A couple of years ago, when my partner moved to a new job, I moved with him, across the world to California. Before this, apart from a couple of very brief work trips and a wedding, I'd barely scraped the surface of North America, but somehow, the whole thing felt fine, easy, completely familiar. I knew exactly what living in America involved. Half-watching that repeat of Friends for the 4000th time while hungover had not been pointless. It had been research. All that US TV had helped me construct an Eye Spy Book of Things That Are Really Really American in my head – an amalgamation of years of US sitcoms, dramas and reality television had provided me with a checklist of things to do in order to look like a real local (or a television local, at any rate).

Walking down the street carrying groceries in a paper bag

I happened to have moved to one of the few places in America that has a ban on giving out plastic bags, which allows me to feel like I'm tapping into the rich tradition of Laverne and Shirley, and Seinfeld and ER and Hill Street Blues and all of those shows. What I have learnt, however, is that the paper bags you get in supermarkets actually have handles, and that the reason you end up carrying them from the bottom is that the handles are completely rubbish.

Eating Chinese food from paper cartons with wire handles

I had a friend come to stay who had been living in Washington DC She hadn't yet had a Chinese takeaway because her first question whenever she phoned a place was whether they'd be delivering it in those little containers that overworked politicians in the West Wing ate out of (then put in the fridge for the next morning) – and no one did. Luckily, on my coast, while our politicians are more Terminator than Toby West-Wing, we do have a lot of Cantonese food in proper cartons. I still get excited when I open the fridge and see leftover noodles in those cartons. (Although, a note: they don't taste any different).

Comforting yourself by eating directly from cement-mixer sized ice-cream tubs

I had always presumed that the idea behind this heartbreak-soothing activity – as seen in Sex and the City and Friends and anything else involving women – was to eat the entire thing tub in one sitting. I soon realised that that wasn't the case – if it was, you would end up with immediate-onset obesity and/or super-diabetes-dairy-death – but that ice-cream containers are the size of buckets because otherwise they would get lost in the freezer. Some of which are bigger than flats I've lived in.

School hallways lined with lockers and generically stained linoleum

Every single school-based show coming out of the US appears to have been shot in the same school: My So-Called Life, Veronica Mars, Freaks & Geeks, The Wonder Years. For so many schools to look so utterly identical would be impossible. This idea, as I discovered doing some work in several different public schools, is not actually true. All schools actually do look the same. Which at least makes it easier to run down the corridors shouting, 'Save the cheerleader, save the world!' and not feel too odd doing it. Though it will probably get you chucked out of your volunteer programme.

Policemen eating doughnuts

Or rather, donuts. I think I actually cheered the first time I saw a squad car outside a coffee shop with a cop eating donuts leaning on the front. It's the kind of image (from all manner of classic shows) that seemed too clichéd to be true.

Hailing a yellow cab in the pouring rain

This is a surprisingly satisfying experience. The fact that they rarely ever know where they're going and don't react terribly well to the phrase "follow that car!", however, is less enjoyable.

It is not however just the American tellyphile in me that is bowled over by such things – having been brought up in London watching Last of the Summer Wine and then moving to the north as a teenager, I remember being very pleased when a man wearing a flat cap and walking a whippet bid me "How do?". There must surely be other television cliches that have been spotted in the wild. Would you like to share your experiences?

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