Things you have been slow to realise

As a kid in the 80s I always got Laurence Olivier and Oliver Read confused.

Laurence Olivier Reed of Arabia, greatest British actor of the twentieth century.

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ITV stands for Independent Television. I’ve genuinely never even considered what it stands for until now, and it’s blown my mind that I’ve spent my whole life never having known that until now.

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Never offside

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Savage

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Haha no one tell him

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:sob:

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Five minutes definitely counts as slow to realise

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Thread got meta

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SHAMBLES!

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Just heard Americans don’t have Christmas crackers and that chocolate advent calendars aren’t a normal thing there

@NeilYoung can you confirm please

I only realised how unhinged their very essence is when I had to explain crackers in a culture where they don’t exist.

They’re brightly coloured cardboard tubes filled with a paper hat, an erstwhile joke, some tat and, um, gunpowder.

Why, you ask? Because Britain, that’s why.

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Christmas Crackers are very popular in Australia too although it seems they often called ‘Christmas Bonbons’, confusingly.

@froglet chocolate advent calendars are also a thing in Australia. I still recall when they first became a thing. What a fucking wonder!

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I disagree that what they contain were ever jokes in any real sense, btw :smiley:

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The other year we went to the States to have Christmas with my wife’s family. I planned to take some crackers to share the wonderful tradition, but you’re not allowed to fly with them :pensive:

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I, too, would love to use something that caused a surprising gunpowder-based bang within a country where people are allowed to shoot strangers they think might be a bit threatening. ( :wink: )

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The one thing I wanted to know when the gap yearers from my school came back from their bollocksy Aussie trips was whether they send Christmas cards with snow and robins on them despite living in the southern hemisphere. Apparently they do.

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In fairness I’ve never seen as much snow at Christmas in the UK as you see on most Christmas cards, so it’s not exactly accurate here either. I guess winter scenes featuring rain and mud don’t represent the spirit of Christmas as well as pristine snowy landscapes

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The ‘traditional’ Christmas scene is a fallacy. Invented by Dickens 150 years ago but white Chrsitmases, genuine snowy ones, are extremely rare and getting rarer…

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I thought it was a nativity

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