Picking on Brits a Bit

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I did have a Japanese friend in grad school. We met every Wednesday and went out to dinner. He had taken me to a Japanese place to eat that was behind a service station that had awesome foods, so he asked me the next week to take him to an American Restaurant. I just couldn't think of one. He was much more traveled than me, and he pointed to the Hunan Gardens, and said, "There, that's American." I just laughed thinking that he was kidding. But he then told me that Chinese people do not eat that stuff they serve us at US Chinese places. Just as he had to take me to a gas station to get real Japanese foods. So, from then on, I stopped thinking of Chinese foods sold here as Chinese food.
 

SmokeyJock

Can't Leave
Oct 4, 2024
300
3,106
Scotland
Not rinsing the soap off of the dishes was what got me. They just scrub them in soap and let the soap dry... or so I am told.

Yep, people just don't understand the charm of having the most beautiful women in the world, and they hate wearing clothes.

Newports? Ugg, I am afraid you lost me there.
someone has been telling you porkies
:ROFLMAO:

is it true none of you yanks have electric kettles?
 
someone has been telling you porkies
Maybe, because I have no idea what a porkie is, but it seems to be confirmed above that Brits don't have the proper sinks for rinsing off the soap.

is it true none of you yanks have electric kettles?
I not only do not own a kettle of any sort, I have never had a reason to ever use one. I see them at stores, but I always just figure they are some sort of antiquated thing left over from the pioneer days... like milk churns and waffle irons.
 
The institution of royalty isn't political, its hierarchy. Political allegiances exist below it.
It is interesting that not too long ago, on here all of the Brits on here were very open to discussing getting rid of the monarchy. In fact, they usually started the conversations. Now, they are all defending them. Not that one is better than the other. Makes no sweat on my balls if they want to support some millionaire's lifestyle with taxes. Just an observation that at times they are more willing to discuss this over other times.
 

woodsroad

Lifer
Oct 10, 2013
12,913
21,605
SE PA USA
I did have a Japanese friend in grad school. We met every Wednesday and went out to dinner. He had taken me to a Japanese place to eat that was behind a service station that had awesome foods, so he asked me the next week to take him to an American Restaurant. I just couldn't think of one. He was much more traveled than me, and he pointed to the Hunan Gardens, and said, "There, that's American." I just laughed thinking that he was kidding. But he then told me that Chinese people do not eat that stuff they serve us at US Chinese places. Just as he had to take me to a gas station to get real Japanese foods. So, from then on, I stopped thinking of Chinese foods sold here as Chinese food.
Is this some sneaky way of saying that Escudo is really a Danish blend?
 

SmokeyJock

Can't Leave
Oct 4, 2024
300
3,106
Scotland
Maybe, because I have no idea what a porkie is, but it seems to be confirmed above that Brits don't have the proper sinks for rinsing off the soap.


I not only do not own a kettle of any sort, I have never had a reason to ever use one. I see them at stores, but I always just figure they are some sort of antiquated thing left over from the pioneer days... like milk churns and waffle irons.
I can't speak for the English, they're a weird bunch, but up here we rinsed our plates after washing them, before the invention of the dishwasher that is ;)

As for washing eggs, do you eat the shells over there? And if the eggs are coming from the chicken's arse, there's either something wrong with American chickens or the way you're taught anatomy, which in the case of the latter makes me feel very sorry for your women :P
 

SmokeyJock

Can't Leave
Oct 4, 2024
300
3,106
Scotland
It is interesting that not too long ago, on here all of the Brits on here were very open to discussing getting rid of the monarchy. In fact, they usually started the conversations. Now, they are all defending them. Not that one is better than the other. Makes no sweat on my balls if they want to support some millionaire's lifestyle with taxes. Just an observation that at times they are more willing to discuss this over other times.
around here we hate the King (unless you're a rangers supporting, up the british union, orangeman hun) but I may be straying into political territory here...

Edit for clarity for yanks: the bit in brackets is me being deliberately politically sectarian, intended to make the bit after the brackets an understatement, which is a classic bit of British humour
 
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MisterBadger

Part of the Furniture Now
Oct 6, 2024
627
4,608
Ludlow, UK
First off, this is made with all good intentions, and for our British friends, feel free to pick back.

I had a visit this last week from a friend who is expatted-down outside of London, and we sat around the other day discussing the difference in here and there.

Why do you guys not rinse the soap off of your dishes when washing them?
I understand that you guys don't like fresh eggs, so you just leave them laying about on the counters, but soapy tasting dishes baffles me.

I have always noticed that it is hard to end a conversation with a British in person, and you guys apologize as much as a rescued abused housewife. That all is ok, quirky, but ok. But, I was surprised to learn that you guys have tv shows about people watching tv shows. This I don't understand.

He was also telling me that the Brits think that we make our walls out of paper. He has been asked about this quite a bit over yonder, which just tells me that they don't understand what drywall is. I asked him what they used to make their interior walls with, and he wasn't sure, but he told me that you guys all carpet your bathrooms. Ha ha.


Now, there are obvious differences between the Brits and us Merikans, beyond just drinkin' weak warm tea, and talkin' funny.
So, let's have some fun. And, you Aussies and Kiwis can join in. I'm sure we do some stuff that is weird to you guys.
Or, all of ya, from places outside the US. Let us have it.
<Rolling up sleeves and handing his jacket to a bystander> RIGHT...

First off, this Brit always rinses the soap off his dishes when he washes them. The way he was taught as a kid. I have never detected soap on dishes, or anywhere else it shouldn't be in the UK, except when smoking Gagsworth & Horrible blends.

Secondly, we like fresh eggs: a bit of poo and feather on the shell reassures us of their recent production. As someone else already said, we don't obsess about washing food containers.

Thirdly: I do admit we find it hard to end a conversation. If I happen to meet my next door neighbour on the track down to the road, we will start by asking after each other's health, then our family's, then having exhausted the subject of the long-range weather forecast and how our crops are doing, after half an hour we're bitching about how the County Council and/or the government is wasting our tax money, and what ought to be done about the war in Ukraine, whether Greg Wallace is misunderstood, (etc).

Fourthly: Apologizing (see what I did there?) for being bumped into or whatever, is a thing you mostly find in the southern counties of England, and especially among the genteel middle class. It's a regional/cultural/class thing. What they are thinking will be something quite different. Further north, we tend to speak as we find. Southerners think us boorish: we might consider them two-faced, and ourselves as forthright and honest.

Fifthly: I also admit British building specifications are shit: modern partition walls seem to be made of hardboard with a thin plaster skim. This is why I have never willingly lived anywhere that was built after the First World War. Older walls are much thicker - but try hammering a nail into the wall of a much older property and you never know whether you're going to hit an engineering brick, a random concrete patch, or go right through a section of mouldy chestnut lath and tired lime plaster. Unlike you, we let our old buildings stand until they fall down. Well, mostly.

But to be fair, I'm minded of what a friend from Kansas City said when she came to stay with us: she described the UK as like being in a parallel reality - which, in a way, it is. Now, it's my turn to generalise (did you see that?) about our Cousins Across The Water (and yes, I have several, between MI and FL):

1. Your tea is a disaster. I think the deficient method of infusion in lukewarm water is hardwired into your DNA ever since that episode in Boston Harbour in 1773 revolutionised (did you see that?) tea-making as a national tradition.

2. You do not understand bacon. It should be cut thick, cooked slowly, and not cremated into charred brittleness.

3. You follow that dyslexic Daniel Webster, when you had Samuel Johnson to guide you in spelling.

4. Your car indicator lights are the same colour as your brake lights. That's not only stupid, it's downright dangerous. As well as driving on the wrong side of the road: I suppose it's your national collective karma for slavishly following everything the French did because they too were at war with us.

5. The stripes on your (neck)ties (FFS, where else does one wear a tie?) run the wrong way.

6. TV: Yes, our programmes can be about as inane as yours (if not more so), but at least when our commercial breaks are finished, we can still remember what was happening in the show before the break started.

Summary: You folk do things differently from us, despite having been shown how to do them right, out of a deliberate perversity and as a laughable protestation of cultural independence, I reckon. I worked under a Lt/Cdr USN when my Brit equivalent went to Washington on a one-year exchange trip. They both came back with culture-shock, but - mind you, I was really sorry when the Yankee officer had to go, and when mine came back :)
 
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SmokeyJock

Can't Leave
Oct 4, 2024
300
3,106
Scotland
<Rolling up sleeves and handing his jacket to a bystander> RIGHT...

First off, this Brit always rinses the soap of his dishes when he washes them. The way he was taught as a kid. I have never detected soap on dishes, or anywhere else it shouldn't be in the UK, except when smoking Gagsworth & Horrible blends.

Secondly, we like fresh eggs: a bit of poo and feather on the shell reassures us of their recent production. As someone else already said, we don't obsess about washing food containers.

Thirdly: I do admit we find it hard to end a conversation. If I happen to meet my next door neighbour on the track down to the road, we will start by asking after each other's health, then our family's, then having exhausted the subject of the long-range weather forecast and how our crops are doing, after half an hour we're bitching about how the County Council and/or the government is wasting our money, and what ought to be done about the war in Ukraine, whether Greg Wallace is misunderstood, (etc).

Fourthly: Apologizing (see what I did there?) for being bumped into or whatever, is a thing you mostly find in the southern counties of England, and especially among the genteel middle class. It's a regional/cultural/class thing. What they are thinking will be something quite different. Further north, we tend to speak as we find. Southerners think us boorish: we might consider them two-faced, and ourselves as forthright and honest.

Fifthly: I also admit British building specifications are shit: modern partition walls seem to be made of hardboard with a thin plaster skim. This is why I have never willingly lived anywhere that was built after the First World War. Older walls are much thicker - but try hammering a nail into the wall of a much older property and you never know whether you're going to hit an engineering brick, a random concrete patch, or go right through a section of mouldy chestnut lath and tired lime plaster. Unlike you, we let our old buildings stand until they fall down. Well, mostly.

But to be fair, I'm minded of what a friend from Kansas City said when she came to stay with us: she described the UK as like being in a parallel reality - which, in a way, it is. Now, it's my turn to generalise (did you see that?) about our Cousins Across The Water (and yes, I have several, between MI and FL):

1. Your tea is a disaster. I think the deficient method of infusion in lukewarm water is hardwired into your DNA ever since that episode in Boston Harbour in 1773 revolutionised (did you see that?) tea-making as a national tradition.

2. You do not understand bacon. It should be cut thick, cooked slowly, and not cremated into charred brittleness.

3. You follow that dyslexic Daniel Webster, when you had Samuel Johnson to guide you in spelling.

4. Your car indicator lights are the same colour as your brake lights. That's not only stupid, it's downright dangerous. As well as driving on the wrong side of the road: I suppose it's your national collective karma for slavishly following everything the French did because they too were at war with us.

5. The stripes on your (neck)ties (FFS, where else does one wear a tie?) run the wrong way.

Summary: You folk do things differently from us, despite having been shown how to do them right, out of a deliberate perversity and as a laughable protestation of cultural independence, I reckon. I worked under a Lt/Cdr USN when my Brit equivalent went to Washington on a one-year exchange trip. They both came back with culture-shock, but - mind you, I was really sorry when the Yankee officer had to go, and when mine came back :)
atta boy Badger, have at em
 
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