Translating British Humor

The Eagle and Child is a pub in Oxford where C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien and other literary pals met weekly for a drink. The so called Inklings nicknamed their watering hole “The Bird and Baby.” Funny or sick?

My work in progress, A MATCH FOR EVE, is about an American teenager who goes to school in England for a year. As I consider her reactions and the British boys’ response to her, my focus is on attraction, miscommunication and culture clash, often with hilarious results. British humor can be witty and dry, but it can also be crass.

My English husband, an expert on public broadcasting politics and killing time on YouTube, passed on two BBC clips:


These animal voice overs went viral at Bowdoin College and our kids’ school in Maine, showing some humor translates well. If you can make it past the farting gorilla . . .


This political satire requires some familiarity with 80’s music and British prime ministers.

One thing I love about the Brits (as opposed to most Americans) is they don't take themselves too seriously. Also just about anything sounds both funnier and more believable with an English accent. A secret to a happy marriage (20 years and still counting) is laughter . . . and proofreading manuscripts, feeding a manic writer and putting up with this blog. Thanks, Henry!

For more on Oxford and expat life, see my Sabbatical in England posts. Do you have any amusing culture clash stories to share, especially about the UK?

Multi-Cultural Blog Watch:

* Reading in Color had a thought provoking post on racial stereotypes in fiction "Latinos Don't Fall in Love and Asians Don't Tell Jokes."

* Travels with Persephone urges us to slow down to look at the texture of travel. Amanda takes us to Italy, Croatia and Greece, focusing on walkways and rooftops.

* Author Barrie Summy celebrated Valentine’s Day with her adopted daughter and shared how Koreans observe Valentine's Day in their country.

* Through the Sapphire Sky shared Chinese New Year in Japan.

Note: I'm taking a one week blog vacation for the kids' February Break.  Next post Wednesday, March 2nd.

Sub Zero

Winter awakes with icy fangs,

Scattering dream crystals,

And sinking mercury.

Exit only on skis or snowshoes;

Storms do not obey traffic signs.

Another blizzard is due tonight!

Nostalgic Mist

What path do you follow to your imagination? My first step is memory. These damp November days are bringing me back to England. Last week the view out of my window in Maine reflected the images inside my head.

Of course the landscape is different. Maine is wild; England (above) is pastoral. The weight of water still hangs heavy on the air. The colors were muted to grays. I looked for brightness and found it in the woods.

Is my son wearing a yellow raincoat or a mac with rain boots or wellies? Are those gold leaves of autumn or fall? Is the dog off leash or off lead?

Bloody dog! Stella ate the boy’s i-pod. Really.

I know when I’m speaking French (poorly!) or English, but somehow the line between American and British blurs. I’ve lived half my life with an Englishman and three years of that in his country. Our children use a mixed vocabulary especially since coming back from our Oxford sabbatical. Quite a few of my friends are similarly split between countries. In my sidebar you’ll find ex-pat bloggers, even though I’m not one anymore.

When writing dialogue or using first person narration, I must be true to character and that includes nationality. NOT CRICKET (A MATCH FOR EVE) is a book that will need readers to flag my transgressions. Even if the aim is to show confusion, I must not confuse the reader.


By the final draft, I’ll have cleared the fog. The first draft introduces me to the characters and follows the branches of the plot. It’s messy, but this is how the structure emerges. The weather seemed to follow my writing. The sun came back on the day I talked to my agent, Jean Naggar. She liked the sound of NOT CRICKET from my description. I won't be showing the manuscript to her until it's polished. I find revision easier than writing the first draft.

Sometimes I don’t sleep as well in this creative stage. I shut my eyes and hear the characters chatting; I dream different scenarios. I leave scribbled note-cards all over the house. There isn’t such a clear line between sleeping and waking or working and resting. Swimming laps or walking the dog is my time to plan that day’s chapter. When I sit down before my computer, I’m ready to write.

Another part of my work is creating a setting. In the first chapter I discovered that my character lives in Portland by the water. With my daughter for company, I set out last month to find inspiration. Now I’m processing it.

Eastern Prom is a park overlooking Casco Bay and backing onto a quiet, residential neighborhood. You might expect grand houses with these views, but many of the buildings are subdivided into apartments. Paint is peeling; vinyl siding is cracking.

What excuse is there for adding a brick entranceway to this old classic? My character lives in a divided house. She’s an artist who craves beauty beyond the confines of home.

My daughter suggested this house. The color is awful, but don’t you love that quirky triangular window in the attic? The haphazard modern additions attach to what must have once been a stable. My search is part real-estate and part archeology. My home will be fictional, but the neighborhood will be real. I need to set the mood, and look what street we’re on:

Portland is a small city but still the biggest in Maine with a population of 64,000. Compare that to Oxford’s 151,000. The Eastern Prom is often hidden in thick fog. I like this parallel to foggy Oxford (below), a low-lying city between two rivers.

My research expedition translated into maybe one page of my novel, but it was worth it. Now that I know where my character lives, I can imagine how it would shape her. I can see how looking across the Atlantic and north towards England, she’d long to sail free.

Blog Watch: My neighbor, author Cynthia Lord had a short but beautiful post on November. Her blog also features her husband's stunning photography. She's under author blogs in my sidebar.

Boston and Nantucket Seaside

There is beauty in what scares you. The New England Aquarium illuminates jellyfish to throb and glow in a twilight sea. I could spend hours watching. Are the waving tentacles so engrossing because they could cause pain?

As much as I love the dreamy underwater world, a shark is my nightmare. I wonder if that fear is hard-wired. I remember taking my daughter as a toddler to this aquarium and pointing out, “Look, a fish with teeth.” She didn’t buy my forced cheerful tone but burst into tears, hiding her face from the shark’s grimace. I know sharks are important members of the ecosystem and rarely attack humans. Phobias aren’t rational.

“Sharks” said with a Boston accent (on the aquarium sign: shahhhks) are funny. A multistory cylindrical tank displays huge fish, rays, sea turtles and sharks. The viewing platform wraps around like a ball run. The New England Aquarium in Boston is not unlike the Guggenheim Museum in NYC only it is nature rather than art on display. Good architecture enhances the viewing experience in both buildings.

At the base of the tank are the penguins, which delight all children. This one appeared to be taking a bow. My daughter and I are big fans of penguins, but they don’t transfix me in the way that sharks and jellyfish do. Why are we so fascinated and drawn to what we fear?

My real life fears were alleviated by seeing my mother in the hospital. She was pale but doing remarkably well after her surgery, although there will be many weeks of physical therapy ahead of her. I spent a couple of days visiting her at Mass General Hospital in Boston. Since the kids were with me, I broke up the time by taking them to the aquarium. My mother is now home and walking with the aid of one crutch.

Last time my mother broke her leg, I was living in England. It’s times like that which make living abroad painful. Even if you can’t do much to help, it’s good to be there for family. We are always stretched with my husband’s family in England and mine in the USA. As parents age, this becomes a bigger issue, especially for multinational families like ours.

Luckily our parents are generally in good health and very active. The joy they find in life after 70 is inspiring. Aging need not be something to fear, but as a daughter, I can’t help worrying sometimes.

Perhaps the biggest support my being there offered was to give my father a break and to provide a welcome distraction. It’s hard to be the supportive spouse. We went to dinner at a really good and inexpensive Italian restaurant my father discovered. Antonio’s Cucina Italiana is on Cambridge Street in Boston, right across from Mass General. I highly recommend the pasta fagioli soup.

We stayed at the ironically named Liberty Hotel that used to be a prison. They preserved some of the cells for the jailhouse look, but the hotel is quite luxurious. Best of all, The Liberty Hotel offers a reduced rate for those visiting patients in the hospital next door. The view from the hotel is spectacular and familiar. I used to work in an office building on the opposite side of the Charles River. I have so many memories from my 12 years in Cambridge, Mass.

When my mother left the hospital for NYC, the children and I continued onto our planned vacation on Nantucket Island. Now you’re probably wondering why I’d leave Maine, with all its lovely islands, to go to Massachusetts. Well, the water is much warmer. The Gulf Stream channels southern water from the Gulf of Mexico to Nantucket, but there’s more to it than that.

Nantucket Island is 30 miles out to sea from Cape Cod and is wrapped with sand beaches. It has miles of bike paths along the wild moors. Nantucket has long since been an inspiration for my art. I wrote most of my master’s thesis on island one spring when I needed quiet and solitude to write. At some point I’m sure to set a novel there.

The main draw for me is my family and our three decade history with this beautiful island. When I was a kid, my father used to split a summer house rental with his sister and her family. It’s fun to come back now to see my cousins with a third generation in tow. It was sad to arrive dockside without my parents greeting us. The two hour ferry journey had erased all tension and transitioned us into vacation mode.

My children joined their cousins for the Nantucket Sand Castle Competition and won third prize in the “Resourceful” category. That means they built their castle with natural items found on the beach. I appreciated their literary theme and pun: Prisoner of ACKaban. There was the Harry Potter reference, and ACK is the abbreviation for the Nantucket Airport. Theirs was the only actual sand castle in the “sand castle” competition. Other teams were flipping over backwards to be original.

This team stretched the rules by using dyes and a painted sign. Those are steps leading down to China (6,827 miles.) You can’t help but laugh.

Here’s a Nantucket lightship basket filled with hydrangea which grow well in sandy island soil. Being on a lightship, anchored out at sea as a floating lighthouse, was lonely. To ease the boredom, the lightship watchmen would weave baskets out of beach grasses. Now these baskets are mass produced for preppy women vacationing on the island.

Once a wealthy whaling community, Nantucket is now a vacation destination. There are only 12,000 year-round residents which swell to 55,000 over the summer. Good beaches combined with fine dining are the draw. No other restaurant blends these elements as well as The Galley Restaurant.

At The Galley there are no windows but rather open tarps to the beach and sea. The atmosphere is elegant and feels more French Riviera than American, especially when the planters sported red and white geraniums. The food isn’t as delicious but still tasty enough to satisfy if stretch the wallet. This year the cooking was better than usual. I especially appreciated the pastry chef’s nod to the restaurant’s sunset views.

The Galley is perfectly positioned to watch the sun set into the sea. Californians might take this for granted, but an ocean sunset can only be viewed from an island on the east coast. Film couldn’t capture how the sun glowed a deep red like a coal in a campfire. All the diners stopped eating and the servers froze to watch the sun sink into the water. Everyone clapped for this grand finale.

Next week I’ll blog more about Nantucket. I wasn’t able to download the images from my DSLR camera because the high definition memory card is beyond the capacities of my old card reader. My point-and-shoot Canon Elph did a fine job (especially at the aquarium,) but I want to share a sunrise and moonset that only a manually set SLR could capture. Technical problems are only an excuse. Don’t you want to dwell on summer, now that August is drawing to a close?

NYC Limbo

Hello from NYC! The kids and I are visiting friends and family here on our way home to Maine. I can’t believe I’m back in the USA. As for culture shock, Manhattan couldn’t be more different than Oxford. My son summed it up as we walked through Times Square, “Nothing’s older than 400 years.”













We stopped and stared up at the sky-scrapers. The sun was shining. Traffic was honking. Lights were flashing, and people were shouting. If I hadn’t grown up in NYC, it would have been an assault upon my senses. This is home, and yet it feels foreign.

Why are strangers saying “hi!” to me and smiling? When people bump into to me, they don’t apologize. Cars and buildings are super-sized. Food comes in portions too large to finish. I needed the ice cubes in the drinking water. The temperature is in the 90’s today.

Yesterday I met my old school friends for lunch at Cipriani Dolci in Grand Central Station. The food was good if not great. The train station setting was fun. The iced cappuccinos were perfect as was the company. I felt very welcomed home. The prices only made me smile when I converted the dollars into pounds.

Perhaps that was how I managed to overcome my sticker shock and buy a digital SLR camera. I have a backlog of paintings to add to my website, but my circa 1985 Nikon SLR isn’t working. I miss the manual control of an SLR. I like to pick my aperture and even prefer focusing myself. Scanning slides for my portfolio costs money too.

My son and I headed to the photography mecca. B&H Photo is near the Empire State Building. It’s enormous and quite the New York experience. Many of the salespeople are Hasidic Jews, and they all know from cameras. You can research and buy a camera on line, but at that price I wanted a test drive and expert advice.

I had originally planned to buy the Canon Rebel XSi as it gets top reviews, but the NikonD80 can take my old Nikon lenses (in manual,) and it’s more of a professional grade camera. You couldn’t go wrong with either camera, assuming you would really use the manual features of an SLR.

For most people, I’d recommend my point-and-shoot Canon Elph. It’s small, versatile and affordable. The image stabilizer allows for nice indoor shots without flash or a tripod. I’ve taken all my blog photos to date with it, and I’m sure I’ll continue to use it for every day blogging. I won’t have my new SLR camera until I get back to Maine Friday as I shipped it to avoid sales tax.

To reach B&H Photo, my son and I walked downtown through Central Park. It was our first day in NYC. There was a light breeze and low humidity with temperatures in the mid 80’s. Summer at long last!

Back in England, people still had the heat turned on, and the rain was relentless. Everyone said it was the worst summer ever. I reminded them of last summer with all the flooding, to which the reply was that was very unusual. Yeah, right. We did at least have a gorgeous last day in England. We took the dogs for a favorite walk “between the fields.”

The landscape was bucolic English, but the wheat against the bright blue sky made me think of the American Midwest and the novel I’m reading now.



Jane Smiley’s A Thousand Acres is set on a farm in Iowa. The story is Shakespeare’s King Lear. Many have called this Pulitzer Prize winner a “Great American Novel.” I loved Smiley’s Moo, which poked fun at academia.

A Thousand Acres is more serious and beautifully written. The characters are quintessentially American. They are ambitious, hard working and tied to their land and family. The farmers might be parochial, but they are far from simple.

I’m enjoying the novel so much, I bought another copy for my parents as a visiting gift (I’m staying with them in NYC .) I also bought them Ellis Avery’s The Teahouse Fire set in 19th century Japan which I reviewed in April.

On my mother’s recommendation, my son and I went to see the Louise Bourgeois exhibit at the Guggenheim Museum. Bourgeois’s installations worked so well in that space. I preferred her earlier work, especially the skinny sculptures. Giacometti worked in a similar way only he got the recognition that would never go to a woman. Understandably much of Bourgeois’s work challenged the notion that women were only housewives and sexual objects. She’s still working now in her 90’s. NYC has such amazing art.

It is wonderful to be back home, but I’m already missing England. Somehow we didn’t realize that we had grown roots until it was time to yank them out. My children had been counting the weeks but then felt sad to go, just when they’d finally been accepted into their new schools and made new friends.

Even our dog, Stella, was anxious about the move. She crawled into suitcases, terrified we’d leave her behind. Rest assured, we even remembered her lamby. Her crate had more legroom than we had on the plane.

Henry flew to Boston with Stella Tuesday and then drove to Maine. American Airlines only charges $90 to fly a dog to the USA, but you need to produce a vet certified well-pet certificate (NOT mentioned on the AA website.) It’s odd to think of them home without us.


Our last few days in Oxford were full of ups and downs. Literally, ups and downs. I let Stella out into the garden one night and left the door open while I ran my bath. Henry came home later that night to find the house hopping with baby frogs. He caught and released 20 of them. I wasn't much help because I was laughing too hard. Henry was very good natured about the whole debacle.

On our second to last night, we stayed with my in-laws in their wisteria covered home. The cousins raced around and had a brilliant time. We donned thick fleeces to have a barbecue outside until it rained. At least we got to see a double rainbow. Our parting was bitter sweet.

For our last night in England, we stayed with friends in Cambridge to be near Stansted Airport. My father called from NYC. He couldn’t find our flight number on line. When he called American Airlines, they told him that AA no longer flew out of Stansted. We had printed out our flight info the day before without problem. I called to reconfirm.

AA had cancelled our flight, and said they had called our home phone in the USA! Can you believe it? Our last flight change in May, they had e-mailed, so why not this time? We had to wake up before 4am to drive back to Heathrow. Still, it was worth it to say goodbye to our friends. Talk about a stressful departure.

I’ve needed the time in NYC to recover. Jet lag is much worse when you’ve lived abroad for a year, and the transition back to “normal” life isn’t easy. It’s a relief to be looked after by my parents in a familiar setting.

Plus I’ve had some comic relief. Here’s an oxymoron my son noticed on the West Side:

Only in NYC would you need to insult the customer to sell produce:

Actually the Turkish shop owners were very friendly and the fruit was excellent. Perhaps something was lost in translation.

This morning I relaxed, taking a walk along the East River. Do you recognize the bridges from my opening shot? Tomorrow we’ll cross back over the Triborough Bridge on our way to the airport.

Poor Henry is already back in Maine unpacking boxes and getting us connected to the internet so I can keep blogging. You may have noticed that I posted twice today. If not, check out Oxford Index for a trip down memory lane. Once I resume work on my novel NOT CRICKET, I’ll need to refer back to my Oxford sabbatical posts, and the archives are hard to navigate.

Another expat American blogger, Just A Plane Ride Away, came up with the best solution to my dilemma. She created a blog page to index her vacation to Germany and Austria. JAPRA, I hope you don’t mind that I borrowed your brilliant idea. Check out her blog and other expat bloggers on my sidebar. I guess I’m not an expat blogger anymore….

It’s only been 3 days since I left England, and already it feels like a dream. Henry just e-mailed to say our boxes arrived (in 6 days!) and the internet is reconnected. We’re meeting friends at the beach on Sunday. Home!