Ah, nostalgia... it's not what it used to be...
Thread hijack here, but hey, it's wet and November and Sunday: back in those good old days, you knew you were in Britain because there *was* a red phone box on every corner, and a Mini in every street, and everyone had milk delivered to their door. Every brand of car was different, you'd never mistake a Ford for an Austin, every high street had British shops in it like Woolworths and Dixons, the trains were rubbish and always late, and the rain was warmer in the summer. Yes, you just *knew* you were in good old Blighty.
Today, go into any town and you know you're not in France, or Germany or the USA, and we still drive on the left. But not one of those old cues is still there to tell us we're in Britain. Shop signs are in a foreign language, milk is ordered online along with every other shopping item, all the cars are grey (sorry, "dusky moonlight graphite silver mist", aka grey), they all look the same and the only ones actually made here are Japanese. Phone boxes are an historical curiosity, and the village post office is a franchise tucked away at the back of an Italian coffee shop.
And yet... and yet somehow, we still know we are in Britain. But how? Is it by default? Is it that we know we're not anywhere else, so we must be in Britain? Or are there contemporary cues that have replaced the old ones? Are there 21st century idiosyncrasies that are peculiarly and uniquely British, that tell the proverbial Martian landing here that he's in Britain? And if so, what are they?
