No, it's you who has the aaaaack-sent

[eldan]

My job involves making a lot of phone calls. I'm not exactly enamoured with that aspect-I'd really rather use email for almost all long-distance communication, but an astonishing number of businesses never reply to emails from their customers-though I'm minding it less and less as time goes by. Having an obviously foreign accent interacts with

Comments

[worst_witch]

But you must have met their cousin John/Paul/Mike/Fred (delete as appropriate) who is average height with brown hair and lives less than 250 miles from London, surely you live in the next castle/thatched cottage along from them.

When abroad I found that answering "John! That John! What a small world" leaves people happy if slightly amazed at how cousin John seems to know everyone in England.

People like Chris make the whole thing worse by trying to convince foreigners that he meets that Basildon is a lovely place full of thatched cottages where everyone stops for tea at 3pm sharp and that all British people have tea with the queen on a rota basis.

[steamingturd]

Don't forget George and Ringo.

[worst_witch]

Ringo...Ringo...Oh that Ringo! Yeah I know him, third castle on the right.

[steamingturd]

Actually, I was under the (perhaps mistaken) impression that there's no room in the castles anymore because of all the tourists, so people in the UK just live in pubs now.

*evil grin*

[gentlybreathing]

Hee. All these pleasures will soon be mine.......

[eldan]

Mostly, this is something to look forward to, but I must admit that every now and then I get really tired of people assuming I'm a tourist and telling me I must try the crumpet shop by the market (because of course if I were a tourist I would most want to go to the place that's trying to imitate where I came from).

[gentlybreathing]

*Snert* That is hilarious.

[trygve]

Liz has a bunch of cousins in England too. You're British, you must know them, right? ;-p

[eldan]

oh, I'm probably related to all of them. There are only about 100 of us, after all.

[trygve]

Yeah, I've heard that's a problem with your royalty.

[eldan]

Oh, with them it's literally true. Prince Charles's ears are the result of successive generations of selecting the same traits, just as much as a pug's wrinkly nose.

[apologies to pugs for that comparison - you're all much more charming]

[holyoutlaw]

I have a British friend. Except he's an expat and last I heard lives in Ballard.

[eldan]

There's a significantly higher chance that I know him, in that case. Does he know about the meetup?

[nein09]

I admit that I do this kind of thing on occasion when I find out that someone is from, say, Hendon.

What can I say- at heart, I'm still someone who is from a town of less than 10,000 people!