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Thursday 1 April 2010

Things I still don't get about Australia - no. 22.

I suppose you thought Manchester was a large city in north west England that in its time has produced everything from overpaid footballers to some excellent music (occasionally written and performed by annoying wankers). Not here it ain't. In Australia it means bed linen. And maybe towels too, I'm a little unclear if that's at all official. But certainly bed linen. Now I sort of get that since in its Manchester was a great producer of all kids of textiles so I imagine that the name has kind of stuck here, but why has bed linen been given the name of a place associated with making that kind of stuff and not other things? Why not call anything ceramic 'Stoke' or something? In defence of the Aussies Mrs Exile said 'Axminster carpet' is a slightly sarcastic tone but coming up with another example doesn't explain anything, so for now it's stays on the list of things that I still find slightly bewildering even after a few years here.

3 comments:

Chuckles said...

Department stores in South Africa were the same, so clearly a colonial thing.

Possibly that the goods arrived in crates/packing cases with 'Manchester' stamped all over them?

Angry Exile said...

Could be. The funny thing is that with Australians you'd expect them to change it to a single syllable word with -o or -ie on the end.

CountingCats said...

You missed another department, the sheffield department. Where they sell metal tableware - cutlery.

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