Baffling differences and minor inconveniences

Thanks very much to the helpful bloggers who explained exactly what "midges" are! As I posted earlier, the lack of window screens here in England means the bugs come in. I really don't mind, although more than a few wasps entered during the peak of the "heat wave" last week. The only time I was really bothered was when one would find its way in through the open transom at 5:30 a.m., right as the sun rose, and buzz angrily against the curtains until I blearily got up and opened the large windows so it could find its way out.

Together we compiled a spontaneous list of what's different here in England. I share it with you now:

1. An unfurnished, rented flat does not provide a stove (called a cooker here), refrigerator, freezer and certainly not a washing machine. The tenants must provide their own. Leanna is very grateful that her new mother-in-law has given her a washing machine.

As a practiced apartment renter, I was at first shocked by this difference. In my work at The Arches, our church's center that helps furnish flats for the poor, we do our best to help families fit out their new properties, but we get very few refrigerators and washing machines, and--for liability reasons--we can't provide cookers. That makes it really hard on a single mum who's just getting back on her feet after being homeless, or on the refugee family who left everything behind in their home country.

2. Many, many bathrooms (or loos or toilets, as they're called here) have separate spigots (taps) for hot and cold water. The idea is that you mix the water in the sink basin, using the available plug. I used to have this set-up in my 100-year-old dorm room at college, and I thought it was charming.

I find it much less charming in a public bathroom that's completely new but where the basin is filthy. Washing my hands in water mixed within a dirty sink seems counter-productive, so I am reduced to quickly dashing my hand through either a boiling-hot or freezing-cold stream of water. Sometimes I try to splash them together with one hand so the two streams meet in the center, but the taps are always placed far enough apart (about six inches) so that this is impossible. I don't understand why more new bathrooms in both houses and public spaces have the infinitely more convenient single tap. Apparently this is due to the British reluctance to Progress for Progress' Sake, but, in my humble American opinion, one tap just makes more sense, not to mention happier and cleaner hands!

3. Most Brits make up the bed with a bottom sheet and quilt only. They don't use a top sheet. When I first arrived in London last September, I thought it was just a quirk of the friend whom I spent a few days with. I was so jet-lagged, though, that I happily stretched out on her very comfortable guest bed and soon got used to the strange sensation of being right under the quilt, with no top sheet. But I've since learned that this is the norm here. I should mention that almost all of the English "quilts" are actually down or cotton duvets, with duvet covers that can be easily taken off and washed. It certainly does make it easier to make the bed!

I've gotten so used to this system that, when American friends visited a few months ago, I was actually puzzled when Tom asked for a top sheet. I'd made up his bed just fine, I thought. When he gently reminded me I'd forgotten the top sheet, I laughed and gave him a spare. "They don't actually use them here," I said, and considered making him do without for a true cultural experience. However, our shower has been out of commission for awhile and since Tom already had to get used to settling for a bath only (still common among the older generation) I figured I should humor him.