Another country #3

For those of you living in Blighty and hammered by rain, grey skies and more rain - meet an old friend. It's the sun. Interesting to try and take a photo of I found. I took this at about 9.30 yesterday morning and could see a little round circle in my eye for at least fifteen minutes afterwards. Nice. Still, it is nice to see the sun and I am crowing now in advance of the problems with snow I see looming every time I notice that our driveway seems to be about fifty foot longer than anyone elses.

So, time for a cultural difference update. In no particular order:

Cheques - the cheque books don't have stubs, you don't write "only" and all the dates are backwards.

Dates - a funny one. I thought it would be 09/11 style all the time but it varies. I am playing it safe with writing Sept whatever 2008 but they shorten the months differently too (eg Se for Sept). That makes reading best before dates feel....odd.

Language - we have cells not mobiles and read books about mailmen rather than postmen (Mailman Mick?) although in fact I have only seen post ladies who all seem very smiley and happy in their shorts.

Shorts - lots of shorts. The school run is full of shorts. And trainers (sorry sneakers). And healthy looking people with pony-tails. On bikes. Drinking coffee. And smiling. Probably about the weather. (Ha!)

Libraries - this one is for you Lise. So they have a fantastic public library here, right at the heart of the community with a whole floor of children's books. (There has got to be a gap in the UK market for early chapter books....) Anyway, cutting to the chase, they don't date stamp the books. Instead you get a receipt with all the books listed and the return date on it. Okay so if you lose the bit of paper you are stuffed, but we have at least twelve books out and at least if I don't lose the bit of paper I know which twelve books I am looking for. So far it's thumbs up for Canadian libraries.

On-line banking - useless

Chris gets paid twice a month - how weird is that?

Alcohol - I feel quite proud that it's taken my me until now to mention that the buying of alcohol is a little complex but it is Friday night so it's on my mind. The supermarkets are open 24 hours but you can't buy alcohol in them. The one up the road has a wine shop inside it but after the check-out (a bit like we have dry-cleaning and photo-printing shops) and it is not 24 hours at all. Beer has to be bought from a separate shop, but at least they call it "The Beer Store" so even Homer Simpson could work it out if he had to. Wine is also sold in LCBO shops (Liquor Control Board of Ontario) but I guess Homer would be happy to stick with Duff Beer so that's okay.

Accents - it's English Jim, but not as we know it. I can't think of a gentler way to put it: the children have gone native! Dominic is talking like a Canadian to a degree that would put the Bangles to shame. He is an expert. He has already corrected me for calling 'football', 'football' instead of 'soccer' and if he doesn't have a 'totally AWEsome' time here I'll be really disappointed. He is the worst, but the other two are not far behind. It might be inevitable but that doesn't make it any better!

I could go on. And I expect I will. But for now, that's it.