Things I think are true about America based on Tv and Film

[PennyHasNoSurname]

People sort of pick at their food with just a fork - putting it on, scraping it off, moving it round the plate before putting it back on again and eating half of whats on the fork. Food must be stone cold by the end.

Nobody says goodbye on the phone. Now I know us Brits are painfully polite to a fault but "see you later" or "bye" is basic?

Everyone eats out of packets / dried goods. Of which they have 3000 of in their basement

School finishes at about 11am. University is called School (isnt that confusing?!)

(I grew up in Tennessee and lived in Georgia for a long time as an adult before moving to the UK.)

I have family in Nashville, Serendipity.

Do people really not mind having to share a bedroom with a complete stranger, Seneca/Serendipity?

I remember being apprehensive about whether I'd get along with my roommate (especially because I was a country bumpkin from Tennessee and she was from Beverly Hills!), but it was just all part of the university experience that I knew to expect. It would never have occurred to me not to share. There were definitely advantages and disadvantages, but I think overall it was better for me than it would have been to have a single. It would be too easy with a single to shut yourself away if you're nervous and/or introverted, which I was. Today, of course, I too shudder at the thought! But as a teenager it was well within my range of normal. I guess it was like going to a sleepover with someone you didn't know but expected to have things in common with, if that makes sense.

It's true, I guess it's just all down to what you expect.

So Serendipidy, if all you knew about the uk was from tv programs and films what would you know?

I met an American couple in Germany who commented that the fog we were experiencing must make us think of London. They were educated people but it took a lot to persuade them that England isn't foggy.

Sadik In the olden days in the UK (i.e. when I went to Uni in 1986) you often had to share a room if you had a place in halls at University. It was certainly cheaper. Also there were no ensuite and if you got a room with a sink in it, you were lucky I shared for my first year and had my own room in the second year.

Also after sharing a room for a couple of weeks, you are no longer strangers.

It's true, though, that it's just something that you expect to do so most people adjust.

My hall of residence in the UK was a large house, formerly a family home, with an extension built onto the back. The original bedrooms in the house were very large, so two people shared; in the extension, where I was, all the rooms were singles. The university has since sold the house; it's a family home again (in a very expensive neighborhood), and the extension has been torn down.

OneWay - I went to uni in 1988, so not that different in time :) We got our own room, but definitely no sink.

The corridor along from ours didn't get an electric socket in their room - can you imagine that now . . . (Though they did get a little bunsen burner kind of thingy to plug into their gas fire for a kettle, which I rather envied, though I suspect not as much as they envied our ability to plug in a tape player )

There was no sink in my room. There was a very nice kitchen type room at the end of the corridor, with kettles and cupboards.

The bottom locker in high schools is never used by anyone ever.

Kooky girls fancy really straight boys. But they never fancy their really geeky best friend who is secretly in love with them.

If you are non-White you are much more tasty to dinosaurs.

I walk everywhere and my DC walk to school.

My husband is 6'4".

Of course I say bye on the phone!

And drink driving is definitely a problem! Double

Ali how have we not talked about SVU yet?!

Anyway.

Yes milk and OJ in gallons. I never have pop. Crisps only occasionally (like when we have visitors or for picnics or parties.)

Am I raining on the parade here? :D

It's hard for me to think of what I'd know about the UK if I only knew films. I've been on here for about 7 years I think so I've been disabused of any notions I might have had!

When I was little I thought England was all like James Herriot books. (And Goodnight Mr Tom, too.) So basically rural WW2 era. :o

No you would never have crisps just big bowls of popcorn in front of the telly that you could throw around after one handful .

Pipbin if I believed everything I see about England I saw or heard on tv it would be that you all talk like the queen, drink way too much tea, and despite the fact that you always end up being the villain or murderer in the story you apologize for everything in general. There was a post on twitter about British stereotypes that I saw recently in fact

Brit 1: Sorry, are you in the queue?
Brit 2: Oh, no I'm not, sorry!
Brit 1: Oh, sorry!

chilledwarmth the over-apologising thing is actually fairly accurate.

People with british accents are bad'un. Smokers will meet a horrible end (seriously they all die) .

Mothers are always fantastic cooks and dining always takes placr outside with the trees covered in fairy lights. There are at least four adult children around the table with their partners. They are always fiercely intelligent and don't mind airing their dirty laundry around the table. They drink copious amounts of local wine and after kissing and making up they all jump into their trucks pissed as farts and drive off into the night. Leaving mother to clear up.

Each do you watch a lot of Parenthood and Brothers and Sisters? :o

Ooh yes, all Brits are posh. No Shameless types around. Scottish and Irish people are interchangeable. The Welsh do not exist. Sorry, Wales!

The giant bags of crisps is true! We goggled at the pillow-sized bags in the supermarkets.

Years ago, my impressions of the UK were from Quadrophenia, Are You Being Served and the few bits of 80's East Enders I'd seen. (Americans were surprised and intrigued by the idea of a soap opera about poor people.)

Having lived here 10 years, I think I wasn't too far off. According to my husband, it's only relatively recently that houses weren't dark, cramped, sooty cold places. Double glazing and gas heat weren't the norm a generation ago and even indoor toilets couldn't be taken for granted.

All weddings take place outside, in a beautiful garden, under a rose arbour, with a view of the sea.

Chilled
That exchange reads like a perfectly ordinary every day situation.
Honestly, I must have had that exact conversation a dozen times this year alone.

Double glazing and gas heat weren't the norm a generation ago and even indoor toilets couldn't be taken for granted

My last house only had one of those three and I moved out 3 years ago.

There is no such thing as too much tea