Change, Prostitution, Crossing Roads and a Confession.

1. Too much change.
No, this isn't me lamenting my uprooted disoriented state. I have too much change.

Literally.

In my wallet.

Far more change than I ever had in England, which is weird as we have a lot of redundant coins - not only do we have £1 coins (whereas here they have notes, unless you're paying for a subway ticket in which case the change it spews is all $1 coins that inspire suspicious resentment in any sales assistant recipient), we also have £2 coins and 2p coins and 20p coins and 50p coins... in fact, England has eight different coins to America's four. Five if you count the rare and begrudged $1s.

Yet I still have far more change in my wallet here than ever before. And I'm pretty sure it's not because I'm spending less. It's because although I know that the 10p shaped coins are actually 25c and the 5p shapes are 10c and the other silver coins that don't look like anything other than maybe the old 5p pieces that were decommissioned back in the 80s are 5c, I don't trust myself to know this instinctively while I search for money at the cash register. So I reach for the largest note I see (which in itself is hard because they all look exactly the same). This results in my wallet weighing more than a small child and my periodically emptying my change out, promising myself that I'll take it to the bank soon to convert it back into easy notes. Only I wont because I don't really know how to do that here and I can't be bothered to find out.


2. Prostitution
All the English people who visit me nod gravely when I say that some parts of Waltham are a bit deprived. "We've noticed there seems to be a big problem with prostitution here", they say. Jeremy and I look at them puzzled. Prostitution? Alcoholism, maybe. Meth addiction even. Homelessness, for sure. But prostitution? "yea - all the stores here have signs on them saying 'no soliciting'...". At which point Jeremy and I catch on and I start to giggle. "They mean trade soliciting / salesmen", we explain.

I don't mention that I knew what they meant all along because I'd thought the exact same thing back when I first visited here.

3. Crossing roads.
Aside from the obvious issues with crossing roads in a foreign country where one has to retrain one's brain to look left first instead of right (or is it right first? I can never remember.). And the fact that I've grown used to the pavements in London telling you which way to look (directions are literally painted on the road - seems I'm not the only foreigner to get confused). And that I'm just not a very good road crosser (Jeremy calls me R2D2 because of my tendency to walk unwittingly into danger...I had to have the joke explained to me 'cause I've never seen Star Wars)...I have another problem with crossing roads here.

Cars always stop.

Sometimes of course it's nice, but they stop even when there's nothing else coming and it'd be much easier for them to pass me by. I'm not sure if they're scared of getting sued or they assume anyone crazy enough to walk is likely to throw themselves in front of a car. Either way, I don't like it - I feel self conscious having them watch me cross when had they ignored me we could have continued on both of our journeys without this momentary pause where I am observed and they are delayed. Sometimes, I pretend not to be crossing the road to trick them into not stopping.

4. A confession.
There's a taxi company here called 'Veterans Taxis'. For a long time I thought they were for veterans only and I was surprised by how many Veterans there must be in need of transportation. Surprisingly enough it turns out it's just a taxi company with no stipulations on whether its passengers have served in a war. Although I do still wonder whether they give a discount to those that have...