A-Z Britain

I didn’t grow up calling a crosswalk a zebra crossing, and the name still made me smile six years into living in England. We had pedestrian crossings in North America, of course. This was one of those ordinary things that sounded much more entertaining here.

When I put together an A-Z of the things I loved about Britain in 2022, that was my choice for Z. The full list went well beyond small everyday habits, but some of my favourite observations involved the way people talked, the things they did for fun and the little details I was gradually getting used to.

The joke can take a moment

Sarcasm was my choice for S, and it still deserved a place even though I wasn’t arriving from a country without sarcasm. I thought Canadians and British people had quite a similar sense of humour. Sometimes people told me I’d adapted to British humour, but a lot of what they were hearing was Canadian already.

Even so, my first office job in England took some adjustment. The sarcasm felt like a different level, and I needed time to understand how people were speaking to one another. Being familiar with the idea didn’t mean I immediately understood every interaction. Once I got used to it, it made more sense.

Innuendo belonged on my list too. Alongside banter and sarcasm, it was part of the British humour I appreciated.

An x became normal

For X, I chose a kiss, specifically the x people put in messages. At the beginning, that had seemed really strange to me. I didn’t know how to handle it, when it was appropriate or when it wasn’t, which is quite a lot of uncertainty to fit into one tiny letter.

Then I’d been texting a friend and noticed that we were both using x’s in our messages. It suddenly clicked that this was fairly normal for me now. Something that once needed thought had become part of how I was talking to a friend.

I found that change fascinating. Spending time in another culture and being open to it could alter an ordinary habit without a dramatic announcement. The message x was my own example of that.

A glimpse of sun is enough

B was for barbecues because the British enthusiasm for them made me smile. In my experience, it could take only a whisper of sunshine for people to be outside in the back garden having one. I loved that willingness to make the most of it.

I also joked that barbecues were cursed with a little rain. I couldn’t think of anyone I knew whose barbecue hadn’t had some, although I wasn’t talking about every meal becoming a complete washout. A bit of rain and a good time could apparently exist together.

C was cider, which I’d never really been interested in back in Canada. Here, one of my favourite things was going to a countryside pub, or a pub I hadn’t tried before, and checking the bar for a cider I didn’t know. Sometimes I’d ask for the best local one or a recommendation, because trying different ones was the enjoyable part for me.

I couldn’t choose a single favourite. There had been very few I didn’t like, although K cider sprang to mind as probably the only one I’d tried and decided wasn’t for me. Even a fairly enthusiastic cider section of my alphabet had to allow for that exception.

A postbox with a hat

Y was yarn bombing, those knitted or crocheted creations that suddenly appear on top of a postbox. I loved coming across them. Some were whole little scenes, with far more going on than a simple hat, and I thought the effort and detail were wonderful.

And then I arrived back at Z and the zebra crossing. Six years later, that name was still more fun for me than crosswalk. I could appreciate the bigger things about life here while also putting a postbox with a knitted hat and an ordinary road-crossing name in my alphabet.

Watch my original video about the everyday British habits in my A-Z.