Last night at 11:00 pm, GMT, the UK left the EU to go it alone.
It's not just Brexit that betrays a British bent toward separation. It's also the taps.
I cannot recall the last time I saw separate hot and cold faucets in a sink in the US or Canada. Maybe, just maybe, decades ago in my grandparents' apartment on Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn. In England though I see this segregated plumbing all the time. Last summer; last week; in friends' homes, in public loos.
They're not necessarily from days of yore. You can buy a brand-new one today at Homebase:
...while in the US and Canadian equivalent, Home Depot, there are none such for sale.
British people don't seem to mind facing the options of freezing or burning in order to wash their hands. "If you want it warm, just put in the plug and fill the basin," says one friend, with asperity. What? Crawl around to find the little rubber plug that's probably dropped behind the toilet? Scour the sink first? Please, no. Once, in a house I rented in Durham, I grew desperate and purchased a weird rubber Y-shaped contraption meant for washing one's hair in the sink.
I gave up after a while, though, frustrated by the frequency with which it sprang off one tap or the other and sprayed the opposite temperature everywhere.
Whatever deals Britain is able to negotiate with Europe in this post-Brexit era I suspect will be a little like that Y(why?)-shaped contraption: wobbly and unfit for purpose.
So mind the hot water.
