Janet Eldred

In an autobiography workshop during my first few months in York, the leader asked us to create collages representing our life histories. I showed up the following week with a poster board covered in photos and magazine clippings, while the British students had used single sheets of A4 paper for theirs. "Typical American," they sighed.

I don't have to tell you that Americans generally assume that bigger is better, while Brits believe in making do with what's at hand. What constitutes the notion of an adequate size for, or amount of, something varies widely between the two countries.

Starting with land mass, the US is big. Even putting aside Alaska there's still plenty of elbow room in the lower 48 states. In a country where it takes five hours to fly from coast to coast, an American will think nothing of driving from Boston to Washington DC for a Saturday night bash. Those few hundred highways miles are a mere blip on the national map.

In contrast, all of England is barely larger than New York State. Add in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland and you still only double that figure. Small wonder, then, that the American tourist planing a trip to Great Britain assumes he can drive from York to Cornwall - and back - in a weekend. (Give the identical itinerary to a Brit familiar with the idiosyncrasies of English country roads and she sets aside a fortnight).

Once in the UK, everything seems Lilliputian to our hypothetical tourist. Cars, homes, refrigerators, foods - to someone used to giant-economy-sized living, all of these things appear hopelessly tiny. What the Brits consider a family-sized bag of crisps for instance, is an individual snack in the States. Items from the chemist are offered in ridiculously small quantities compared to US mega-multiples.

The average British house would barely accommodate one American's belongings, never mind the entire family's. Even the number of terrestrial television channels is an affront to our intrepid traveller's taste for infinite choice. The average American tourist returns home believing his British cousins are either still living out the post-war rationing years, or else practising some form of national asceticism.

Of course, one explanation for this relative smallness is that retail prices for most consumables are higher in the UK. the cost of a US-sized package of anything would be prohibitively expensive in Britain while the average American can easily afford to maintain two mid-size cars, heat a four-bedroom house and stock and chill a refrigerator the size of a telephone booth.

The modest size of many things in England also seems to reflect the national character. Brits are generally self-effacing, non-bragging types who loathe drawing attention to themselves. Americans on the other hand are brash 'look-at-me' limelight seekers.

Americans also have a lingering belief in the limitless frontier. They expect continuous growth in population, cultural influence and prosperity. The most powerful resource-rich nation on the planet, they conclude, can consume as much and create as big as it wants to. The British, having long since seen the sun set on their empire, know that what they have is irreplaceable and has to be conserved, and that smaller is often less damaging to the environment and the pocketbook.

Over time, this transplanted American has grown accustomed to living on a less-than-wide-screen scale and come to appreciate this country on its own terms.

Like Britain itself, those collages on A4 paper didn't have less to say than my large one - they offered just as much detail and insight into my classmates' lives.

It was I who had to change to learn a new way of seeing. Now I appreciate that good things do come in small packages.

11/11/98

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.