Things I will not miss about the UK

1. Rude drivers - although drivers here tend to be somewhat more courteous towards each other than they do in the US, they are anything but friendly towards pedestrians. Despite much governmental huffing and puffing about increasing the number of walkers and cyclists, the fact remains that crossing any road here requires a combination of savvy, speed and stupidity. Even halfway across the road I've had drivers turn directly in front of me like I'm not there.

2. Myopic street crossing design - in the US, a traffic light changes from green to amber to warn drivers that the light is about to turn red. In the US, this warning generally means 'go like hell'. In the UK, the light changes from red to flashing red and amber to inform drivers that the light is about to change. It generally also means 'go like hell'. The unfortunate thing is that at many intersections, the green crossing sign is lit until exactly the moment that the lights change to flashing red and amber. I can't tell you the number of times I've nearly been run down because when the red/amber combo started flashing I still had one foot on the sidewalk, making me fair game.

3. Foxes and their excrement - the foxes themselves aren't so bad, though they do chew up anything that we leave in the garden. It's their poo - slimy, smelly, everywhere - that really gets me.

4. Chavs - I've heard that 'chav' stands for 'council housed and violent'. I don't know whether this is the origin of the term, but it's accurate enough. There's a certain look about this type of person - something about the condition of their skin and hair, their clothes maybe, that makes these types stand out. Oh, yeah, maybe it's the pit bull that seems to accompany them everywhere. What is it about these people that compels them to buy dogs that look like Mike Tyson after a heavy night?

5. Ageing thugs - one of the oddest things I had to get used to here was the elderly thug. Men in their sixties back home don't generally instill any sort of fear, but here that same quality of skin and hair clings to the chav through his whole life well into old age. Frightening.

6. Pebbledash - a mixture of gravel and concrete, this awful treatment is applied to the exterior of many otherwise lovely homes. It's cheap and hides, as my grandfather used to say, a multitude of sins. It also looks, in color and texture, exactly like vomit.

7. Clouds - it doesn't actually rain that much here, it just usually looks like it's about to. It IS cloudy here. A LOT. That gets old pretty quickly.

8. Short winter days - on the winter solstice, the sun rises after 8am and sets before 4pm. This makes it hard to get out of bed in the morning.

9. Rubbish - there's always trash blowing around in the streets and on the sidewalks.

10. Vomit - we have a lot of bars and nightclubs in town, so I often have to maneuver the kids around a fresh pile of pebbledash on the sidewalk on Saturday and Sunday mornings. Yuck.

11. Driving on the other side - still haven't quite gotten used to this.

12. Brutalist architecture - nothing says 'post-War cheap and nasty' like sootstained poured concrete.

13. Health and safety - EU health and safety laws are among the strictest on the planet. If I had a dime for the number of times I heard that 'we used to be able to do that, but can't any more because of health and safety'...

14. VAT - like sales tax, only much, much higher.

15. Smelly commuters - I realize that sometimes people just can't help smelling. But first thing on a February morning? It's not like they've been sweating on the train for an hour yet.

16. Pushy commuters - The daily bump and grind to get on and off the trains got old quickly. I'm a big guy, I'm not really sure what makes people think they're going to be able to shove me out of the way.

17. The cycling menace - I'm sure that most people who cycle are mindful of traffic laws, pedestrians, etc., but I've had more than one near miss with a Spandex-clad cyclist wearing one of those idiotic aerodynamic helmets. Generally he's run a red light so that he can ride the wrong way down a one way street or he is riding on the sidewalk. I've considered carrying a heavy stick to shove into the spokes of his back wheel.