They should have realised. After all, the village shop was displaying eggs for 6D per dozen and had a board on the wall offering the Daily Telegraph for 1D. Besides even though this was deepest Norfolk, the village bus and the local cars must have seemed unusually antiquated.
If the tourists had waited long enough all would have been revealed. As soon as the September rain let up, a loudspeaker boomed "ACTION" around the village of Castle Acre and old vehicles spluttered into life, while half the villagers, attired in War time clothes began to stroll in leisured fashion according to prearranged instructions. The extras included Robin a solicitor friend from London. During the week he advises banks and East European governments, but during the filming he became a seedy local with brylcreemed hair and baggy suit.
We were gathered that damp weekend to watch the filming of location shots of the BBC's Easter spectacular about a clash between American and British air forces in the tragic comedy (or comic tragedy) Over Here. Our village had been renamed, but the Ostrich which features as a haven for the release of tension in many of my articles, remained the same.
The war caused television aerials to be removed, modern houses to be masked and Ford Sierras to be banished.
The film skips to the present day. The opening and closing shots feature Fleet our beautiful golden retriever, towing Sophie, while Nicholas races back and forth on a mountain bike ostensibly delivering papers.
Over here was fun to watch, and the children now think they will have careers on television, rather than in the law - thank goodness. I liked the contrast between Martin Clunes and Sam West, and the conflict with the Americans.
But it is all very true to life. I have lived it for ..... well let's just say the whole of my life.
Americans have been arriving at my parents' house ever since, a little injudiciously, my father decided to end the Second World War by marrying an American. She comes from Nebraska (so little known in this country that several knowledgeable lawyers have asked me down the years: "What state is that in?").
My parents' first visitor was her mother (I was too young to take notes then but I remember my grandmother later - a stern grey haired matriarch with a quavering voice who acquired the family farm by homesteading, and took on banks during the Great Depression - and won) to check up on what this Englishman was doing with her beloved daughter. She was accompanied by her 14 year old granddaughter Ginger to whom we shall return in a moment, and they were also in the process of acquiring a small baby from Ireland, who was to be taken back to Nebraska for adoption and in due course to become my cousin Kelly.
My mother took a little time to tune in to the niceties of British society. Once, when in the presence of an elderly Dawbarn, she described a small baby as a "cute little bugger" and nearly ended my father's career.
Curiously she found the true Fen folk easier to understand than those who regarded themselves as being higher up the social scale. Their language and its inflexions were not unlike American.
As children we became quite used to an American mother. If she was given a cold stare when asking in a hardware shop for a washer for a faucet we would translate that it was for a tap. If she told the garage that she had a flat, we would say that was not where we lived, but could they repair the puncture in the boot.
American cars do not have boots. They have trunks. When the family was on holiday in the USA we crossed into Canada. The border guards asked to look inside the trunk, but my father glibly announced that we did not have one. He was almost arrested for impertinence, as the officer moved towards the rear of the car with a crow bar.
The arrival of American visitors was always a moment of excitement. They would loudly enter the front door in their plastic rain coats uttering expressions like "Gee" and "Say isn't this cute". They would wear clothes which even in our youth we perceived might be slightly tasteless and they would drain the bottles of whisky and laugh their curled laughter way into the night.
Sometimes they would entertain us.
There was an eccentric music teacher who became drunk one night and waded into one of the drainage dykes. She was up to her waist in black water and mud, and had to be rescued by two farmers using the same techniques as for extricating straying cattle.
Once the mayor of a small American town thought he was all alone. Observed by my brother William (also, I'll have you know, an occasional contributor to the SOLICITORS JOURNAL) and myself from the safety of our tree house he spat one of the world's largest gobs of phlegm across the lawn. It must have travelled 50 feet before it landed. We treated him with a lot of respect after that and introduced at every opportunity the language of expectoration, in the hope that he might attempt to beat his own record. We talked about spitting images, Spitfires and spitting in the wind. He would not do it again.
Those things happened years ago, but the latest Americans arrived last week. There was Howard, and Kendall, and Alberta and Ginger. Ginger was no longer 14 or ginger. The proceedings were sedate. The guests were polite about English lawyers. They had to be: there were several of us. The tree house has now been cut down. Nobody fell into ditches and nobody spat. But the Americans talked about life in a Condom and I sat wondering whether being divided by a common language could cause schizophrenia.

This article first appeared in Solicitors Journal in May 1996