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Money & Shopping (cont'd) << back Penny - A single pence (just like in American English, only worth a bit more). Shilling - They haven't used shillings since 1971, but I had always wondered what one was, so here it is: the Pound used to be divided up into 240 pence, and 1/20 of that (or 12 pence) was called a "shilling." England went metric in the 70s (we didn't quite make it, something I blame, for no particular reason, on Gerald Ford), and stopped dividing everything by 12s, but you can still find the old shilling coins in coin stores. V.A.T. - This is one of those confusing things that make shopping quite a headache in other countries (and can sometimes make the price on the tag look absolutely nothing like the price on the register. "But it didn't have so many zeros when it was on the rack!") Guidebooks can tell you how to get around this "Value Added Tax," something which is possible in most cases for foreigners, but showing them your American passport at the till (register) will prompt them to help you forego this tax (which is somewhere vaguely in the vicinity of, but don't quote me on this, 17.5%) by shipping whatever it is you are buying directly to your home in the States. This saves you the trouble of lugging it around with you throughout your trip until you break it checking out of your last hotel room. Shipping it allows trained baggage handlers to break it for you before it even gets put on the plane! Ah, the joys of modern conveniences.
Now here's a section that warrants inclusion because of the many mistakes it is easy to make while shopping for clothes. Not only are the sizes all different, but what we call a rose by any other name might smell positively horrid. In other words, "suspenders" is a garter belt, "pants" are men's underwear, and I can't wait to see the photos of how you, foolishly disregarding the advice here, look all dressed up (or down, as the case may be) after a shopping spree in London. You never can tell when you could use a good piece of blackmail material. Happy shopping! If this dictionary were actually helpful, I would give you a quick conversion chart for sizes here. Oh what the heck, you might at least get something useful out of all this:
Jumble - Used clothing-stuff someone else bought when it was in style 12 years ago and has already sweated into, stained, accidentally washed in the same load with something that as it turned out was not dyed with the colour-fast sort of red, rubbed the elbows/knees of bare, used to mop up the beer on the kitchen floor, given to the dog to worry, tied to the cat's scratching post, and then finally affixed with a price tag on in the hope that someone else will think it looks 'Sooo Retro.' Jumble Sale - A tag sale, kind of like a flea market, of used junk, the most expensive of which are known as "antiques." These are usually more planned and official than boot sales, but you'll get the same sorts of stuff. (Car) Boot Sale - A kind of group garage sale, only they leave the garage to hold it. If you see a bunch of cars pulled into a parking lot with their trunks open and little tables with people wandering amongst them around perusing the miscellaneous household junk spilling out of the boots, you've happened upon a boot sale. Stop by, you never know what kind of bargain you might find. ("Wow, Bob, look! A 1968 Chevy tire iron!" "That's nothing. Check out this early steel-belted radial in the spare compartment!") more >> getting
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