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
-
This Friday, August 20th, some of our fall 2010 lads and lassies are off tae Scotland or North Britain as it was once called. It is the 11th...
-
When I was first accepted to the Ithaca College London Center for Spring of 2016, I could not have been more excited. I immediately began w...
-
It’s Saturday on Bank Holiday weekend, August 28th-30th – NB the cultural issue: in England we don’t have July 4th, Memorial Day, MLK day h...
-
I mention 12th place as a cheeky reference to Glee. Apologies to those readers who find Glee annoying. While I see how the show can elicit...
-
What is a community? How does such a simple word mean even the most extravagant of things? We tend to delve into the idea that community...
-
I always feel a bit scrooge-like when the middle of February rolls round each year. We have just about gotten over the excesses of the w...
-
What do I do when I'm low on blog post ideas? Embrace the random factor. I may or may not have previously mentioned that the London C...
-
A few things have happened recently that have gotten me thinking. Completely independently of each other, last week was London Fashion Week...
-
I like the film Four Weddings and a Funeral . It came out in 1994. In the film, a wedding guest asks Kristin Scott Thomas if she's a l...
-
So many study abroad students spend what seems like the whole semester with their camera in hand. With an impressive turn out of entries in...
No comments:
Post a Comment