Lost in Translation

...and then we moved back to England from Canada and I had a whole new set of stuff to miss.
I like distances in kilometers instead of miles, because as a friend said 'it means you get there quicker'.
I miss having a clean, safe underground system. Or 'tube' as people used to like saying to me, forgetting that that's only in London.
and I'm telling you, I'm missing the Canadian weather. The joke/cliche here in England is if you don't like the weather just wait 10 minutes or go 10 miles, is just not that funny. I took a photograph of the huge hail stones a couple of weeks ago. This time last year I had a tan. Me, a tan. A real one, not from a bottle. To most people this probably doesn't sound like a big deal but for me, big deal. I went on holiday to Greece a few years ago and when we got off the return flight the people waiting to board the plane were more tan than me.
I miss the Canadian National Anthem and the fact that people actually sing it . Not all the time you understand, like in the supermarket or doing the gardening, but at sporting events and other apt occasions.
And just when there was a chance of my french improving I move back here and there is no dual language on stuff.
As usual there is the things I don't miss. I won't miss Tim's coffee. Sorry but Tim Hortons coffee is terrible. I know to Canadians this is unholy talk, but the stuff is awful.
I wont miss hockey, yet more sacreligious talk! A long time ago in these very pages I wrote about hockey. My opinion hasn't changed.
And I most surely do not miss the DVP. Dear, lovely people of Toronto, there are other roads. These other roads go to the same places as the DVP - but quicker, because everyone in Toronto just uses the DVP.
So that's it. The moves and misses so far.
I'm not moving again.

sine qua non

There were things I missed when I moved from Ireland to England, but then I moved from England to Canada and guess what?
Canada is a great country but I had even more crisp related problems. First off, they don't have cheese and onion flavour as routine. And then there is the pack size. You know those silver heat reflective things they give to runners when they finish a race? When the runners are finished with those they are sealed down the sides and made into chip packets.
Canadian content refers to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission requirements that radio and television broadcasters must air a certain percentage of content that was at least partly written, produced, presented, or otherwise contributed to by persons from Canada. What this means is that it takes a long time to find a decent radio station. Far too much Rush and other 70's rockers. When I did finally find a good station the Canadian content rule meant the same song would be played 32 times a day. I never thought I miss Radio 1 but there you go.
I missed the variety and price of wine in England. There was less choice and what there was was much more expensive than in England, something to do with taxes I think. I missed double gloucester cheese.
Most of this was balanced by the things I didn't miss about England. Like chavs. I saw no chavs in Toronto. Really, none. I didn't miss people thinking I was Canadian, like almost eveyone I ever met in England and I didn't miss being called 'love' by strangers.
Millions of pounds every year are spent on travel guide books and television shows but none of them ever tell you the good stuff like this you know. You can't buy this advice folks and really you can never have enough shoes, Thornton's chocolate or life lessons.

Wants and needs

When you move from where you happen to have been born and go to another country you expect things to be different. In fact that may well be the reason for moving, for the differences.
I expected to miss the normal things, like friends and family, but it was the odd little things that I didn't anticipate missing that were the shocks.
When I moved from Dublin to London I discovered they didn't have red lemonade. The savages.
This shock was on top of my discovery that they didn't have proper crisps. These two jolts were unsettling.
In Ireland, if you are waiting for the bus to work (and to be honest, you are always waiting) it's considered normal form to talk to the person stood beside you if you happen to make eye contact.
Usually just small talk about the weather or complaints about the lack of buses.
This behaviour in England got me a few funny looks and was soon stopped.
And then there is the stuff you pay no attention to when it's there every day and only notice by it's absence. Being a lapsed Catholic (honestly, never much of one at all, shhh) I never paid much notice to the nightly event on RTE , the national television channel, at 6 o clock. But the angelus , as far as I was concerned was eternal. It was accepted and expected, like sand on a beach or sunburn on everyone the day after the first sunny day, it's just there.
Except it's not.
In fact, in England they had never even heard of it. And I had to try to explain the concept.
It went something like this:
me- Well, it's on at 6pm and is a series of religious pictures and a ringing bell.
them- why?
me- the ringing bell is to accompany the reciting of prayers.
them- no, why?
I had no answer.