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@Geoff Cooper, this is for you.
It was late spring of 1997 when I was 19. I was flying to England for what was supposed to be a few days of providing technical support for some software that I had written to a British company that was selling it in Europe. Quickly it turned into a six year stay. I flew from Fayetteville, AR where @Rana and I were attending the University of Arkansas. I had a web hosting business in Fayetteville that was covering our tuition and rent.
I should caveat this with the fact that this is a story of different perspectives. Nothing in this story is meant to imply that anything is wrong with the Brits but to express the perspective of a young Arkie when first experiencing a different way of life.
When I arrived at Gatwick Airport I found it to be very cold and damp. I quickly found that the Brits were very busy and much less friendly than the folks at home. I also found it very strange that police were walking around the airport with MP5 (submachine guns) in three point slings. I had instructions to board a train to Bedford the capital of Bedfordshire where I would meet the CTO of the company I had come to assist. Soon after the train left the airport I began seeing row after row of multistory brick buildings with clothes hanging outside the windows to dry and black smoke coming from the chimneys. Back home almost everyone had a clothes dryer and those that did not went to the laundromat to wash and dry their clothes inside. I was accustomed to wood heat but the smoke was white or grey with a more pleasant aroma. Even our charcoal burned much cleaner that whatever they were heating with. I felt bad for these people who must be in distress. Most likely these memories are from Croydon. Which I later learned was not typical of London. Judging London by Croydon would like judging the US by East Saint Louis or Inglewood.
The train I was on stopped at almost every small town along the way. It was not heated and was quite cold. I believe the trip was around 3.5 hours to Bedford. When I arrived there Chris, the CTO, picked me up in the smallest car that I had ever been in, I believe it was an Austin Metro. It was so small that my suitcase barely fit in the boot (trunk). He was very proud of his small car and had been telling me about it the whole way from the train. He said that he was one of a very small number of private car owners at the company. Almost everyone drove a company car. On the drive to his home he told me many tales about Stewartby where he lived. The village had been built for the workers of the London Brick Company. Everything in the village was built from brick.
When we arrived at his home, his wife had prepared a wonderful meal of organ meat and a side, or perhaps it was bangers and mash. I have forgotten which came first. He proudly showed me the fireplace where they burned coal to heat the house. But coal was so expensive that they only burned it when it was really cold. He also was proud of the bed that he had bought from Argos and assembled in his guest bedroom for me earlier that day. I had no idea how he would have gotten that bed into or on top of his car. Later I learned about the packing and assembly methods that the Swedes and IKEA had invented. That night I slept in my clothes and my coat. I did the same every night that I slept in his house. In hind sight, his home was detached (had four walls) which meant he was doing better than most Brits whose houses only had two or sometimes three walls (semi detached). In fact that may have been the only time I slept in a fully detached house in the UK.
The next day we went to his office in St. Ives, Cambs. It was a pretty location along the Great Ouse River. His office had a view of the river. The lower floor of the office was empty because the river had a tendency to flood that level of the building. He told about how many hundreds of years old the building was. There were noticeable gaps in the wooden construction of the buildings interior and the floors were many degrees out of level. The interior of the building was similar to what I would have expected to find inside of The Mayflower. On the postivie side, it was heated. The two most important things to note about St. Ives are that "St Ives always needed large numbers of pubs, 64 in 1838 (1 for every 55 inhabitants), 60 in 1861, 48 in 1865 and 45 in 1899" and the one lane bridge across the Ouse had a small building at its midpoint which had been used as a brothel.
Later that day we went to the main office which was in an industrial park in Huntingdon, Cambs. At the main office I met Alan, the CFO, who invited me to his office for tea and biscuits. Turns out that meant hot tea with UHT (milk that is so pasteurized that it does not spoil) and cookies. Alan proceeded to tell me about his three marriages. He dated his second wife while married to the first and this third while married to the second. He currently had three women on the go and a new car that he needed to "christen" with one of them but he was debating which. He very proudly told me about his 400 year old house.
Then I met the CEO. He drove a Jaguar sports car, his girlfriend drove a BMW M3 and he shared a Ferrari 355 with a friend. His house was semi detached, in a new neighborhood in St. Ives with a pub within walking distance and radiators on the wall for heat. Radiators are metal structures on the wall that hot water is pumped through to heat the room. They were a vast improvement over the coal heat in Stewartby but I later learned that it is really important not to let them make steam. If they do, the boiler explodes. After perhaps four nights in Stewartby I moved into the CEO's house. We had a fun Friday night at the pub. The next morning his girlfriend made High Tea for us. This consists of tea, small sandwiches and biscuits / sweets. This was the first meal that I enjoyed in England. I am eternally grateful to her for feeding me. Later I learned that she also cooked a wonderful roast chicken with roast potatoes.
I am going to skip ahead a week or so to the day of my first experience with the British Police. So far I had been chauffeured every where I went. But on this day I needed to go Watford where the companies tech support center was located. This was roughly a 60 mile drive. I had worked and driven in Australia and New Zealand so driving on the left and round a bouts were not new to me. I was given the keys to one of the company Vauxhall Cavaliers, a mobile phone, and a map. I made the drive to Watford where I met the Lotus Esprit driving CEO of the tech support company and his assistant who spent the day telling me about her sexual exploits while traveling Europe. I was told that their call center workers bred like rabbits. They had a very cool coffee vending machine that you pressed buttons on to make various combinations of single serve coffee or hot chocolate. That was probably my favorite part of their office. I was not a fan of coffee, but I had been cold so much of the time that I really appreciated the hot chocolate! On the drive back to Huntingdon the day turned into night and after turning at a large round about off of the A1 Motorway I felt that I had made a wrong turn. I pulled into a gated driveway with a guard house to look at the map. While I was looking at the map a black Range Rover pulled across the driveway blocking me in. Two men with reflective jackets and MP5s jumped out of the Range Rover behind my car and another came toward me from the gatehouse. I put my hands on the steering wheel and explained that I was a lost American looking for the office park. They gave me directions and let me go. I told the story at the office the next day and everyone laughed as they told me that I had pulled into Sir John Major's driveway! He had just retired from being the Prime Minister and would later arrange for my work permit.
About a week later I flew home to get @Rana. Over the next six years we lived in six different homes (St. Ives x 2, Cambridge, New Market, Hitchin and finally London), traveled to all of the tourist sites of England, Scotland and Whales and then began exploring the continent.
Being young I believe our accents were moldable and after a time the Brits began to accuse us of being Canadian. They felt out accents were not strong enough to be American. Even now after speaking to friends over the pond we retain a slightly British accent for a while.
Some day I will write about having Anchovy Toast with Lord Cope at the House of Lords or perhaps about sitting down with George Michael to discuss a business investment, or perhaps about that Israeli Colonel who had the heaviest grenade I have ever felt with no drill marks on it sitting on his desk in London.
It was late spring of 1997 when I was 19. I was flying to England for what was supposed to be a few days of providing technical support for some software that I had written to a British company that was selling it in Europe. Quickly it turned into a six year stay. I flew from Fayetteville, AR where @Rana and I were attending the University of Arkansas. I had a web hosting business in Fayetteville that was covering our tuition and rent.
I should caveat this with the fact that this is a story of different perspectives. Nothing in this story is meant to imply that anything is wrong with the Brits but to express the perspective of a young Arkie when first experiencing a different way of life.
When I arrived at Gatwick Airport I found it to be very cold and damp. I quickly found that the Brits were very busy and much less friendly than the folks at home. I also found it very strange that police were walking around the airport with MP5 (submachine guns) in three point slings. I had instructions to board a train to Bedford the capital of Bedfordshire where I would meet the CTO of the company I had come to assist. Soon after the train left the airport I began seeing row after row of multistory brick buildings with clothes hanging outside the windows to dry and black smoke coming from the chimneys. Back home almost everyone had a clothes dryer and those that did not went to the laundromat to wash and dry their clothes inside. I was accustomed to wood heat but the smoke was white or grey with a more pleasant aroma. Even our charcoal burned much cleaner that whatever they were heating with. I felt bad for these people who must be in distress. Most likely these memories are from Croydon. Which I later learned was not typical of London. Judging London by Croydon would like judging the US by East Saint Louis or Inglewood.
The train I was on stopped at almost every small town along the way. It was not heated and was quite cold. I believe the trip was around 3.5 hours to Bedford. When I arrived there Chris, the CTO, picked me up in the smallest car that I had ever been in, I believe it was an Austin Metro. It was so small that my suitcase barely fit in the boot (trunk). He was very proud of his small car and had been telling me about it the whole way from the train. He said that he was one of a very small number of private car owners at the company. Almost everyone drove a company car. On the drive to his home he told me many tales about Stewartby where he lived. The village had been built for the workers of the London Brick Company. Everything in the village was built from brick.
When we arrived at his home, his wife had prepared a wonderful meal of organ meat and a side, or perhaps it was bangers and mash. I have forgotten which came first. He proudly showed me the fireplace where they burned coal to heat the house. But coal was so expensive that they only burned it when it was really cold. He also was proud of the bed that he had bought from Argos and assembled in his guest bedroom for me earlier that day. I had no idea how he would have gotten that bed into or on top of his car. Later I learned about the packing and assembly methods that the Swedes and IKEA had invented. That night I slept in my clothes and my coat. I did the same every night that I slept in his house. In hind sight, his home was detached (had four walls) which meant he was doing better than most Brits whose houses only had two or sometimes three walls (semi detached). In fact that may have been the only time I slept in a fully detached house in the UK.
The next day we went to his office in St. Ives, Cambs. It was a pretty location along the Great Ouse River. His office had a view of the river. The lower floor of the office was empty because the river had a tendency to flood that level of the building. He told about how many hundreds of years old the building was. There were noticeable gaps in the wooden construction of the buildings interior and the floors were many degrees out of level. The interior of the building was similar to what I would have expected to find inside of The Mayflower. On the postivie side, it was heated. The two most important things to note about St. Ives are that "St Ives always needed large numbers of pubs, 64 in 1838 (1 for every 55 inhabitants), 60 in 1861, 48 in 1865 and 45 in 1899" and the one lane bridge across the Ouse had a small building at its midpoint which had been used as a brothel.
Later that day we went to the main office which was in an industrial park in Huntingdon, Cambs. At the main office I met Alan, the CFO, who invited me to his office for tea and biscuits. Turns out that meant hot tea with UHT (milk that is so pasteurized that it does not spoil) and cookies. Alan proceeded to tell me about his three marriages. He dated his second wife while married to the first and this third while married to the second. He currently had three women on the go and a new car that he needed to "christen" with one of them but he was debating which. He very proudly told me about his 400 year old house.
Then I met the CEO. He drove a Jaguar sports car, his girlfriend drove a BMW M3 and he shared a Ferrari 355 with a friend. His house was semi detached, in a new neighborhood in St. Ives with a pub within walking distance and radiators on the wall for heat. Radiators are metal structures on the wall that hot water is pumped through to heat the room. They were a vast improvement over the coal heat in Stewartby but I later learned that it is really important not to let them make steam. If they do, the boiler explodes. After perhaps four nights in Stewartby I moved into the CEO's house. We had a fun Friday night at the pub. The next morning his girlfriend made High Tea for us. This consists of tea, small sandwiches and biscuits / sweets. This was the first meal that I enjoyed in England. I am eternally grateful to her for feeding me. Later I learned that she also cooked a wonderful roast chicken with roast potatoes.
I am going to skip ahead a week or so to the day of my first experience with the British Police. So far I had been chauffeured every where I went. But on this day I needed to go Watford where the companies tech support center was located. This was roughly a 60 mile drive. I had worked and driven in Australia and New Zealand so driving on the left and round a bouts were not new to me. I was given the keys to one of the company Vauxhall Cavaliers, a mobile phone, and a map. I made the drive to Watford where I met the Lotus Esprit driving CEO of the tech support company and his assistant who spent the day telling me about her sexual exploits while traveling Europe. I was told that their call center workers bred like rabbits. They had a very cool coffee vending machine that you pressed buttons on to make various combinations of single serve coffee or hot chocolate. That was probably my favorite part of their office. I was not a fan of coffee, but I had been cold so much of the time that I really appreciated the hot chocolate! On the drive back to Huntingdon the day turned into night and after turning at a large round about off of the A1 Motorway I felt that I had made a wrong turn. I pulled into a gated driveway with a guard house to look at the map. While I was looking at the map a black Range Rover pulled across the driveway blocking me in. Two men with reflective jackets and MP5s jumped out of the Range Rover behind my car and another came toward me from the gatehouse. I put my hands on the steering wheel and explained that I was a lost American looking for the office park. They gave me directions and let me go. I told the story at the office the next day and everyone laughed as they told me that I had pulled into Sir John Major's driveway! He had just retired from being the Prime Minister and would later arrange for my work permit.
About a week later I flew home to get @Rana. Over the next six years we lived in six different homes (St. Ives x 2, Cambridge, New Market, Hitchin and finally London), traveled to all of the tourist sites of England, Scotland and Whales and then began exploring the continent.
Being young I believe our accents were moldable and after a time the Brits began to accuse us of being Canadian. They felt out accents were not strong enough to be American. Even now after speaking to friends over the pond we retain a slightly British accent for a while.
Some day I will write about having Anchovy Toast with Lord Cope at the House of Lords or perhaps about sitting down with George Michael to discuss a business investment, or perhaps about that Israeli Colonel who had the heaviest grenade I have ever felt with no drill marks on it sitting on his desk in London.
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