An Wardrobe Guide to Nationality

The city has come to life again after its long grey winter. Tourists are back (not that they ever went away) and bare skin is being, well, bared.

Sitting in the park yesterday and sipping my white wine, I devised an interesting game (for me - The Man soon tired): What nationality? Using only what the person was wearing as a guide, we would try to determine from where the individual hailed. The only drawback was that: a. Said person had to be speaking as they walked by so we could hear their accent/language; and b. We had to know enough of that language to identify it or the accent.

Here are my observations (yes, yes, it's a stereotype, I know):

Americans: Very easily identifiable, mostly because of their shoes. White sneakers, on both men and women. I have yet to see a British person wear white sneakers (or trainers, as they're called here). Also fanny packs (known as bum bags here - 'fanny' here means, er, the frontal part).

Canadians: Who knows? I can't actually tell the difference between a Canadian and an American accent. But mostly like Americans, I guess (treasonous, I know).

Italians: Sunglasses, sunglasses, sunglasses. Big ones. Jeans and short trendy jackets.

Spanish: Lots of clothes. The temperatures in London are equivalent to their winter.

French: Scarves. Tied in the way that only French people can tie them.

Polish: Red hair. I will never understand why a 60-year-old woman (for example) would want carroty red hair. It's a mystery to me.

Arab: Well, the head-scarves were a bit of a giveaway, although that doesn't necessarily make them Arabs.

Thus we exhausted our linguistic knowledge.