Any American that has ever visited England has been bemused, amused, and eventually annoyed by our taps. Or faucets if you will.
America has mixer taps, England doesn't. The only way to get warm water in England is to move your hand rapidly between the two taps so that, although you are alternately burned and frozen, the water is on average just right.
Binary is cool, and sometimes even kewl or coolies, but as a system for water temperature regulation it is shite. Hot or cold. That's the choice. Britain didn't get where it is today by giving people what they want.
However, this is beginning to change - mixer taps are moving in, and I have plenty.
In a previous job I was occasioned to be at a restaurant with my boss and four auditors, two American and two English. After we got the pleasantries out of the way, one of the septics, Pete, went straight in for the kill with the mixer taps question, 'just what is the deal with the taps in this freaking country?'
I was just about apologise on behalf of my backward, flat-capped, pigeon-racing nation when my boss parried with a claim that it was all due to water pressure. Because of pressure differentials it is simply not possible to have mixer taps. So it isn't that we are fuckwits, just that we are blighted with some kind of Curse of Bernoulli.
You could have read the incredulous expression on Pete's face from about 10 miles away, and I probably didn't help matters by choking on my wine, but she stuck to her guns with lots of blather about plumbing.
Thankfully after 10 minutes of lecturing she headed to the bathroom and the moment she was out of earshot Pete asked me, 'so what do you make of that water pressure story?'
'Total horseshit Pete, I have mixer taps throughout my house. I think what we are seeing here is a major drugs problem!'
I guess the moral of the story is that you don't ever want to be my boss.