British Musings

There's been a few funny Britishisms I've noticed in the past couple of weeks.  One is I have discovered a new fruit, a Satsuma, it's an evil mandarin.  It's from Japan, and is meant to be a cross of an orange and a mandarin, but I think somewhere along the way a grapefruit got mixed in there.  Maybe it was masquerading as an orange.  Definitely my biggest fruit disappointment here so far.

Another thing I have struggled with here is finding antiseptic, a weird thing to struggle with here.  But the ubiquity of the Boots pharmacy chain has meant you can basically only find Boots-branded anything in the way of first aid.  I am a massive convert of betadine, it's an iodine based antiseptic, and it's basically the only thing I have ever used.  But I'm shocked to discover nobody sells it over here.  They very rarely even have iodine based products.  The only thing close I could find was an iodine spray, I have never seen antiseptic in a can.  And what is weirder is that it is produced by Savlon, which in the world of antiseptics is my arch-nemesis.  So I've had to cosy up to a product that when I was 5 years old caused an allergic reaction, and pushed my moving date to Australia back until I had recovered.

I always felt a bit uneasy spraying Savlon-based iodine on wounds, so I was pretty happy when I discovered Dettol over here.  It being one of the few brands I recognised, who says advertising isn't useful :).  When I went to get some more in the supermarket I couldn't see it with all the rest of the first aid stuff, which I thought I was a bit weird.  So I asked the pharmacist and he took me to the cleaning products aisle, where I found it sitting next to the toilet cleaner.  So you can appreciate I'm back to feeling a bit uneasy with my choice of germ-fighter.

With our newly purchased TV license I've been getting into more of the BBC iplayer shows.  Gotta say the BBC iplayer is an awesome application.  I'm wondering which came first, BBC or ABC with that little idea?  But it means I've been watching more British comedy, and I have to say I'm noticing a few differences between Australia and here.  They have this show, The Revolution Will Be Televised, which is like the first season of The Chaser, back when no one knew them.  But there's only 2 of them, and they have a much smaller budget.

Obviously with both these shows a lot of the humour is in how the unsuspecting public reacts to them.  That's where the difference is the most noticeable, the British public is awesome! These two strangers come up to them and start saying the most bizarre things, and the public actually engages with them, doesn't just treat them like the lunatics they are behaving like.  I really like that, I feel that the British are much more willing to engage with strangers.  Whilst I like it, and it always amuses me when I see it on the tube, I don't think I'll ever be able to do it with the ease they do here.  But it does make their comedy shows much more amusing.