Postcards from the Edge Episode IX Part II

So here we are in the south of England (alas, not the south of France...) visiting our good friends Pastor Dave and Linda (for those CGYGers who know who they are). We are having a jolly good time wandering the English channel coast and looking at carnivals and castles. They are doing quite well and have a lovely home near the seaside... did you know that most of the English can reach a coastline within two hours and get to beachfront? Niiiiiice... except for the English beaches are made up of rocks, not sand. Mind you, they are small, round stones (and yes, Dave and Denis, I got you rocks), but it's still rocks... Yet the English will sit and lie upon them like they're the sands of California... weird... personally, I like feeling like I'm lying upon cushions, not in a Shiatsu session or on a bed of nails...
Furthermore, being coastline, there are a lot of seagulls. Except unlike being 'pigs with wings' as I so affectionately call them in Toronto ('mine, mine, mine')... these guys are actually CLEAN. They're actually quite beautiful birds, relatively speaking. They're actually quite white and have clean beaks, and don't have that kind of disease, 'I-have-the-equivalent-of-bird-rabies' look about them. They're also HUGE! They're the size of toddlers, kind of like around the size of the Arctic ravens... honestly, they look like if they teamed up, they could do a lot better than leftover bagels and popcorn and actually go for a small child... yummmm.... Atkins for birds...
For those of you who know that I decided to go to the UK this time around because I figured "They speak English, just like me... how hard could it be to get around?".... uhhh, I'm realizing English isn't all it's cracked up to be... We've actually had a hard time a)reading b)understanding and c)being understood by other people. Hunh? What the?? I've had to repeat myself several times to a police officer the other day as I was looking for a PARK to eat my lunch in. He thought I was looking for SHOPS and was trying to explain how to get to the nearest shopping area. Then he got really confused when I was explaining, "You know, a park, that has trees and grass and stuff"... "Oh, I'm sure that there are trees over in [said shopping area], see, there's one over there..." "no, no a PARK, PAR-KE" "OOOOOHHHHH, you're looking for a PARK with trees and grass in it... oh well, in that case..." (oh dear Lord, please help me...)
On the other hand, some of the words I've learned, vaguely:
Yob, or yobbo: Jerk, hooligan, much like drunken English thugs who beat up people with blue shirts
Slapper: Refers to women who sleep around
Wanker: jerk
Bangers and mash: The British delusion of high cuisine :P
Uhhhh, so basically, I've learned some insulting slang... I guess that's not really helpful... oh well...
julia