December Days 25

[cosmolinguist]

jesse_the_k asked for "a truly weird encounter with a stranger" but I misremembered it as being just "a truly weird encounter" so you're getting ones from my family, sorry.

I can't do a proper poll on DW any more but feel free to vote in comments.

Which is the weirdest thing an aunt said to me this Christmas?:

1) The one yesterday who said in a shocked/wary tone: "Your hair is longer than it was when I saw you in September."

or

2) The one today who said, "Is Manchester like a little suburb of London then?"

(She also told me "I like your dress, it's very London" and I don't know what that means except that it's not going to be something I find complimentary!)

Comments

[anoyo]

Definitely #2. Aunts are strange creatures.

[softfruit]

“Your dress is very London” - I see that being a nichely-honed insult locally....

[cosmolinguist]

I know! That sentence is the sort that I so strongly, when it's a family member, except to end with "nice" or "cute" or something that when we actually got to the end I was so surprised I couldn't help being honest: I laughed and said "8 hope it isn't!"

[swingandswirl]

... Definitely #2. I mean, the UK is the size of a postage stamp, relatively, but it's not that tiny.

[cosmolinguist]

A disturbing number of Americans hear "London" when I say I live in England. It isn't even that they haven't heard of anywhere else: they don't even seem to expect there can be anywhere else.

[solarbird]

To be fair, neither does the City. (¬ᴗ¬)

[quantumcupcakes]

Definitely 2 - but then the only thing in England is London and we all talk like either the Queen or Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins ;)

[cosmolinguist]

The aunt from Weird Comment #1 has previously asserted that I have "the British accent" and that I sound just like Andrew. Who has a weird scouse-hybrid accent that I couldn't sound like if I tried.