All jokes aside, it got me thinking about how people treat things they don’t understand. The adage goes that ‘we fear that which we do not understand’; this is certainly true at a root psychological level when it comes to the meeting of two or more cultures. As a 7 year old staying at a friend’s house in Hertfordshire, I was approached by two white teenage boys in a nearby playground who called me a ‘paki’ and punched me. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard that racial slur used against me, nor was it the first time I’d been bullied for being another race. This was 1987; and given that I was visiting just outside of London, those boys couldn’t have seen very many different races in their short lives at that point. To them, I was brown, not white, meaning that I was some sort of problem that needed erasing, irrespective of the fact that at the age of 7, I stood at 140cm tall and came up to their knees. Side stepping the needless violence for a second, if you take a close look, all factors point to ignorance. Not just that it’s fairly obvious to most people that I’m not Pakistani, but that someone different by any standard should be a figure of blind hate. Perhaps governing authorities in London and the South East would like to claim that we’ve overcome that kind of thinking today. But overcome in what way? Overcome expressing what some people continue to think? The point is that even in our multi-ethnic, global 21st century, where all countries touch at the click of a mouse, button or touchpad; where the world is supposedly so close to being ‘beige’, there are still people walking the earth today, who think like those boys.

It’s rather sad that many societies, particularly Western ones, are quick to formally declare themselves free of racial oppression altogether when it isn’t the case. It is however, an admirable goal to strive toward in the pursuit of holding onto civilization. The desire to see racism wiped out is motivated by the clarity and perspective that comes with understanding someone who is different than you. Once the mind can understand another person’s reality; a third, fourth and fifth, leading to the thirst to know many more; like a canopy of thunderclouds a great shame hangs over the time of ignorance…a shame which humans hope to fig-leaf over as quickly as possible with unifying statements about race. The truth is that racial oppression, though largely eradicated on the wide screen, is definitely still alive in Western civilization; it shows up in erratic blips and episodes all over the world like bad acid reflux after a heavy meal of multiculturalism.

Culturally we’re already trying so hard to be a shade of beige, eating each other’s foods, infusing each other’s music and blending each other’s customs. But I think the of idea totalitarian beige-ism at a pandemic level is what scares people. The idea that nobody would ever be different ever again, that everyone would be the same, marching to the same mantra, ingesting the same formulas like unthinking lemmings, becomes a frightening morphosis to imagine. It is this surreal morphosis that encourages us to laugh at our racial stereotypes with an endearment, much in the way that Russell Peters’ stand-up comedy reinforces. How does an Canadian-born Indian man get away with cracking jokes about Koreans in front of a laughing multicultural audience?? How does he do it?? Because although nothing’s weirder than your own family, the paradox goes that we’re actually not that different when it comes to our stereotypes.

I don’t think Martin Luther King wanted to do away with just racial intolerance, although he succeeded with much of that vision during the Civil Rights’ Movement. I think he knew that accepting and appreciating our very differences would be a much harder long-term goal, because we’re still struggling with that now. For now, though, we can only hope that everyone won’t eventually, be…beige. I certainly don’t.

People constantly ask me if I would ever move back to London again. I tell them no, which often shocks people who ask why. Half of the reason, I explain, is because the London I left behind 3 years ago is, culturally speaking, no longer in existence. The other half is that it is simply too expensive to hold a roof over your head in Britain. Both answers always baffle people; the former because nobody can conceive of a city possibly changing that much in such a short space of time; the latter generating the response, “Well, you can’t keep using money as an excuse.” The problem, which many Americans do not understand, is that it is not how much money one earns in Britain. The problem is the British property market.

At the time of press there are currently 2 million people in Britain without a home. The majority of these people are not below the poverty line. They are often people working 40 hours a week, earning an average of £16,000-25,000 ($25,000-39,000) a year. Many of these people are aged between 30 and 40, either 1 or 2 parent families with up to 3 children, single professionals or couples. They are either unable to get on the property ladder because the housing market has completely priced them out, or they are simply at the end of a perpetual waiting list for government housing called a “council home”. Between the 1970’s and 1980’s there was a wait of just a couple of months between applying for a council house and being given a home, it was remarkably quick. Now because of increasing population sizes and demand, the wait can be up to 6 or 7 years. And yet, there is the confounding mystery problem of some 350,000 long-term empty properties across England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, some which have been abandoned for years. It is estimated that there are enough empty and boarded up homes to populate an entire city the size of Leeds.

To put this to the test, I utilized several websites to pull together a typical situation for the average Londoner.  A full time London Ambulance worker is typically paid between £17-22,000 ($29-34,000) a year.  A four bedroom, 2-storey, 1272 sq ft terraced home in West London’s Shepherd’s Bush area is approximately £675,000 ($1,047,485). (This is the average size of any London house within the M25 highway belt encircling the city. It is also the average asking price of four-bedroom terraced property in East, South, West or North London.) On a 25 yr mortgage repayment at 5.5%, your initial deposit would be £101,000. In the UK, it is a mandatory prerequisite to put down an initial deposit of 15% when buying a house, irrespective of whether you are a first time home buyer or not. Your calculated monthly payments would be £3093 per month interest only, or £4145 per month total repayment.

Best case scenario on a £22,000 a year income, you could possibly borrow up to £110,000 based on your mortgage lender/personal circumstances. This would cover your initial deposit and the first 2 months’ repayment. However if your income was anything less than £21,000 you’d only be able to borrow up to £90,000, making you completely ineligible to get on the property ladder.  Repayments of £3093 a month leave you with absolutely nothing left to live on: someone earning £22,000 will have a monthly income of £1692 a month–before tax. In order to pay £3093 a month, you would need to be on an income of £60,000 bringing in £4616 a month, which would leave you £1523 every month to feed you and your family, pay the horrendously expensive bills and God forbid you have anything that needs repairing. Please bear in mind–I haven’t even deducted the 30% income tax from these figures, nor have I even made consideration for a CAR—this is just a home alone.

The trouble with this £60,000 a year number is that in 2011 a) the average London couple does not earn £60,000 between them, b) the average single parent or single professional in London is not earning £60,000 and c) an income of this size moves you out of the 30% income tax bracket and into the 40% income tax bracket, meaning your mortgage lender is probably going to lend you less, putting your initial deposit on the line.

It is important to remember that the average parent in this generation does not have a nest egg to rely on. In Britain alone there have been 3 recessions in the last 30 years, meaning that the 30-somethings of this age have never really had a successful opportunity to save anything substantial. Couple these numbers with the current global recession affecting huge pay cuts in many sectors, it is understandable that people are now holding fast to jobs that are paying them far less than they are worth. The risk to attempt move to a higher income bracket is simply not worth it when well-paying jobs are so scarce.

For every American who asks why I would never go back to live in London, I charge you: a roof over your head is a basic necessity. 2 million British people are already without that. Would you have any intention of making that number any bigger? I wouldn’t.

Many thanks to Channel 4′s ‘The Great British Property Scandal’ for research statistics.

There are fewer things more stressful than discovering that your two days off happen to be the two days your city decides to degenerate into full scale violence and turmoil. There are fewer things more stressful than being out of the country when this happens and suddenly realizing that your loved ones are geographically scattered around the city like marbles refusing to stay in one spot.

Making the most of my position, I immediately secured a position in front of Twitter for the next 48-72 hours. I could not have made a better choice for my information; it was the most invaluable tool I had at my disposal. The hours between 4-8pm sees London a hive of activity, with thousands of people crossing from one side of the city to the other; as that despicable Monday evening began to unravel I quickly turned into a control centre of sorts. Watching the clock, I observed Facebook to determine who of my friends were leaving any area at any given time. Knowing that it takes anywhere from 4-8 minutes for a Londoner to change locations I knew would have to react quickly to information to get them away from chaos. Using my ground-level knowledge of London I surfed through what Tube stations, Tube lines, buses and roads friends would be taking on their travels. Checking with TFL for station closures and line disruptions, I scanned Google Street View to cross-check bus numbers with bus stops on targeted roads. I quickly formulated alternate routes to avoid potentially dangerous areas where youths were holding standoffs with the police. To correlate suspicious situations cropping up on Twitter with verified ones, I ran online streams of just about every London broadcast I could to confirm newsstories. Never have I been more relieved at the saving power of online communication as I began frantically relaying information to friends in North and South London, who were unaware they were cutting across a potential minefield that afternoon.

Even still the stress didn’t end there for me. I failed to remember that the typical Londoner will go ahead with dinner plans stubbornly undeterred by train station closures, alien invasion, disaster weather or apocalypse. I sat there in total disbelief as friends began telling me they were going out for the evening anyway. One friend–who works in North London and lives Lewisham–went so far as to tell me that even after safely making it home across the Thames, he was going all the way back up to North London for dinner in Camden because it ‘didn’t look that bad out there’. Another insisted on taking the overhead train through Hackney on her way to dinner with her fiancé, undoubtedly with the unfazed assuredness that ‘a bunch of thieving little toerags aren’t going to upend my evening.’ After several nailbiting hours of simply not being able to get in touch with my hardy Lewisham optimist, he arrived home with the report that my warnings about Camden unfolding had been completely true: by the time he and his friends were done with dinner the place had degenerated into a warzone, cars burning, glass missiles flying across the road, looting and riot police galore. On the attempt to leave the restaurant they’d had to duck into a pub for cover, before making a last dash for the car which, luckily, had escaped being torched.

As if my work hadn’t been cut out for me the ensuing chaos continued well into the night. Probably the easiest area to contain but the hardest for me to watch had been the riots that spread through my home borough of Ealing. I’ve lived in many of the areas of London that were rioted; as difficult as it was to see those places almost annihilated in parts, there was nothing more emotionally crushing for me than seeing Ealing dealt such a costly blow. Almost all the damage done to Ealing happened after 8pm that night; with most of my friends and family in West London having settled in for the night, I had at least that much peace. General opinion in West London will carry that over the years, comparatively and culturally speaking, Ealing has sought to endure the character of being probably one of the most ‘inoffensive’ boroughs of West London, explaining the shock that copycat incidents of looting and destruction had cropped up there in the first place. What has incensed many London communities above anything else is seeing these treasured places destroyed and shown such undue disrespect; valuable representations of social harmony people have strived to preserve over countless years…trashed. In a city whose demographic changes several times overnight, the weight of London is almost always valued in what contribution you make to the city before you leave.  I’ve heard that American values encourage Americans to place a much higher emotional value on people than they do on things and places, the reason for this being that the latter things are transient and replaceable while people are not. However when it comes to the familiarity of buildings and streets that provide a constant backdrop to your life’s tapestry, London has far more to lose in it’s streets when the company it houses is so transient.

I loved hearing about the clean up operations that arose from this royal mess. Knowing exactly how hard it is for London to come together as a community when the culture of the individual is the order of the city, makes the effort twice as heartrending. Whole communities pouring out with their brooms and delving into their pockets to offer services to help repair people’s lives; these things are certain rarity in the metropolis. I found myself pining to be amongst the best of them, wishing I was contributing to restoring what little I could; yet overwhelmed with the helplessness of being so sedentary and so safe where I was. As an expat who is still very, very connected to London, I am also very aware that I do have to ask myself if I am being completely reasonable when it comes to my emotional response to the London riots. Those close to me have sensitively pointed out that beyond the grand measures I took at the time, which were already quite a lot for someone living away from the city, there’s really nothing else I could possibly have done. While that may be true and certainly something I acknowledge, it doesn’t quite adequately explain the pool of unsettled cork at the bottom of my heritage that continues to float around my processes. While everyone is singing and dancing about the political undertones, the social diaspora and the economic consequences that the London riots had on the city’s future, the shock that something this ugly even took place in London will be with it’s people for a long time, both near and far.

Since my last post I’m relieved to say that after several long, quiet years, I’ve finally acquired some solid native friends in America. Naturally being a Londoner, the first instinctive thing I did was friend them on Facebook. All was fine and dandy until the day an unrelated epiphany exploded over my head. This week, I suddenly came to the mortifying realization that I’d done absolutely nothing with my two days off but sit glued to Facebook. My addiction had become a sick normalcy in the middle of my newly acquired social life; repulsed, I lost my temper and in a frenzy, began emptying out my contacts at random blast. I stopped short of about two dozen people when I realized my temper had driven me to go about this all wrong; clearly, the sensible thing would have been to deactivate and leave well alone for a week. It was like a boxing match derailing and crashing before my eyes. I could now no longer go any further forward in my madness nor any faster retrograde to undo the social massacre I had begun. So I turned tail like an ostrich and buried my head for the next twelve hours, pretending nobody was going to notice anyway. After all, it’s just Facebook……right?

Arriving back at work the next day I faced a torrent of fury from my bewildered colleagues; why, would anyone do something like that for what seemed like no apparent reason?! I found myself stammering like John Cleese in A Fish Called Wanda, desperately trying to redeem myself that this was not a personal assault but a moment of idiocy in an attempt to break my addiction. As the miraculous forgiveness trickled out and the calm blanketed over the storm, I realised that, wait…..how is it possible that if you consider me to be such a great friend, that we have never exchanged phone numbers??

There is still, on this side of the millennium, something to be said for obtaining someone’s phone number to remain in contact with them as a friend. Facebook has monopolized the way in which anyone communicates with anyone around the globe these days, and while that is not necessarily a bad thing (thank you, Mark Zuckerberg, for coming into our lives and bringing us the power of up-to-the-minute sharing), it is certainly not the only thing. I ran around collecting phone numbers in the aftermath of the social Hiroshima I had dropped on my new friends and yes, it gave both parties a sense of security….that our friendship wasn’t just as fragile as Facebook. City types with little time for voice-on-voice conversation will piffle at my observation and claim the advent of the emoticon did away with the necessity for a chinwag on the phone. However, the power of the phone number offers a security that Facebook is still not able to offer. In a world where friendships have become evermore fragile due to the residual effects of social networking, the power of having someone’s phone number is still the heaviest chess piece on the board of humanity. Being able to pick up the phone and establish human connection more naturally is still needed when making friends.

So next time you friend someone on Facebook, ask yourself whether it’s a friendship you should establish via phone first. Despite appearances, some people are simply not as easily discarded (intentionally or accidentally) as others. And as I learned this week, one can be as humble as one wants; but one should never underestimate the influence one has on the outside world…however small or magnifying that may be.

There’s never an excuse for losing your accent if you’re British, least of all to an American accent. Australian popstrel Kylie Minogue burst onto the British music scene in 1987, all her interviews conducted in a naturally thick Aussie accent. After emigrating to London for good, not a word was uttered about her completely losing that accent. But for a Briton to develop an American accent is outrage (see Joss Stone for reference). Perhaps other expats consider my concern trivial, but I’m sure I’m not alone in this. To one day wake up, open your mouth and find yourself speaking Americanese is the end of you; expect a few days marinating in rotten fruit on your next visit home. American residents in Britain also go through something similar–anyone remember The Simpsons’ episode in London, where The Queen grants the family free passage home in exchange for returning Madonna, who protests, “Oim British! Oim telling yew!” Scriptwriters may mock, but it does happen without you realising it. Yet I’ve met people on both sides of the pond with their accent intact. So why does it happen to some and not others?

The English language has so many variations because it reflects the different cultures of each English-speaking country. I can only liken it to Arabic. Egyptians find Iraqi Arabic quirky to listen to; Iraqis find that Lebanese Arabic uses different words, Jordanian Arabic has its differences to Kuwaiti Arabic. The difference is that in spite of such different vocabularies, the Middle East’s attitude is to be unified by this one language where a) nobody corrects anybody else and b) it is considered an education to speak more than one version of Arabic. If only this was true of English.

There are people in the world who are psychologically more prone to mirroring the person they are talking to. I once stayed with a friend in Bristol for 3 days and arrived back home in London with a Bristolian accent. Some people find it difficult to adopt a new accent, some find it easy and some find it subconscious–I fall into the latter category. I can start any conversation with an American, purposing to speak with my natural London accent, but within 10 minutes I lose the battle. Most English speaking people remember the first time they attempted to speak English in a different accent. The reason it probably sounded ridiculous is because certain sentence structures, intonations and inflections sound wrong when accompanied by a different vocabulary. I’ve sat and listened to some of my American friends attempt at playing the old “Let’s Speak British For A Day” game; the result is often wholly unnatural not just because we use different phrases and words, American syntax and British syntax are quite different.

Bearing this in mind, it can be hard to get your point across in another English speaking country if your audience is fixating on the way you’ve worded something. Day to day communication with the general public will move a lot faster for you if you adopt the native dialect of English in your region. Considering that many Americans have the perception that the British ‘impose’ their values upon them, this has been my attempt at assimilation into American culture.

With English, changing your accent happens as a matter of consequence when you choose to start substituting one line of vocabulary for another. Why would anyone do that? Well, to be understood better by people around you. While some do, there is no guarantee that every American I come across is going to understand what I mean by “reversing into the car park“, “Do you have a tissue?”, “Just chuck the rubbish in the bin,” or “Rearing a puppy is a rather long story.” Thanks to a lack of proximity, most of the time speaking American doesn’t affect my communication with Britons back home. The unfortunate circumstance happens when I have to receive a phone call from an American friend during a Skype call to London; hearing my dad giggle to my mum in surprise, “Oh! Speaking American now, eh…?!” was quite disheartening to say the least. Previous lectures from my parents and friends back home about “not forgetting where you’re from” flash through my head as I end the phone call and prepare for a questioning about, “What’s happening to you?!”

I acknowledge there are people who would call me a traitor for curling my ‘r”s, singing my vowels, using American phrases and joining in with the misuse of the word “awesome”. To those people I assert, this isn’t me suddenly “becoming fake”; the adaptation is just a survival mechanism. My demeanor returns to ‘normal’ amongst other Britons because the survival mechanism is no longer needed. Whether or not I like having to use such a mechanism is another story. Life’s a lot simpler in your own skin without having to adopt camouflage all the time. So yes, for now I concede, my accent’s a right royal mess.

It’s a sad day to admit that I’ve had my doubts proved right about friends promising the earth to stay in touch. Full of emotional embrace and goodbye speeches, dozens of people showed up for my leaving do and yet, out of a possible 150 people who promised to phone, email, IM and Skype regularly, 4 have stayed in touch. 4.

Londoners are self-confessed morons when it comes to being a reliable friend. Sorry to have to let the cat out of the bag, but it’s true. Nobody meets at the time they say they will. Nobody phones when they say they will. Nobody shows up when they say they will. And nobody writes when they say they will.

The city is full of people standing around looking sour because someone is an hour late, in the process of being stood up, or planning revenge for being let down. Londoners are utterly horrible at keeping their promises to each other and because of this, nobody has any hopes or expectations of each other anymore. This creates a throwaway culture about the city’s friendships, where friends are quickly and passionately made, then quickly and passionately dumped.

“I’ve been so busy…” “Well, you know how busy we are…” “It’s just been so busy lately…”

Busy? BUSY? Will ‘Busy’ be coming to your wedding, then? Will Busy be at your funeral, crying over your coffin? How about when your boyfriend dumps you—is Busy the first person you’re going to call?

Please.

Let’s face it. Nobody wants to talk about the giant elephant sitting in the room. Londoners cull their Facebook friends’ lists and empty their phone of numbers more frequently than they cook hot dinners (and people wonder why the cynicism). In spite of this, I’d held out a morsel of hope for some people I’d been close to for a good, decent 5-12 years. It turned out to be a pointless, sore exercise. I watched old friendships flushed down the toilet as some sort of cruel consequence for leaving the city.

There are those who have everything but no wisdom, then there are those who are deaf, dumb and blind and have the profound and sublime. I’m reminded of the words of Helen Keller: “When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.”

Just when I thought I’d grown accustomed to the cold British character, I discovered the ones closest to me were the iciest of all.  But my comfort lies in the fact that this will ultimately be their loss, not mine, because I see the door that has been opened for me.

And I’ve already walked through.

I have never liked American television. Thousands will agree with me. The television advertising business is so deliriously out of control with profit making in this country that it has ruined watching television for millions of Americans.  Alright, so airtime is precious expensive space to hire and the shows need the sponsors. But why make your customer suffer for it by having their favourite show interrupted every 8 minutes with a deluge of loud, obnoxious advertisements?

There is no joy in watching a 20 minute programme over 35 minutes because it’s being stopped every 8 minutes—and for nothing enjoyable. Fellow Britons may think I’m exaggerating here, but I kid you not. An episode of The Simpsons is 22-24 min long. In Britain it’s possible to watch a full episode of any show without a break ‘til the next broadcast. In America, one episode of The Simpsons is interrupted a total of 4 TIMES. They hurriedly run fast food commercials—back-to-back—full of revolting enlarged images of congealed meat, cheese, grease and gloop. After that, if you’re really lucky, they’ll throw in a nice, sexy commercial for combating blackheads and pustules.

American commercials are mocked the world over for being exaggerated, loud, fast and unnecessarily indiscreet about incontinence and contraception. Watching a 60-second commercial of a delirious woman yelping excitedly about her tampons is nothing, ‘til you’ve seen a middle-aged man skip through a field with joy, yelling proudly that he’s fixed his erectile dysfunction problem. Once you’ve heard a grinning old lady testify about using scented diapers to mask the smell of her poo, who wants to continue watching a cooking show after that?

By complete contrast, British advertising has less and less to do with mass-produced advertising. The concepts behind British commercials have become more and more obscure; they are saturated with fringe artistry and favour the organic, ‘less-is more’ approach. Being a small nation gives Britain the cream advantage of employing fringe graphic designers, kitsch animators, freelance editors and undiscovered directors. The most successful British commercials derive heavy influence from the unorthodox; the quirkier, the more intercontinental the angles; the more unique, the more powerful the message. British advertising aims to give obscure artists a pedestal, a good example being Swedish animator Kristofer Strom’s Carphone Warehouse August 2008 campaign.

But this isn’t what American television is about. It is a known statistic that the US spends more on advertising medicine than any other country in the world. Health insurance companies monopolize American healthcare and because of this, they’ll encourage you to ‘shop around’ for the most suitable brand of medication you want.  Pharmaceutical companies then suck the public into a fierce advertising war and send them spinning with the choice of 20 different cholesterol pills, 15 different heart pills, 100 different contraceptive pills. Home and car insurance companies are no different. And this, is what American television is about:

8 minutes of a very interesting documentary, then—

Fast food! Car insurance! Car hire! Incontinence pants! Acne cream! Fast food! Home insurance! Tampons! Fast food! Weight loss! Health insurance! Restaurants!

7 minutes of that documentary, then—

Fast food! Car insurance! Car hire! Incontinence pants! Acne cream! Fast food! Home insurance! Tampons! Fast food! Weight loss! Health insurance! Restaurants!

And they wonder why people download so much these days.

You’ll have to forgive us, but London’s gone quite berserk. It’s not our fault. The last 2 years have been a complete anomaly to our recent weathering history. London just doesn’t get snow anymore. Huge, government snow plows do not await us each winter, nor do we haul out the snow tyres for Christmas. From their frozen, icy terrain, Americans have recently snorted in derision and harrumphed at our chaos, remarking, ” Now they’re getting a taste of what we have to deal with every year and look at them, they can’t even handle it! They’re out of control!” Well, perhaps we are in the middle of a badly managed catastrophe, yes. But we’re having fun. As unprecedented snow falls for the second year running, YouTube and the BBC have immortalized the London response to the chilly white stuff blanketing the city. And boy are we having a right laugh with it or what!

It’s no secret to anyone that the British are eccentric. Some of the greater strains of this eccentricity are found at concentrate levels in London. We’re quirky about our tastes in music, art, entertainment and pretty much everything we consume. But like any other geek on the planet, we don’t always have the best social skills as far as making new friends. This is not least because London has one of the most isolationist societies by daylight. If you can get a Londoner to look up from his/her newspaper for longer than 20 seconds, you’ve achieved the impossible. When tourists are asked about their opinion of Londoners, two of the most frequently used words to describe us are “rude” and “cold”. We seem self-involved to others, which is really, only partially the truth. Half of that is down to the national awkwardness of finding anything to talk to a stranger about. So rather than look the fool, the protectionist attitude Londoners would rather take, is that it’s easier and less stressful to simply ignore everyone.

But then one day, London woke up and the snow had stopped everything. Nobody could get to work. Nobody could get to school. Suddenly we realised we’d been absolved of these responsibilities. All you could do was stay in and look at the snow. Most British 18 year olds have never seen snow fall like this on their own doorstep. They were dazzled. And secretly, so were all the adults; last time any 30-something seen anything like this was 20 years ago when we were all about 10-11 years old. So it shouldn’t surprise anyone that rather than sit indoors, taking it all very seriously and being a miserable gooseberry, thousands have flocked to the streets to rediscover their youth and…play.

I don’t overlook that there are hundreds of frustrated people unable to get to work, meet deadlines and keep the city running. Thanks to poor planning, the councils having taken no precaution to line the streets with salt the night before the snowfall. But if you’ve ever seen small children meet for the first time and play, you’re probably aware that fun is infectious. In a city of self-isolating individuals, starved daily of making conversation with strangers, waking up one day and making hundreds of new friends thanks to abnormal weather is like a dream. The excitement is bound to look rather strange to the outside world: hundreds of people united in an effort to build a giant snowball on Hampstead Heath; giggling people building snowmen in the middle of Piccadilly Circus and on the streets of Soho; bus drivers having snowball fights and lying down in the road to make snow angels.

Perhaps these scenes seem frivolous; unheard of on Wall Street, outside Sears Tower or downtown Minnesota. But London hasn’t seen anything like it in years. I say to those who turn up their nose at us: lay off  Londoners and let them have their snow!

All those in favour raise a snowball and say aye! )) I’m off to build an honorary snowman. Toodle-oo!

I was recently speaking with a friend of mine who is fed up of depressing blogs. She challenged me to deliver a crowd-pleaser for the weary-hearted. So I drew from one man’s hate, to discuss another (wo)man’s obsession. Shoes.

I’ve tended to find that most red-blooded females on the planet have a personal war on shoes. Either Ms Perfect-Foot’s shoe-buying is so out of hand that department stores have an open tab on her credit card, or the inability to find anything to fit awkwardly-shaped feet, creates an exhausted monster of a woman. ‘Never again!’ she cries, trudging through the high street. Then there’s the sneaker collector, ready for conversion. Tired of living in soft soles, her new-found interest in encrusted spike have her convinced in the emergence of a miracle “glass slipper” for the wide footed. For the women (and men!), who can’t abide by another joyous ode to shoes, look away now. My feet have aspirations too!

But. Before any new acquisitions can take place, there is the daunting task of taking inventory of my current stock. And here’s where I’ve been stuck awhile.

Close friends can testify that I was once a complete and utter sneaker fanatic. My essential reading consisted of “Where’d You Get Those” by Bobbito Garcia, Nike’s “Sole Provider”, Milk’s publication of “The Sneaker Book” and Neal Heard’s “Trainers”. It was ‘a lifestyle’, in which the unmistakable factory smell of a pair of box-fresh trainers was music to a collector’s nose. If you’ve ever heard anyone extol the virtues of sneaker collecting, he/she will probably be discussing the benefits of preserving collectibles in the freezer. Or the secret behind masking tape for keeping soles white. It’s another world completely. But, I digress.

In any woman’s wardrobe there’s something of a swamp area below the clothes rail, where footwear finds it’s home. Oftentimes, men have little to no understanding, about this part of a house or apartment–and quite likes it that way. With varying severity, this closet can look anything like an idyllic shop window display, or a pile of knotted chaos. The miracle of the latter, is that most women living with such disarray have an uncanny knowledge of the exact location of each shoe. I’m a perfectionist; for years I have been the former and stored everything in labelled boxes. Nice and organised, you say. Ah, yes, perhaps, but the notorious problem with this is, that you quickly forget what makes up the content of these boxes. It’s by no mistake that many women, absent-mindedly, cycle just 4 pairs of shoes each season. So the real question is, what’s the most effective way to keep track of your shoes?

Alternative shoe storage solutions have always seemed a dubious option to me. I imagine the nightmare that an uncovered shoe tree, will leave the precious shoes victim, to some sort of spillage, or falling object; even freak weather through an open window!…or some other equally successful catastrophe. By the same token, hanging shoe pouches sound like ideal conditions for moths and spiders, who may take up residence and commit therein, their final days. Classy. And so, gingerly, I first experimented with the unfolding drama of removing the boxes. Which was, of course, a rather short-sighted, silly idea; because having boxed your shoes since the beginning of time, you actually have no idea how many shoes you really own. Not til they begin uncontrollably pouring out in full horror/grandeur. I, apparently, own a ‘modest’ 100 pairs. Perturbed, I poured myself a glass of wine, which, somehow, led me to the next ‘logical’ step of lining them up, palisade. A drum roll was almost audible at this point, as the room began to take on the character of a fortress at war. This attempt at remedy, was also destined for disaster, as I quickly ran out of floor space when my neat palisades began to resemble piles of sandbags: the shoes began stacking each other. This wasn’t looking good. Another glass of wine later and a glowing brow evidenced that, I was working up a sweat here. In an effort to find the floor again, I had somehow convinced myself that, fewer, taller piles of shoes, would be ‘better’. Even further from my original, ‘tidy’ manifesto, these pathetic skyscrapers were speaking promises of fabric damage and…looked threateningly precarious. No sooner had this crossed my mind, than I was interrupted by the final frontier. I watched, in slow motion, as a pile of clubbing stilettos toppled, scraping past a pair of fine suede Jimmy Choos. Shoes began flying all over the place. Scrambling with outstretched arms, in a bid to minimise further wreckage, I wobbled and tripped, into the stupid stack of empty boxes, sending everything flying. The resulting domino avalanche across the entire room, must have sounded like I was destroying the house, because my fiancé poked his head around the bedroom door. One look at the absolute calamity and a gloriously frustrated woman and quickly, the door shut. At least someone was having some sense today. This wasn’t working! However would I regain control of this territory now?

Another hour of tidying and I had burned about 600 calories, with all the commotion. I emerged, exhausted and perplexed. The chaos remains (somewhat) boxed and I’m back to square one. Anyone have any ideas?!

Ah, it’s that warm, fuzzy time of year again. Which can only mean that once more, I find myself torn between the customs of my homeland and the customs of my adopted homeland.

By nurture a workaholic nation, America is hard pushed to come to a complete stop for anything these days. Thanksgiving is one of those miraculous days where the entire country grinds to a complete halt, if but for one day. Ever since this was made possible, it’s become time-honoured tradition to consider such, if any, time off as sacred. And so when America stops, it feasts. Thanksgiving dinner is the meal of the winter season in North America. Unlike much of Europe which starts a-stuffing on Christmas Day, Thanksgiving is America’s biggest gastronomical event of the year. The “happy holidays” begin, businesses are closed and everyone gets a national day off; family rally round to one person’s house and eating is the central theme of the day. At the break of dawn an assigned chef commences to spend many a God-forsaken hour sweating, over cooking enough food to fill a table the size of a football pitch:

• A 17lb turkey (the size of a small terrier)
• A huge plate of stuffing made with breadcrumbs and celery
• Sweet potato pie topped with marshmallows
• Mashed potatoes with a sprinkling of cheese
• Green bean casserole
• Cranberry sauce (often tinned)
• Lashings of white gravy, sometimes accompanied with buttermilk biscuits
• Sweet apple pie
• Pecan pie
• Pumpkin pie
• Lots of wine, beer and if you’re lucky, champagne

Americans use Thanksgiving to call a ceasefire on family rifts for a day of unity, watching the New York (Macy’s) parade and university ‘college’ football games on television. Out-of-town relatives benefit from Thanksgiving to catch up on family affairs and news; also a time for the well-organized to exchange early Christmas gifts and save a few bob on postage. The general eating and vegetating can either go well into the night, or end at a strategic hour for the shopaholics of the family to tackle Black Friday’s crowds: the first day of winter sales. People have been known to die during Black Friday’s out-of-control stampedes…not for the faint-hearted.

Meanwhile Britain is–mostly–blissfully ignorant of anything happening on the third Thursday of November. It’s no national holiday for us; a large proportion of 21st century Europeans live under-informed about the original Thanksgiving story. A normal work day passes with barely a mention of the event. The festivities in Europe don’t really begin until December. Often held in fully pedestrianised town squares, the famous German Christmas markets are now found all over the Continent, selling homemade Stollen cake, fruit strudels, traditional gingerbread and Lebkuchen cookies and plenty of hot, mulled Glühwein. The open-air stalls are decorated with outdoor pine trees and lit with hundreds of lights. Children ride carousels to folk music and there’s much traditional dancing and singing. Wine and champagne abound every weekend as Europe drinks the vines dry, merrily toasting to winter cheer amongst strangers…strangers who’d normally hurry through these same streets without a glance at each other.

Close of business in Britain, is around 6pm on Christmas Eve. The clock strikes 6; there’s a tangible buzz in the air: it’s The Night Before Christmas. Suddenly everyone’s excited; the streets are full of people gleefully rushing home early for Christmas…you can smell it coming. Anyone open for business on Christmas Day, the British consider a lunatic: 25th December is when Europe grinds to a halt. Church attendance tends to waver between Christmas Eve for Mass or Christmas Day’s special service. Those with a church-free day will awake on Christmas morning and immediately open presents. Some will eat a Full English, our traditional fried breakfast of egg, toast, sausage, baked beans, fried tomatoes, back bacon and mushrooms. Some nibble enough to tide over til later. Once breakfast is consumed, the cooking of the British traditional Christmas dinner begins. Rather less laborious than Thanksgiving dinner, an average British kitchen produces enough food that afternoon to traditionally last two days/two meals/whichever is soonest.

• A large roasted turkey with stuffing/Roast leg of beef/ Roast gammon or leg of ham
• Roasted potatoes
• Peas and sweetcorn
• Brussel sprouts
• Boiled carrots
• Cranberry sauce (from a jar, for extra shelf-life)
• Roasted parsnips
• Yorkshire puddings
• Thick beef gravy for pouring over practically everything
• Lots of champagne and wine, often mulled

Dinner is at some point, marked by the pulling apart of Christmas crackers which contain paper hats, a small nick-nack of sorts and a joke or charade to enact(Arbitrary, but all the funnier after a few drinks). After-dinner cake-eating is a serious affair in Britain; a totally and utterly mandatory indulgence for all present. The table is spread with one or more of the following:

• A slice of traditional, homemade Christmas fruitcake, served with a generous pouring of table cream
• Traditional Christmas Pudding: A sticky looking fruitcake of varying size, oven-heated, removed and doused in brandy/cognac, set alight and also served with a generous pouring of table cream
• A cup of coffee or tea
• Glass of sherry (optional)

American tradition is without Christmas crackers or Christmas pudding; they find both rather strange. I’ve heard many an American confess that Christmas dinner with British in-laws consists of mastering ‘smiling-whilst-heaving-on-mum’s-cake’. Americans consider Europeans an eccentric people, of antiquated tradition–now we know why.

Past the rich, heavy dinner, traditionally Christmas Day is spent playing charades, cards, chess, backgammon, or watching the specially-broadcast films on television. Slightly inebriated picking-at-leftovers is encouraged the entire day. Most Londoners continue their festivities past midnight, bed being out of the question til around 2am. A leisurely lie-in begins another British national holiday–Boxing Day. Boxing Day is Britain’s second Christmas Day, which also marks the first day of shopping lunacy: the ‘January Sales’. The rest will spend Boxing Day in expandable trousers, gleefully shovelling yesterday’s leftovers and watching more films. Unlike America, who has already been back to work an entire day, Britain does not return to work until 27th December. It’s quite blissful, really.

So.

Which of the two do you prefer? Think you could you live in a country where Thanksgiving is a non-day? Or would it be worse to return to work on 26th December? For three years, my husband suffered the former, while I will now endure the latter. The shoe’s on the other foot and it ain’t pretty!

Please, share all your Christmas/Thanksgiving stories here!