It would seem it never ever really rains on the British Isles…

It is another beautiful day in London and we are ensconced in our neighbourhood London office aka Starbucks-Of-The-Free-WiFi.

We walked, traveled the Underground and rode every bus known to man yesterday. By the time we ended up back in our room last night, it felt like we had walked part of Offa’s Dyke Path all over again. It seems the legs and joints aren’t quite restored yet, though the value of the bath cannot be underestimated in their restoration.

And as much as I love this city, I do have to ask; What’s up with the separate hot and cold taps?

I understand if it’s in an old building and the plumbing is ancient. But I’m talking new installations in restrooms (or as they say, toilets) with brand new appliances. I am not going to fill a shared nasty sink in some public facility, though, I’m getting pretty good at filling my cupped hands with the cold, and then quickly moving them under the running hot tap to get some sort of warmish water.

But that seems a bit of an indulgent waste of water with my hands going back and forth between the blasting taps, doesn’t it?

Which brings me to my other observation of life here in United Kingdom. Why does every sentence have to end by making the listener complicit in whatever has been said…do you see what I mean?

The weather is sunny, but overcast, isn’t it? I went shopping in the afternoon, didn’t I? We were completely knackered by the end of the day, weren’t we just?

It is a country of collaborators. It seems that anyone can make a declarative sentence, and then, by tagging it with a ‘didn’t I?’, ensure the listener has no choice but to agree with that view of reality. Perhaps the Canadian ‘eh’ is simply a less precise version of the same?

Kevin and I have been practicing hard to make our thick Canadian English understood, and now end every sentence with a question, don’t we?