America arrives in Britain

Sharpies are in WHSmith. I love, love, love Sharpies. I can't imagine life without Sharpies. I am a Sharpie bore. Now you can get them in Smiths. Maybe I can move back to England.

I spotted Burt's Bees products in Waitrose. Burt's Bees have buzzed into this country. Yes, it probably would be ok to move back now. I'm not sure I could live without Burt's Bees products, but if Waitrose stocks them...

But here's an American import I don't like. The classification of milk.

Once upon a time, there was Gold Top and Silver Top, in glass pint bottles delivered to your door. The top of the Gold Top was what you had on your cereal, if it was your turn. The Silver Top was the ordinary stuff. Then they expanded our horizons by adding a Red Top. But life was still fairly simple. We weren't too far gone from Tess of the D'Urbeville days. Not any more. These days, buying milk is hugely complicated. Supermarkets should offer the public a short training course, and not let us loose near the milk section until we have our certificates. Organic, not organic, Jersey, Cravendale, skimmed, skammed, skummed, semi-skilled, semi-literate, semi-detached, and all those different sizes, from pint-sized to who-has-a-fridge-door-big-enough-for-this-for-heaven's-sake?-sized.

When we moved to America, it took a while to get used to milk by numbers. Whole is still whole, but semi-skimmed is marketed as "2%" and skimmed as "1%". Not too difficult, really, but I have to say, I always preferred the British terminology and enjoyed reverting to it when visiting back here. But now, it seems that the use of percentages has infiltrated Britain too. They couldn't keep it simple though, and stick to 2% and 1% (which is cope-able with, once you've got used to it). Oh no. It's got to be 1.7% and 0.1%, hasn't it? What kind of complex mathematical formulae were used to work out those?

Sharpies, yes. Burt's Bees stuff, yes. Milk by percentages, no no no no no.

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