I spent about 30 minutes the other morning sitting and watching our clothes dance in the wind. Obviously, I was a bit hungover.

I was also thinking about the two years that have passed since my wife and I moved to Britain. This week in July 2006, the child bride and I arrived in Cardiff, Wales, delirious from exhaustion and slightly terrified of our new surroundings. Strangely, the little things were hardest to get accustomed to.

Driving on the left, grasping the accents, drinking at all times of the day -- no problem. Got used to those right away; the third helped considerably with the second.

But working excessive gratuities into regular speech -- "That's lovely, cheers very much, thank you. Ta-ra." -- and hanging clothes outside to dry were a challenge.

Hanging clothes outside. Blimey, who does that?

In the far, far reaches of my memory I can remember my mother hanging clothes on the line. When we lived on the frontier. Wild buffalo would come and trample the linens. Every few months we would take the buckboard out to Gunderson's Mercantile for more washing powder.

But for the most part, the rusted metal clothesline poles in the backyards of the homes I grew up in were little more than depressing, tetanus-laden playground equipment.

The only people in the U.S. hanging their clothes on lines these days are the poor. Americans write fanfares for the common man, but God help you if you actually are one. Several homeowners associations in the U.S. forbid clotheslines, arguing that they are aesthetically abhorrent. Your failure to leave a massive carbon footprint offends your neighbors.

But on this island there are 60 million people who wouldn't be allowed to live next door to you. And I've grown accustomed to them. After two years of living in Britain, this place feels normal. Which is kind of weird.

When I lived in the United States, I was an insufferable Anglophile. You know the kind of person I'm talking about: Always insisting on calling it "football" instead of soccer and trying to pretend it's a legitimate sport, drinking tea, throwing in the letter "u" at inappropriate times. Remember that guy you knew in college who went to London for a semester and came back with an accent? Yes, old boy. I was that chap.

Now I'm here and, well, yes, I am drinking a lot of tea. But it's all become rather ordinary. I think that when I was living in the U.S. I must have been romanticizing this place, making it to be a sort of Disneyworld of ideas and culture.

It is an everyday place. There are ups and downs, people go to work, and there is good and bad. It's a place where normal people live normal lives.

That's not to say Britain doesn't still present the occasional surprise. Yesterday, I spotted in the supermarket a product called the Full Monty, which is a traditional English breakfast in a can. Egg, bacon, sausage, mushrooms and beans. In a can! How could that ever turn out to be anything other than awful? The type of thinking that produced this product is what led to the downfall of the empire.

But just because Britain is normal to me doesn't mean I love it any less. Arguably I love it more -- it is real to me. This is my life. I watch soccer; I hang my clothes outside.

Over the years I've picked up that there is a slight art to hanging clothes. By that, I mean there is an art to gauging the weather, because forecasts here are notoriously inaccurate. Maybe that's intentional. The Spanish, French and Germans were all at one point or another undone by Britain's unpredictable weather. Perhaps, just in case the Chinese are lurking somewhere in Cardigan Bay, the national weather service deliberately throws us all for a loop.

When I imagine my future, it is very much like British weather and British life: agreeable and normal. Usual. In the specifics, though, in the little things, in the forecasts, there is uncertainty. And in that way the past two years in Britain have really been no different than when I lived in the United States. Life is still life, generally worth living and awfully hard to figure out.

But over here, my neighbours get to see my underwear.

Chris Cope lives with his wife in Cardiff, Wales. His column appears every other Tuesday.