Full Metal Wheelbarrow

I’ve been reading the Dorothy Martin detective series by Jeanne M. Dams. The main character is an American woman (as is the author) who has come to live in England, and the books are written in the first person, so the American terms sprinkled through the narration are entirely legitimate.

However, there are the occasional howlers where the author clearly hasn’t quite got all the facts about life in England.

In the latest one for instance, she refers to a character having a “pound box of sugar”. If it were sugar lumps that might be fair enough, those do come in boxes, but it’s clear from context that this is not the case. Granulated sugar in the UK comes in paper packages rather than boxes everywhere I’ve ever seen it. And the standard bag is a kilogram, not a pound, but a half kilo bag is close enough, so could have passed unnoticed… It’s funny, the little things that throw you out of the narrative.