee than Burnley, which, after all, is English but probably isn't bending over backwards to be so to the hilt. This faux finish does nothing to ameliorate the cookie cutter appearance of our landscape, especially since they often indiscriminately plaster on names that refer to nonexistent hills or other land features. I imagine that, in Burnley, any place with 'Rise' in the name is actually on one.

Where are all the Mini Coopers? They're all over the Chicago North Shore area, sometimes with Union Jacks painted on the roofs. The mix of cars in Burnley looks more Chicagoish than where I live!

I didn't see anyone in these clips that looked like they would have twatted you for combing your hair the wrong way. Maybe I was erroneously expecting --erm-- Mohawk haircuts and two-pound earrings. (Again, nothing against the Mohawks.)

Good job you got a decent serving of fish and chips out of the day. What toppings? In America, it's a felony to serve them with anything other than malt vinegar, it seems, even in the better places that serve really good f/c. Tell us so we can be envious!

[SepticTone]

The vids weren't of Burnley, dave: that was Skipton, about 20 miles away.

The Native Americans didn't need to strive for anything, if my history serves me well. They were nomadic hunter gatherers living in a land of plenty, with Nature furnishing all their needs. Before the white men came & fecked it all up for them, that was.

The Victorian/Georgian centre of Burnley was torn down in the late 1960's & replaced by weeping boxlike concrete structures, much like many towns in England, in the name of progress. Skipton is a little Yorkshire market town & escaped most of that,& I can assure you that none of the architecture is fake, believe me.

Try being over 6foot tall & trying to walk straight through the little 5'10" high doorways of the old pubs there are there.

Minis are made now by BMW, very expensive and are girly-cars. A man wouldn't be seen dead in one. Girly-cars. Hairdressers' cars.

Nobody goes round twatting people for no reason round here. That simply isn't British, dear boy. I imagine Fox News likes to portray Britain as a sleazy liberal Communist violence-ridden rat hole with everybody having abortions all over the place, but that really isn't the case. Outside London, life is led very much like in my vids, & as I said, I did that vid last month.

Fish & chips. You don't have fish n chips with 'toppings'. All there is on the counter is a bottle of malt vinegar & a giant salt shaker. That's all you get, & you put it on yourself, & that's really all it needs. So in that respect, the Americans are correct. Oh, except you can get a portion of extremely mild, yellowy, Chinese type sloppy curry to pour over it if you want, known as chip shop curry here. Oh, & of course, mushy peas. Forgot about that, sorry. Many working class kids are still raised on chips & curry, or chips & mushy peas in this region, as they're extremely cheap & quick to get & very filling, & chip shops, or 'chippies' are all over the place.

Nothing to be envious about, frankly

[davec]

<<Nobody goes round twatting people for no reason round here. >>

You made reference to 'violent local yokels'. (Didn't know 'yokel' was UK slang. Did we get that from you or vice versa? Sounds like it could be either Old English or Yiddish.) Did you mean pikeys in white socks and chrome nipple rings, or what? Nobody much of anywhere in America would worry about walking around with a video camera going, no matter who they were recording. I thought you were being dead serious. We Septics are great at inventing Vegematics and the like, but we can be so easily derailed otherwise...

This sort of thing is where Auntie Beeb really lets us down. They do tend to portray England as 'London and Miscellaneous If We Get Round To It' (hmm.. an oddly familiar archetype ).

[Kate]

I want fish and chips now. Actually, I want fish and chips pretty much any time...

And yes, media in general tends to portray England as "London and other various countryside scenes."

[SepticTone]

I was going to upload a nice pic of fish n chips for you to look at



But I thought I'd upload a more accurate picture of real British fish n chips in paper, except this greedy sod's bought 2 fish! The batter looks a bit burnt to me, but it'll taste alright in the dark, probably, if you've had enough beer beforehand.

I've put on a bit of vinegar: you can put your own salt on if you want.

[davec]

Umm, yumm... My mouth thanks you. I won't quote my arteries.

But then again, I usually don't anyway.

[daisy]

I'm an American who has never been to England, although my father's family is from somewhere near Bristol and our ancestors were apparently settlers in the Jamestown Colony. Not the originals, but fairly early in the game. My maiden name is very English. My maternal grandfather (who died before I was born) was from Edinburgh, and named his four daughters after English Queens. I have always felt close to my British roots since my mother was thoroughly versed in English poetry and literature, which she passed on to me.

Now, that being said, I would love to visit London some day, but I know there are a lot of other wonderful places to visit if I ever get the chance. I think access to British TV, even before BBCA came here, has raised our awareness of towns, cities, countrysides, slang, foods, and other bits of British culture.

Now, "when" I finally make it to the UK, as a literary buff, I want to see Tolkien country, the 100 Acre Woods, Gilbert & Sullivan sites, the Glastonbury Thorne, and of course, Bristol and Edinburgh, with its amazing underground tunnels. There's more, but I'd have to stay a year or more. I especially want to see an obscure ceremony called "Turning the Devil's Stone" that takes place on Nov.5, just like Guy Fawkes Day. I can't recall where this is done, but it sounds like fun.

Daisy

[PeterSF]

My maternal grandfather (who died before I was born) was from Edinburgh, and named his four daughters after English Queens.

Perhaps Quentin Crisp, Danny LaRue, Larry Grayson, and Elton John? I jest...

Re Dave's

Didn't know 'yokel' was UK slang

"Yokel" is similar to "country bumpkin" - picture someone in a smock and floppy hat, with a hay straw dangling from his mouth - I think Monty Python used this caricature in a sketch about village idiots, but I'm too lazy to look it up. Don't know its etymology, but I doubt it's Yiddish. Traditionally, a "yokel" is portrayed as not too bright, and speaking with some kind of south-western accent, eg.Cornwall or Dorset, punctuated by phrases like "Oo, arr", and is a farmer or farm-worker. In actual use, it just refers to local yobbos and others intolerant or suspicious of outsiders, such as those SepticTone took precautions against. The film "Straw Dogs" shows a rather extreme example of these, with Peter Vaughan as the yokel patriarch, and Dustin Hoffman as the "can't we just get along?" septic intruder who had the effrontery to marry a local girl (Susan George).
I suppose "redneck" or "hillbilly" would be the septic equivalent.

Re SepticTone's Skipton video: I definitely saw the Blair Witch influence on the cinematography, and got a bit queasy, but I think I saw more of it than I did of Blair Witch. Didn't realise how historic Skipton is, judging from the architecture, and the castle of course. Reminded me a bit of my home town (Chester), but smaller of course, and Chester's old buildings are sandstone and thus reddish rather than whatever stone was used in Yorkshire (and Derbyshire). Limestone?
It seems like shopping malls have taken after the American model, except they're Olde English versions with Laura Ashley and M&S everywhere instead of Best Buy and Macy's (I try to avoid them so my examples may be off).

Regarding the main topic: Americans sometimes ask, "are you from London?" as the equivalent of "are you from England?". They also cannot distinguish a northern accent from a southern one, hard as that is to believe. I was at an artists' open studio the other weekend with an American friend, who I knew thought all English accents were alike. We happened upon a Londoner with some interesting paintings. I asked my friend if she could tell the difference in our accents (no). So I asked the artist to say the word "afternoon", and she obliged with "ahhfternoon" as I knew she would. At least my friend got that difference - i.e. Northerners pronounce it correctly
My theory is that the reason Americans think English accents are the same, and vice versa, is that they notice the similarities in English speech, rather than the differences - this probably should be in another topic, but there you go...