Doc C has to go to the doctor on Monday, and for reasons we needn't go into here, he can't eat anything on Sunday except for blue or yellow jello. We were talking about that on the way into work this morning, and I said that I quite like jelly (as long as I don't think about the actual gelatin of course). Doc looked at me and said "Jelly or Jell-O?", and I explained that in England we call Jell-O Jelly. So Doc asked if that meant we make Jelly moulds, which yes we do; but we'd just call it Jelly, and the shaped mould part would usually be assumed (My Mum had a mould shaped like a rabbit for example. Or it might have been a cat. Hmmm). Actually, a few days ago, a British archaeologist we were watching on a documentary about Pompeii described something as having held it's shape, like "a Jello Mould", and I thought it was really odd because it was so Americanised a way of phrasing it.
The UK Vs US thing still crops up occasionally, not in a confrontational way but sometimes something that was just an ingrained aspect of my childhood will pop into my head and no-one will have the slightest clue what I'm talking about. For example, when I started singing the theme tune to "Record Breakers", which I know wasn't shown over here, so then I tried explaining what it was to Doc C and he was just bemused by the whole thing. Possibly my explanation was a little garbled -
"Well, it was a kid's TV show and it was always on. The presenter was Roy Castle and he sang the theme tune, and played the trumpet on the theme tune, and lead record breaking tap dance routines on that fountain at BBC Television Centre. Oh, and they had Norris McWhirter, who was a proper adjudicator from the Guiness Book of Records, and people would, um, break records. Which is why it was called 'Record Breakers'. Anyway... "Dedication. Ooh Dedication. Dedication! That's what you need! If you want to be the best, and if you want to beat the rest, Oo-Oh Dedication's what you need!'"
Doc's used to that sort of thing every now and again, but it's a damn catchy theme tune to inflict on a poor unsuspecting husband.
AND - I found out this week that they don't really do Advent Calendars in the South! I still can't quite get my head around that one. No tiny piece of chocolate shaped like an elf? No little plastic toys that are almost certainly a choking hazard? No pictures of mangers and stars? But how did you know when it actually was Christmas?
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