On our first trip to England in 1985, my wife and I were waiting for a bus in Portsmouth. This was in a residential neighborhood, and houses in that area were built right up to the sidewalk/pavement. That's something we're not used to. Where we come from, houses are set back maybe 15 feet, with lawn in between. Back home, we couldn't have done what we did in Portsmouth.

What did we do? With our feet on the pavement, we half-leaned, half-sat on the windowsill of the adjacent house.

An older woman who was also waiting for the bus spoke up and pointed out that this was someone's kitchen window, and we shouldn't sit there. She was polite, but she spoke plainly.

What she said made obvious good sense, so we immediately got off the windowsill. I thanked her.

So I learned two things that day about England: (1) There is private space that you need to respect, in places where you wouldn't expect to find it; and (2) if you commit a faux-pas, a stranger will speak up and tell you.

That wouldn't happen in Minnesota, where "Minnesota nice" requires that you don't confront strangers over their small infractions. Unless it's serious enough to call the police, you're supposed to ignore it. I think I like the English system better.