Molly holding a teacup for America

Not Half Bad

by

in

Sometimes she will ask me.

“Do you miss it?”

“No, I practice my aim” is my whimsical reply.

“No silly, do you miss America?”

The answer to that is no, I don’t. There are things that I miss about America which I shall enumerate. This is by no means a complete list, but I don’t want to spend too much time knocking the UK.

Pizza

Sorry UK, but you suck at pizza (I am not talking about Dominos or Papa Johns, (they suck worldwide) you get the shape right, but frankly that is about it. The sauce is too sweet, the crust is too thick and oddly under cooked, the cheese is completely wrong, I mean it doesn’t even stretch and pull when you take a bite.

Coffee

The Brits are completely correct when they say that Americans don’t know how to make tea. They are completely right, we don’t. There are whole tea practices and debates that most of us are utterly unaware of, like milk or water first. But while we can’t make tea, they haven’t the faintest notion of how to make a cup of coffee. I’m not talking about fancy coffee, lattes, cappuccinos and the like. I am talking about a plain old cup of joe. Even if you can find a place here that makes a cup of “filter coffee” it is pretty damn bad. Often I will have to settle for an “Americano” which was invented during the war for GI’s who just wanted a damn coffee. An Americano is a shot of espresso that they add hot water and apparently gold because, wow, is it expensive £3 and no free refills, ever, on anything.

Hot Dogs

Hot Dogs in the UK come in cans or jars, I shall give you a moment to recover. They are packaged this way because they are pickled in brine. I repeat PICKLED IN BRINE. To add insult to injury this Frankenproduct is made of pork or pork and chicken not beef like real hot dogs. Then they label them Ye Olde Oak American Hotdogs, no wonder the rest of the world thinks our food is terrible.

What the UK thinks are America hotdogs

Knowing how everything works

There are so many little things that are different here than the US that still catch me unaware and even after five years I am still turning to Molly and asking her questions about so many different things. We had a conversation that illustrated one of those differences where a Bill had been tabled and it turns out that here that means they are going to debate it whereas to me that means exactly the opposite. Some days I do feel a bit like a fish out of water. Thankfully those moment are less and less as time goes by.

It’s not all bad

In fact it is pretty damn great. I have made so many wonderful friends since I have come here and I wouldn’t trade for the world. I live near one of the coolest cities on the planet and I have become active in ways that I never could have anticipated. Then of course there is the person that made this all possible. My love weirdo, Molly. I count myself lucky every single day for the serendipitous chain of events that brought us together. I have fallen in love with this country right along with the woman that brought me here. I love the climate and the people and the differences to be frank. I do find myself in a bit of a quandary these days with the rise of racism and nationalism, our long term plan was always that someday we would go back and live in the US, but I was never concerned about the when of that until now. But now the GOP is making us look at that plan a bit more warily these days.

Now that I have rambled endlessly and lost the topic I will finally bring it all back home with the actual answer.

No my love, while I miss things about America I don’t miss it. I am home, because home is wherever you are.

Michael


Comments

3 responses to “Not Half Bad”

  1. This brought tears to my eyes: “I am home, because home is wherever you are.”

    Love you guys!

    Rebel xox

  2. Peanut Butter. They really can’t do peanut butter. JIF, my man!

    1. Choosy Mom’s Choose Jif 😛

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.