You Say Potato, I say Zucchini

Apparently the characteristic greeting of a Nottingham native is ‘Ay up, me duck’. I’m not sure whether that is a question or a statement, and frankly have never heard it used. Perhaps this is because because no one of my acquaintance keeps barnyard fowl. Either way, I’ve been pondering the difference between Australian English and English English. The differences are small but numerous; in most cases insignificant but in many cases curious.

Some of the words used in England but not in Australia are for me are quintessentially English expressions that connote this country in all its hedgerow-and-tea, double-decker-bus and scones glory. Like ‘nursery’. Here, this means somewhere to store children during the day. The Australian equivalent, ‘child-care centre’, is much more prosaic, but then Australians use ‘nursery’ for somewhere that baby plants are tended and nurtured. I don’t know what this says about Australians’ priorities when it comes to their offspring.

Surprisingly, there are also grammatical differences between antipodean English and the original version. One of these is a particular bugbear of the Beloved, and a guaranteed way to get his goat. So of course I throw it slyly into conversation on occasion. The difference is that in Australia, when speaking about the past, we use what I believe is called the gerund. So I would say ‘I was standing by the flotilla when the duck danced its jig.’ Theoretically, anyway; I’m fairly sure I’ve not yet had occasion to comment on a dancing barnyard fowl. An English person, however, would say ‘I was stood by the flotilla when the duck danced its jig.’ While this sounds wrong to me, the only grammar I ever studied at school was in other languages, so I’m not sure who’s in the right.

There are other word differences whose misuse can be comical, and embarrassing. The word ‘pants’, for example, refers in Australia to trousers and in the UK to underwear. A dear antipodean friend of mine was caught out on this when living in Edinburgh, when she commented to new workmates about the oddity of the strange fashion then current for wearing trousers under skirts. Her comment that ‘I never wear pants under skirts, it just looks weird’ has a whole different meaning in the UK.

In a similar way, I was most surprised to here the Beloved tell somebody that we had an estate. I’d hardly call our modest dwelling an estate; we don’t even have a garden, and ‘having’ implies more ownership of said property than we could fairly claim. It turns out that ‘estate’ is the British term for the equally irrelevant Australianism ‘station wagon’, a term of course for a useful type of family car that’s not a sedan. Perhaps such cars were originally conceived of for large properties, which in Australia is often termed a sheep or cattle station; in England, the more lordly ‘estate’.

There are different words for food too, even basic things like fruit and vegetables. I suspect these reflect the differing influences on the food culture of Australia and Britain, particularly in the postwar period. Australia’s zucchini and eggplant, for example, are Britain’s courgette and aubergine, which suggests to me that Britain got these first from the French, while the large numbers of postwar Italian migrants brought them to the Antipodies and the US, and used the Italian ‘zucchini’ to describe their import. As for eggplant, I have no idea.

There are other less explicable differences; ‘squash’, for example, in Britain refers to what Australians call pumpkin, as well as – oddly – being a vague term used interchangeably for cordial, fruit juice and soft drink. Most bizarre is something that I first tasted in Italy, where its name, kaki reflects its Japanese origin; in Australia it’s a persimmon, a term also used in Britain, where it is however sometimes called a Sharon fruit. Go figure.

And to sum up a bunch of other random differences: in Britain, mothers drive down the motorway at half nine and then use buggies to transport their children to the cashpoint after having a c-section. In Australia, however, mothers drive down the freeway at half past nine and then use strollers to wheel their kidlets to the ATM after a Caesarian.

A New Office

I recently started working in the office of a large government organisation. Having spent the last four years in freelance, studenty and academic milieux, working from home or in an office with a total occupancy of one, this makes a change. It’s currently a novelty to be living an officey, nine-to-five lifestyle and I’m enjoying it immensely. I suspect this novelty to eventually wilt like an old lettuce, but at the moment it is fun.

I am enjoying the daily cherry-picking of a combination of bits from my wardrobe to combine into a corporatey ensemble. Tailored trousers that had been sulking, neglected, at the back of my wardrobe are now worn while sauntering briskly across the office, accompanied by a pair of sensible-but-smart low heels. I’m learning to pass off the casual cotton tops of my previous jeans lifestyle as genuine corporate wear, with the aid of a nice scarf here and a jacket there. I’ve consciously toned down my penchant for large accessories but the big necklaces and whimsical brooches are creeping out to adorn my sensible lapels and sober cardigans.

After a long period as a PhD student and a brief period in which I was self-employed/unemployed/still studying, depending on the day, it’s a relief to be doing something useful. The swipe card hung around my neck feels like a stamp of approval that I’m useful to someone. Not that I ever believed any different, but somehow working for and by yourself robs you of the validation of someone else valuing your contribution. And I’m not doing anything important, or exciting, or challenging, or fulfilling, but I like it nonetheless. Even walking around the supermarket in my corporate wear feels better than the neat but relaxed clothes I wore around the house in the last days of my studying/freelancing phase.

Funnily, the change in what I’m wearing seems to embody the way I feel, that suddenly someone else thinks I’m useful for something, and the sneaking suspicion that tends to fester during the long years of a fulltime PhD, that perhaps what you’re doing is interesting but useless, is gone. Someone’s paying me, and I may be doing bland and unexciting things but someone thinks that contribution is valuable enough to pay me to do it. I’ll take that.

It’s funny how what we wear contributes, unconsciously or consciously, to how we feel about ourselves; perhaps it’s because of the way we imagine we’re being judged. No matter how much you know that you’re in a temporary pause between studying and your chosen career, or that you’re doing some freelancing or flexible hours, being in the supermarket in the middle of the day in lounging around clothes, even well-fitting, decent quality ones, feels like an admission that you’re not really doing anything useful with your time. Heels and suityness may be less comfortable, but they feel better.

Travels with my Stomach

I have decided that the way to determine how the middle class eats in a given city is to visit its museum café. In Chicago, for example, it was a free soup with your overprocessed, tasteless made-to-order sandwich, which spoke volumes about why Americans are so fat. In New York, it was a different story. In Melbourne, it’s generally decent but overpriced; I can’t speak for other Australian cities. In Britain, it’s routinely baked potatoes, sandwiches and soup, with the notable exception of the National Trust cafes I’ve written about here before. In Italy, unsurprisingly, they haven’t caught up with the trend of putting cafes in museums yet. After four days in Toronto last week and two trips to museum cafes, it seems that in that part of the world the middle class eats very well indeed.

I formed this view after visiting the Royal Ontario Museum’s café, which was full to the brim of thoughtful and tasty bites, including as burritos and the burgers that seem to obsess all North Americans, pasta to order and decent pizzas. The chef seemed to have her finger firmly on the pulse of food fashion, in a good way, as suggested by her use of ‘artisanal sausage’ (presumably one crafted on a lathe by a master) and a range of local products.

The rather fetching Royal Ontario Museum

Most telling, perhaps, were the soups, which seemed to sum up Toronto’s cultural mix. There was a corn chowder inspired by the adjacent part of the States; a curried carrot soup that nodded to the local Indian population, and a hot and sour broth with Chinese overtones. The cauliflower and miso was intriguing, if a little odd-tasting. Then there was what I mistook for Cream of Toronto; perhaps, I mused, a mixture of a little North America (ketchup?), with a little of Britain (pea and ham?), and something unique (maple syrup?) – but no, the maple was the neighbouring pot in a parsnip soup. This vat was in fact not Cream of Toronto but Cream of Tomato, a soup which itself blends the Italian tomato (yes, I know it was American originally) with the creamed English soup style.

While the middle class eats well here, I’m not sure that they drink well, at least as far as caffeination is concerned. On one wall at the Royal Ontario Museum café was a huge bank of machines that doled out coffee in every percolation and combination. Your decaf mocha frappa cappuccino latte could be whipped, sprinkled or spiked with every kind of sweetener, milkerer or syrupy additive you could wish for. The coffee was branded and sloganed with every kind of Colombian fair-trade organic no-beans-were-harmed moniker possible. Like their US of A neighbours, Canadians seem to be into coffee in a big way, but like most of the Anglo world, not in a good way. They thrive on the big vats of terrible coffee that are also adored by lots of Americans; the Starbucks model of bigger is better. I steered clear of it and went for tea instead.

The British influence in this former colony was evident in the reasonably large selection of tea on offer from said machines. I chose an Earl Grey and it was undrinkable. This it had in common with the two or three other cups of Earl Grey that I had in Toronto, before I gave up looking for something that wasn’t soapy and awful, and went for the local variety instead. This is called Rose Tea and I am happy to report, is quite good. There’s an ad on TV in Canada where an Englishman opines that said brew is unavailable in his homeland. I’ll stick with Earl Grey that tastes like bergamot.

The Nanny State

The term ‘nanny state’ used to confuse me. Did the term, I wondered, refer to a part of Britain where the per capita population or female goats was particularly high? Or was it used to describe the dazed brain fog that afflicts sleep-starved milk-leaky new mums? Or perhaps a state of mind brought on by governessing middle-class children, making bread and jam and administering cod-liver oil? With occasional penchant for carpet bags and magic umbrellas?

Begin cartwheel here

Since discovering that the nanny state refers in fact to the British government’s overbearing interest in the health and welfare of its citizens, I have become more and more bemused by said authority’s enthusiasm for overprotecting Brits, whom it implies by its actions are a bunch of half-witted, poor-sighted two-year olds who couldn’t take responsibility for their actions if said actions were covered in chocolate and handed out at Tesco.

Warning, dad dancing ahead

You quite literally can’t leave home without encountering the nanny state in Britain. In fact, you don’t even need to leave the house. English bathrooms, for example, have no power points or light switches in them. None. This is perhaps to stop Britons amusing themselves during electrical storms by throwing jugs of water at switched on power points. No bathroom in the entire country has them, unless there’s some electrician at home in Hackney chuckling in rebellious glee as he fits a row of shiny power points to his bathroom wall with a triumphant ‘So there’. Anyway, this rule means our bathroom is inflicted, jungle-like, with a tangle of different cords to activate the heater, hot-water service, heated-towel rail and overhead light. You have to walk carefully to avoid being draped with them.

Escaping stick figures ahead

Sometimes, Britain protests at bits of nanny state legislation that seem to defy common sense. In recent weeks, for example, two policewomen were forced to put their children into childcare centres because they were advised that each taking turns to baby-sit the two girls was illegal. Because the childcare enabled each woman to work while her child was looked after by the other, the arrangement was deemed financially beneficial to each, which under current legislation deems the setup a commercial organisation. Thus the two women were legally required to have criminal record checks, which they didn’t have. Such checks were so time-consuming to procure that the girls went unhappily into childcare instead. Fortunately the media pounced on this outbreak of silliness, prompting some governmental blushes and promises of reviews.

In other cases such requirements are just silly rather than ridiculous, as in my encounter with risk aversion yesterday. Yesterday I was again at my favourite aquatic centre, where a moveable floor allows the pool’s depth to be altered. Last time I swam, the floor was asserting its independence by deciding spontaneously to move itself, prompting a large warning bell of the type heard in action films when the hero is stealing an aircraft. The staff watched bemused as the floor moved up a bit, then stopped, contented. Yesterday, it had gone further and made a dramatic bid for freedom. When I arrived, the pool attendants were all looking slightly confused, and the pool floor was jutting out of the water and pointing toward the ceiling.

Be sure to levitate at least 5cm above the ground

This required some creative thinking. The lane ropes were rotated so that swimmers could do laps across the pool instead, and things continued as normal. But the nanny state needed further protection for us innocent cretins. Thus a large and detailed sign headed ‘Risk Assessment’ advised me that the lane ropes were now a trip hazard, as they were longer than the width of the pool and extended out over the edge. Right. In a serious tone, the pool attendant filled me in on this verbally, too, just in case I was illiterate as well as stupid. Good. Then twenty-five ten-year-olds from the local school arrived, and after each and every single one of them looked at the pool and said ‘Oh my God!’, the attendant told them, too, that the lane ropes might be a trip hazard, just in case they were all imbeciles who couldn’t see below their knees. And just to be sure, each lane rope was bedecked with a large yellow sign that said ‘TRIP HAZARD’. We got the message.

Hopefully, the pool floor will receive counselling and career advice and be put back in its place so that we can swim full lengths again. Otherwise the whole place might go the way of a nearby diving pool that is said to have been closed down because diving was too risky a pastime. This to me seems less like the nanny state and more like the loony state.

Trash, Treasure, Teacups

On Saturday I went to a fleamarket at the home of the county football club. It was a blustery, chilly day, with the kind of wind that buffets you about and sends you inside for a cup of tea drunk with a sense of cosy gratefulness for an indoor haven.

The market took place in a former sale yard, a motley collection of red-brick buildings with an indistinct current purpose and use; there were bathroom fittings for sale in one and another appeared to be a café but had no obvious entrance. In another building labelled ‘Poultry Market’, a nondescript man perched in an unlit corner of the room and auctioned off fridges for a pittance.

The main floor show at the fleamarket was, oddly, a butcher’s van. The miked-up butcher in a stripy apron and perky cap flogged bargains to the small crowd of appreciative buyers, asking who wanted a prime fillet or leg or rack for only fifteen quid. ‘But don’t tell the others I’ve given it to you for that price’. Next to the butcher was the flower lady, who sold expensive pansies and an incredible variety of inexpensive bulbs. I bought some red and pink tulip bulbs which I went home and planted upside down (at least the first few, until I realised that the pointy end should go up).

Amongst the junk stalls there was also a fishmonger selling lovely hunks of salmon and cod, shells full of delectable crab meat, and smoked haddock, which in this country is frequently and inexplicably dyed a violent, nuclear yellow. There were also fruit stalls selling eat-me-now strawberries for a pound and mushy plums for less. Even here at an outdoor market much (although not all) of the fruit and veg is imported, plastic-looking and wrapped in plastic. Sigh. Nearby, a van labelled Locksley Catering sold muffins, cake and flapjacks as well as onions and sausages, by the smell of it. I wondered idly whether Robin Hood was really Robin of Locksley as in the 1991 movie, and whether, this being Nottingham, the choice of name for the food van was accidental.

Around the food stalls, people had marked out bits of ashphalt and were selling odds and sods, mainly from cardboard boxes set on the ground. It was trash and treasure, with a heavy emphasis on the trash. Each stall looked as though the contents had been accumulating in a family home for for thirty or forty years, before being swept into boxes and dumped out for sale when the last of the family finally dispersed. In each case the age of the toys hinted at the era in which the family raised children; games and puzzles from the eighties sent me back to my childhood.

Lots of people hate this kind of junk; others pick over the boxes carefully and fish out some almost-useful not-quite-attractive item that just needs a little repair. I fall somewhere in between, largely because of a penchant for vintage kitchenware.

Before I left Australia I divested myself of as many of my material possessions as I could bear to part with. Shoes, clothes and household goods – many of which I still used – all went into boxes and off to a fleamarket. Things I’d bought overseas, magazines, the old books I use to make birthday cards, kitchenware, the dinner set we’d used until that date, jewellery, photo frames, candelabra and much else was set on a stall and eventually carted off piece by piece to be useful to other people. Selling the stuff was a little daunting at first, particularly the hordes of greedy fingers and head-torch-bedecked bargain hunters scrabbling amongst my stuff on a wintry pre-dawn morning before it could even be unpacked and put on sale. But when it all calmed down, I found the whole experiencee of divesting myself of my stuff strangely liberating. Each item that someone bought made me feel strangely lighter, as though I was being gradually relieved of the great weight of my possessions. And the fact that they gave me money in return only sweetened the deal.

Now that we have our own place here in the UK, we’ve had to go and undo all that good divesting, and instead have had to shell out wads of cash at Swedish homewares barns for a set of replacement items of variable quality and durability. The alternative was to continue eating with a wooden spoon porridge served in a mixing bowl, as we did for the first day or two after leaving our share house and setting up by ourselves. But with the basics covered, acquiring the extras has brought me full circle, and I’m enjoying picking up interesting bits and pieces to adorn our rather bare home. The fact that they by necessity need to be very cheap only adds to the challenge.

And now I see why the people hungrily gobbled up my stuff at the fleamarket (although I’m still a bit bemused by enthusiastic buyers of half-used toiletries and cleaning products). It’s stuff with a history. Stuff that someone else has bought, enjoyed and which has become redundant to them. But which the new buyer acquires for a song, which makes it all the nicer.

So I came home from the fleamarket with three small, delicate china cups that are painted with blue flowers and have gold rims. Along with a few plates, they seemed to be all that was left of what must have been a beautiful set of very good quality. I wonder if it was the good china that a young wife acquired decades ago, and that was used countless times before it was dropped, cracked, chipped and smashed down to these few remaining pieces that will now be greatly enjoyed by me.

Bargains and Swindles

I don’t think of myself as a verbose type but I am incurably chatty when it comes to perfect strangers. I can’t resist asking phonebankers how their day is, asking shop assistants how they find the garish wallpaper or what is their favourite pastry of the selection available. I try to remember that lots of non crap people do crap jobs on their way to better employment, and find that often addressing someone as a human rather than a customer service machine transforms them from said automaton into a really nice sort. Then you go away with a warm feeling and the sense that you have peeked through the window into someone else’s life.

Today however the total strangers were not in retail but were fellow swimmers at my local pool. First off it was the charming participants in the 10am water aerobics class. There were twenty one agile senior ladies, two young women and a jaunty, tubby fellow in his mid twenties. English pools being what they are these days we all showered together afterwards (bathers on, of course) in the communal showers, and discussed the temperature of the pool (coldish), the instructor’s moves (gentle but constant), the music (bland but catchy, I prefer the original Abba to the bland cover versions). Tubby Fellow was enthusiastic about the class, and Small Granny beside me dubbed him an honourary lady for the day and told him he could join them again if he so pleased.

It’s also amazing what you can learn from complete strangers. In the change room, other conversations bubbled along. One of the young women turned out to work for a company that makes swimming attire, consulted one of the older ladies about the design of her bathers. Was the strap at the back comfortable? Yes, but her fat did bunch under it in a rather unattractive way. Of course – ruefully – that was the fault of the fat, not the bathers. Then there was chat about the best place to buy bathers at better than retail prices, and I butted in unashamedly to ask for the details of the factory outlet.

Noting my obvious interest, fat-rolls woman began to give me advice on where to buy cut price clothing in our city; where the best flea market was, and, somewhat randomly, how to buy furniture at auction. Eventually, she – a kinder name would be Bargain Hunter – gave me her email address so that I could write to her for details, as we both knew I wouldn’t remember all of what she had said. I was chuffed; I hate paying full retail price for things and knowing that most of your hard-earned cash goes to high-street overheads and advertising. Later, Bargain Hunter sent me an extended email with addresses, advice and directions to five different markets and factory outlets where the best bargain was to be had. It wasn’t until afterwards when I read her address again that I realised that Bargain Hunter’s name was Mrs Swindells. Swindles – in the form of high street retail rip-offs – certainly weren’t her thing.

A Knightley Haunt

Blessed with a temporarily sunny day and encumbered with a desire to get out of the house, yesterday I ventured out on a jaunt into Derbyshire, this time to visit Kedleston Hall. The place is gorgeous. It has a spectacular art collection, an awe-inspiring domed entrance hall and a suite of rooms entirely covered in gleaming pale-blue damask. But because the house itself was more a showpiece than a home, the visit was less satisfying than others of its ilk in terms of offering an insight into the lives of dead aristocrats. Other houses I’ve been to do this admirably; Calke Abbey, for example, is overflowing with the stuffed bird collection that was the passion of the house’s last, reclusive earl. The whole place, frozen in the midst of its decline but not restored, is a fascinating and slightly creepy time capsule into the vanishing lifestyle of a dwindling family.

Kedleston, on the other hand, was designed largely as a place to show off the not-declining Curzon family’s collection of art and furniture. Like a handful of other properties in the region, it was built in the eighteenth century in a grand neoclassical style; all columns and nymphs and large proportions. The house includes a series of state rooms ostensibly reserved for visiting royalty, but which had almost never been used for such and were instead opened at parties for guests to admire. The rooms were set pieces for showing off, almost a museum as soon as they were created. Gorgeous, but not fascinating.

In fact, the whole place was reminiscent of the movie set it became in 2007, when The Duchess was filmed at Kedleston. In case you missed it, Keira Knightley looked aggrieved, pouted and strutted around with her shoulders clenched. Exactly like Bend it Like Beckham only sad and in poncy dresses.

Cafe at Kedleston

Anyway, Kedleston did charm me, in the same way that most of the National Trust properties around here do: food. The organisation is really into local, seasonal, home-grown food, and does its best to reflect this in the cafes that are a great enhancement to a visit to any of their properties. Most of the cafes are either in converted stable blocks or kitchens; at Kedleston it was the latter, complete with a full set of gleaming copper pans hanging on the wall, and a motto left by the Victorian inhabitants, ‘Waste Not Want Not’ still admonishing customers from the wall.

Lamb curry in the making

At Kedleston the dishes included lots of local cheese; sausages from the surrounding farms, Derbyshire beef and the estate’s own lamb. Even the dishes reflected the history of the property; a curry, noted the menu, was based on a Victorian recipe ‘inspired’ by one of the Lord Curzons who was Viceroy of India. The café also served Viceroy pale ale, inspired by an alcoholic uncle (possibly) and made with National Trust hops. I had tea that appeared to have been inspired by a mad hatter (it was labelled black tea on the packet and green tea on the teabag). I also had a nice chat to two fat grannies who were gobbling two cream teas, and we discussed the nomenclature of scones with jam, cream and tea (cream tea? Devonshire tea? Cornwall tea? Apparently its all about the cream). A nice day out all round.

New Digs

I’ve written posts for this blog in a number of places. I’ve mused under a belting sun in a Turkish backwater; in the dusty work-room of an archaeological dig in a medieval manor house and in an art-deco English colonial mansion. I’ve penned prose in the bar of a hotel built in 1909 for intrepid travellers to the orient to drink whisky sours and typed thoughts on a verandah looking over the sapphire-coloured Mediterranean. I’ve also written while connected to the Cyprus Navy’s unsecured wireless network; while on a dodgy Syrian aeroplane that had its original 1970s décor; and while sitting in airports everywhere from Paris to Aleppo.

Life is much less peripatetic now, but we have just made one last move that no doubt will influence this blog. The first and last part of this blog, the bits in England, were written in the kitchen of a share house that the Beloved and I occupied with an absent-minded future professor. Future-professor was genial company and did wicked impressions of our friends and fellows and was a generally benign presence in the house, despite his habit of leaving taps running and fridges and freezers open and of cooking bacon by draping rashers directly over the oven shelves, free of any tray or foil. Having our own place, however, where we can kick around without heed for anyone else, is wonderful.

We’re definitely pleased to be rid of Mouldy Mews, our former residence. The house was one of hundreds of identical red-brick former council houses, each with a garden enclosed by hedges. Our house included front and rear jungle, occasional hot water and off-street drafts. It had been cheaply renovated before the Beloved and his housemates arrived several years ago, but by the time I moved in recently, the cheap furniture and superficial renovations had well and truly begun to sag, peel, moulder, droop and rust, and had been been thoroughly grubbied. The whole house had a subtle but insistent smell of mould perhaps related to the rising damp that had been hastily plastered over as part of the makeover. The smell lingered in anything washed or stored in the house.

For my part, writing took place on the small kitchen table shoved in the corner of the poorly arranged kitchen. The table was small and round, a feature that I discovered made things fall off the edges constantly, as did having to keep all my books and papers in piles. I sat on a slightly-too-high plastic chair of the type used in schools, and which had been pilfered from one. A doormat under my feet stopped the chair’s sharp-edged legs from scratching the kitchen tiles. For company during the day I had the fridge that gurgled contentedly most of the time, and the succession of neighbourhood cats, fat, black, ginger or tabby, that wandered around the backyard. Occasionally on frosty mornings I saw a fat red fox in the bottom of the garden.

Our new place is wonderful. It’s warm, lit by windows facing in two directions, bright, airy and did I say warm? Best of all, we have a spare room – ‘the study’ – that has me dancing a jig of delight. Rather than the cold, faintly stale junk repository that is so many spare rooms, ours is light and cheerful. It is right under the roof, and has an attic-like sloped wall with two windows that swivel in the middle so that the whole pane rotates to open the room completely to the sky. You could climb out on the roof or stick most of your body out to drink in the fresh air. I have a big, square desk and some magazine files for my papers. The carpet is soft and clean and the walls are white, just dying for some of the bright things I have in mind with which to decorate them.

Virginia Woolf famously wrote that to write one needed first and foremost a room of one’s own.  An uninterrupted kitchen was a start, but a room, a big table and a huge window are a lovely, lovely luxury. I am sharpening my pen already.

Going Postal

When you’re at large in the suburbs during working hours and not holed up in a workplace, you see the people that only come out during the middle of the day. Just as the night shift, on its way home, sees the lurid and the lecherous, the drunk and the confused, being in the suburbs during the day one encounters a different wildlife. The yummy mummies and the ladies who lunch may be in their fashionable shops and sipping their lattes, but in the suburbs are the olds and the unemployeds; the freelancers and the sick, the pensioners and the less cashed-up mums.

Our post office looks a lot like this

Such was the wildlife I encountered in the post office this afternoon. England has remained firmly attached to the idea of the little local post office, and amongst our clutch of shops – alongside the kebab and pizza joint, the two off-licences and the never-open beauty salon – we have a newsagent-cum-post office. The post office also sells greeting cards, newspapers, drinks, sweets and dusty stationery.

Mr Middleton runs the post office counter and his wife the newsagent. Mr Middleton has a Nottingham accent, of the kind that says Ay up, me duck, although I’ve no idea what that means. He is the cheerful type that talks you through what he’s doing and calls you things like ‘pet’.

When I arrive Mr Middleton is doing some kind of complicated post office business with a short post office man who is wearing a motorcycle-style helmet with a glass visor and a dinky neck shield. This seems odd as he appears to have arrived not on a motorbike in the red post office van that’s waiting outside. I wonder if this is some kind of complicated protective gear.

The business is taking time and Mr Middleton makes cheerful asides like Blooming Eck and What a Palaver. Waiting at the counter is Pseudo-Ginger, who must be about seventy. He has an awful gingery wig propped on top of some ungingery tufts of grey hair. He’s wearing a bomber jacket made for a giant and is making impatient complaining noises as Mr Middleton stamps things and hands over parcels to Post Office Man. Arrived at the Wrong Time, grumbles Pseudo-Ginger. That’s what you call bad luck, says Mr Middleton in response, while making a phone call, sealing a parcel and writing a list of figures at the same time.

Finally at the front of the counter, I count out my two pounds ninety seven, post my two items and tootle home. Catching myself in the mirror, I realise I’m looking as odd as Pseudo-Ginger. When I’m at home, freed from the need to look any part at all, I start out with my most comfortable clothes and add layers as necessary. Today I’m wearing a grey layer with a green over that and then a blue top, with a large pink scarf for good measure. Good thing I took off my red ugg boots before leaving the house, or I would have been truly a bit of local colour.

Curlew Wharf and Close Quarters

We recently engaged in a spot of house-hunting, which some people love. A friend, upon hearing that we were looking, asked excitedly if she could hunt for properties for us, because of her immense enjoyment of said task. I would take pleasure in it too, if it were for someone else. When it’s on your own behalf, I find the stress of imminent homelessness slightly, well, stressful.

Looking at houses did however remind me of how immensely whimsical and creative British street names can be. I’ve written here before about English place names, but street names are equally comical. Trundling around the English countryside and going on long walks around our area has turned up all sorts of quaint and curious specimens.

Church Gate, Colston Bassett

For a start, British planners have been very creative in their descriptions of thoroughfares. Where I come from, there are streets, roads, avenues, courts, the odd close and even a close, alley or boulevard, if you’re lucky. In Britain, that’s just the start of it. Here ‘street’ is no more common than ‘close’, ‘crescent’, ‘lane’ or ‘drive.’ On maps of various British towns there are also approaches, banks, causeways and embankments; mews, links, hills and brows. One might be forgiven for thinking that an address on Willesby Lawn referred to a tent, ditto one on Canning Circus. King’s Mead sounds like a monarch’s beverage; Parker Gardens well, like a park.

A Street Named Westgate. Just Westgate.

Other street names refer whimsically to a long-vanished past. In the midst of the suburbs we found Cow Lane, which by the look of the dense residential properties on it, had not seen bovines in more than fifty years. Others are just nonsensical. While house-hunting we found a small thoroughfare called Close Quarters. This, to me, sounds less like an address than a description of proximity; 4 Close Quarters sounds like a description of an Australian football match. Ditto Curlew Wharf, which is in no sense proximal to the sea, but is surrounded by Heron Wharf, Flamingo Court, Kingfisher Wharf and other sea and bird references.

Compared to such lexical whimsy, Australian street names are rather dull, with the occasional sparkling exception. My brother once lived on Cocoa Jackson Lane, and a dear friend lives in a suburb with streets all named for British authors and poets, so you could meet on the corner of Bronte Street and Tennyson Ave. Very quaint. Others make interesting historical references; Celestial Ave in Melbourne’s Chinatown for example refers to the adjective used to describe early Chinese settlers in said city.

Hall Lane, Colston Bassett

Most street names in Australia, however, seem to have been chosen by planners either at random, from personal preference, or to commemorate some facet of their own life long shrouded by the passing of time. Some other friends of mine, for example, lived until recently in Marjorie St, which was adjacent to streets named Kenneth, Kathleen, Albert, Sheila, Rita, Beatrice, Hannah, Ruby and Holly. Did some nineteenth-century planner immortalise their family in these names? If so, will we ever know who they were? Perhaps if such names fall from use these streets will record for posterity the fact that they were once in common usage. Most Australian streets, however, are incredibly mundane.

What we really need are more inspired names changes like that which occurred in central Melbourne in 2004. On that day, uninspired Corporation Lane was renamed after rock band ACDC. Apparently the Lord Mayor at the time, John So, launched the name change with the words ‘As the song says, there is a highway to hell, but this is a laneway to heaven. Let us rock.’ They don’t make them like him any more.