My husband and I spent about a year deciding how we wanted to redecorate our living room after we moved into our new flat. It took us so long to decide what colour we wanted to use on the walls and what stain of wood flooring that I needed to head back to the US to change my visas. To say that this bothered me in the least would be extremely false. In my eyes I had just won the lottery, not only had my colour been the one we decided to use but I was getting out of all the hard work.
Fast forward six months and I am back from the US and I have a beautiful new living room with freshly painted walls, newly laid hardwood floors, and the original fireplace striped and varnished. I did notice however that my husband had not put up the blinds. When questioned he said that he had thrown the old wooden blinds out because he did not like them and figured we could choose new blinds or drapes now that I was back over in the UK. This like every other joint decision did not run smoothly and it took us about six months to finally decide on what we wanted. This was quite and inconvenience since we live in a first floor flat on a busy street and every one can see into our flat. It had become the running joke in the family about our lack of window treatment. Once we had finally made a descion I called my mother in law with the great news, the conversation went something like this.
ME “Philip and I have finally decided to hang sheers in the living room”
MIL “Why would you hang them there and not in the shed by the drive way”
ME “Well we really need them in the living room and it seems kind of strange to put them in the shed before the living room”
MIL “But why would you need them in the living room?”
ME “So that I can run around naked without the whole street knowing”
At this point there is a silence on the other end of the line and you can hear the light bulb going on.
MIL “Oh you mean you are hanging net curtains”
ME “Is that what you call them over here?”
MIL “I thought you were talking about garden shears and that really made not sense”
It just goes to prove that American is definitely a different dialect.
1 comment:
Both terms are lost on me. You were speaking Window Treatment English.
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