The most British thing about me is definitely my cheerfulness and sunny outlook on life 

 

I wasn't always so super duper cheery though 

 

Before I moved to the UK, I was like every other American: gloomy, sarcastic and miserable.  

 

But after being around these super smiley Brits for the last three years I've done a complete 180 

 

Now I super earnest! 

 

I love your swell cap! 

 

And never sarcastic! 

 

Isn’t this rain fantastic! 

 

Yup - back in America I used to avoid making eye contact and stand around looking miserable.  

 

Now?  

 

Now I reach out my hand with a big British smile and say "My name is Melvin and I am darn happy to meet you!" 

 

I mean, ok - am I occasionally not so optimistic and sunny? 

 

Sure 

 

Like maybe I get a little bit down when it’s mid February and I haven’t seen the sun in like a hundred and thirty six days 

 

Or when I’m idling at another level crossing that’s been blinking red for thirty minutes straight - even though there are no trains in sight? 

 

Sure 

 

But other than those two tiny things I am always incredibly cheerful and pos- 

 

Oh, wait - just remembered something else 

 

Our neighbor kid. Harry. If I’m being honest - just the look of the kid gets me in sort of a bad mood because he’s got these enormous fucking ears. Seriously - I mean - out of the corner of your eye, you might mistake the kid for a baby elephant. God those ears annoy the shit out of me. They really do. And the irony is that the kid has absolutely no ability to listen! None! The kid comes over to hour house all the time, leaves a bunch of shit and piss in the toilets and then walks out the door with a stash of our snacks in his hoodie! You know what else he likes to do? Steal my iPhone and then scramble up the outside of our house and sit on the chimney and sulk and refuse to come down until I apologize for screaming into his face that his ears look like fucking frisbees 

 

But other than Harry - and sometimes the weather and the wait at those crossings - I can’t really think of… 

 

Oh, wait - another thing — the fucking trains! Delayed! Cancelled! Delayed AND cancelled! Cancelled again! Delayed again! Fuck it I’ll drive the six miles to work. Six miles that’ll take me ninety seven and a half minutes because of that fucking one lane bridge and the road works that have been going on for the last nine years! Before I moved to this country I didn’t know that ‘road works’ meant a bunch of guys standing around some broken orange cones, smoking and drinking tea and passing around Euro Millions tickets while all of us taxpayers sit there for ninety hours in the fucking tailback 

 

That stupid Radio Four gardening show! Decrepit old pensioners asking if their azaleas should be planted in the first or second week of April! Who gives a shit you broken old dogs! Just plant the fucking things and shut up. Oh God no - we’ve gone from the gardening show to one of these incomprehensible radio plays! These things put me to sleep inside of five minutes so now I have to pull the fuck over on the M fucking 4 and wait ninety seven and a half hours for this impenetrable piece of shit to finish! 

 

This country is total crap! 

 

I would rather live inside the colon of a hippo or in the bathroom of a Chinese butcher’s shop! 

 

This rain! This cold! The broken lifts! Love Island! The Daily Mail! The Tesco Express in Blackpool! Graham Norton’s beard! We’re all doomed! Everything is shit! Fuck me! Fuck you! Fuck everybody! Fuck your grandmother and her grandparents and their grandparents too and every puppy that’s ever lived! 

 

I hate you! 

 

I hate your baby! 

 

I hate kittens and weddings and Christmas! 

 

But more than anything else I positively optimistically cheerfully hate this shithole excuse for a country! 

 

Oh God somebody please shoot me in the face!