british things that just make sense

I went into Morrisons after the gym for chicken and one other thing, expecting to run in and get home. I picked up my two things, headed for the tills and found them all shut. The self-checkouts were locked too. There was a little queue of people holding their shopping, and I had no idea what was going on.

That was my introduction to browsing hours. After nearly eight years in England, I still had everyday things to get my head around, including shops that let me in before I could pay. There were also switches on wall sockets and taps that made me much more grateful for the one in my kitchen than I’d ever expected to be.

A switch for the empty socket

I hadn’t seen on-off switches on wall sockets before moving here. Behind the chair where I film, my floodlight plugs into a socket with switches beside it. When I first arrived, those little switches drove me crazy because I wanted everything turned off at the plug, even if there was nothing plugged in.

A double wall socket with two switches, one plug connected and the other socket empty.
The switches beside the sockets behind my filming chair.

It wasn’t about saving money. What bothered me was seeing one side switched on and the other switched off, or an empty socket left on. That urge had calmed down over the years, but there was still an outlet by the gym lockers that caught my attention. If I saw an empty side switched on, I would turn it off.

I’d spent time in the US as well as growing up in Canada and hadn’t noticed little switches like these there. A wall socket wasn’t something I’d expected to think much about when moving abroad. Then I found myself on the floor, talking about one on camera. The ordinary things can be surprisingly unfamiliar.

The supermarket was open, but I couldn’t buy lunch

My Morrisons visit wasn’t supposed to be a big shop. I was sweaty from the gym, had nothing for lunch and just wanted to buy a couple of things. When I got to the closed tills, I wondered whether something had happened. It took seeing the queue around the locked self-checkouts to realise we were all waiting for the same reason.

The shop had opened for browsing before its tills opened for sales. In that particular store, I understood the browsing period to start around nine and payment to start at ten. I’d been able to walk in, choose my shopping and carry it to the checkout, but that didn’t mean I could buy it yet.

I could see how it would work if you were doing a big shop and wanted time to wander around before checking out. With my two items, though, it felt bizarre. I normally used the self-checkout to get through quickly, and here I was standing around with everybody else, waiting for the machines to become usable. That was a real cultural experience for me.

I had strong opinions about the taps

At the time of this video, I’d lived in four properties in England. This was the first with a combined hot-and-cold tap, and I was very grateful for it. In the other places I’d had separate taps, which gave me a choice between water that felt immediately scalding and water that felt like ice.

Washing my hands or face had become a ridiculous decision about which temperature I wanted to put up with. I hated those separate taps. With the combined one, I didn’t have that same problem, and I hadn’t even remembered how much the old ones annoyed me until I started talking about them again.

The combined taps I’d known in North America had made them feel ordinary to me. Now a tap was something I appreciated enough to talk about for several minutes. I hadn’t imagined that being part of my life in England, but there I was, very pleased with the plumbing in my kitchen.

Watch my everyday British quirks video.