The World Cup is coming, and while the UK is generally the kind of place where they celebrate all of the UK or none of it, England pride is definitely in full force throughout the London area. This fazed us not at all, as I’m not sure anyone’s really expecting the US to survive their first match (which, coincidentally, is against England).

The English rallying cry is “Come on England”, which I’m pretty sure is supposed to be pronounced like a cheer, the same way we yell “Go Phillies!” (I’m amused by the fact that while Americans want their teams to “Go”, Brits want their team to “Come on”. Teams in that stadium won’t know if they’re coming or going.)

We saw so many Come on England signs that my sister transformed the phrase from a cheer to a jeer. It’s not pronounced like “Come on England, whoo!” it’s pronounced more like “Aww, come on, England, what’s wrong with you?” Before long, if we were caught in traffic, tired, the waiter was taking too long, the sun went behind a cloud… you know, pretty much anything, we’d all go “Come on, England!” giggle, and move on.

Throughout our insanely long trek through the Canadian airport, we debated the fate of “Come on, England!”. For a while, we converted it to “Come on, Canada!” but hit a glitch when we were annoyed at the US customs line… “Come on, America!” is too long, the suggested “Come on, Yanks!” felt like we were letting the other 3/4 of the country off the hook and I just haven’t warmed up to “Come on, States!” the way I thought I would.

So for now, everything’s England’s fault. Could be for a while.