More Weirdness

First, let me apologize to any and all Brits for the below.  I think -- I mean, I've been informed -- that the language I use below is quite offensive here, and for that I'm sorry.  It's just that everything here is still SO WEIRD, and these words just aren't offensive to me... but maybe they will be in a few more weeks?

Let's warm up with just weird instead of inappropriate or profane.  I'm the idiot tourist (not a tourist!  ha!) taking surreptitious photos of the things that jump out at me as not normal in Canada.  Yes, I realize that I'm not in Canada anymore, but some of these things are just not...normal.  Words fail me.

Take this warning sign in an elevator:

I think it could also be a toe trap, small-child's-arm trap, tail trap...

Or this detail of the tube map.  I thought of my dear kindred spirit, Bec, and giggled like, well, like my 4-, 7-, and 8-year olds were doing.

Down in Trafalgar Square, one might ask, what has one thumb each and thinks the Hufflings are pretty cool?

These guys.  One might also ask the significance of a giant, elongated thumb... best not to.

I jogged past a nice little inn the other day with dragging Ziggy (it was the home stretch).  We had gone there for dinner already, and it's billed as being "dog-friendly" - more on that later - but we didn't want to risk having our dog kicked out of a dog-friendly restaurant, so we left him at home.  The food was amazing, the inn dogs (Gin and Fizzy) pleasant and calm, and we will definitely go back again, with or without the kids and dog in tow.  

What I hadn't noticed when we dined there was the lettering on the outside of the building, toting the "Gastro" inside.

Let me tell YOU, British people, that in North America, "gastro" can be applied to "pub", but if used alone, means "gastroenteritis."  Ha.

Ok, on to the juicy stuff.  There was a clickbait about a famous British man calling his wife a "k**b".  Well, naturally that peaked my curiosity, because I couldn't think of any swear word that starts with k and ends with b.  In other news outlets, it was reported as both "k***" and "kn*b", respectively, and I eventually found a very daring site that printed the whole word.

"Chris!" I hissed in horror, "Knob is a bad word here!  We can't even say knob!  Stop calling people knobs!"  

I mean, he doesn't often call people knobs, but it happens from time to time, but now I guess he'll have to stop cold turkey.

(Also, throwing back to my comment a few posts ago, where I thought I was being funny by using the word, fanny, I had been warned by British Friend Viv that "fanny does not mean what you think it means."  I naturally assumed that there was yet another meaning of fanny that she thought I thought it meant, and that fanny just meant bum, which is very saucy.  Chris read my blog about a week later and dashed in to the living room, practically panting.  "Fanny doesn't mean what you think it means!" he gasped, and explained that, in fact, it really, really does not.)


(Oh dear.)