Dave and Marian were very generous to invite us over to their house for a supper. Again, very English . . . but then what would you expect? I am in England for crying out loud!
He's a Methodist, don't you know, and she's an Anglican, don't you see? But they have a great marriage, and a generous heart.
The first course was carrot soup. It tasted great, but I could have never identified it as carrot. It was so yellow like there was a lot of butter or food coloring in it. I kept asking if there were such things as yellow carrots.
"Well maybe there are . . . but I've never seen one!"
"So you just blended those kind of carrots that grow In the ground and are orange when you pluck them up?"
"Why, that's the very ones."
"But this soup is so yellow. Did you add some yellow squash to it?"
"Yellow squash? Why not at all!"
"So it's just carrots, is it?"
"Isn't that what I just said?"
"Why, come to think of it, I believe you said the very thing!"
But it was great whatever it was. And that was a huge hurdle for her to cross. I tend to like only raw carrots. I'm just not a fan of cooked carrots unless they are candied in some way. And I don't mean just that thin gruel of a sugar glaze. I mean candied like a think, browned barbecue sauce.
Dinner was great, their back yard was delightful and the gardening evident, but what was superb was BABS.
Now for those of you who do not know, I love barbershop quartet singing. Not that I am in a group or anything, but I love the very close harmony. I wish the church in the village could somehow manage to pull off a song once a month.
At any rate, Dave, who happens to be part of a barbershop society group, had this recording of the American group who had won a gold medal in BABS. They were phenomenal to put it mildly. As I was listening to the introduction by the American chap, I started laughing.
Dave wanted to know what was so funny.
I said, "That bloke doesn't have an accent!"
"Doesn't have an accent?" And then he could see what I meant.
A song that really focused the difference between American and English cultures' use of the language, was using a version of George & Ira Gershwin’s, “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off.”
They highlighted the way we say and use different words and expressions—tomato; potato; loo, bathroom; queue, in line; diversion, detour; etc. It was a lot of fun sitting with our British hosts and laughing about how differently we use our common language.