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Wednesday, 24 April 2019

ENGLISH v AMERICAN OUT AND ABOUT BY FIONA CUMMINGS


Good day Bloggets. It’s a beautiful day here wasn’t forecast, but there you go. Well I hope it stays nice for tomorrow again forecast isn’t promising but I’m out for the day with friends and it’s somewhere I have always wanted to go but more on that tomorrow. Thankfully Hub is working from home so I can leave my Waggatail as this place isn’t good for dogs she would be so fed up and the car I’m going in is tiny, no way it will accommodate my dog, even though she is small.  And it’s somewhere I haven’t been so don’t know the route so won’t be able to instruct her and she will get confused, so I shall be guided by one of my friends.

 

Today I got a Alice in Wonderland cake plate, oh, my trying to put it together? Wow, I’m sure it’s still not right, but it will have to do as now it looks rather stuck. It’s two plates high then a saucer and cup on the top. It’s so tall too! I don’t know why I put myself through the torture of buying fine china. Especially when I can’t put it away in my display unit to make it’s safe. I have far too much stuff… and though I have held off buying for a while, I couldn’t resist the cake plate. It came in so many fiddly bits. There was a piece of paper, but what good is that to me? And I guess it wouldn’t even be in English?

 

Speaking of English, well, kind of. I was talking with my American friends and a friend from Canada yesterday about how the way they speak, words they use are so different to the way English people talk? My friend was describing our friend’s new hairstyle saying she had bands…. Bands? What are they? Well translated we would say fringe. A fringe is something on the end, a band? Hahaha. Not sure how that makes sense, but obviously it does to our friends across the pond.

 

Like we say lift, they say elevator. Football = soccer. Petrol = gas. Rubbish = trash. Dustbin = trash can. Toilet = rest room. Postcode = zip code. Bill = check. Biscuits = cookies. Shop = store but sometimes a small place in America is still referred to as a shop. Torch = flashlight. Holiday = vacation. Post or post box = mail or mail box. Married = hitched. Injections = shots.

And there are different ways to spell too. I remember talking with the same friends I was talking about a rucksack; it took a while before I realised, they call that a backpack.

 With regards a bum bag? Well, let’s leave that one…

 

If you come to England as small as this country is, you will notice that there are so many different accents. Where I come from Northumberland, we still have pit talk. It’s a language on its own, that people who live in the same area sometimes won’t even understand unless you or your family member worked down the coalmines. My Dad called a table a chebble. I wished I had written down his words as now it’s diluted sadly even the way normal English words are said there, is pronounced another way. My home city of Newcastle a fifteen minute car journey, they speak so differently to what people spoke like in my village. So, no wonder by the time English got across the huge pond it changed a lot, but still we understand each other… and as for the spelling of some words? The way people in America spell, it’s so much easier and sometimes they spell just how it’s pronounced, that’s great, I remember once talking with my English tutor she said she wouldn’t like to change our spelling because it’s history and in all the great books, I said but wouldn’t it be easier for children to learn to spell? She replied, yes, but children have always learned so why change something that isn’t broken. I guess it’s like turning a beautiful castle into a shopping centre, or shopping mall.

 

I have to go to the shop later and I really don’t feel like it today. I should have gone this morning but had to wait in for my cake plate. I find if I don’t go first thing, I really struggle. It’s not like something easy. I have to let my dog out so she doesn’t mess when I’m working her. Then get a bag just in case she does. Then a treat so I can give her to say well done when we get to our destination. Then her leader and harness. And then the things I would do if I had sight, key and shoes. And all that is before I have to psych myself up telling myself I can do this. Even now I still can be walking along and my heart can start to beat faster than I would like. I can easily get myself into a state by overthinking the fact that I am out in the big bad world. The fact that I have to cross a very busy road. The fact I have to remember every single turn, where the steps are and will my dog take me to the door of where I need to be? Will there be any bins out on the path, will a car be parked on the path so I will have to go off kerb onto the road and back on again, because I have slightly detoured, will I be able to find my Barings again? Will there be an overhanging tree? If someone stops to talk with me, will I remember in my head, where I was and what section comes next? When I get to the shop, will there be an assistant to help me get what I need, or will I stand there looking like a fool, or at least feeling like one. Hopefully at the shop, they will still have the old-fashioned card machines as Hub and I have been caught out where it’s been a flat glass pad rather than the raised buttons. I have an iPhone and it’s flat, but it’s played out on screen like a keyboard of a lap top/typewriter also our iPhone speaks, where as the card machines don’t. normally it’s restaurants though that have those annoying flat screens. In most cases, thank goodness for contactless. I just wish they would make the money so you can pay more than £30.

 

Oh, my goodness, guess who’s returned back to hotel Fifi? Yep, old Bloggets may have guessed. A mouse. Always one. And last night, it was going crazy. Trying like mad to get from in between the wall and our kitchen cupboard. And that was after Hub had everything out of the cupboards and cleaned inside. He looked last night when it went quiet and there were no holes to let it in. but Boy Wonder Hub and myself were all around one cupboard listening to it and it wasn’t even afraid of us. It was determined it was getting into our cupboard. And I knocked on the door. I would have messed myself if it had answered. Hahah. But when I knocked, it still continued to try to get in. oh, gosh, I feel sick thinking about it. Shamrock came around and we were all sitting having a nice chat when suddenly the dam thing went across the sitting room wall. Inside of it. But the noise, oh, my, it’s not a rat, it’s far too small. Sham was petrified. Me too. Boy Wonder is a vegan so won’t set a trap so Hub set a humane one but this morning it was empty. Let’s see if it comes back tonight. I hate them. We are opposite a field and we have neighbours who love to feed the birds all that combined with some factories half a mile behind our house, is a great combination for Mickey and his family.

 

Our house is detached, so, why our house? I know my neighbour five doors away in her garden had a rat in her compost heap. It used to pop out during the day to look at her. Hahahaha. She has three dogs too and one is a Jack Russell who are great at catching at least mice. That rat wasn’t bothered, it was a rock-hard rat with attitude.

 

OK, I must dash and clean the house then get ready to go out.

 Take care please, smile and I shall be back to tell you about my day out later.

 

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