I know I live in a country with a lot of history and culture but I guess I needed reminding of this.

Last weekend saw the arrival, all be it delayed due to weather and Heathrow airport’s incompetence, of two American friends.

Tina flew in from California and Jenna from Austin, both ended up jetting off from Chicago and landed three minutes apart, but had an hours wait on the tarmac at Heathrow in snowy conditions.

My plan as chauffeur for the day (including driving on the wrong side of the road for them!) was to take them to Stratford upon Avon to show them Shakespeare’s birth place etc, but got ’Persuaded’ by Jenna after a brief chat, to head for ’Waw-Wick’ "No, that’s pronounced Warick" Castle.

During the drive up, which would take about 1 ½ hours (driving at a sensible speed of course) we caught up on the gossip and discussed interesting things about the UK and American politics too.

I started to realise when pointing out various landmarks, towns we passed, relationships with fellow European counties etc, that we in little old Brittan have a bloody lot of history (of course comparing it to America we would) but its’ amazing how you take this for granted.

While touring Warwick castle, we walked through a ’Royal Weekend Party’ set in 1898 including wax work figures, I pointed out to Jenna and Tina that that was the same year my house was built, which they found difficult to comprehend because many properties (not including the Alamo!) across all states would not be that old.

Discussions on history included Roman roads (yes, we did drive down one and it felt like it hadn’t been resurfaced since Roman times), War time bombings by the Germans, our ’United’ or not Kingdom with the Welsh, Scots and Northern Irish and the commonality with Americans of being a Mongrel breed, oh and our dislike of the French.

I was starting to get the reason why we see so many (well not as many since 9/11) American visitors here, History, heritage, friendly people (take note Frenchies), oh and speaking nearly the same language! I even managed to teach Jenna a few new English swear words. Tina choose to take up on the clean words offered and added to her ’Queens slang’ vocabulary "Cheers" and "Mate", which they will no doubt use on the second leg of their UK trip, which they are now on, in London.