While I've been faffing around, humming and hawing, turning over bits and pieces in the messy jumble that is my mind, my husband, paragon of orderly thinking and intelligence, has been putting together a list of the pros and cons of Australia and Britain. Here it is, and any contributions anyone else has will be gratefully received :
Britain and Australia: Pros and Cons
Britain: Pros
Rural natural and built landscape in unspoilt, uncrowded areas e.g. West Country, Norfolk, North Yorkshire, Peak District, remote bits of Wales and Scotland
Ancient churches and trees
Pre-WW2 architecture (except most twentieth century suburbia)
Old pubs esp. with open fires in cold weather
- large number of pubs in nice rural spots with reasonably-priced accommodation
- letting dogs into pubs
Surviving traditional caffs, e.g. the ‘Regency’ in Westminster
Regional differences including accents
No need to worry about watering gardens
Pantomimes
Radio 4, despite all the faults – esp. its light-hearted programming (unlike much of Radio National) including silly panel games
BBC Shipping Forecast
BBC/ITV/Channel Four television, despite all the faults
Five good daily newspapers, plus the ‘Economist’, ‘Private Eye’, the ‘Spectator’, ‘Week’
London’s large choice of theatre, live music, museums and shops
Free major museums
Cross-channel and Scottish island ferries
Exploring London by foot
Traditional London taxis
Long-range country footpaths
Old country road signs
Hedgerows
Surviving large old cinemas, incl. Odeon Chelsea, Curzon Mayfair
Well-off parts of London
Pall Mall clubs
Historic cores of Oxford and Cambridge
Old country houses
Carpeted bathrooms
Fact that all parts of the country easily and quickly reachable
Proximity of Europe
Britain still one of the world’s great cultural centres, especially evident in the publishing/arts/theatre/music/media worlds
Britain: Cons
Default grey skies
Long dark winters
General personal coldness, esp. in London
Love of and rigidity about rules
Shoddy service standards/high levels of inefficiency/incompetence
Crowding, esp in the south-east – nightmarish public transport at rush hours
road congestion and endless roundabouts
- large numbers of once nice places blighted by busy roads and ugly development
Public drunkenness – much more noticeable than twenty years ago
Dismal aspects including most twentieth century suburbia, most seaside resorts (e.g. Margate, Ramsgate, Bournemouth – exceptions include Southwold and Llandudno), allotments, use of terms ‘lorry’ (truck) and ‘estate’ (station wagon)
Incompetently managed immigration, leading to large numbers of unintegrated immigrants, high terrorism threat and racial tensions
Overpriced, crowded, noisy restaurants, esp. in London
- almost complete absence of BYO restaurants
Lack of air conditioning
Hopelessness of Heathrow
Failure to master plumbing, incl. those irritating and weak ‘power’ showers
Absence of interesting spoken word radio other than Radio 4 (in contrast to choice between Radio National and Newsradio in Australia)
Having to pay to visit Westminster Abbey/St Paul’s
Distance from Australia
Australia: Pros
Default blue skies and sharpness of the light
General cheery friendliness
Competence/efficiency and overall good attention to customer-friendly detail, e.g. brilliant banking system compared to Britain
Pre-WW2 architecture; esp. verandahs
- old homesteads, pubs and churches
Corrugated iron roofing, old water tanks, shearing sheds and windmills
Brilliant beaches – strong surf, beautiful sand, lack of crowds
Ancient trees, including elms which no longer survive in Britain
Lack of crowds
Informality
Rural sense of vastness - ‘the sunlit plains extended’
Surviving old-fashioned milk bars/caffs, e.g. the ‘Paragon’ at Goulburn
- milk shakes served in metal containers
Bleached grass
Clear starry skies at night
No need for a clothes dryer
Cheap, plentiful, reliably-sourced fruit, vegetables, fruit, meat and seafood – agriculture not as industrialised as in Europe
Thrill when it rains
- the smell after summer rain
Radio National, despite all the faults – Newsradio generally an interesting spoken-word alternative
Wonderfully archaic orchestral fanfare for ABC radio news
ABC/SBS television, despite all the faults
The ‘Australian’ and ‘Sydney Morning Herald’
Vibrant cultural life in major centres
Sydney ferries
Akubras
Ubiquity of BYO restaurants
Generally successful immigration programme
Big city skylines – despite the sad loss of the fine buildings they replaced
Qantas (incl. the nice acronym)
Efficient airports
Giving names to highways, not just numbers
Good air-conditioning
Native wildlife, esp. kangaroos, wallabies, wombats, kookaburras, cockatoos, rosellas
- nice natural bush noisiness, incl. cicadas
National treasures including Les Murray, Barry Humphries, Geoffrey Blainey, H.G. Nelson and Mark Colvin
Australia: Cons
Regular temperatures above 30 degrees
Canberra - despite the leafy charm and nice setting blighted by many unlovely modern buildings (some exceptions e.g. the National Library) and monotonous suburbs
- Central area, Civic, an indictment of a planned city – why wasn’t it integrated with the lake and more non-commercial elements, e.g. churches?
Humourless, earnest fare of much of Radio National
Suburban sprawl
Distance from Europe
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I have to say I have no idea why allotments are so objectionable, but I have never met a pure-bred Australian who doesn't find them absolutely awful.
I would also add these things to the list:
Daily question time when federal parliament sitting (best free theatre in the Western world)
Country motels (they have their own weird 1960s charm and are always reliably what they are - and cheap)
John Bell
Victorian gold towns - there is a touch of a kind of Ozymandias lost grandeur to some, especially Bendigo
Less domination of retail by chain shops than in UK, where Boots, Top Shop, et cetera seem to have driven out almost all small establishments
Greater variety of fiction published - local publishers seem less driven by market and genre
A sort of dry teasing, specially from country people, that I rather like
I think the list reflects as well on your husband as it does on the two countries. Despite irritations they both sound really enjoyable places to live - and that's an indication that the compiler of these lists is someone who enjoys life and has a generally positive attitude to the world.
ReplyDeleteAs I get older I'm getting less and less tolerant of people who let the bad in things overwhelm everything else. I think it's quite a grave sin.
Always interesting to read these lists, which must inevitably be subjective. For example, I wouldn't necessarily have "Default grey skies" and "Long dark winters" as cons. But then England is in my bones.
ReplyDeleteAgree with Gaw on the whining about bad things. I have no time for Britons who complain about how awful is Britain, especially when it goes with a certain strain of frog-worship.
australia pros:
ReplyDeletefarmers union ice coffee
Unbelievably, one of my friends wants to add morris dancing to the pros of England.
ReplyDeleteI confess to enjoying les danseurs morrisiens (sp? gender?). But surely they should be accounted part of the poetry of England rather than added to its pros. (Geddit?)
ReplyDeleteYou didn't mention how difficult it is to get a decent meal in London (unless you're prepared to pay a squillion and even then it's not guaranteed).
ReplyDeleteNurse - Good point, how stupid of us. If you're there again any time soon, the Giaconda Dining Room in Soho is supposed to be good and cheap, although you can't book (it is run by Canberrans)
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