Mundane but wow!

Continuing with my theme of same but different, I have another one that came out of nowhere.

Back gardens. I was brought up on the old tradition of an Englishman’s home is his castle and that extends to his garden. Like Australia, gardens tend to be fenced in. It maintains your privacy as well as forming the boundary of your land. Not here. It is the norm for gardens to have few or even no fences. Just doesn’t seem right somehow. I mean anyone could just walk in.

And what about when you want to take your dog into your garden? I am staying with my daughter, who I might add married an American a couple of years ago and now lives in the US. When they want their dogs to have time in the garden, they have to be chained up as there is no fence at the back. Since I became aware of this I have noticed lots of other gardens with no fences at all. Personally I find that strange.

Here’s another one that came out of left field.

Drying washing. What on earth could be different about something as basic as drying washing? In England and Oz, washing if normally dried on washing lines, right? Not here as there are no washing lines. You can't even buy them. The norm here is to use a clothes dryer. Forget about being eco friendly and all that!

Not only that, the tumble dryers are different. I can remember dryers in both the UK and Australia as being pretty simple. You had the timer, a hot or cold button and that was about it. My daughter informs me you can program all sorts of things and it has sensors that detect when it is dry and do something to make sure the clothes don’t need ironing. Sounds a great labour saving device (always hated ironing) but I am starting to understand why Americans use so much energy compared to the rest of the world.