In the Fatherland for Father's Day I’ve landed in London where there are no elevators, only lifts, and where the signs say “Offices To Let,” which at first looked like “Office Toilet” to me, and where you see “Look Left” or “Look Right” painted on the pavement at every pedestrian crossing — and I wonder, How many of my countrymen looked the wrong way and were crushed by a lorry before the Brits painted the warnings? Nebraska wheat farmers, New York stockbrokers, confident successful men who brushed off their wives’ warning to look both ways. “I know how to cross a street, dang it,” they said and stepped in front of a double-decker bus and were erased from the face of the earth and their dust flown home for the memorial service. They spoke of the kindly delight
In family, how he fought the good fight,
And nobody said
As they spoke of the dead,
“Why didn’t he look to the right?” This is one peril and another is the English language. You sit down in the Middle Eastern café and order the lamb kebab and the waiter asks you a question in what sounds like English and you say, “Yes, thank you” and he brings a stew that turns out to be red-hot lava. The lamb died in a volcanic eruption. You gulp a glass of water, which spreads the toxins to your lower tract and now there is steam coming out of your shorts. Other Americans are fascinated by the Royal Horseguards and the figures waving from the balcony, but I grew up in love with Stan Laurel and Flanders and Swann singing “Have Some Madeira, M’Dear,” and the funny way Peter Sellers said the name “Balham,” the music hall strut called the Lambeth Walk, and the young lady in the London revue who played a tune on the pennywhistle and then, blushing, put another pennywhistle up her skirt and played a duet. Pure silliness that we colonists seem incapable of. Read the rest of the column >>> | 
