A fun experience while in the land of tea and biscuit is to hit up the supermarket. The one in my neighborhood is the good ol’ Safeway. It calls to you as if to say, “Come American. You’ve seen my name in the States, come my way, you’ll be safe from the snaggletooth funny-talkers.” Safe you are not.
The market appears to be the same, aisles of food, produce, salad bar, check-out line, but what lies within is as mysterious as the Tower of London. The cereal aisle, normally a safe haven for me, turned out to be nothing but absurdity. Essentially, all the cereals are the same, but none of the names are different. That way the English don’t have to relate to Americans at all.
American: Hey Jonathan, you’re eating Cheerios! I love Cheerios! Brit: Oh no mate, these are High Corn Circle Toasty Cakes, sorry! American: Oh…I guess, that’s different. [sigh]
Frosted Flakes are Frosties, Kix are Corn Yums, and Rice Krispies are Rice Poppers, or just Snappies. On a bright note, they do have a Simpsons cereal we do not, No Problemos, with “yummy chocolate biscuits.”
Beyond the cereal aisle things only get worse. The English don’t call shrimp, shrimp, they call them prawns. Yeah, those things you used to keep in a fishbowl or disected in biology class. I’m just waiting for them to serve up some fetal pig.
When you go to the deli counter, you should be able to just get cheese but oh no no. I made the horrible mistake of asking for my cheese sliced. “Sowry, we dahnt sloice et.” It seems that you can oly get large chunks. Apparently, this is how the British want their chees, in a 1 kilogram block that they can slather with mayonnaise and put on a piece of bread for consumption. No wonder the UK has the highest death by cancer rate in the world. Their arteries are screaming, “For the love of God, cut the fucking cheese in a fucking slice! We can’t take it anymore!” When she handed me my cheddar block she shot me a nice “cheers.” What? I am I gonna drink the cheese, is that what they do here….so confused.