I’m one of those annoying people who loves naming inanimate objects.  And not just the car either (’Jeremy’), but the super-duper coffee machine (’Santo’), each computer I’ve ever owned (my ASUS, ‘Beatrice’; and my new Inspiron 1525 - in Espresso Brown no less - ‘Gino’), and every other phone (’Baby Beatrice’) or camera (’Penelope’) that’s passed through my hands.  Then there’s the habit my sister and I have acquired of naming random creatures - from the scary looking spider who inhabited our bathroom (’Merv the Perv’) to the tiny green grasshopper we found on the back of our car (’Derek the Dancing Grasshopper’) to the multitude of geckos and various other insects you find in your average Australian backyard.  I’ve taken to naming other people’s things for them as well - my Dad is the proud owner of two motorbikes, ‘Gunter’ and ‘Gertrude’; whilst my mum happily drives her Toyota Corolla otherwise known as ‘Phyllis’.  My mother’s laptop has somehow gained the name ‘Casper’.  Our friend Nick’s new car is referred to as ‘Kevin’.  The challenge my sister and I have adopted is to come up with a funny or unusual name which is either old fashioned or heard most often in a language other than English, or that just plain makes us laugh.  We’ve yet to run out of inspiration.

It occurred to me today that if I lived in the seventeenth century, my naming habit would have become far more of a problem: it likely would have branded me a witch, and given my neighbours an excuse to have me tried and perhaps even executed.  In Britain, people that referred to their animals - whether domesticated or rural - by name were accused of having familiars.  A ‘familiar’ was an animal that people believed was inhabited by the devil or another nasty demon, and which was thought to give powers to the person that spoke to it.  If I, and my cat Eskimo, had been lucky enough to land ourselves a birth-date after the ascension of King James I of England (James VI of Scotland), we probably would have found ourselves in some pretty significant ecclesiastical trouble.  My love for my cat, taken alongside my habit for naming insects and other people’s property, probably would have sent me quite quickly to the stake.  I doubt Rob would have stood up for me either - he refuses to let me name any of his electronics, and he only referred to our car as ‘Jeremy’ because it matched the letters on the numberplate, ‘JRM’.  Men… they’re just too practical for witchcraft.

Rob and I will be looking for a new place to rent soon, either in Edinburgh or London - depending on whether I decide on Edinburgh University or University College London (U.C.L.), both of which I’ve been accepted to. Either way, we’ll have to pack up most of Rob’s stuff (which is currently residing in his parents house) and drive it to wherever we end up. I don’t know about you, but I don’t see the point in packing three old and broken mobile phones, several old cables which don’t have homes (and which are unidentifiable), fifty or so books which are out of date or have been read already, and several old gadgets which are either incapacitated or have been replaced by something half their size and twice as fast. As such, I convinced Rob to list his old stuff on eBay, with the promise that he could use the profits to buy a new flat screen TV. Unsurprisingly this sounded like a very appealing idea to him, so today we’ve been sorting through years of collected ’stuff’.

After an hour or so of this cleaning and sorting, I realised that it’s spring over here in the UK, which technically made what we were doing a ’spring clean’. I wondered why it was called a spring clean (to which Rob unhelpfully responded, ‘Because you do it in Spring’), so I decided to hit Google and Wikipedia. It turns out spring cleaning probably came from the Iranian New Year holiday - Nowruz - which occurs on the first day of Spring, and which traditionally would be accompanied by the practice of ‘khooneh takouni’, which means ’shaking the house’ (or giving it a very thorough clean). Other theories are that the Jewish holiday of Passover is usually preceded by giving the house a thorough clean, and Passover usually falls in the March-April period which also sees in the season of Spring in the Northern hemisphere. In Orthodox Christianity, the week before Lent is traditionally filled with cleaning duties - Lent precedes Easter, which also occurs in Spring. Then of course there is the theory that in centuries past, when cold winters were warded off by smokey fires which blackened the walls, ceilings and furniture of everything indoors, spring would be the first opportunity to put the fires out and give everything a thorough clean.

I wonder if any of the people that undertook spring cleaning in times past had an incentive like the purchase of a flat screen TV to keep them going?

Tower Bridge, London

I love the UK, and I have ever since I set foot in the country all those years ago and walked through Customs in Heathrow without seeing a single person getting their luggage checked. That being said, there are some things I simply don’t understand about the UK and probably never will… but I’m willing to put up with these little eccentricities. Here is my list of the UK’s good, bad, and ugly.

The Good:

• The pubs. Australia may have great weather, but Australian pubs are simply not up to scratch. Here in the UK there’s a pub on every second corner, each with a good selection of beers on tap and any number of comfortable chairs and benches to stretch out on in front of the fire. If you’re lucky your local establishment will be the sort that lets people leave their muddy wellingtons at the door, and which makes the most of the local produce to provide some of the best pub food around.
• The clothes. It’s no secret I’m slightly obsessed with River Island, but there’s a huge number of other equally fantastic (but reasonably priced) brands - TopShop, H&M, Zara, Next, New Look, Monsoon, FCUK… the list goes on. What’s even better is the fact that you have to wear my two favourite clothing items - coats and boots - most of the year because of the weather. Which brings me to my next point…
• The weather. This falls into the ‘Good’ and the ‘Bad’ categories. On the plus side, it snows in the UK, something that is far more unusual in Australia (unless you live in the snow fields of Victoria or New South Wales) than it is here. Snow is still a novelty to me and I expect it always will be.
• The newspapers. How did I ever get by without the Guardian in my pre-UK life? The selection of papers here in the UK is enough to make your eyes water, and when you consider that capital cities in Australia really only have one paper of their own and share the national paper, ‘The Australian’, you really have to wonder how anyone in Australia manages to have anything other than a mainstream opinion about world affairs. Diversity is the key, and the UK certainly has that.
• The junk food. Crisp flavours in the UK are fantastic, as you may remember if you read my post about chips. Sweets (or as I refer to them, lollies) are great as well - Bassetts, wine gums, midget gems, Haribo, Galaxy… is it any wonder I manage to put on weight whenever I’m in the UK?

The Bad:

• The girls. Not all the girls, just some of them. In particular, the ones that coat themselves in fake tan, pluck their eyebrows into non-existence, wear skirts that show the world their choice of bikini waxing, and have super-long plastic nails that click-clack whenever they move their fingers. These same girls are the ones that get pissed on Stella and vodka mixers, over-exaggerate their regional accents, and want to be Katie Price ‘when they grow up’. Luckily they rarely inhabit the same haunts as I do, so I generally don’t have to put up with them.
• The weather. It’s bloody cold, and you rarely see the sun shine. Coming from the land of outdoor barbeques and days at the beach, adjusting to temperatures that freeze your ears and nose in seconds and your fingers and toes in minutes isn’t easy. Luckily I have come up with a remedy - whisky.
• Expensive everything. The food, the alcohol, the petrol, the clothes, the football tickets… you name it, it costs double what it does in Australia, and not just because of the dodgy exchange rate. Luckily I get paid in GBP or I’d really be struggling.

The Ugly:

• Rooney and Ronaldo. Why does the majority of the UK worship the ground these guys walk on? One loses his temper whenever he misses a goal and the other is more concerned about keeping his perfect hairstyle in place throughout the 90 minutes of the game than he is about the welfare of the rest of his team mates. Ridiculous!
• Fish and chips the British way. Instead of doing the civilized thing and having some lightly battered fish with some chips and slices of lemon, the Brits seem to be fascinated with curry sauce, mushy nuclear-coloured peas, and chips that are more liquid than solid. Disgusting.