Газета "Нью-Йорк Таймс" предложила читателям в Твиттере рассказать о мелких преступлениях, которые случились с ними в Лондоне (собирают материал для статьи). Это породило волну остроумия на тему британского этикета. Несколько милых ответов:
I was on the Piccadilly Line last week and the announcer said there were “delays due to less drivers available” instead of “fewer”. The outrage on the crowded platform was so intense that several people audibly sighed.
While wearing my coat on the tube, a stranger brazenly sat on the bottom of it as it had accidentally encroached onto his seat. I had to travel eight stops further than intended to retrieve it. #pettycrime
I was in a busy pub just yesterday, I knew the gentleman a few people to my right was there before me but he was looking at his phone. I placed my order without alerting him. I haven't been sleeping since.
I recently took my 10 month old daughter on the underground. She stared at people, it frightened them. She doesn’t know the code. She now lives in the north. The tube is safe once more.
As a Northerner visiting London I have been known to commit petty crimes, such as saying hello, smiling or nodding to people I don't know.
Думаю, что логика примерно та же, что в нашем "я приехал на автобусе". Конечно, если важно подчеркнуть какие-то материальные аспекты конкретного автобуса, то употребим "в" ("в автобусе было много людей / темно / стояла вонь / итд."), но если речь о выбранном средстве передвижения - то "на".
Думаю, в данном примере говорящий не имееет цели подчеркнуть, что он находился внутри вагона (хотя дело происходит именно там), он просто говорит "пока я ехал на метро..."
.. and you see nothing funny in that it was THE STRANGER who was wearing the storyteller's coat, who then sat on the end of the coat he was wearing - just because it encroached onto the next seat - ending up sitting in two seats at the same time?!
People have lost their sense of humour these days, completely.
«Only 4 percent of all domestic burglaries in London were solved between April 2017 and April 2018, police figures show, while the number of suspects caught for all crimes has halved over five years to 9 percent.
I am a London-based reporter for The Times who has covered crime in Britain for the past two years. Two months ago my apartment was burgled, and I have had my own experience with this.»
В жж была похожая реакция в истории про журналистку, сломавшую ногу, и комментарием «напишите про это в глянец»
"While wearing my coat on the tube, a stranger brazenly sat on the bottom of it as it had accidentally encroached onto his seat."
Disgusting, outrageous, unthinkable, unforgettable. The sad thing is I spotted this outrage even in broadsheet editorials (yes, the Times, Daily Mail and Guardian, all are affected)!
And no, this crap is not legit in the English language any more than in Russian, where it was famously lampooned by Chekhov: "проезжая мимо станции, с меня слетела шляпа"
-------for those in the tank------- "while wearing my coat" implies "I" as the subject, omitted but implied and clearly understood. And if "I" lives in a subordinate clause, the same "I" must be present in in the main finite clause of the complex sentence.
"My coat tail was brazenly sat (up)on when I was wearing it (while) on the tube, as it had accidentally encroached onto his seat." -- would have been grammatical.
But as it is now, it's an illiterate outrage, produced by an american, trying to poke fun at the English. I think I could see some poetic justice in that, too:
it was THE STRANGER who was wearing the storyteller's coat, who then sat on the end of the coat he, the stranger, was wearing - just because it encroached onto the next seat - ending up sitting in two seats at the same time bloated twice his original size?!
