Liv Tyler lives in London and can’t get the hang of the 24 hour clock or Celsius
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Liv Tyler doesn’t get a lot of press, because she’s just a genuinely sweet person and she’s not out hustling. She does get steady gigs though, like her role on the 911 spinoff, 9-1-1 Lonestar, where she plays a head paramedic. It premiered this week. (Sidenote: If you like TV podcasts, check out the Pajiba podcast. I have heard their hilarious recaps of the regular 9-1-1 and am looking forward to their new Podjiba episode about this show!) Rob Lowe is on that show too, so it looks like they’re getting so much star power. Liv was on Jimmy Kimmel to promote that, and she told some cute stories about living in London with her partner, British sports agent Dave Gardner. Jimmy joked that Liv moved in time to avoid Trump, which sounds like a definite advantage. I think about doing this a lot. Liv said certain things are tricky for her though, like the 24 hour clock, Celsius, and driving on the other side of the road. (I almost wrote the “wrong” side of the road, but know our British readers would not appreciate that.) Here’s some of what she said and you can see the video below:
Her youngest kids, Sailor, 4, and Lulu, 3, have English accents
Milo [15] is a New Yorker. [Ed note: his dad is British rocker Royston Langdon]. The babies have complete English accents. It’s very sweet. They say the English words for everything. They call a stroller a buggy. They’ll say the English version, like chips and I’ll say ‘you want some french fries.’The hardest part of living in London
It’s really basic things. The 24 hour clock, I can’t get my head around it. I don’t know what 19 o’clock means, I have to have a chart in the kitchen. And Celsius and Fahrenheit really gets it. Driving, I’m too scared to drive on that side, which is weird because I’m a good driver here. The roundabouts and the rules. Pedestrians do not have the right of way in England.
[From Jimmy Kimmel Live via YouTube]
After that they showed some road warning signs from England, that’s at about 3 minutes into the video below. They use red circles around things to say they’re not allowed, but there’s no line through them! I would have a hard time getting used to that too. Also I didn’t realize that pedestrians don’t have the right of way there, but it’s been over 20 years since I visited. In Switzerland you have to stop immediately for pedestrians and they take it super seriously, so this is bizarre to me.
On our latest podcast I talked a little about what it was like to go through culture shock living in Germany (my ex husband is German) as that related to Duchess Meghan’s experience. (That’s at 7:10 into our talk and here’s a link to that section.) I didn’t even mention the little daily differences like this! I was able to drive in Germany, I was one of the only expats I knew who drove, because we moved to Switzerland first and they accepted my Connecticut state license. Then when I moved to Germany they took my Swiss license without making me take any tests. Otherwise I would not have bothered. They do drive on the same side of the road as us, I doubt I could have driven there otherwise, but it was hard to get used to yielding to vehicles coming in from the right on some roads. Of course driving on the Autobahn was crazy! The 24 hour clock was easy to me though, you just subtract 12. Liv is so cute for acknowledging that’s hard for her, and no shade on that. I always had to convert Celsius to Fahrenheit using my phone and never quite knew what temperature it was. There’s so many seemingly minor things that you don’t realize will be an adjustment until you live somewhere.
Here’s Liv’s interview!
Photos credit: Avalon.red and Getty
