Blog Tour - Christine Johnson UK Style

Christine Johnson is the author of Claire de Lune which features my favourite supernatural creature, the werewolf....WHAT WHAT.  To celebrate her Uk release, she has organised a lovely UK blog tour, so without further ado, I'll pass you over to the lady herself with her 5 reasons why she would move to the UK if she could.  

Five reasons I’d move to the UK: So, it’s been more years than I care to count, but I once spent a couple of really wonderful weeks in England. My oldest friend had moved there, and we managed to convince both of our parents to let me come and visit her. As soon as the plane landed at Heathrow, I fell in love. It smelled different. The cars were on the wrong side of the road. We had to buy “petrol” for the car, which sounded infinitely more polite than the “gas” my mother put in the minivan back in Indiana. Katie lived a couple of hours north of London, in a little village in Nottinghamshire, in a house that was older than the entirety of the United States. We spent two or three weeks galavanting around England, traipsing through castles and eating in tea-shops and seeing churches that absolutely took my breath away. It’s been decades, but I can still see Westminster Abbey in my mind’s eye without any trouble at all. I loved the *age* of everything. It made the history of the US seem so flimsy by comparison. England felt secure. Rooted. And I *wanted* that. There have been two places I’ve ever traveled that felt oddly like home, in spite of how foreign they were. England is one of those places. The other is Japan, but that’s a post for another time. This post is about why I would move to England. Which I would, given the opportunity, without any hesitation at all. Here are the top five reasons, in no particular order. 
1 ) Manchester United Football Club. I’ve been to Manchester. I know it’s not the most gorgeous city in England, but it’s home to the BEST FOOTBALL CLUB IN THE WORLD. My husband and I are big English Premier League fans. I support Man United and he’s a Liverpool guy, which means we spend most of our weekends during the football season trading off-color jokes about Fernando Torres and Nani. Here’s the thing: we’ve never been to an EPL match. And we’d both be faint at the prospect at seeing our teams *live*. If we lived in England, there would be a lot of time spent at stadiums.  

2 ) Healthcare. The United States is head-shakingly behind on this one. My family pays *outrageous* premiums for healthcare. Medical bills are a real concern. Quite simply, the Brits do healthcare better than we do, and I’d like to be part of that system.  
3 ) Indian Food. If I had to pick one and only one cuisine to eat for the rest of my life, it would be Indian. The variety of options would keep it from being boring, and I *adore* all of it. For me, Dal Makhni is more of a comfort food that the United States standbys of fried chicken or apple pie. (Don’t get me wrong. I like those things, but I’d trade ‘em for a takeaway curry in a heart beat.)  
4 ) The Oxford Libraries. I doubt I really have to explain this one. I’m a book person. I’m a research person. I enjoy following strict rules and pondering things in gorgeous old rooms. When my best friend spent a study-abroad year in Oxford, I was most jealous of her time in the Bodleian. That, and the cream tea.  
5 ) The Trains. I love a system where - for a reasonable price - you can travel safely around an entire country. I did it at fifteen years old, with my friend. The United States doesn’t work that way, and other than the major metropolitan areas, public transit is nearly non-existent. My city in particular has a small and pathetic bus system that is nearly useless. I want to live somewhere like Japan or England, where I can go from place to place without driving. Where I can watch the countryside go past and see how and when it changes. Or read a book. Or write. Definitely write, while the sheep go past and the green landscape rolls by. Ah . . . anyone in the UK need a writer-in- residence? Email me.
SEE, when people do these guests posts, it always makes me feel so DARN HAPPY that I live in the UK. We get crumpets and scones y'all, and it doesn't get much better than that.
You can see the schedule for the rest of the tour right here on Christine's blog and don't forget to hop right on over to Dead Book Darling tomorrow where Christine will be posting about her thoughts on werewolves.
To read more about Claire De Lune then click right here
and.........a big massive THANK YOU to Christine for the guest post. You made me giggle. Also, MANCHESTER CITY FTW. *coughs*