Mirror-World Moments and Funny Money

I'm getting used to looking right first when I cross a street. I'm beginning to develop a better sense of where traffic might come from. But I still experience some moments of strangeness, such as today when I saw the driver of a car looking out his side window with a bored expression as he drove, never even glancing at where he was going. Naturally, he wasn't the driver. He was a bored front-seat passenger, sitting where I expect to the the driver. And it happens almost every day as I cross streets and look at the car to see if the driver is going to stop for a pedestrian in the crosswalk or not. I look to the wrong side of the car to make eye contact with the driver. For driver's who politely stop for me, I wave my thanks half the time to their passenger.

It's interesting that I seldom had this problem in Japan, where the driver again sits on the right. I think the difference is that in Japan I had reminders at every moment that I was in a foreign land. Here, where they speak my language (more or less) I begin to feel that I'm in familiar territory.

I've already complained here and elsewhere about earning dollars and spending pounds, but there's more to the situation than an unfavorable exchange rate for the dollar. Just as I am accustomed to looking for the driver on the left side of vehicles, I am used to thinking of prices in terms of certain whole units. To see 5.95 on the restaurant menu of a modest restaurant seems quite reasonable when I'd expect to see a similar dish for 6.95 at home. The overall higher prices in London combined with the weak dollar end up making me feel, when I have a hundred pounds in my pocket, very much the way I'd feel with a hundred dollars in my pocket at home. I've dealt with different currencies in a dozen or more countries, but since a pound in London buys about what a dollar would in Eugene, it's easy to lose track of the reality that taking the hundred pounds from an ATM drew down my checking account by one-hundred and ninety dollars and change.

Also, although I've been in Britain before, visits here were always part of travel to other countries in Europe to that the coinage of the United Kingdom often mixed in my pockets with Austrian schillings, Czech crowns, French francs, and eventually euro cents. This time, I've dealt with British coins long enough to really learn the denominations and get a sense of how sensible they are. Before, the relative sizes of huge two-pence coins and tiny five-pence coins, big ten-pence coins and small twenty-pence ones threw me. But one night, emptying my pockets and stacking the coins by denomination, the system of shapes, sizes, and metals became so wonderfully clear that I feel a bit foolish now for having had to search handfuls of change with such puzzlement before.

On Holly's dresser are a few American coins. I can't say they look strange to me. I've known these coins all my life, and getting used to British ones is not enough to make nickels, dimes, and quarters seem alien. But I was struck by how worthless they are. When coins held value because of their metal content, you could spend a florin or a drachma or a shekel wherever you took it. But the coins of fiat currencies are based on faith and the willingness to accept them. Generally you can't exchange coins (unlike paper money) outside of the country that uses them, so fiat-money coins turn into disks of metal, and won't be money again until they are repatriated.

Odds and Ends

One of the betting parlours in the neighborhood is called "Ladbrokes." I think it's comfortingly honest of them to use a name that has "broke" in it.

On the package of Ginger Nut biscuits: "Does not contain nuts."

A fun and silly radio programme on the BBC, "Just a Minute," had celebrity contestants trying to complete an extemporaneous speech on a surprise topic without repeating themselves, digressing, or pausing. Wit is celebrated on British radio. There is almost no wit on American radio. I wonder if that means we don't value verbal cleverness. Or don't trust it. (Certainly we don't value articulate speech in our politicians. Maybe we are afraid that we can't trust people who are witty. America is still is in some ways still in love with the Jacksonian ideal of the commonest of common men being, in some way, our ideal.)

Alluring lingerie goes by the name of "French wear."

I keep meaning to write about the Willesden Lane Cemetery, but once again, that will have to wait for another entry.