for brit ex pats: is there anything you miss about dear old Blighty?

its taken the better part of a year but i'm finaly having pangs of homesickness... it all started when i saw a red london bus ( they use it around here for tourist tours) .

Got worse when i went to a out door ex pat event, were it suddenly poured with rain, it was amazing to see the blitz spirt come out! the locals packed up and left but the brits started singing ( " i'm singing in the rain!") handing out free wine and chips, almost like a party really, everyone was so happy... and you could see the locals looking at them as if to say " you british werdios!"

and of course i tried buying twinkle lights, and so now am missing woolworths, were you could get twinkle lights for 99p last year! Yes i know they went under but still...

...i'm going to miss the queens speech, yes i know its traditional in my family to mean to watch and then forget to, but still...

i miss not being able to do a quick whizz around tescos, here i have to translate all the labels to figure out what it is.

the other night it was raining so hard it looked like snow...if i want to see snow now i'll have to go into the mountains...

i'm going to miss the queens speech.............you mean people actually sit through that crap?

Apart from family - Not much

Proper chocolate, stuff here tastes really waxy

Tea bags - the orange pekoe tea they have here is revolting. Luckly my parents always bring me some boxes of Yorkshire tea when they visit.

Thats about it!

We never watched the Queens speech when we lived there.

Sorry highdose - looks like I killed your thread!

I've never even been there, but somehow I miss it

When I spent my longest time away from Blighty, only a month, all I missed was decent beer, and roast dinner, and decent beer, just those three.

Love

Wobble

pedestrian pub crawls

sharing soccer football with savants

being 60 minutes from spain france italy

leaving my irony throttle set to wide open

Well I'm here right now enjoying all the things I really miss when living in the US

family

friends

Pizza Express

Fish n Chips

Curry

That beautiful crisp autumn feel, smell, colours, piles of leaves, fireworks night

The rain

Chocolate - can't stand the American chocolate unless we're talking Joseph Schmidt of course....

London and all it's fabulous shops and restaurants - it really is one cool city!!

Pub lunches on a Friday (North Americans don't seem to approve of 2-3 hour lunches at the pub during the work day for some reason)

Chippies - Curry 'alf'n'alf and Chip Barm Specials mmnnn

Indian Food - there are some in Calgary but we were 15-20 minutes from Rusholme and the 'Curry Mile' ... it's not the same

Chinese - again, they have that here but it doesn't taste the same as what we're used to.

TV - the more gritty comedy in the UK was better IMO

That's about it though and I don't miss any enough to want to go back. I would probably miss more things that were more important from here if we did.

When I was an 'ex pat', I missed Golden Syrup, decent biscuits and 'Fish & Chips',

BUT there was always something good locally that wasn't available in the UK

Such as 'Kymis'; fermented mares milk in Bashkiria!

The refinery director insisted I had it regularly for my bad chest (Asthma).

fokyc

Hey, doesn't anybody miss those scotch eggs? - Scarf'em down for a quick breakfast on the way to work and make your workmates suffer later!

dont worry about woolworths, they shut them all down so we brits miss them too. xx

Oh Angie wanna send me a tea bag?    

What I miss is Fish & chips in newspaper with a Wally

A basin ful of Eels & Mash & Parsley sauce.

Codlive oil of Malt...The Chocolate  & sweets >Dolly babies,Sherbate Dabs..

I wanna go home

I bet no one misses rush hour on the M25, The over development of the Thames Valley, Eastenders or The Daily Mail.

i don't miss the daily mail, cos i read it every day online;)

highdose - a daily mail reader - wow.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/

there ya go...

We miss:

Decent chocolate, although you can get Green & Blacks here. The local stuff, especially Cadbury's, is very waxy - I think they add more vegetable oil to stop it melting.

Tetleys Tea - although we can get it in the Brit shop now

A sense of humour that understands irony, sarcasm and wit - these colonials can be extremely dense at times

Green, yes Green - the countryside here is very dry

Decent Curry - If a few Indians/Pakistanis/Bangladeshis were to move to Perth they could make a killing with the number of Brits here

An effective work ethic. We have been here 4.5 years and it still amazes me how lax things are here; tradies will not bother turning up or will do slipshod work when they do, all of the IT people I work with have a "that'll do" attitude. This winds me up, but thats my problem not theirs.

Having said that....we have just been back to the UK for three weeks and I can honestly say that we will never be moving back. Despite all its faults and the small mindedness of the natives, Australia and Perth in particular is an awesome place to live and raise a family.