UK oddities and singularities.

Throughout my 3 years in the UK (I lived in England for 18 months a few years ago), I've noticed many inconsequential differences between my own culture and the British one.

Please keep in mind I'm in no way judging those nor the French or UK culture. I was asked once by an American girl whether France and the UK were similar... obvisouly this person never studied the European History. But on a funny note, it seems the only similarity we truly have is that we both drink tea (but then again it's subject to discussion)!

To list but a few oddities I've come across:

- Tea bags: You'd think England is the country where to drink a cup of tea, a cuppa as they would say. Granted, it's part of the decorum, but if you want a good cup of tea, the UK is not the place to go in my opinion. They basically have two kinds of tea, Breakfast tea and Earl Grey! You'll have to go to wee retailers like Whittards where you'll find a few more varieties, but nothing like we find in any middle range supermarket in France or the dozens of varieties found in tea and coffee shops!

Another oddity is that they haven't discovered something I find rather useful, some very basic concept I thought always existed... the string! You'll need a teaspoon or a tea claw to extract your tea bag from your cup.

The reason for this might be they don't really take the tea bag out! If you like it light, my advice to you... always specify you want the tea bag on the side, not already in the cup or tea pot! They like it really strong and sweeten it with milk. All in all it's not bad and I came to like it like that too, but nothing is better than a light Orange-Cinnamon cuppa if you'll ask me!

- Products you won't find in the UK: Being French, I was used to certain products I was raised with. Nothing too fancy or too French, at least that's what I thought, until I came to the UK!

In here they don't have 'compote' nor do they have an English word for it! It's not marmelade, it's more like mashed fruits and it's really good! They don't have 'crème dessert', they have chocolate mousse. You'll find some in the continental shop Lidl but every single French person out there will share my misery when I tell you I couldn't find a single Danette pot here! You won't find a good slice of ham the way we know it in France, nor will you find any 'saucisson sec' or pâté (I'm talking about real pâté folks! ;-) )

- Products you'll find in the UK that you should find in France!

Everything isn't negative about the food, truth be told I don't really miss the French food in the UK but I surely miss the UK food in France! They have baked beans, real bacon (not the round tasteless slices we have!), real barbequeue sauce (not the Heinz sort we're so proud of!), Digestives (the best cookie ever!), scones and clotted cream (so posh, so good!), garlic bread...
But more importantly, we don't have cheddar in France! Yes, we do have tons of different and very good cheeses. Being from Normandy, I know about cheese, but I'm telling you, extra mature cheddar is to die for!

Now for the real oddities!

They have bags of crisps I could fit in after I had eaten the content, it's crazy! Their frozen chips departement is bigger than the vegetables one! If you go to a take away and ask for a burger, they'll just dip a piece of ugly meat in boiling oil and put it in a box! Their kebab meat always looks like they haven't removed the plastic wrapping!

I can't list all of the oddities I've discovered in one post, it would be a looong one... so stay tuned for more comparisons!