When it comes to dealing with space in the UK, your South African roots will show if…
- Your neighbours are dining al fresco and you’re embarrassed that you can hear every word of their conversation. And they live four houses down.
- You can’t squeeze a coin between the cars parked on any given street. They’re that close. You’re horrified that you need a degree in geometry and an advanced driver’s license to work out the angles involved in some parking manoevres. And even then, you still wouldn’t have the balls or cheek to attempt those moves yourself.
- You marvel at the sight of how bicycles are stored on the balconies of apartment blocks. One wheel precariously propped over the edge. I have to avert my eyes from the imagined carnage of bicycles dropping to the ground like those hotdogs on Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.
- You’re horrified that upon entering a lift, 10 people will trail in behind you. As the lift doors are about to close, another eight will sneak in. Even after you’ve started breathing into your handbag, one more will join the crowd.
- Your mind boggles at the ubiquity of three or four storey homes - where there’s a kitchen in the basement and a bedroom in the loft. You walk up two flights of stairs from your kitchen to enjoy a cup of tea in your lounge. You need hiking gear and a healthy appetite to haul a midnight feast up your bedroom.
- You’re stumped by the design and home décor challenge of the long narrow rooms in typically British houses. It will never be ok to climb into your bed from the bottom because it’s neatly slotted in between two walls. Never.
- You feel completely violated on a Tube packed with commuters when someone stands so close to you that you can feel their breath on your neck. And you get unsolicited butterfly kisses on your cheek.
- You’re amused that beds, couches, coffee tables, futons – all come with built-in storage space. Even storage comes with extra storage.
- You’re shocked in a coffee shop when other diners will brazenly sit down and fill the unoccupied space at table you’re sharing with someone. Possession is not nine tenths of the law in the UK. Space is.
- You’re disturbed by the fact that in most open plan offices in London you can hear every stage of your colleague’s peristalsis as they digest their lunch. You can also watch a five o’clock shadow grow. You sit that close to Fred from Accounts or Lauren in IT.
- You’re dumbstruck that you can boil the kettle and mow your lawn in time to make a hot beverage. Your lawn is that small. Your kitchen is that close to your lawn.
- The blind acceptance of queues astounds you. Waiting 2 hours for a ride on the Fire Engine at Legoland is no problem for Brits. No one, but you, proclaims: “This is ridiculous. Waiting two hours for a 30 second ride. Bloody waste of time.” No one tries to consult management. The queue remains. People keep joining it.
- You’re freaked out by how the shops are always packed. All of the time. There is no off-peak. And no one minds. Everyone just gets on with it. Personally I take issue with choosing a brand of tampons alongside a geriatric man who’s shopping for nosehair clippers. But then that’s just me. And only me it seems.
- You’re mortified to discover that campervans and boathouses are not just for the downtrodden or down on their luck. Scores of folk of middle-class standing choose to live in a home they can also use as a mode of transportation. And I have to reiterate. They choose this. A conscious decision has been made to have a bed that can double up as a table where one eats, or a work surface where one cuts the fat off one's chicken thighs. A sink where one washes one's face in the morning. And then one's dishes after breakfast.
- You have an urge to call the RSPCA when you see a fully-grown Golden Retriever being led out of a terraced house. Just when you’ve suspended your disbelief – out trots another dog. The Brits keep their pets indoors. No matter the breed of dog. No matter the size of dog. Or the size of their house. And it’s perfectly legal.
- You find it completely insane that vegetables are grown in communal areas called allotments. People mission with garden tools to a plot of land that they don’t own to fiddle with a few fruit and veg. And someone can just nick their harvest at any time. What’s the point? How obsessed with 'organic' can one person actually be?
- You get road rage by how common it is to have to reverse to go forward on a street to allow another car to pass. Why is it a road if two cars can’t travel on it at once?
Space is not a commodity the Poms worry about it. They don’t miss it, because they’ve never had it. You can’t lament the size of your home to a Brit who’s never lived anywhere else. They just don’t get it. Like rusks, biltong and boerewors, it’s a completely foreign subject matter. For us Saffas, space is an attribute of life that we take for granted. On the day we hauled our seven suitcases on to the hearth of our modest (euphemism for teeny tiny) new home – my son walked through the front door, took the five steps into the living area and said “where’s the rest of the house?” Seven months down the line, he happily shares a box room with his sister. They sleep on top of each other on a single bunk bed. He swims in the bath instead of our swimming pool in Africa and climbs the wooden fence in our garden instead of his beloved tree. He’s adapted to small.
So have we. We’ve discovered it’s now ok to shower in what can best be described as a time capsule. You just can’t drop your showel gel. You will eventually learn to sleep with the sounds of Avatar or Tomorrow Never Dies blaring in surround sound from someone’s Friday night movie night. You just need to build the plot into your dreams. You’ll become accustomed to the cars grinding their gears in your street in attempts to perfect 16-point maneuvers to fit into a parking space the width of a lamppost. You’ll learn to eavesdrop from your bed on conversations held at 2am on the street. Go back to sleep if they're boring. Listen a little longer if they're the rants of a drunken couple. Our perspective has changed. Our world-view has grown, but our home-view has shrunk. We’re trying small on for size – and it’s slowly starting to fit.
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| A mobile home... outside an immobile home. Go figure. |
