Public biliousness

The UK and the US are so similar in so many ways that the more subtle differences only come out after quite some time. This being quite different than India, where one is more readily confronted by cultural differences, such as people pooping in the streets or camels and donkeys traveling on the superhighways.

Here, traditional British society is reserved, quiet, perhaps a bit dour, etc. This being quite different than the states, where on the surface people seem to be a bit more freespoken. Here in the UK, on the other hand, there is a nearly constant effluvium of people seemingly at the bursting point of rage or other forms of public dissonance. I was inclined to chalk this up to happenstance, being in a real city, etc. until I picked up "Kitchen Con" by Trevor White. He spends an entire chapter describing how vicious, biting, and destructive the UK food critics are and how comparatively meek the US critics are. This is undoubtedly true, and it translates into many areas of life here (thankfully not to my colleagues at work, as far as I can tell). I think that a high level of very public disagreement, argument, yelling, rudeness, and general loutishness is expected and perhaps encouraged.

It's doubly weird because if this same level of behavior was going on in the states, you would expect someone to pull a gun and for things to escalate in a hail of lead. Here, at some point someone backs down, and life proceeds as usual.

Also, the Crunchy Bar is fantastic candy and the digestive with chocolate and caramel is spectacular.

In other news, we went to Bath last weekend and had a fine time there with much oohing over the Cotswold scenery, which we viewed by velocipede. Bath is well known for hot smelly water, naked Romans, leprosy, soft stone, Jane Austin, a fleeting time of among-class mixing, an abbey built over the bones of a cathedral, angels on ladders, and a population of wretched three-chord street musicians surely well past the carrying capacity of far larger towns.

What else. I went to a sea level rise meeting and learned a great deal of science. The coffee wasn't fit for the pigs but the tea was drinkable. One day I had a nice toasted sandwich with red peppers, red onion, pesto, and cheese.