Summary: The British are very polite; everyone knows that. But, while the British have a sense of humor, it doesn't extend to unintended slights. McBride shares her story.

The British are very polite; everyone knows that. And they are. Except, perhaps, for a few bank tellers. The fact that it had taken me a year to get my name on my husband's pre-existing account notwithstanding, when the moment came for it to be all "sorted" as the British say--once and for all--I threw a spanner into the process by being cheeky. I didn't mean to; it resulted just from a misunderstanding. And, indeed, the glitch really made no difference to my finally being able to access our funds. No, rather it was a painful reminder that while the British have a sense of humor, it doesn't extend to unintended slights. And I felt as if the entire incident marked me as a hopelessly crass, abundantly ignorant Yank.

For Americans reading this, you should know that a spanner, in Brit-speak, is a monkey wrench; sorted means straightened out. If I go back and forth between U.S. and U.K. idioms and spellings, please forgive me. I'm in process of sorting a bi-continental life and, like someone undergoing a sex-change process, am adopting my new country's ways little by little.

When I first went to southwest England, it was only because I had married an expat Brit who had been living in the U.S. for 25 years. As a bona fide granddaughter of an Irish woman, I was seeking dual citizenship in the Republic of Ireland. Nothing in my past would have suggested a desire to become British or to live in that nation, so at odds for so long with my own ancestral home. However, once you meet the people of southwest England en masse, you can instantly begin to love them almost as much as I loved the single specimen who had become my husband.

Financial feet first

After a while, it seemed we were shuttling back and forth so frequently that I had to put more than a toe in the British waters, and a logical first step was adding myself to my husband's existing bank account, maintained over the years as a convenience for his trips home.

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About the Author Laura Harrison McBride is a well-published author (fourteen books for Simon & Schuster, Prentice Hall, etc.), and currently runs her own publishing company, Muffindogpress.com, and England travel site, englandsouthwest.com, to entice world travelers to her favorite part of the world.

First Published: Aug 23, 2008