dreadcrumbs

The Asynchronicity Review, Part One

Over the next several days I'm going to try to outline the weirdness I did not expect to discover in Britain. You know, like I would have, had I been diligent with the blog while I was over there.

So let us begin with the horrors of...

Sink faucetry!

I am accustomed to the mono-faucet sink, where I can, through judicious use of a single control dial or lever, create one stream of pleasantly warm water. Alas, twelve of the fourteen bathroom sinks I dealt with in the UK, from hotel to residence to public lavatory, were of the two-faucet variety. The burnt-left-hand, frozen-right-hand variety. But that's okay. Two-faucet sinks are still occasionally found in the US, so I already had behavior modifications in place, like only using cold water, or trying to wash my hands fast enough in the hot before it became truly scalding. So, fine. No real problem.

But the truly odd thing was the distance that the faucets extended themselves out from their roosting spot over the expanse of the sink itself. Or, rather, the absence of distance. I am used to being able to stick my hands underneath a faucet and have the water hit the palms of my hands in some fashion. But those British faucets barely cleared the basin at all, and allowed a liberal dousing of fingertips only. Sure, my hands are larger than most, but my wife (who has dainty little hands) will attest that it was fairly ridiculous.

After puzzling over this for several days, and noticing the strange options for taking a shower (more on that tomorrow) I have come to the conclusion that the British must favor "the bath" as a concept over spray & drizzle cleansing. The faucets were there not to wash your hands with, but simply to fill the basin. The basin itself was then to be used as the cleansing tool. I was meant to give my hands a little mini-bath, digits soaking and splashing in an increasingly stagnant pool.

Now, I don't know about anyone else, but I wash my hands to remove the filth of the day (or of the moment). I do not wish to relish it, languishing in a filth-of-the-day soup. Or stew, depending on how chunky that particular day's filth happens to be.

Yes, I still hold with the wisdom of my sainted great-granny, who used to say "Standing water is the devil's chamber pot."

I never thought I would become the Ugly American and stubbornly refuse to adapt to another culture. I don't know. I guess I just can't shake that old Puritan fear of cesspools.

Microstory Monday

Systematic Self Discovery by Dictionary, Day One

"They don't really eat with their noses, you know," the doctor says, plucking two more ants out of my nostril.

Teetotalling in Yorkshire

Being descended of water buffalo, I require great amounts of liquid to thrive. I can survive on a paltry liter or two, but it just isn't a comfortable existence. And here in the UK I have found an unforeseen social discontinuity.

The British apparently do not drink more than 16 ounces daily of water-based liquids.

Oh, they'll have a pint. Or two, or three, of ale or beer or whiskey, but coke, sprite, or the fabulous Scottish beverage Iron-Bru are delivered in tiny little sipping glasses. Glasses for tiny little people. Tiny wretched little people. Sub-human people. Baby people. Not real people.

I'll concede that you can get some beverages bottled in convenience stores in sizes up to a half-liter, but that's still not nearly enough. Especially when you're carting 150 pounds of luggage down narrow cobblestone roads and across ungainly train terminals. It's sweaty work. One must replenish or die.

My wife and I had taken to filling up a bottle with water from the bathroom faucets in the hotels we were in, just to stave off death by dessication, but a little sign discovered above the water spout in our hotel in Leeds stated simply "This Water Not Suitable For Drinking."

Which of course calls into question all the other water we'd been drinking from taps.

Was it just that the Leeds hotel (which was quite a nice one, incidentally) was civic-minded enough to want to protect their guests from the pervasive water-borne pathogens of England? Or is it just that the water in Leeds is known to carry something?

Hard to say.

We did fill up in our hotel in Ilkley, though, which is just a few miles outside of Leeds. So far no cholera.

Possibly some bird flu, but no cholera.

Connected!

At long last I have found a free wireless host for my Parasitic Digital Assistant to latch onto. I'll make an entry here in Manchester while I can. Maybe another in Birmingham in a few days if the wireless outlook is just as rosy.