We have different medicines! Calpol is the main one for children though adults can have it too, paracetamol and anadin are painkillers, and these are the main ones that we use. For something more strong, co-codomol is a very strong painkiller that contains paracetamol amd codeine that you have to get from the doctors typically on prescription
Free healthcare is great and all but the NHS (National Health Service) is fucked, so if you want something specialised in the long-term like a surgery, its kinda common to go private - this does cost money though
Things like ambulances and fire engines - both separate services - do not cost money to call
Our emergency service line is 999
Something we learn about in school is a service called Childline - 0800 1111 - which is something you can call for help if you're under 18, and they'll help with anything you want (pretty much anyway)
The tea we typically have is called English Breakfast, or Builders Tea. We normally just call this "tea", but if we have to specify then we'll call it a shortening of one of the earlier names - "We've got Builders if you want it", for example.
We have tea with a splash of milk - anyone who doesn't is a heathen and will be shunned out the country. (I'm joking. But seriously, we all have milk in our tea.) Most people also have a couple of spoons of sugar, typically one or two, but this is a lot more free for people to decide - its a matter of taste.
If we're being fancy we might have Earl Grey - like Builders but a bit more floral? Still with milk and sugar though
We do also have fruit tea? But we have it a lot less. Builders is what we mean when we talk about Tea
We have kettles that you press a button and it boils water. Very simple to use, I don't know why so many other places don't have them as A Thing yet
Picky tea and picky bits are basically small picnic-y items that we have for dinner sometimes. M&S does great picky bits but they're fucking expensive
We always complain about the weather - too hot, too cold, too wet, too dry. And a classic phrase is that "it's the humidity that'll get you"
We don't have Walmart or Target or anything like that - we have Tesco (expensive), Lidl (cheap), and Aldi (it sure exists). These are the classics. Morrisons is shit, don't go there under any circumstances
We have a lot of culture around music, everywhere has a place showing live bands and we all know the chorus to the same 20 songs
Regional accents are definitely a thing, but quite hard to portray in writing, so just trust me on this
Static caravan holidays to shitty seaside towns seems to be something that everyone has done at some point
Pubs. There are three kinds. Arty pubs with nice beers and posh twats talking about the bouquet of the wine. Crappy pubs showing rugby in the corner with a perpetual stickiness to the tables. And weird chains, serving mediocre food and Guinness. (There's obviously more, but these are the main three.) "Locals" are probably the second or third kind, the first tends to be in the city centre. Everyone has a favourite kind of pub even if they never acknowledge it
Tear a packet of walkers in half and lay it in the centre of the table so everyone can share it
Taco bell and wendys never really made it over here - you don't go to them really, they don't really exist - but McDonalds definitely does. Love a maccies breakfast
Our final exams in High School are called GCSE's, and they're basically a test we take to see if we learnt anything from years 9-11. It's a fairly standard school system really, graded from 1-9. A grade 9 is the best you can get, a 4 is the lowest you can get and still pass.
The only GCSE's that really matter are English, Maths, and Science. Everything else is just sorta for fun
American politics really effect us, but in a way that's hard to put into words. We know a lot about what's happening in America but we don't know why it effects us, but it really does
Prices in London are enough to make your eyes bleed
Our school system is structured like this:
Year Seven (first year of high school) - 11-12
University - Changes depending on your course, typically three years
(Note: We do not have the ages memorised! We normally know what year we were in when something happened, but not how old we were. This changes from person to person though)
And that's everything I can think of! If you have any more, feel free to add them, and have fun writing! And please for the love of god call our emergency services 999 not 911 please I'm begging you please-
