People say the strangest things

And I'm not just talking about the idiocy of TLOML telling me I looked like Humpty Dumpty (surely ill-advised?).

Like, on finding out she’s a girl, ‘oh that’s brilliant! Girls are so great!’. It makes me wonder what they’d say if she was a he. ‘Oh what a shame, girls are so great,’ perhaps?

I shouldn’t be snarky, it’s just politeness I know, and of course people say it’s brilliant whichever gender you announce. 

But I am curious about the response I'd garner if I started saying ‘yes, we’ve found out… it’s an American,’ or ‘…she’s a goat’.

NY to London Freight

We couldn't pack everything. That screen we never painted, and the golf clubs he hadn't used for years, were jettisoned in New York.

Some habits I left behind quickly too. 'Line' and 'store' became 'queue' and 'shop' again within days of being back in London.

But there are three props and practices I did import.

1. Old  Bay
The finest pre-mixed seasoning in the world. I mainly sprinkle it on avocado, and add it to crab salad. TLOML would add it to the water he steams clams in, only the clams here are too small to bother with. Still, for anything fishy it's just perfect and I don't know of a British substitute.

2. The American way of saying numbers out loud. Saying 'twenty four hundred' is much more efficient than 'two thousand four hundred'. It takes a while to get used to be soon it makes as much asense as that French way of saying phone numbers ('47' '61' and '23' rather than '4, 7, 6, 1, 2, 3).

3. Putting a sheet on the bed between us and the duvet
It means you can lose the duvet but still have a thin layer of something to keep you warm. Nice in the summer. But more valuable is the energy saving: you don't need to change the duvet every time you change the sheets. Perfect for lazyboneses.

I wonder if these Americanisms will ever catch on in Blighty?

Turkey Day 2012

We did celebrate Turkey Day this year. But it was rather different to previous Turkey Days we have enjoyed.

By Turkey Day I mean, of course, Thanksgiving. The day Americans give thanks for the plentiful land God gave them. And thanks to the Native Americans for babysitting it so nicely till the Pilgrims got there.

Americans gather in large groups, and spend the whole day watching football, and the Macy’s Parade, while eating turkey with side dishes like ‘candied yams’ (sweet potatoes baked with a shit tonne of sugar and marshmallows) and ‘honey whipped butter’ (pretty much as it sounds). Also sometimes little wieners, aka tiny hot dog sausages, slow cooked in grape juice. Really.

Americans in America, that is.

For the Americans in London it’s a different story all together. And, thanks to the ongoing visa farce, TLOML is still very much still in London. I had booked a couple of days off in the hope we might hit Florida to see his mum for Thanksgiving (and sneak a little sunshine in too), but we are grounded. So we made the best of it.

Serves a minimum of 8 unless one of them is TLOML

We ordered a 12lb turkey, which we thought - based on TLOML's track record - would serve the two of us nicely, with some leftovers. But when it arrived the packaging claimed it would serve 8 at least.

My trusty old Good Housekeeping, for what it's worth, reckons a 12lb turkey will serve at least 15 people. Cue disparaging remarks from TLOML about British portions.

15 to 20 people? Really?

Nevertheless, it seemed likely we'd have turkey to spare. So we mustered some friends to help eat. Then panicked that we'd be short on food after all. A frenzied hunt for cornmeal - not easy to find in NW3 despite all the Americans who live here - and buttermilk meant I could add cornbread to the side dishes of sausage, stuffing, mashed potato, string beans with almonds, sweet potato, and sweet corn pudding.

My cornbread, of which I am disproportionately proud. It tasted like it does in California: miraculous

We had pecan pie for afters too. Even though it hurt a bit to keep eating.

No one was hungry but we forced it down anyway.

Yes, it was a lot of food. And yes, two days later we are still eating leftovers. Which means that, despite the absence of NFL and the Macy's parade, it felt like a fairly traditional Thanksgiving after all.

Just some of the leftovers..

My Hairy Baby

There’s a chatty lady at Big Corp who is always asking after my health and that of my bump. She usually looks a bit disappointed when I tell her (truthfully) that I haven’t really suffered any unpleasant pregnancy side-effects..

The other day I told her I had started to suffer heartburn, just to keep her happy. I had, in fact, had a smidge of heartburn. But I had eaten a massive curry accompanied with 2 pints of water, topped off with three satsumas. So it’s probably just actual heartburn, rather than the special pregnancy kind.

She was delighted. ‘Oh!,’ she cried, ‘You know what that means, dintchya?’

I had to admit that I did not. God knows I read enough Babycentre, NHS and Bounty emails and surf enough Mumsnet blogs, I thought I was reasonably well informed. But I missed the bit about the significance of heartburn. (Shame).

‘Airy by-bee,’ she cackled. Loud enough that people’s heads turned from quite far away. ‘You’re ‘aving an airy by-bee!’.

I recreated the sound for you here (turn your sound up for max authenticity - she really belted it out):

For the benefits of Northern and American readers, I will translate. She was accusing me of having a hairy baby. Which sounds disgusting to me. Like a little chimpy baby growing inside me, all matted and unkempt. Yuck.

I smiled, and said, ‘Really?’ and silently wished her to be struck dumb with heartburn.

Funnily enough at our last scan, a few days later, we were told that it was already possible to see the hairs on our baby’s head. I guess she will be quite hairy when she’s born. We were a little disappointed that the sonographer couldn’t tell us if she was blonde and fuzzy, like me, or had the poker straight, chestnut hair I dream of for my daughter. I wonder if, in the US medical system, you’d be able to find that out…

Needless to say I have not given Ms Chatbags the satisfaction of knowing she is right about our little chimp.

Silly things Americans say

TLOML and I went out a couple of weeks ago for a fancy dinner. (Once the baby comes we figure it's all about nights in with our slippers on eating Chicken Tonight in front of Strictly Come Dancing).

We had some stinky cheese, obvs, and it came with toasted bread....

Or 'toast points', as TLOML called them.

Just when I thought he had acclimatised. He's saying 'shop', and 'queue' and all that good stuff. And then he wheels out 'toast points'.

Pointing at toast does not make 'toast points' make any more sense

'Toast points' strikes me as one of the most ridiculous Americanisms of all. They're not even pointy!

Just sayin'...