i don't know how or why but apparently it's been 10 years since i first moved to this quaint little
island known as britain and over the past decade i have amassed quite a long list of things that i
find strange about the uk and today i want to share some of them with you the sentence you
are right is something you will hear all the time here in the uk and my trouble with that sentence
when i first moved here was that i thought it was a genuine question silly me i thought people were
asking me whether i was or was not okay and these are some of the emotions it stirred up within me
number one confusion do i look like i am physically or mentally not okay number two fear
why are strangers going out of their way to ask me this
are they being nice or are they very concerned either for themselves or for me and number three
when i do go on to answer that question why are they no longer listening well if you've
ever faced this dilemma here is the solution when asked you are right by a british person
you just say it back okay this is because the question you ride actually has nothing to do
with you it's just a form of greeting similar to the american what's up
point number two is about bathrooms and i frankly don't even know where to begin with this one the
british have managed to conquer most of the known world yet they have somehow not managed to conquer
the concept of taps that don't make you feel like you're in purgatory i mean it stings it burns it's
uncomfortable and for what why we have invented tabs that fulfil all these criteria yet somehow
you are not installing them and that's all i'm gonna say on the matter but don't worry we're not
done with bathrooms because there are more quirks number two let me take a breather because this
one doesn't get me still riled up but number two why are there no plaque sockets in your bathroom
what if i want to charge my electric toothbrush i know i'm a modern woman what can i do what if
you're a guy and you're trying to use clippers and you want to plug them in what happens then
silly and number three and this is gonna be my last point on the bathrooms but my blood pressure
is rising again because i'm about to talk about the monstrosity that is carpets and bathrooms
i'm talking thick fluffy carpet in that one room that is full of steam and liquid and odors and
just horribleness why would you want to have a fabric in there of any sort really but a fabric
that is permanently attached to the floor that i have no idea how you clean do you does anyone want
to argue with me about this by the way because if you do and if you have strong opinions about
the benefits of having carpets and bathrooms i would absolutely love to hear them our next point
is queuing and i am completely on the british side here i think cues are fantastic i love how
orderly and organized they are i don't love maybe how plentiful they are but frankly at this point
i've been here long enough that if i see a queue i just go stand at it do i know what awaits on the
other end of it no and i don't need to number four we've got tutting and this can often go hand in
hand with cueing especially if there is somebody who is breaking the unspoken rules of the system
and what will happen instead of somebody telling you all for saying oh you're doing it wrong go
to the back whatever they'll go quite often they won't even make eye contact because for a british
person that could be a little too confrontational another great example that comes to mind here is
cueing on escalators the way escalators work here in the uk is you stand on the right hand side and
you're stationary on the left-hand side however you're supposed to leave space so people can walk
if they're in a rush if somebody were to break the system as people especially tourists often do
tutting would probably be expected and i have myself tutted at taurus and it was incredible
because it made me feel like i was finally being accepted by my my adoptive brethren i
want to kick off number five with a fun little number did you know that here in the uk people
drink more than 150 million cups of tea every single day now to you the term tea might mean
many things you might think of green tea you might think of black tea you might think of herbal tea
but here in the uk it really only means one thing and that's english breakfast tea with milk and
there are four main brands that everyone seems to buy and that's pg tips twinings tetley and
the other one yorkshire yorkshire tea and uh i don't think i've ever been to a british household
that didn't have one of these on their shelf and i think that's beautiful i like the certainty
of knowing what to expect sandwiches are just a huge thing in this country most big supermarkets
in the uk like tesco asta or sainsbury's have something called a meal deal where for
somewhere in between three and four pounds you can get a sandwich a snack and a drink which frankly
is a very good deal especially if you're going out for a quick lunch or whatever and the selection is
astounding it's amazing at christmas time you will have like stuffing sandwiches with turkey
come i mean i think that's the only time of year when you have special sandwiches
but truly it is incredible and most people have favorites and when they go to buy a meal deal
they will try to get the most value out of it that they possibly can there is a guy by the name of
max fosh here on youtube who does something called ranking people's meal deals and i absolutely love
watching them point number seven let's make the oh so logical leave from the topic of sandwiches to
social class now meal deals can actually be a pretty good predictor of somebody's
social standing and background but an even better predictor is their accent here in
the uk it is truly incredible you can pinpoint where somebody is from or where they were born
to the street sometimes if you've ever heard of george bernard shaw's pygmalion or my fair lady
you already know what i'm talking about the way a person speaks the things they say hear britain can
be used as a pretty reliable predictor of social class and it's something that is still at the
forefront of people's minds today it's something that people are very aware of and i know this is
the case in every country people you know wonder what another person's background is but it is
just so obvious in many ways here and there are so many terms of four people who belong to different
social classes a person from the upper class might be called posh very common word it might be
called a tough or a sloan which is a term derived from sloane square in i think it's in chelsea um
where a lot of rich people live and then on the opposite side of the spectrum some working-class
people might be described as chavs although this is a special specific subsection of that bigger
group or they might be called scallions there's a lot of words um but many of them are derogatory
so we're going to move on to our next point when i first moved here i thought there was breakfast
lunch and dinner and it turns out i was completely wrong because here in the uk those names are
completely open to interpretation for example you can get school dinner which is actually
lunch because you eat it at lunchtime there's also the word supper and the word tea both of
which can be used to describe dinner and frankly i haven't fully figured out the distinction
between these it really depends on where you come from so in the north of the country people might
use different words to people in the south and different families and different social classes
might use different words as well so it is truly a minefield in number nine we've got pet names there
is an infinite degree of nuance and so many layers to the way in which these terms of endearment are
used but here are a few examples a girl from essex somebody from towie might use um the word
babes a lot right to refer to another person of a similar age but then you get an elderly
elderly elderly gentleman who might call you love or sweetheart or maybe
a dinner lady skilled in dinner lady who serves lunches yup exactly she might call you darling
and all of these terms i think are very beautiful although sometimes
can come across as a little bit sexist these days if men keep referring to young women as like
sweetheart or darling in a slightly patronizing way but overall i am a big fan of this and it
just feels so quintessentially british number 10 and i'm sorry i didn't mention this sooner is
british politeness there was a survey done a few years ago of more than a thousand brits and they
came to the conclusion that the average person says the word sorry a total of eight times per day
and that one in eight people apologize a total of 20 times per day which i think is wonderful
because i have or am quickly becoming one of them at this point i will say sorry to
inanimate objects if i bump into a table i will probably apologize the word sorry actually has
mirrored uses you can use it to apologize but you can also use it to replace many other sentences
for example if the weather's bad you might choose to say oh i'm sorry the weather's bad even though
obviously that is fully out of your hands you may also say something like oh i'm sorry that happened
to you although again you weren't the perpetrator of whatever bad thing happened to that person you
can use the word to show sympathy you can use it to soften your language you can use it when
stopping somebody in the street say oh sorry have you got the time or sorry could you point me to
saint paul's my favorite building in london so beautiful on the topic of british politeness i
also want to mention that brits sometimes have a tendency to be very indirect and even the way
i said that was pretty indirect so you can see i'm learning for example if you ask somebody for
their opinion about say the sweater instead of saying no i don't really like it they might say
oh it's lovely but it's not really my cup of tea or um it's interesting number 11 the british
sense of humor do you know what i just said about brits being really polite and kind
well forget all about that when it comes to close friends because your close friends if they are
british are just gonna make fun of you the whole time and it's never gonna stop and at some point
hopefully you're gonna just join them because if you don't i i direct to think what might happen
and yeah it helps with growing thick skin it helps to assess how close you are with someone because
if they are not ripping into you you're probably not that close number 12 let's talk about british
fashion obviously the way people dress varies across cultures and the uk is no exception
now i could mention a few things here like the british love of fake tan and super short shorts
but i'm not going to do that what i want to focus on instead i mean i've just done it but
what i want to focus on instead is the way brits dress wrong for the weather scenario number one
the first warm day of the year and by warm i mean we've we've gone into double digits suddenly you
look around you and everyone virtually everyone is topless it's it's absolutely astounding especially
i would say in scotland where i lived a few years ago the second the sun is out the guns are out
the just everything's out scenario number two is the opposite it's called nights and
on some exceptionally cold nights i've witnessed things like a group of girls age is irrelevant
walking to or from a club i don't know and they are literally not wearing tights or a coat just
a really short dress and high heels and there can be ice on the roads but that's their uniform and i
just am physically incapable of understanding how they don't perish it literally makes me feel like
i'm david attenborough observing a different species number 13 is trashy holidays abroad
and this one i love this is something british teenagers tend to do after finishing their
a levels i graduating from high school and basically there are only a handful of destinations
these british teenagers tend to gravitate to we've got maglev and ibiza and spain we've got
maria cabos and zante in greece and ayanappa in cyprus i may have left one or two out but these
are the epicenters of what can only be described as mayhem absolute havoc
utmost hedonism cheap shots scantily clad everyone i mean it is awful and brilliant at the same time
i myself went on one such holiday after graduating from high school i went to ibiza or i beat that
would like to say and yeah it was exactly what you would expect if you are unfamiliar
with this trend i would like to point you in the direction of a very special show the tv
show is called sun sex and suspicious parents and basically producers will invite a group of
young people and unbeknownst to them they'll also invite their parents who will then watch
their young offspring from afar and judge them silently and in the end not so silently for the
various ways in which they've debased themselves that brings me to my next point which is british
tv there are some completely outrageous shows on british tv let me open the floor with something
called gogglebox gogglebox is a show in which you watch people watching tv why i'm not sure
there's naked attraction where you choose a date based on looking at several people
inside transparent boxes that slowly reveal every inch of their naked bodies including the inches
need i say more no then there's another show called dogs might fly in which they you know
literally teach dogs how to fly a plane and don't worry there's more there's carjackers where people
steal their friends cars and turn them into something else like a giant chicken nugget
or a miniature space shuttle and even the normal tv shows are a bit weird like 8 out of 10 cats or
come dine with me which is currently in its 46th season that's not um and when i say weird by the
way you should know that yes i think objectively these are really strange concepts but i also think
they are hugely enjoyable all right we've reached point number 15. this is by no means the full list
of things i find weird about britain but these are the 15 that i chose to open this topic up with if
you would like to hear more by the way do let me know don't forget to like and subscribe etc now my
final point are those x's that some birds choose to end text messages with the x's represent kisses
and as a teenager i used to hugely overthink this especially when texting people i was potentially
romantically interested in i would look at the x's and then be confused as to how many i was supposed
to send was i supposed to send any by sending the wrong message what does two x's mean vis-a-vis
three am i too much of a flirt are they too much of a float am i not enough of a flirt it was a
complete minefield now as an adult i have made the executive decision to just not care because people
use them in different ways some people use them to flirt some people use them to send to friends
some people use them because they don't know how to finish a text message without them don't forget
to subscribe give this a thumbs up and i will see you next friday bye and sorry just for no reason