One Foot On Two Continents

After ten months of acclimatising to New York City, arriving in the UK was strange in that nothing seemed strange. There was no mental change of gear to look the right way crossing the road, it didn't seem odd that the driver should sit on the right hand side of the car, and I managed to avoid striking up conversations about baseball with each and every Brit I bumped into.
So far so good, but there were a few moments when it was clear that I have begun that irreversible process of being completely at home neither here nor there.

Friday morning dawned bright and early, and even without the 3 hour phone marathon with British Airways I wasn't feeling 100%, so I made an appointment with my family Doctor in the UK for Monday.

I was no longer registered at the Ventnor surgery, so I had to fill in a form with my current address and everything. After a less than engaging conversation about my malady, the doctor wrote out a prescription and buzzed through to reception.
"Hello, Muriel, yes, I finished with Mr. Bridgett from America. Yes, could you take care of it? Thanks."
Then he turned to me and said, "Right, well, as you're American, you'll have to pay, I'm afraid."
There was a moment in which my mouth dropped open and my flabber was gasted.
"I'm British. I mean, I'm from Ventnor!"
"Oh, I'm sorry, I thought you sounded American."
I left. Everything was made better by Muriel at reception.
"You're not American - I know your Mum."

To give the man his due, I haven't been ill very frequently in the ten years since he started being our family doctor, but still.

Walking through Newport with Krissa, heading to the bus station to catch a bus home after a day's gallivanting around castles and the like, she said, "Where is the bus station?"
"Just around the corner."
Only we turned the corner and BAM! the bus station had disappeared. Piled rubble and the tortured tangles of steel reinforcements sat dejectedly where once it stood. Reeling a little, I turned around and BAM! the huge supermarket had changed from Safeway to Morrisons. It was as close to feeling like Marty McFly in Back To The Future that I have ever been. Fair enough it was only two changes to a town centre I once knew well, but it felt so odd. I half expected the Island's only McDonald's to have metamorphosed into some sort of a friendly family eating establishment, but thank the lord, my nerves were spared.

Then there was the food shopping.
When I first arrived in New York, I embarrassed the cashier and subsequently myself by packing my own shopping bags at the supermarket. This just isn't done. Instead you stand there slightly awkwardly and watch the cashier pack the bags, and then you take them.
After ten months of this you get rather used to it.
So at the express checkout in Ventnor's branch of Somerfield, I dumped our basket next to the till and instantly lost interest. Express checkouts not being the widest things in the world, after a bottle of Irn Bru and a loaf of bread there wasn't much room left for the cashier to stack things. With me standing there frowning at the whisky prices and doing pound-to-dollar conversions in my head, she was left with no choice but to carry on scanning.
When I finally noticed, a packet of Wine Gums had rolled onto the floor, the loaf of bread was labouring valiantly to support two bags of mixed vegetables and a hot rotisserie chicken, and the poor woman was trying to balance a carton of ice cream on top of the Irn Bru bottle.

I had lapsed in my role as a British supermarket customer, and for me England will never be quite the same again.

All right, not much, but hey.