Yorkshire Tea arrives at our local Kroger

I don't care what anyone else says but Yorkshire Tea is the best tea there is. And for the last five years and more, we have had two options: (1) Bring back a big box of Yorkshire Tea whenever we visit England; (2) Make do with Twinings Breakfast Tea or similar. Well, this week all that changed with the arrival of Yorkshire Tea in our local Kroger. It's a bit steep at $4.99 for a small box, but these are the small pleasures that make the life of the British expat just that little bit more cheery.

Wearing my poppy with pride

Today is Remembrance Day in the UK. In the USA it is called Veterans Day or Armistice Day. It is a state holiday and so my kids are off school, though my employer (Duke) has classes as normal.

As I pointed out in a post here a couple of years ago (No Poppies in America on Remembrance Day), people here don't wear poppies on 11 November, or the week leading up to it, as they do in England. I really miss it, and so the Resident Alien Blog is wearing its poppy with pride to honour those who have fallen in the wars.

Free Cleaning for the American flag

Unless you have spent some time living in America, you might be surprised by the esteem many Americans feel for their flag. Down our way, many houses have the stars and stripes mounted on a flagpole from the front of their house. Schools have it at their entrance. I had not thought about it before, but these flags always look sparkling clean, and this is why. I was picking up some dry cleaning today and while I was waiting, I read a bold notice pledging as part of the cleaner's pride in their service that they always clean the American flag for free.

I am a redneck

I may be a resident alien here in North Carolina, and I may be keeping my English accent, but apparently I am now a redneck! I have been visiting the same barber in Durham for three years and on the most recent visit, on Monday, right at the end of my haircut, he told me that I have become a redneck. Too many visits to the pool, no doubt.

Thunder and lightning on the 4th of July

Out here in the US, we have been enjoying the 4th of July. Two years ago, Viola posted on our first Independence Day. Last year, we missed it because we were flying back from the UK, arriving in Washington DC late in the evening, and just in time to see a few fireworks in the sky as we drove home. Unlike that occasion two years ago, we didn't get the chance to go to the pool, but we did drive into Durham, and we spent an enjoyable afternoon with friends over there. We were back before dark, so we repeated our walk around the neighbourhood of two years ago and watched the fireworks which were being let off all over the place. Perhaps one of the first things one notices as a Brit doing this is the odd feeling of fireworks in the warmth of a July evening rather than the freezing cold of a November 5 in England. One also can't help noticing that people, at least round our way, are rather more cavalier on the safety issues than they are in the UK. The fireworks are let off in the middle of the road, and people just balance them on the road and walk right up and light them, and everyone seems to stand, and sit, pretty close. Mind you, didn't hear a single ambulance siren while we were out walking. But this year was dramatic because at about 9.30pm, a film-style thunderstorm began to develop, with forks of lightning, loud thunder and flickering lights in the sky of the kind that I used to think were just a film cliché before we moved here.

With the rain dampening everyone's fireworks, the evening's fun was over, and we returned home to catch the latest Big Brother eviction, a documentary about Abba and Mamma Mia and a discussion about how excited we were about tomorrow's final episode of this series of Doctor Who. On the latter, we have a plan of action to avoid accidentally hearing any possible spoilers between broadcast on BBC1 and our viewing an hour or so later. Oh, and it seems that SciFi Channel have a Twilight Zone marathon. It began very early this morning, and is still going on as I write. Could be a late night.

When British stuff breaks into America

As a British expat in America, I am intrigued by the British things that break through in America. There is an unpredictability about the things that make it and the things that don't. Sometimes one forgets which British things Americans like and which they don't, or, more accurately, which they have heard of and which they have not. What is curious is that most Americans are Anglophiles. They love Britain, the British, our history, our castles and especially our accents. Yet when it comes to British imports, it is never that easy to work out what the criteria for admiration are. The really big things -- the Beatles, Monty Python, Tolkien, Harry Potter, James Bond -- are loved with a passion by many Americans. They are all bigger here than they are in the UK. There is no question of Americans having heard of them. Other things attain a kind of cult status here -- British stuff for Americans in the know. One of my favourite TV series, The Prisoner, is like that. I was shopping in Kroger the other day (a supermarket on the scale of smaller Sainsburys and Tescos) and I was stopped by a bloke who was delighted to see my Prisoner t-shirt and wondered where I had bought it from. He gave a kind of knowing chuckle when he heard my English accent .

There are other things that have a kind of cult status, an underground fan base, that encourages the big cheeses to try to turn them into something truly large and American, sometimes with disastrous results. The Office is a superb exception to this rule -- it is remarkable to see how successful the American version of the sublime British original has been. It is never as funny as the original, but it is always worth watching, and after several years it has a life of its own. The attempt a few years ago to transform Steven Moffat's brilliant Coupling into an American sitcom was a disaster, and the forthcoming attempt to Americanize Life on Mars looks so bad that I was really hoping it was a parody. We saw a short trailer for it on the telly just the other day, and there was no improvement on the earlier one.

American television at its best is wonderful. Anyone in the UK who enjoys television also enjoys American television. I love the best American TV. A British channel's success is as much about its ability to find the best American shows to broadcast in primetime as it is about its ability to commission new programmes of its own. But there is an unnecessary reluctance on the part of the big cheeses in the States to do the same, and to buy top British programmes and put them in key slots alongside the homegrown programmes. It wasn't always like this. Back in the late 60s, with more imaginative programme schedulers, The Avengers was broadcast primetime. Not so recently. BBC America gets respectable viewing figures, but it is the tiniest section of the overall audience.

I wonder what the next big British thing here will be? I doubt that it will be Doctor Who but I love to imagine that it could happen. "New Who", i.e. the revival of the series after a sixteen year hiatus, stands up above anything on American TV at the moment, and it is just beginning to impinge on American media consciousness, growing out of the kind of "cult" status it has enjoyed here for years. Each of the four new series of Who (read "seasons" in the US), from 2005 to the present, has been broadcast first on SciFi, then on BBC America, and then on PBS and associated channels in syndication. The current series (the fourth) is almost up to speed on SciFi, lagging behind by less than three weeks. Mind you, it is infuriating to see SciFi still cutting content in order to squeeze the show into an American hour with advertisements.

A sign of the growing awareness of new Who comes in its appearance in a political cartoon recently, This Modern World by Tom Tomorrow (HT: Outpost Gallifrey). And still more importantly, there was a lengthy discussion of Russell T. Davies, the person responsible for the resurrection of Doctor Who, in the New York Times (HT: Loren Rosson), which is unprecedented:

Who Altered British TV? ‘Who’ Indeed
By SARAH LYALL

It's a nice piece, if a shame that its author feels obliged to go on and on about Captain Jack's sexuality. There are several perhaps insurmountable problems with the programme becoming anything more than cult viewing here, though:

(1) Many of the episodes are too long. As soon as they push beyond 42 minutes, it doesn't fit into the American TV hour. The Sci-Fi style edits are pretty awful.

(2) These thirteen episode series don't stretch across an American-style 22-24 episode series.

(3) The revival is already so well underway that it seems unlikely that any big channel would be inclined to dip into the series at this stage.

(4) Many Americans can't understand the dialogue. David Tennant speaks very fast and BBC America offers subtitles for those who can't understand British English.

And actually, come to think of it, there is something quite nice about being one of those in the know.

UK living standards outstrip US

Looks like we chose the wrong time to move to the US; this is from The Sunday Times:

UK living standards outstrip US
Living standards outstrip those across the Atlantic for first time in over a century
David Smith, Economics Editor

LIVING standards in Britain are set to rise above those in America for the first time since the 19th century, according to a report by the respected Oxford Economics consultancy.

The calculations suggest that, measured by gross domestic product per capita, Britain can now hold its head up high in the economic stakes after more than a century of playing second fiddle to the Americans.

It says that GDP per head in Britain will be £23,500 this year, compared with £23,250 in America, reflecting not only the strength of the pound against the dollar but also the UK economy’s record run of growth and rising incomes going back to the early 1990s . . .

Mind you, it's still much cheaper to eat out in America. And the beer is cheaper here too. And the petrol.

No Poppies in America on Remembrance Day

Today is Remembrance Day in the UK. In the USA it is called Veterans Day or Armistice Day. It is a state holiday and so my kids will be off school tomorrow (Monday), but I will be at work since Duke has an odd attitude to state holidays and regards them as dispensable (with the sole exception of Martin Luther King day in January). But here is something we wouldn't have known if we hadn't come to live in America, that people don't wear poppies on 11 November, or the week leading up to it, as they do in England. I really miss it. To explain just how widespread this is in the UK, you will see people selling poppies at school, in the streets, in petrol stations, the corner shop and everywhere. The idea is that the wearing of a poppy signifies a shared, public act of remembrance. Because we watch a lot of British television, it has felt strange this last week seeing people wearing poppies on the news, the weather, in parliament and so on, where outside our front door men's jacket lapels look rather naked and sorry for themselves. As far as I can tell, there is no alternative badge of remembrance in the USA. In our church this morning, the man doing the children's talk gave out little US flags to the kids to wear. I couldn't help thinking that as a badge of remembrance, that does not work as well as the poppy, not least given that we were sitting there as British expats, wishing to join in the public act of remembrance for all those who have died in the world wars, and subsequent wars and conflicts.

Let me conclude, though, with a comment on our service at church this morning. The veterans present in the church were asked to come forward and the children gave them certificates of some kind. As the veterans returned to their seats, the congregation all rose, apparently spontaneously, and applauded them loudly. This kind of public act of gratitude and respect for the veterans I found profoundly moving, and it has made this "veterans day" quite special and meaningful for me. And in their honour, this blog is wearing its poppy with pride.

The week when the timings are all wrong

As a British expat in the North Carolina in the USA, I get used to living according to two different time zones, US Eastern Time and Greenwich Mean Time / British Summer Time. For 50 weeks of the year, we are five hours behind the UK. Our day to day activities are, of course, based on Eastern Time here. But at the same time, I am always conscious of what time it is in England, not least because I listen to a lot of British radio (Radio 4 and FiveLive mainly). And when I phone people back home, I know instinctively what time it is for them. But each year there is this odd week when all the timings go wrong, and it began today. British Summer Time ended on Sunday morning, but the hour does not go back here for another week. So this week, I have to adjust my British clock to four hours behind. I just tuned in for the Today programme on Radio 4, which normally starts at 1am, 6am in the UK, and it wasn't on yet. So for a few days I'll be a little disorientated. Normality will return again next weekend.

Two Years in America

It was two years ago today that we left Birmingham to begin our new life in the USA. We stayed in a travelodge at Gatwick airport that night, and arrived in North Carolina; my travel diary continued with Waking up in America, finding my office and Supersize Me! I found it enjoyable reviewing those travel diaries and a lot of those first impressions have stayed with me. I still find it amazing to have the warmth of a British summer in late September. In fact, the climate here in the autumn is lovely, and I often sit outside to work. Although I can now find my way to work without trouble, I still get lost if I am on an unfamiliar journey. Groceries are, on the whole, a little cheaper than in the UK, though you have to invest a bit of time to get all the best prices. Eating out is much more common for us here than it was in the UK; it is often as much as once a week. And I still love my job.

The second year here has been much easier than the first. There were moments in the first few months when we really struggled, and we were on the verge of leaving. But the only really draining thing in the last year has been the application for the Green Card, which went off in January. That was a massive amount of work, and all a bit soul destroying, but fantastic once we had it over and done with. Viola received her work permit not long after that and now enjoys working for a computer company, from home.

I don't know how Americanized we are becoming. I can say American words now without feeling self-conscious, though asking for "water" in restaurants is still a challenge and sometimes we have to use a cod American accent. Lauren does a really convincing North Carolinian accent when she is with American kids. Our lives are a mix of Americana and British stuff. The kids watch a lot of American TV and Viola and I watch some of the big American series, but we all still watch quite a lot of British TV, and I listen mainly to British radio.

One thing we'd like to do is to explore more of America as a family. So far we have explored the mountains in North Carolina (twice) and the coast. We have driven the 620 miles to and from Orlando, Florida, and we have flown to Seattle. We have more trips planned over the coming months, and I hope to blog my travel diaries here.

The End of Summer

It was easy to know when summer had ended when we lived in England. It ended when the cricket season was over, and you felt that cool September breeze and had to return to school. It's more difficult in North Carolina to work out when the end of summer comes. The schools start earlier than in the UK -- they go back at the end of August, when it is Bank Holiday Monday in England. And the weather still seems to be roasting hot even now in mid September.

But the moment when the whistle blew on our summer was at 5.50pm on Sunday evening when our neighbourhood pool closed. It's open every year from mid May to early September and it is one of the big bonuses of living here, and one of the reasons we chose this neighbourhood. Over the summer, we have made as many visits to the pool as possible. On school days, we have tried to get down there as soon as the kids are home. Last weekend, we spent as much time as we could there, and on Saturday evening we ate there and stayed until the sun had set, and we "made a memory". On Sunday evening, when the lifeguard blew her whistle for the last time this summer, everyone in and around the pool gave a jokey "boo", sighed and went home. I'm already hankering for next May.

Labor Day

The first Monday in September is designated "Labor Day" in the USA and it is a bit like the August Bank Holiday Monday in the UK. It provides a chance for a late summer weekend away, or the last chance to get to the neighbourhood pool before it closes, or a chance to refocus for the Fall term ahead. Practically everyone celebrates it except Duke University, where life goes on as normal. I was impressed, though, with the way that the students threw themselves into the day as a normal teaching day; attendance was about the same as usual. But there is a slightly odd feel to campus in that the faculty and the students are not joined by the rest of the staff who are, quite rightly, spending the day at home or off on holiday for the weekend. So the car parks are half empty, the administrative offices are all closed and there is no post. My family and our visitors spent the day at the planetarium while I was teaching, but I am not complaining, especially after having had the luxury of being able to work at home so much this summer. And on Saturday we had a great day out at Old Salem. I hope to blog about that with a couple of pictures in due course.

Scorchio!

It's been over 100 degrees Fahrenheit for the last few days here in Raleigh, NC. Today there were highs of 103F, which is 39C. This kind of heat takes a bit of getting used to for a Brit. We are used to getting outside, with our shorts on, as soon as there is any sign of sunshine. But a nice summer's day in England is in the late 20sC, 30 if you are lucky. It's pretty rare to get the kind of high temperatures that appear to be the norm here in the summer. So it still feels a bit odd to me to be trying to stay indoors in the summer, but that's what you have to do. Like all Americans around here, we have air conditioning in the house, and we have it whirring away a lot of the time. When you step outside the front door at night, there are the intermingled sounds of everyone's air conditioning whirring away and the crickets and the tree frogs almost as loud. Goodness only knows what kind of impact all this air conditioning has on the environment. Our electricity bill in the summer is a lot higher than it is in the winter.

It feels odd to me not to be able to pop the window open and get a nice through breeze in the house. In our house in Birmingham, we'd just pop the patio doors open if it was a bit warm, or open the back door and a couple of windows. Here, that just makes the place hotter. And our cats are annoyed at the moment because they don't get to sit in the window and watch the world go by. I have stopped trying to sit outside on the decking for the time being at any point in the day because it's too hot. I am now getting used to the phenomenon of being able to sit outside in December, but staying inside in August.

When we were back in England in June, we saw a lot of the flooding that has devastated some areas. And then we got back here and everywhere was dry; our lawn was brown. We have water restrictions here so that we are only allowed to water the lawn on certain days.

There is still something quite exciting and different about being in such a warm climate. And the storms, when they come, are very dramatic and exciting. The thunder storms are like the kind you get in films. We once got caught in a very dramatic one when we were driving back from Durham. We could hardly see two feet in front of us because the rain was so heavy.

One of the major pluses of this kind of climate, though, is that lots of the neighbourhoods around here have their own pool. Ours is great, and only a short walk from our house. It's open from May to September and is "residents only". We try to get down there every day if we can. Some really posh people, including one or two of my colleagues, and some of the kids' friends, have their own pool in their back garden, but that doesn't appeal to me much -- it seems rather a lonely and isolated thing to swim on your own in your own pool with just the lizards and flies for company. But it was interesting that at our pool today, there were only a handful of people, perhaps because the heat was so intense. After the sun had been beating down on it all day, it was like jumping into a hot bath. And the slabs around the pool were very hot underfoot.