The Difference Between Britain And America

Last week I was returning to our flat from doing some errands and I came across a crew from Haringey collecting leaves from the footpaths. As they did this, I was recalling the method used by our former home, Montgomery County, Maryland. It involved homeowners raking or blowing all leaves to the gutter, and sooner or later a rather large vacuum truck came along to suck up the leaves. But in our street, it wasn't any such high-tech solution. Rather, a council worker had come along to sweep all leaves into small piles, perhaps three feet by three feet. Then, a standard rubbish truck came along the street, accompanied by a leaf collection crew. Each of the leaf collectors held a flat board in each hand. Two crew members came along, used their boards to sweep underneath each pile, which they collected into their arms. They walked each pile over to the truck and tossed it in the back.

I began to think about this surprisingly elegant, though labor-intensive approach. The boards they used cost nearly nothing, and if they broke, could be replaced easily. It required no fancy equipment that sits idle 10 months a year. In short, they used the tools at hand to get the job done while keeping costs to a minimum. For me, it summed up the difference between Britain and America: a vacuum truck would have been excessive, every bit as excessive as air conditioning, automatic transmissions, or helpful customer service.