I am watching Foyle’s War. If you haven’t seen this brilliant (US: real good) detective show, then your life is not as good as it could be. It combines all of the things I love the most – World War II, historical backdrop, and the murder of a British person.

Burke, to say the least, does not share this interest. To her, a costume should be on a Disney character and a British accent should be on a mournful rich kid who’s recently gone skint. And if there’s one lesson I’ve learned about cohabitating with someone who isn’t a cat, it’s that you take little opportunities to watch shows you want to watch. Since the pandemic forces us to be home all the time, this is when she’s teaching in our office/storage room. This is when, amid songs about following rules and not stepping out of line thinly-veiled as pronunciation tunes, I cozy up to a British detective.  

It all started many years ago with Inspector Morse. I liked that there were no guns and that the detective, like Columbo, figured things out with sense rather than DNA and a world class laboratory. I liked the old wobbly BBC production value that looked as though it was done in my neighbor’s basement in 1987. And I loved that in Britain, people aren’t just murdered, they are absolutely torn to pieces. (Sometimes literally. One woman broke a mirror over a girl’s head and thrashed it back and forth, thus tearing her to shreds. She was upset because the girl was stealing her son, with whom she was having an incestual relationship. Tell me British TV isn’t awesome.) It’s as if the whole country’s TV bad guys are deep-whiskey-drunk pissed off about a bad cricket loss.  

I was perhaps six episodes into Morse when I realized that I didn’t know what the hell was going on. I could barely understand. Listen though I would, I still couldn’t pick up what was being said. British speakers of English have a completely different vocabulary, with a whole different set of idiomatic expressions, and put it all together in one of a variety of accents whose only uniting factor is that they all sound like someone mumbling the torah while eating peanut butter. On top of that, British plotting and dialogue are far more sparse than that of an American show. American characters are like Americans – direct, obvious, and profuse with their language. The Brits are indirect and they don’t say things that need to be said as much as they omit things that should have been said. And it’s tough to follow, because if you don’t know what’s been said, how the hell are you going to figure out what’s not been said?

Morse led to its sequel Lewis and then their prequel Endeavour (US: Endeavor). My UK English was careening towards proficient around then and I got cocky. I got most of Lewis and eschewed the subtitles.

I’m walking through the supermarket today. I have a list. And I’ve been asked (read: required) by Burke to adhere to it reasonably. Reasonably because she knows there’s no chance I’ll be able to avoid a tiny impulse buy or two. Usually those impulse buys are a bag of grapes or a box of taco shells, a few jars of fruit-on-bottom or oats-on-top yogurt. I have to justify my impulse buy upon return home and I use my walk home to practice that justification. I thought we could use these on…, It’s Friday, isn’t it?, Hey my birthday is in four short months.

But it’s usually ignored.

Today I walk by the endcaps with confidence. I look at my list and know that I am fine. But then I notice a few little capsules, like thick squat plastic pills the size of a coffee mug.

“What are you?” I ask them. As I’m wearing a mask, nobody can tell that I’m speaking. All is well. I pick one of them up.

Home Lantern.

Uh oh.

I begin to sweat almost immediately.

I suppose we all wonder what we manifest of our parents. This has become something of a theme for my middle life crises, which are various, fruitful, and evidently multiplying. I got my mom’s cheeks and my dad’s hair. I got my dad’s temper and my mom’s tendency to discuss topics and argue out loud in public alone. And I got my dad’s impulse buy tendency. Which is our jedi trait.  

In the last week of August, I was asked by the kid’s magazine to write an article called My Hometown. The premise was relatively simple: write an article on some basic trivia and ins and outs of your hometown. As several of the writers are from other countries, there were a few asked to do this. I did my first draft on the basics, writing from the information in my head. Selected clips:  

Philadelphians love sports. We have a team for each of the four major professional sports. Our Phillies (baseball) won the World Series in 2008. Our Eagles (football) won Superbowl LII.

The Declaration of Independence was signed there in 1776 and Washington’s Crossing is where George Washington crossed the Delaware on Christmas night to surprise attack the British. It worked so well that we won the Battle of Trenton. It’s why you have to learn American and British English in school.

Philadelphia has lots of delicious food that will make you very fat. Soft pretzels are our preferred street food for a snack. Scrapple is a breakfast meat and if you go to Philadelphia you have to get a cheesesteak.

I finished the draft and, as usual, closed the file for a day while I let the ideas permeate. In the meantime, I let the ideas come and jotted them down. I looked through some articles for inspiration: 32 Things that Make Philadelphia Special, 20 Things We Love about Philadelphia, 9 Things that are SO Philadelphia.

As I read through the articles, I said this a lot: “Oh yeah. I need to mention that.”

As it so often does, the second draft reflected the dearth of my research.

Sports

Philadelphians love their sports teams. We have a team for each of the four major professional sports. Our Phillies (baseball) won the World Series in 2008 after an absence of 27 years. Our Eagles (football) won the Superbowl in 2017 for the first time. It was a great moment for the city.   

History

America was born in Philadelphia in 1776 when The Declaration of Independence was signed there. Washington’s Crossing is where George Washington crossed the Delaware on Christmas night to surprise attack the British. It worked so well that we ended up opening a can of whoop ass on them and winning the Battle of Trenton. It’s why you have to learn American and British English in school (ha ha). Elfreth’s Alley is the oldest continuously-used street in America. Philadelphians have been using it since 1704.

Food

Philadelphia has lots of delicious foods that will make your mouth water. Soft pretzels are our preferred street food for a snack. You can buy them on the street from vendors. Scrapple is a breakfast meat that’s very common and if you aren’t from Philadelphia you won’t understand its appeal. It’s sort of like tlačenka*. If you go to Philadelphia you have to get a cheesesteak. The most famous places for that are Pat’s and Jim’s, but each section of Philadelphia has their own special place for a cheesesteak. If you like cold meat sandwiches, you can have a hoagie, Philadelphia’s special name for a submarine sandwich.  

Famous People

There are many famous people from Philadelphia. Kevin Hart and Will Smith are two of them. Founding father, statesman, philosopher, and inventor Ben Franklin ran away to live in Philadelphia when he was 17. He probably needed a cheesesteak.

As usual, I closed the file on the second draft and let the ideas and words seep in and permeate. I worked on other projects, but found that my thoughts were drifting back to Philadelphia. This is perhaps also due to the fact that I couldn’t go home this summer. Summer is the time of year I get my “home fill” of all things Philly. I eat water ice and ice cream with jimmies, go to the Jersey Shore, eat four cheesesteaks, a couple Italian hoagies, go down to Center City and visit Independence Hall. I sit at a sports bar and watch a Phillies game and listen to the sports talk guys gripe about an Eagles season that hasn’t started yet. And yet none of this was possible this year. And I soon found that I was consumed with Philadelphia.