10:00 I switch on my smartphone and trawl the "Quora forum" website. I'm very pleased to see that Liz O'Callaghan, one of our favourite pundits on the website, has been weighing in on the vexed subject of "What do Irish people who've moved to the UK think of life in the UK compared to Ireland?"
“I lived in the UK for a few years before returning back
to Ireland, so here's my tuppence worth …
"It really wasn't that different! Superficially, we have the same shops, same architecture, same cars driving the streets, so nothing was unusual. I regularly travel to Northern Ireland, and other than the red tarmac hard shoulders and different signage, you really couldn't tell that you've crossed a border. That was the same feeling I got when I moved to England. Very familiar.
“I suppose the first real difference I noticed was volumes of people and the diversity of the population. When places got busy, they got busy on a scale you'd never see in Ireland. Dublin felt practically empty compared to the centre of London! Ireland is still relatively monocultural, so seeing the racial, ethnic, and cultural mix crammed in a single Tube carriage was something I always marvelled at.
“I found people generally had a great affinity towards the Irish. It's hard to explain, but there was almost an expectation by English people that, if you were Irish, you'd be funny, chatty, and not adverse to the occasional alcoholic beverage. I think it stems from the fact that English people tend to be quite reserved - I often found myself saying things out loud that work colleagues would suddenly looked shocked at, then start laughing because they'd be thinking it but wouldn't say it. People tend to divide ‘work colleagues' and ‘friends' in a way Irish people don't do to the same extent, but I always thought that was due to lengthy commutes. If you're travelling in and out of the centre of London for a few hours a day, it makes getting to know people outside of work difficult.”
Fascinating stuff !!!!
And yes, I can vouch for the fact that, also, when British people travel to Ireland, it doesn't look all that different from home. You see the same style of road-signs, and it's driving-on-the-left and all that, which all make it seem very much like home. I will say, however, as a word of warning, that the road-signs over there are bilingual when it comes to place-names - something we've never bothered with in England, and that makes perfect sense to me. I don't think it would be worth the expense, to be honest with you!
14:00 Lois and I are feeling a bit more relaxed this afternoon about our upcoming house move from Cheltenham to Malvern. We're buying a new-build home there and we've been a bit worried in the last few days, because the builders have made a point of saying to us that if we didn't exchange contracts by September 4th, they "reserved the right to resell the home to somebody else, or to raise the price, or both".
Yikes, the cheeky buggers !!!!!
I query this "threat" with Sue, our solicitor, and she says that in 40 years of working in the house conveyancing business, she's never once come across builders who resell or re-price one of their houses if the "exchange contract" deadline isn't met. They simply shout about the alleged "deadline" as a way of putting pressure on everybody involved, both buyers and their solicitors, trying to make them feel harassed and uneasy, and to get them to hurry them up.
What bastards !!!!
That's nice that we don't have to panic now - we don't feel quite so pressured now we know that the builders will wait for us to be ready. After all, in a sense Lois and I are waiting for the builders to be ready. Our new home isn't even finished yet. That would be madness !!!!
17:00 Have you noticed how, if you live in England, all the visitors who drop by your house tend to be English normally? I wonder what the reason for that is. Perhaps it's time we should be told!
It makes life a bit monotonous sometimes, maybe! But not today - Lois's old work-colleague Niza, from Chile, drops in for a chat with us today about 4 pm - we haven't seen her for quite a few years.
Wow - Niza is so..... what's the word I'm looking for?... Yes, Chilean. Yes, Niza is so Chilean!! Dark skin, big dark eyes, jet-black hair, big smile, open face, friendly as anything. What a shock to suddenly have somebody like that, larger than life, here on our sofa! But very nice to see her again, and she can chat to Lois about the old days and the staff at the retirement home for Anglican vicars where they both worked. Lois retired in 2006.
In contrast to the very Latin-looking Niza at tea-time today, Lois and I are feeling very much like a pair of quiet, rather pale "gringos", which I suppose is what we are, so fair enough.
Years ago, I read that the word "gringo" was a Spaniard's attempt to say the word "English", but more recently I've read that it was originally probably an attempt to say the word "griego", which means "Greek". The reasoning is that, like in English, we say "It's all Greek to me" meaning it's incomprehensible, the Spanish have the same idea.
But what madness !!!!!
It's fun today to try and understand Niza's English too. It hasn't changed, and it's sometimes a bit tricky, even though she's lived here for about 25 years.
She misses out the letter 's' when it's next to another consonant, for example, so Christmas becomes "Chri'mas". And as another example, Prestbury, the area of Cheltenham where we live, becomes "Pre-bury". See? See the pattern there? It's not exactly rocket science, is it haha!
18:00 I've just got time to order birthday presents for our eldest grandchild, Josie, who's coming up to age 16 - it hardly seems possible. Our daughter Alison told she was "expecting" on the very day Lois and I both retired in February 2006.
What a momentous day that was - to both retire, and on the same day to find out that we're going to be grandparents. We've followed Josie through her first 16 years, on visits to us, including many Christmas stays, and on visits to all of Alison's and Ed's houses, both in the UK and in Denmark between 2012 and 2018.
How grown up she is now. And now intellectual! Just look at her "wish list" for a present from us.
We still see a lot of Josie, of course, and she's still the sweet child she's always been, even though she lives more "inside her head" than when she was a little toddler, that's for sure!
19:30 We wind down with an undemanding documentary charting 60 years of UK TV's longest-running quiz show, "University Challenge", the student quiz.
