Though as a foreigner, I'm
really not supposed to disagree or criticise British weather in any manner. The author refers to this as the 'Weather-as-family Rule'....it's okay for someone to criticise their own family but it's not okay when an outsider does it. The English kind of treat English weather as part of the family and are particularly patriotic about it. The author writes:
The worst possible weather-speak offence is one mainly committed by foreigners, particularly Americans, and that is to belittle the English weather. When the summer temperature reaches the high twenties, and we moan, 'Phew, isn't it hot?', we do not take kindly to visiting Americans or Australians laughing and scoffing and saying 'Call this hot? This is nothing. You should come to Texas/Brisbane if you want to see hot!
That really is kind of funny.
Don't diss our weather! -- even if we do.
I wouldn't worry too much about it, Eru.
I disagree with other people about the weather all the time. It can get quite comical.
In any case, the very worst social
faux pas people can make in Britain is
Jumping the Queue.
I think the definition of 'hot weather' in Britain is this: the sun shows its face every so often through the cloud cover, this tends to happen most during the warmest time of year (May to September), and we all go, 'it's
hot! Yay!' We swarm eagerly to garden centres and beaches and parks because IT'S OVER SIXTY DEGREES FAHRENHEIT AND THE SUN IS OUT!!! OMG WE DON'T KNOW WHEN WE WILL SEE IT AGAIN!
On another note, I love my country madly but I am the first to admit that it does
not do Customer Service.
Jewelsong and I were at Hampton Court Palace yesterday afternoon, a wonderful place I have visited many times, but the staff on duty seemed to be having a particularly bad afternoon on the courtesy front, the administration front, and the general PR front.
It was that classic thing you get in Britain when the customer is treated rather like a nuisance. It was all very Fawlty Towers.
I wanted to visit because they had this exhibition called 'Henry's Women', which was a collection of personal items from his six wives: Anne Boleyn's prayer book, a locket of Catherine Howard's hair, stuff like that. Doesn't that sound interesting?
Well, I'd love to tell you how interesting it was, but we never got to see it! The queue was
ridiculous. The collection was in a very small room. OK, fine: so why not have
timed tickets, like every other museum/gallery in London, so you can cope with the numbers? If you advertise an exhibition like that, of course tons of people will flock to see it. People were also having trouble finding the exhibit, because there were
no signs anywhere. Hampton Court is one of London's major tourist attractions. FAIL.
I wasn't going to stand in a queue for forty minutes while the sun was shining outside, especially if it was only to try to view these precious historical items in a small room with 20 other people blocking my view. That never fails to drive me crazy.
FAIL.
It wasn't the only Fail either. Our afternoon was a bit like the Comedy of Errors.
On the totally upside, the gardens and grounds at Hampton Court are incredibly beautiful, the sun was shining, we watched Henry VIII and Katherine Parr getting married (like you do) and there were lots of cute kids running about in velvet cloaks. And we had a ride on a carriage pulled by two gorgeous Shire horses. And we ended our afternoon in a nice restaurant by the River Thames, enjoying some excellent food and wine.
I learned something new too: King William and Queen Mary (1682-1702) wanted to pull down the 'old-fashioned' Tudor palace and put up their smart new Versailles-style palace instead. They ran out of money, so that's why Hampton Court is the architectural hybrid it is ... one half is the lovely Tudor old palace (the one that King William and Queen Mary found so terribly out of date
) and the other is
their 'modern' 18th century Versailles-style palace. I like their newer French-style palace very much, but am not sorry they were unable to totally demolish the old Tudor one.