Many ICLC students celebrate their 21 birthdays during their semester in London. While it's a momentous occasion in the States to go into a bar and buy your first legal drink, you may have noticed that there is much less fuss about 21 year olds buying a drink here in the UK. In many ways drinking culture is a horse of a different color. The legal age is lower in the UK and pubs close much earlier than Americans are used to. You can go to a pub for a classic Sunday roast or for a pub quiz to find out how good your knowledge of trivia really is. There are also similarities, though. They are major social meeting points and binge drinking is problematic in both countries. But one thing that definitely separates British and American drinking establishments is what they are called. Often sites have had pubs on them for hundreds of year and have names that don't necessarily make sense to a modern audience. There are more pubs than it's worth counting called the Queen's Head, the King's Head and the King's Arms. There's a chain called the Slug and Lettuce. There's a pub in Notting Hill called The Windsor Castle. My local when I was a student was called The Elusive Camel. What do these names mean? For some the answers can probably be found on Wikipedia (a reputable source), but other meanings may be completely lost or even made up, not ever really having had any particular meaning. Pub names can also be influential. The areas of Swiss Cottage and Elephant and Castle are named after local pubs (actually I think there is some debate about where the name Elephant and Castle comes from, but it sounds like the name of a pub. The area's more official name is Newington, not to be confused with Stoke Newington which is not nearby).
Your two missions this week, should you choose to accept, are to find the most interesting pub name that you can and, in honor of my old local, to find a camel. Dromedaries need not apply. Only Bactrian camels. Elsie will be counting the humps. I have high hopes that both of these will prove difficult and time consuming, but lead to admirable creativity. As a Londoner herself, Elsie probably feels that she has seen it all. Show her how wrong she can be!
-Elsie
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Previous Posts
-
I've never written a blog before. I tried once. I was in Italy and thought that instead of continuously repeating myself I would record ...
-
Studying abroad is the perfect opportunity to travel, however, deciding where to go and what to do is tough! This is the first post of a ver...
-
I have noticed that this blog is followed by current students and alums alike. So some readers might remember the toilets at the ICLC. Do y...
-
Another interview with Bill Sheasgreen. Shame he couldn't make it to this one either. Claire Mokrauer-Madden: Hi Bill! Nice to see ...
-
Having recently read one of the most well articulated valedictions I've ever come across, I hesitate to say goodbye in Jack's shado...
-
Part of the appeal of studying abroad is the possibility of immersing yourself in another culture and meeting new people from around the wor...
-
I would like to say that this is a Kylie Minogue inspired blog post, but that wouldn't entirely be true, it just happens that she is pla...
-
I'm not talking about cowboys, I'm talking about cemeteries. Yes, this is another installment of What I did This Weekend. My inten...
-
Bill finds a silver lining in the freezing February temperatures...
-
I would like to measure this fall's orientation week against a loaf of bread. This summer, for my birthday, I was given a bread machin...
No comments:
Post a Comment