Originally Posted by Buzzy--Bee

But what was weird was the finding that 15 degrees in London didn’t feel as cold as 15 degrees in Melbourne. And people in England wear shorts and short skirts in 15 degrees. Nutters!

Originally Posted by chris955

I meant as if paying for parking was some sort of unique UK thing, sorry thought I was clear.

Originally Posted by commonwealth

also, 15C in Sydney does not feel as cold as 15C in Melbourne. there must be something about MEL...

Originally Posted by Kapri

Paying for parking really p***es me off

In my local town it's 90p per hour in the multi storey. And they wonder why town centre's are dying!

I disagree with what people do at weekends though S.

We take our kids walking - plenty of lovely coastal and country walks here and it's rare for the weather to be so bad we have to stay in.
We go to a theme park on average once per year, if that.
Even when we went to Leeds a couple of months ago (big city, colder) we still went walking in the huge park there and plenty of other families were doing the same.
I appreciate that there are families who do as you describe, but not in my friendship group.

Originally Posted by Sherlock Holmes

Much of Victoria has free parking. I'm sure Melbourne and bigger towns charge, but for most public places (parks etc.) it's free and where I am, I've forgotten the last time I paid to park anywhere. AND there is usually somewhere to park. But then I am close to whoop whoop.

Originally Posted by Sherlock Holmes

Much of Victoria has free parking. I'm sure Melbourne and bigger towns charge, but for most public places (parks etc.) it's free and where I am, I've forgotten the last time I paid to park anywhere. AND there is usually somewhere to park. But then I am close to whoop whoop.

Originally Posted by Sherlock Holmes

It was 19 here today...I had to put my coat on..... (really).

Originally Posted by keel

The last few times I've been back I've noticed that the traffic speeds has gone down considerably.

I used to drive at between 80 and 90 MPH going from London back to Newcastle but it's now rare if anyone gets upto 70 anymore.

Keel

Originally Posted by Buzzy--Bee

OK, I appreciate that this post is in danger of becoming an Australia vs UK debate, however I would like to post my impressions of my first visit back to the UK since I emigrated from West London to Melbourne with my wife and twin 2 year old daughters over 5 years ago.

We just came back from 3 weeks visiting England and there was quite a lot that surprised me.

My very first impression was that I was astounded how many people smoke in England. Young, old, middle aged, rich, poor, so many people smoke it is really noticeable. And while the advertising in Australia is along the lines of “don’t smoke, it will cause death by cancer”, advertising in England is all about making sure you put your fag out so you don’t cause a house fire. One follow-on from all this smoking is the massive amount of fag butt litter.

I had forgotten the visual impact of every house having white plastic windows.

I was surprised how clean and nice the kids playpark was near where we were staying. There was no broken glass and no outwardly visible graffiti. Unfortunately this was spoiled by one of my daughters stating she was upset by some writing she had found on the playpark. I asked her what it said and she replied “it says – Casey you are a ****ing bitch”. My daughter has never used this word before and we have never seen such explicit graffiti in Melbourne, just meaningless tags. Very disappointing.

Supermarkets in England, as we all know, are way cheaper and have far more choice. Or do they? They have far more choice in prepared and processed foods certainly, I didn’t see more choice in fresh food though, I think Australia definitely has the edge there. But supermarket shopping in England is hell on earth. You are bumped and jostled and banged by the sheer number of shoppers, people bashing you with trolleys, queueing for ages, wait for people to get out the way before you can choose something off the shelf, driving round and round to try and spot someone just coming out of a parking space. I would not choose to shop in an English supermarket again in my life.

Shopping for clothes is phenomenally cheap in England when you are converting from AU$, we did a lot of clothes shopping. Westfield shopping centre in Shepherds Bush is incredible.

The cost of Transport is an art, not a science. We were given prices by National Rail Inquiries, TFL, the ticket machine and the man behind the counter of 60, 40, 18 and 12 pounds respectively for the same journey so we took the cheapest offer! Then we had to pay over 7 pounds to go a couple of miles on a bus! The trains are much faster, quieter and smoother in England, they swoosh instead of “clackety clack”.

Driving in the UK – 100kph does not feel as fast in England as it does in Australia, and we did go much faster at times, but we were very aware of how many more fixed speed cameras there are now than there used to be, and how people seem to be obeying the speed limits much more in England than they used to.

My kids were very surprised when I had to “pay and display” – “but why do you have to PAY to park the car Dad????”

Weather – mainly OK, although I never had that much of a problem with London weather, it was the winter early dark that used to depress me. But what was weird was the finding that 15 degrees in London didn’t feel as cold as 15 degrees in Melbourne. And people in England wear shorts and short skirts in 15 degrees. Nutters!

It was funny having to teach the kids not to touch stinging nettles, and seeing how enamoured they were with squirrels.

London was looking surprisingly clean and done-up. Our English friends said that this was just for the Olympics, even so, it was looking pretty good. And people were friendlier than I remember, people offered us seats on trains, talked to our kids, were generally very good-humoured.

But I did notice a lot more shouting and swearing in public. My children were upset by overhearing a man on the bus shouting into his mobile phone that he was going to “smash someones ****ing face in.” I heard several other instances of people shouting aggressively in the street.

Weekends - in Aussie we might take the kids to the beach, or to the park. In the UK people seem to take their kids to expensive theme parks of various sizes, pay a lot of money to get in, a lot of money for food/drinks etc and then come home and moan about the cost of it.

But I felt the only massive downside to life in England, one of the reasons we emigrated, and the biggest item to stop me wanting to live in England again, was the lack of space. There is just not enough room in English houses to live the lifestyles people live now. If you bang your elbow when you turn round in the shower, this is an indication your house is not big enough for your lifestyle. If you have to move the dining room table to eat a meal, this is an indication your house is not big enough for your lifestyle. if you have to sit on the toilet diagonally this means there is not enough room for you in your house. You have to squeeze your car in between others – I found I had forgotten how to parallel park with any degree of accuracy! People in the UK seem to put in an enormous amount of effort to build an extension that actually gains them a very few square feet more of space, like a porch or something.

One of my daughters summed it up well when I asked her if she thought she would like to live in England. She said “I don’t think so Dad, it’s too squashy!”

BB