1) It is an island. Okay, Britain is not an island - but it is lots of islands and some of them are very small like Nantucket. We recreated a scene from Lilo & Stitch today, driving from one side to the other. You turn a corner, bam: there's the sea again! We could see it from the pub we had lunch in, as if it was waiting for us. In fact, it started creeping up the road to get us but I'll come to that later.
2) It was globally important in the 19th Century and is now just a pleasant speck in the Atlantic. Ha ha ha. Had to say that.
3) Driving. Oh my gosh, roundabouts! How cool are they? People of Britain, do not take them for granted! Houston does have one but it is really just a big circular road. Here there is one but it is the centre of the entire traffic infrastructure for the island, like some British motoring totem. In Massachusetts they call them 'rotaries'. This is interesting, but still wrong. Also there is a killer one way system around Nantucket town which made me feel right at home. Interesting fact: there are no traffic lights on Nantucket.
4) Parking. Hmm.. Small town.. Narrow Streets... Tourist Trap... One Way System... And American-sized cars. Say what you like about Houston, but you could get the Queen Mary into most of the parking spaces I see. Let's just say I made Laura drive today.
5) The Weather. There was a COLOSSAL storm today. It rained knives and forks and the thunder seemed to be cracking about twenty feet off the ground. Now, we have some pretty sensational downpours in Texas not to mention the odd hurricane or two, but oh my giddy aunt this was COLD! Cold rain? Ugh! That's not right at all. Rain is supposed to be warm, any fool knows that. Why, to put up with COLD RAIN, you'd have to live somewhere like, oh, I don't know...
6) The Weather. It was such a fine morning, sunny and warm with a slight heaviness in the air. Then, far off, the thunder started to peal. By the time we were trying to park for the second time (it is difficult with these itty-bitty spaces) it was already raining hard. By the time we had all got out of the car it was torrential and with it came a sea mist that began to choke up the narrow streets. There was an awning a few metres from the car and we dashed for it. We had the parking space for an hour so we had to do something - maybe one of us could slosh up the street and try and find somewhere that might do us lunch? Yeah, right But wait, what's this building immediately behind us, under whose awning we are trying to shelter? It's a pub! We were saved!
7) Pubs. Opportunities to slink out of an evening and find bars is limited when holidaying with smallish children. But there's always lunchtime. This place wasn't really a pub, it was a bar. But it was a very pubbish bar. Very pubbly. In fact, if it wasn't called "Cy's Bar" and something else like "The Dog & Duck", or even "Cy's Pub", then I wouldn't even have queried it.
8) The Weather. So we grabbed a table at the back of the 'pub' and there's a window there that looks down a back street and improbably there's the sea at the end of it, lurking. Then after a few minutes I notice that the sea isn't just in the harbour any more, it's seemingly spreading up the street: cars are ploughing through 15cm of water, tourists in flip-flops and t-shirts are standing ankle deep in.. the sea. Later, when we got back outside, we found sand spread across the town, churned up by the storm and - what - rained down again? Huh? (Another interesting fact: during the Second World War the USAF trained pilots here because the weather in Nantucket (fog, rain and so forth) was a better match for Britain's than anywhere else in country.)
9) The Weather. So, we went for an ice cream and (ultimately) headed for the beach. Okay, so the tempest had passed - things tend to blow over very quickly here - and suddenly the skies were blue once more.. A perfect British Summer evening with only a couple of stiff G&Ts between us and dinner.
10) Everyone here is obsessed with the weather.
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