Top Quotes: “Watching the English: The Hidden Rules of English Behaviour” — Kate Fox
Introduction
“Although very few of the Asians, Africans and Caribbeans living in England would define themselves as English — most call themselves British, which has come to be regarded as a more inclusive term — they have clearly contributed to the ‘grammar’ of Englishness.”
Small Talk
“You do not go up to someone at a party (or in any other social setting where conversation with strangers is permitted, such as a pub bar-counter) and say “Hello, I’m John Smith,’ or even ‘Hello, I’m John.’ In fact, the only correct way to introduce yourself in such settings is not to introduce yourself at all, but to find some other way of initiating a conversation — such as a remark about the weather.
The brash American approach: ‘Hi, I’m Bill, how are you?’ particularly if accompanied by an outstretched hand and beaming smile, makes the English wince and cringe.”
“When the person’s occupation is finally revealed, it is customary, however boring or predictable this occupation might be, to express surprise. The standard response to ‘Yes, I am a doctor [teacher, accountant, IT manager, secretary, etc.]’ is ‘Oh, really?!’ as though the occupation were both unexpected and fascinating.”
“The initial stage of the parting process is often, deceptively, an unseemly rush, as no one wants to be the last to leave, for fear of ‘outstaying their welcome’ (a serious breach of the privacy rules). Thus, as soon as one person, couple or family stands up and starts making apologetic noises about traffic, babysitters, or the lateness of the hour, everyone else immediately looks at their watch, with exclamations of surprise, jumps to their feet and starts hunting for coats and bags and saying preliminary goodbyes. (Although ‘Pleased to meet you’ can be problematic as a greeting, it is acceptable to say ‘It was nice [lovely, great] to meet you’ at this point, if you are parting from people to whom you have recently been introduced even if you have exchanged no more than a few mumbled greetings.) If you are visiting an English home, be warned that you should allow a good ten minutes — and it could well be fifteen or even twenty — from these initial goodbyes to your final departure.”
“Just when you think that the last farewell has been accomplished, someone always revives the proceedings with yet another ‘Well, see you soon, then . .,’ which prompts a further chorus of ‘Oh, yes, we must, er, goodbye . .., ‘Goodbye’, ‘Thanks again’, Lovely time’, ‘Oh, nothing, thank you’, ‘Well, goodbye, then .. ‘Yes, must be off — traffic, er ..’ ‘Don’t stand there getting cold, now!’, ‘No, fine, really . ., ‘Well, goodbye . ..’ Then someone will say, ‘You must come round to us next…’ or ‘So, I’ll email you tomorrow, then ..’ and the final chords will begin again.
Those leaving are desperate to get away, and those hovering in the doorway are dying to shut the door on them, but it would be impolite to give any hint of such feelings, so everyone must make a great show of being reluctant to part. Even when the final, final, final goodbyes have been said, and everyone is loaded into the car, a window is often wound down to allow a few more parting words. As the leavers drive off, hands may be held to ears with thumbs and little fingers extended in a phone-shape, promising further communication. It is then customary for both parties to wave lingering, non-verbal goodbyes to each other until the car is out of sight. When the long-goodbye ordeal is over, we all heave an exhausted sigh of relief.
As often as not, we then immediately start grumbling about the very people from whom, a moment earlier, we could apparently hardly bear to tear ourselves apart from.”
Emotions
“Serious matters can be spoken of seriously, but one must never take oneself too seriously. The ability to laugh at ourselves, although it may be rooted in a form of arrogance, or at least complacency, is one of the more endearing characteristics of the English. (At least, I hope I am right about this: if I have overestimated our ability to laugh at ourselves, this book will be rather unpopular.)
To take a deliberately extreme example, the kind of hand-on-heart, gushing earnestness and pompous, Bible-thumping solemnity favoured by almost all American politicians would never win a single vote in this country. We watch these speeches on our news programmes with a kind of smugly detached amusement, wondering how the cheering crowds can possibly be so credulous as to fall for this sort of nonsense. When we are not feeling smugly amused, we are cringing with vicarious embarrassment: how can these politicians bring themselves to utter such shamefully earnest platitudes, in such ludicrously solemn tones? We expect politicians to speak largely in platitudes, of course — ours are no different in this respect; it is the earnestness that makes us wince.
The same goes for the gushy, tearful acceptance speeches of American actors at the Oscars and other awards ceremonies, to which English television viewers across the country respond with the same finger-down-throat ‘I’m going to be sick’ gesture. You will rarely see English Oscar-winners indulging in these heart-on-sleeve displays — their speeches tend to be either short and dignified or self-deprecatingly humorous, and even so they nearly always manage to look uncomfortable and embar-rassed.”
“Only a minority — less than 20 per cent had actually expressed any emotion in the previous 24 hours, and 19 per cent could not even remember the last time they had expressed any emotion. (Compare this with our survey on weather-talk, where 56 per cent had talked about the weather within the previous six hours, 38 per cent within the previous hour.) We English have become much better, in recent years, at talking about emotions — everyone has now mastered therapy jargon, and can talk about ‘emotional intelligence’, the ‘inner child’ and the need to be ‘in touch’ with one’s feelings. But most of us still don’t actually express these feelings very much.”
“It is often said that the English suffer from a lack of patriotic feeling. And there is some evidence to support this claim: English people, on average, rate their degree of patriotism at just 5.8 out of 10, according to a European survey, far below the self-rated patriotism of the Scots, Welsh and Irish, and the lowest of all the European na-tions. Our ‘national day,’ St George’s Day, is on 23 April, but surveys regularly show that at least two-thirds of us are completely unaware of this. Can you imagine so many Americans not knowing 4 July, or Irish people unaware of St Patrick’s Day?
I had a hunch, however, based on my participant-observation research, that our apparent lack of patriotism might have more to do with the ban on earnestness, and perhaps some other closely related aspects of Englishness, than an absence of national pride. So I did my own national survey, asking rather more detailed questions, which confirmed my impression that we are in fact a nation of ‘closet patriots’. My survey findings showed that the vast majority (83 per cent) of English people do feel at least some sense of patriotic pride: 22 per cent ‘always’ feel proud to be English, 23 per cent ‘often’ and 38 per cent at least ‘sometimes’. My survey and many others invariably show that the English quality we feel most proud of is our sense of humour.”
“The boastful, sentimental, flag-waving patriotism of other nations is frowned upon and makes us cringe. We may feel proud to be English, but we are mostly too squeamish and too cynical — too conscious of the unwritten ban on earnestness — to make a big, gushy, patriotic fuss about it. Ironically, the English quality in which we take most pride, our sense of humour, prevents most of us from actually displaying this pride.”
“If a country or culture could be said to have a catchphrase, I would propose ‘Oh, come off it!’ as a strong candidate for England’s (although not as strong as ‘Typical!’, which I’ll come to later).”
“The English may not always be joking, but they are always in a state of readiness for humour. We do not always say the opposite of what we mean, but we are always alert to the possibility of irony. When we ask someone a straightforward question (e.g. ‘How are the children?”), we are equally prepared for either a straightforward response (‘Fine, thanks’) or an ironic one (‘Oh, they’re delightful — charming, helpful, tidy, studious ..” To which the reply is “Oh dear. Been one of those days, has it?”).”
“The reasons for our prolific understating are not hard to discover: our strict prohibitions on earnestness, gushing, emoting and boasting require almost constant use of understatement. Rather than risk exhibiting any hint of forbidden solemnity, unseemly emotion or excessive zeal, we go to the opposite extreme and feign dry, deadpan indifference. The understatement rule means that a debilitating and painful chronic illness must be described as ‘a bit of a nuisance; a truly horrific experience is ‘well, not exactly what I would have chosen’; a sight of breathtaking beauty is ‘quite pretty’; an outstanding performance or achievement is ‘not bad’; an act of abominable cruelty is ‘not very friendly’, and an unforgivably stupid misjudgment is ‘not very clever’; the Antarctic is ‘rather chilly’ and the Sahara ‘a bit too warm for my taste’; and any exceptionally delightful object, person or event, which in other cultures would warrant streams of superlatives, is pretty much covered by ‘nice’, or, if we wish to express more ardent approval, ‘very nice.’”
“The irreverent’ wit, humour and irony professed by the NYRB advertisers might be sorely tested by the personal ads in its London counterpart, where their English demographic equivalents attract life-partners with ads describing themselves as ‘fat, 47-year-old moody bitch’, ‘hostile and high-maintenance’, ‘clingy, over emotional and socially draining’ ‘paranoid, jealous and often scary’, ‘serial divorcee’, ‘shallow’, ‘obsessive’, ‘menopausal’, ‘bulimic’ and ‘desperate’. The men typically describe themselves as ‘bald, short, fat and ugly’, ‘run-of-the-mill beardy physicist’, ‘lonely, desperate and emotionally draining’, ‘lacklustre, melancholic and depressive’, ‘sinister-looking man with a face that only a mother would love’ and ‘man with low sperm count seeks woman in no hurry to see the zygotes divide’.
The London advertisers’ impressive career achievements and recherché interests include ‘care assistant and weekend league bowler’, ‘post-divorce comfort-eater and sex therapist’ and ‘my hobbies include crying and hating men’; and the delightful personal qualities they offer potential dates and mates are summed up in phrases such as ‘tell me I’m pretty, then watch me cling”.”
Class and Language
“Exhibit A in this argument is the lower-class failure to pronounce consonants, in particular the glottal stop — the omission (swallowing, dropping) of t — and the dropping of h. But this is a case of the pot calling the kettle (or ke’le, if you prefer) black. The lower ranks may drop their consonants, but the upper class are often equally guilty of dropping their vowels. If you ask them the time, for example, the lower classes may tell you it is “alf past ten’ (which may even come out sounding like ‘ah pass ten’), but the upper class will say ‘hpstn’. A handkerchief in working-class speech is “ankercheef, but in upper-class pronunciation becomes ‘hnkrchf.’”
“Pronunciation of vowels is also a helpful class indicator. The upper class only ‘drop’ some of their vowels: others are drawled, such that, for example, the upper-class o becomes or, as in ‘naff orf,’ and the a in, say, ‘plastic’, becomes aah (plaahstic). The upper class a may also become a short e, so that ‘actually’ sounds like ‘ectually’ (or the even more vowel-economical ‘eckshly). The lower-class a is often pronounced as a long i — ’Dive’ for Dave, ‘Tricey’ for Tracey. (Working-class northerners tend to elongate the a, and might also reveal their class by saying ‘Our Daaave’ and ‘Our Traaacey’.) The very upper-class i may become a long a, such that ‘I am’ sounds like ‘Ay am’.
But the upper class don’t say ‘I’ at all if they can help it: one prefers to refer to oneself as ‘one’. In fact, they are not too keen on pronouns in general, omitting them, along with articles and conjunctions, wherever possible as though they were sending a frightfully expensive telegram.”
“Jilly Cooper recalls overhearing her son telling a friend ‘Mummy says that “pardon” is a much worse word than “fuck.” He was quite right: to the uppers and upper-middles, using such an unmistakably lower-class term is worse than swearing. Some even refer to lower-middle-class suburbs as ‘Pardonia’. Here is a good class-test you can try: when talking to an English person, deliberately say something too quietly for them to hear you properly. A lower-middle or middle-middle person will say, ‘Pardon?’; an upper-middle will say “Sorry?” (or perhaps “Sorry — what?’ or ‘What — sorry?’); but an upper-class and a working-class person will both just say, ‘What?’ The working-class person may drop the t — ‘Wha’?’ — but this will be the only difference. Some upper-working-class people with middle-class aspirations might say ‘pardon’, in a misguided attempt to sound ‘posh’.”
“The upper-middle and upper classes insist that the sweet course at the end of a meal is called the ‘pudding’ — never the ‘sweet’, or ‘afters”, or ‘dessert’, all of which are déclassé, unacceptable words. Sweet can be used freely as an adjective, but as a noun it is piece of confectionary — what the Americans call ‘candy’ and nothing else. The course at the end of the meal is always ‘pudding’, whatever it consists of a slice of apple tart is ‘pudding’, so is a lemon sorbet. Asking ‘Does anyone want a sweet?’ at the end of a meal will get you immediately classified as middle-middle or below. ‘Afters’ will also activate the class-radar and get you demoted. Some American-influenced young upper-middles are starting to say ‘dessert’, and this is therefore the least offensive of the three — and the least reliable as a class indicator. It can also cause confusion as, to the upper classes, ‘dessert’ traditionally means a selection of fresh fruit, served right at the end of a dinner, after the pudding, and eaten with a knife and fork.”
“If they are ‘common’, young people will call their parents ‘Mum’ and ‘Dad’; ‘smart’ children say ‘Mummy’ and ‘Daddy’ (some used to say ‘Ma’ and ‘Pa’, but these are now seen as very old-fashioned). When talking about their parents, common children refer to them as ‘my mum’ and ‘my dad’ (or ‘me mam’ and ‘me dad’), while smart children say ‘my mother’ and ‘my father’. These are not infallible indicators, as some higher-class children now say ‘Mum’ and ‘Dad’, and some very young working-class children might say ‘Mummy’ and ‘Daddy; but if the child is over the age of ten, maybe twelve to be safe, still calling his or her mother ‘Mummy’ is a fairly reliable higher-class indicator. Grown-ups who still say ‘Mummy’ and ‘Daddy’ are almost certainly upper-middle or above.”
“Mothers who are called ‘Mum’ carry a ‘handbag’; mothers called ‘Mummy’ just call it a bag. Mums wear ‘perfume; mummies call it ‘scent’. Parents called ‘Mum’ and ‘Dad’ go ‘horseracing’; smart mummies and daddies call it ‘racing’. Common people go to a ‘do’; middle-middles might call it a ‘function’; smart people just call it a party. Refreshments’ are served at middle-class ‘functions’; the higher echelons’ parties just have food and drink. Lower- and middle-middles eat their food in ‘portions’; upper-middles and above have ‘helpings’. Common people have a ‘starter’; smart people have a ‘first course ’— although this one is rather less reliable. Referring to the main course (in, say, a three-course meal) as the ‘main meal’ is decidedly common.
Lower- and middle-middles talk about their ‘home’ or property; upper-middles and above say ‘house.’ Common people’s homes have ‘patios’; smart people’s houses have ‘terraces’. Working-class people say ‘indoors’ when they mean ‘at home’ (as in ‘Oh no, I’ve left it indoors when they find they have forgotten something.”
“Other causes of the working-class ‘identity shift’ are the ‘aspirational’ ideologies promoted by Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government, and then by Tony Blair’s New Labour, which have for many people eroded any sense of pride in being working class. The focus of governments for many years has been on promoting social mobility (which has remained stubbornly static at best), rather than improving conditions and life for the working class. Given the relentless message that being working class is a condition one should aim to escape from, it is hardly surprising that many working-class people now choose to call themselves ‘middle class’, a term that, for some, has been radically redefined. In response to my chatter about some research I was doing on class, for example, a working-class hairdresser told me, ‘I’d like to say I’m middle class.’
‘What does that mean to you,’ I asked, ‘that you’re middle class, rather than working class?’
She answered: ‘That I’ve got some class, I suppose — like, I dress nicely, I’ve got some ambition in life … I’m not just some lazy chav!’”
Pubs
“The first rule of English pub-talk tells us why pubs are such a vital part of our culture. This is the sociability rule: the bar counter of the pub is one of the very few places in England where it is socially acceptable to strike up a conversation with a complete stranger. At the bar counter, normal rules of privacy and reserve are suspended, we are granted temporary ‘remission’ from our conventional social inhibitions, and friendly conversation with strangers is considered entirely appropriate and normal behaviour.”
“Having to go up to the bar to buy drinks gives the English valuable opportunities for social contact. Waiter service, I pointed out, would isolate people at separate tables. This may not be a problem in more naturally outgoing and sociable cultures, where people do not require any assistance to strike up a conversation with those seated near them, but, I argued rather defensively, the English are somewhat reserved and inhibited, and we need all the help we can get. It is much easier for us to drift casually into ‘accidental’ chat while waiting at the bar counter than deliberately to break into the conversation at a neighbouring table. The no-waiter-service system is designed to promote sociability.
But not rampant, uncontrolled sociability. ‘Cultural remission’ is not just a fancy academic way of saying letting your hair down’. It does not mean abandoning all inhibitions and doing exactly as you please. It means, quite specifically, a structured, ordered, conventionalised relaxation of normal social conventions. In English pubs, the suspension of normal privacy rules is limited to the bar counter, and in some cases, to a lesser degree, to tables situated very near the counter.”
“The bar counter is the only place in England in which anything is sold without the formation of a queue. Many commentators have observed that queuing is almost a national pastime for the English, who automatically arrange themselves into orderly lines at bus stops, shop counters, ice-cream vans, entrances, exits, lifts — and, according to some of the baffled tourists I interviewed, sometimes in the middle of nowhere for no apparent reason.”
“The object is to make eye contact with the barman. But calling out to him is not permitted, and almost all other obvious means of attracting attention, such as tapping coins on the counter, snapping fingers or waving are equally frowned upon.
It is acceptable to let bar staff know one is waiting to be served by holding money or an empty glass in one’s hand. The pantomime rule allows us to tilt the empty glass, or perhaps turn it slowly in a circular motion (some seasoned pub-goers told me that this indicates the passing of time). The etiquette here is frighteningly precise: it is permitted to perch one’s elbow on the bar, for example, with either money or an empty glass in a raised hand, but not to raise one’s whole arm and wave the notes or glass around.
The pantomime rule requires the adoption of an expectant, hopeful, even slightly anxious expression. If a customer looks too contented, bar staff may assume that he or she is already being served. Those waiting to be served must stay alert and keep their eye on the bar staff at all times. Once eye contact is made, a quick lift of the eyebrows, sometimes accompanied by an upward jerk of the chin, and a hopeful smile, lets the staff know you are waiting. They respond to these pantomime signals with a smile or a nod, a raised finger or hand, and perhaps a similar eyebrow-lift. This is code for ‘I see that you are waiting and will serve you as soon as possible.’”
“There is one important excepton to the pantomime rule, and as usual it is a rule-governed exception. While waiting to be served at a pub bar-counter, you may hear people calling out to the bar staff, ‘Oi, any chance of a bloody drink some time this millennium?’ or ‘Get a move on: I’ve been stood here since last Thursday!’ or committing other blatant breaches of the pantomime rule. You would be advised not to follow their example: the only people permitted to speak in this manner are the established ‘regulars’”
“It is not customary in English pubs to tip the publican or bar staff who serve you. The usual practice is, instead, to buy them a drink. To give bar staff a tip would be an impolite reminder of their ‘service’ role, whereas to offer a drink is to treat them as equals. The rules governing the manner in which such drinks must be offered reflect both polite egalitarianism and a peculiarly English squeamishness about money. The prescribed etiquette for offering a drink to the publican or bar staff is to say, ‘And one for yourself?’ or ‘And will you have one yourself?’ at the end of your order. The offer must be clearly phrased as a question, not an instruction, and should be made discreetly, not bellowed out in an unseemly public display of generosity.
If you forget to add ‘And one for yourself?’ when ordering your drinks, it is acceptable to ask the bartender or publican, ‘Will you have a drink?’ at another time, but the ‘And one for yourself?’ approach is much preferred, as it implies that the customer and the bartender are having a drink together, that the bartender is being included in the ‘round’. I observed that the English also. tend to avoid using the word buy. To ask, ‘Can I buy you a drink?’ would in theory be acceptable, but in practice is rarely heard.”
“On pouring the drink, however, even several hours later, bar staff will often go to some lengths to ensure that they catch the relevant customer’s eye and raise the glass in acknowledgement, with a nod and a smile — and a ‘Cheers’ if the customer is within earshot.”
“When a regular enters the pub, there will often be a chorus of friendly greetings from the other regulars, the publican and the bar staff. Publicans and bar staff always address regulars by name, and regulars always address the publican, bar staff and each other by name. Indeed, I have noticed that in the pub, names are used rather more often than is strictly necessary, as though to emphasise the familiarity and personal connections between members of this small ‘tribe’. This is particularly striking as a contrast to ‘mainstream’ English conversation codes, in which names are used significantly less than in other cultures, and where overuse of names is frowned upon as cloyingly American.
The bonding effect among pub regulars is further reinforced by the use of nicknames — pubs are always full of people called ‘Shorty’, ‘Yorkshire’, ‘Doc’, ‘Lofty’, etc. To call someone by a nickname universally indicates a high degree of familiarity. Normally, only family and close friends use nicknames. The frequent use of nicknames between regulars, publican and bar staff gives them a sense of belonging — and gives us a helpful insight into the nature of social relations in English pubs. It is worth noting in this context that some regular pubgoers have a ‘pub-nickname’ that is not used by their friends and family outside the pub, and may not even be known to these groups. Pub-nicknames are often ironic: a very short regular may be known as Lofty, for example. In my own local pub, although I was normally known as ‘Stick’ (a reference to my rather scrawny figure), the landlord went through a phase of calling me ‘Pillsbury’.
The greeting rules require the publican, bar staff and regulars to welcome a regular with a chorus of ‘Evening, Bill’, ‘Wotcha, Bill’, ‘All right, Bill?’, ‘Usual, is it, Bill?’ and so on. The regular must respond to each greeting, normally addressing the greeter by name or nickname: ‘Evening, Doc’, ‘Wotcha, Joe’, ‘All right there, Lofty’, ‘Usual, thanks, Mandy.’ The rules do not prescribe the exact words to be used in these exchanges, and one often hears inventive, idiosyncratic, humorous or even mock-insulting variations, such as ‘Ah, just in time to buy your round, Bill! or ‘Back again, Doc? Haven’t you got a home to go to?’”
“Banter, backchat and mock-insults of this kind (often involving the use of heavy irony) are a standard feature of conversations between regulars and bar staff, and among fellow regulars.
Pub-arguments, which are not like ‘real’ arguments in the ‘real world’, are an extension of this kind of banter. Arguing is probably the most popular form of conversation in pubs, particularly among males, and pub-arguments may often appear quite heated. The majority, however, are conducted in accordance with a strict code of etiquette, based on what must be regarded as the First Commandment of pub law: ‘Thou shalt not take things too seriously.’”
“Regulars will frequently start an argument about anything, or nothing, just for the fun of it. A bored regular will deliberately spark off an argument by making an outrageous or extreme statement, then sit back and wait for the inevitable cries of ‘Bollocks!’ The instigator must then hotly defend his assertion, which he secretly knows to be indefensible. He will then counterattack by accusing his adversaries of stupidity, ignorance or something less polite. The exchange often continues in this manner for some time, although the attacks and counter-attacks tend to drift away from the original issue, moving on to other contentious matter’s — and the need to argue among male pub-goers is such that almost any subject, however innocuous, can become a controversial issue.”
“Arguing, for English males, is a crucial element of the pursuit of intimacy. The pub-argument allows them to show interest in one another, to express emotion, to reveal their personal beliefs, attitudes and aspirations — and to discover those of their companions. It allows them to become closer, more intimate, without acknowledging that this is their purpose. The pub-argument allows them to achieve intimacy under the macho camouflage of competition. The English male’s tendency to aggression is channelled into harmless verbal fisticuffs, with the ‘symbolic handshake’ of round-buying serving to prevent any escalation into more serious, physical violence.
Similar male-bonding arguments do, of course, take place outside the pub — among work-mates, for example, and among members of sports teams and clubs, or just among friends — and follow much the same rules. But the pub-argument is the best, most archetypal example of the English male-bonding argument.”
“People who regularly frequent the same pub are not necessarily, or even normally, close friends in the usual sense of the term. It is very rare for fellow regulars to invite each other to their homes, for example, even when they have been meeting and sharing their random thoughts every day for many years.”
Homes
“Hungarian humorist George Mikes claimed that ‘An English town is a vast conspiracy to mislead foreigners, citing the indisputable facts that our streets are never straight, that every time a street bends it is given a different name (except when the bend is so sharp that it really makes two different streets), that we have at least sixty confusing synonyms for ‘street’ (place, mews, crescent, terrace, rise, lane, gate, etc.), and that street names are in any case always carefully hidden. Even if you manage to find the correct street, the numbering of the houses will be hopelessly inconsistent and idiosyncratic, further complicated by many people choosing to give their houses names rather than numbers.
I would add that house numbers and names are usually at least as well camouflaged as the street names, indicating that an obsession with privacy.”
“In a survey conducted by some of my colleagues a while ago, only two per cent of English males and 12 per cent of females said that they never did any DIY.”
“Gardening is probably the most popular hobby in the country — at the last count, at least two-thirds of the population were described as ‘active gardeners’.”
“The most recently troubled, unstable, precarious countries tend to have the highest rates of home ownership.
Within Europe, for example, Romania tops the list with 97.5 per cent, closely followed by Lithuania, Croatia and Slovakia (all with over 90 per cent); we are well below this on 64 per cent, and neutral, peaceful Switzerland has the lowest home-ownership rate of all, 44.3 per cent.”
Humor
“Nowadays, you will also often hear at least one comment containing the phrase “the wrong sort of …” — a reference to the now legendary excuses offered by the railway operators when ‘leaves on the line’ (and, on a later occasion, snow) caused extensive disruptions to large parts of the railway system. When it was pointed out to them that fallen leaves were a perfectly normal feature of autumn (and snow not exactly unprecedented in winter) and had never previously brought the railways to a halt, they responded plaintively that these were ‘the wrong sort of leaves’ (and ‘the wrong sort of snow’). These admittedly daft remarks made headlines in all the newspapers and news broadcasts at the time, and have been a standing joke ever since. The joke is often adapted to suit the circumstances of the delay or disruption in question: if the loudspeaker announcement blames rain for the delay, someone will invariably say, ‘The wrong sort of rain, I suppose!’ I was once waiting for a train at my local station in Oxford when the loudspeaker announced a delay due to ‘a cow on the line outside Banbury.’ Three people on the platform simultaneously piped up: ‘The wrong sort of cow!’
Such problems seem to have an instant bonding effect on English passengers, clearly based on the ‘them and us’ principle. The opportunity to moan or, even better, the opportunity to indulge in witty moaning, is irresistible.”
“Somewhat more helpful was the ‘information exception’, whereby one may break the denial rule to ask another passenger for vital information, such as ‘Sorry, is this the right train for Paddington?’ or ‘Sorry, do you know if this one stops at Reading?’ or “Scuse me, sorry, but do you know if this is the right platform for Clapham Junction? The responses to such questions are often mildly humorous: I’ve lost count of the number of times my panicky ‘Is this the right train for Paddington?’ has prompted replies such as ‘Well, I certainly hope so!’ or ‘If it’s not, I’m in trouble!’ When I ask: ‘Is this the fast train to London?’ (meaning the direct train, as opposed to the ‘stopping’ train that calls at lots of small stations), some Eeyorish wit is sure to respond with ‘Well, depends what you mean by “fast..” (I have even had this jokey reply from conductors and railway-station staff.) Although technically the same principle applies as with the politeness exception, in that one is supposed to revert to the denial state once the necessary information has been imparted, the more humorous responses can sometimes indicate a greater willingness to exchange at least a few more words — particularly if one can subtly engineer the conversation towards the ‘moan exception’ category.”
“During the London riots in August 2011, I witnessed looters forming an orderly queue to squeeze, one at a time, through the smashed window of a shop they were looting. They even did the ‘paranoid pantomime’, deterring potential queue-jumpers with disapproving frowns, pointed coughs and raised eyebrows. And it worked. Nobody jumped the queue.”
“We like to think that our approach to selling things is more subtle, more understated, more ironic — and certainly less overtly boastful.
And, on the whole, it is. As I have said before, we do not have a monopoly on these qualities, but they tend to be more pervasive here than in other cultures, and we take them to greater extremes, particularly in our approach to advertising. The most striking example of this was a series of television advertisements for Marmite in which people were shown reacting with utter revulsion — to the point of gagging — to even the faintest trace of a Marmitey taste or smell. The campaign was so successful that Marmite have been running variations on the same theme ever since. In 2012, for example, Marmite was repackaged as ‘Ma’amite’ to celebrate the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, but in the accompanying ads, even a dog (a royal corgi, of course) turns up his nose at a piece of toast spread with Marmite — and then emphasises his disgust by cocking a leg and urinating on it. It is well known that Marmite is something one either loves or hates, but an advertising campaign focusing exclusively on the disgust some people feel for your product strikes many foreigners as somewhat perverse. ‘You couldn’t get away with that anywhere else,’ said an American informant. ‘I mean, yes, I get it. People either love Marmite or find it disgusting, and as you’re never going to convert the ones who find it disgusting, you might as well make a joke out of it. But an ad with the message “some people eat this stuff but a lot of people can’t even bear the smell of it”? Only in England!’”
Conclusion
“We may well be, as Orwell said, the most class-ridden country under the sun, but I think it is safe to say that in no other country is social class so completely independent of material wealth. And social acceptability in the wider sense is, if anything, inversely related to financial prosperity — there may be some surface sycophancy, but ‘fat cats’ are objects of contempt and derision, if not to their faces, then certainly behind their backs. If you do have the misfortune to be financially successful, it is bad manners to draw attention to the fact. You must play down your success, and appear ashamed of your wealth.
It has been said that the main difference between the English system of social status based on class (that is, birth) and the American ‘meritocracy’ is that under the latter, because the rich and powerful believe that they deserve their wealth and power, they are more complacent, while under the former they tend to have a greater sense of social responsibility, more compassion towards those less privileged than themselves.”
“‘Typical!’ is also used in moaning rituals in many other contexts, such as on delayed trains or buses, in traffic jams, or indeed whenever anything goes wrong. Along with ‘nice, ‘typical’ is one of the most useful and versatile words in the English vocabulary — a generic, all-purpose term of disapproval, it can be applied to any problem, annoyance, mishap or disaster, from the most insignificant irritation to adverse events of national or even international importance. On the morning of the 7/7 bombings in London, when news of the horrifying terrorist attacks on the Underground reached the tube station where I was waiting for a train, the passengers around me incorporated this inconvenience into their standard ritual moans, with grumbles such as, ‘Of course bloody Al Qaeda had to pick the one day I really needed to get to work on time! Typical!’
There is something quintessentially English about ‘Typical!’ It manages simultaneously to convey huffy indignation and a sense of passive, resigned acceptance, an acknowledgement that things will invariably go wrong, that life is full of little frustrations and difficulties (and highly inconsiderate terrorists), and that one must simply put up with it.”
“The most popular English television soap operas are highly unusual, utterly different from those of any other country. The plots, themes and storylines may be very similar — the usual mix of adultery, violence, death, unwanted pregnancies, paternity disputes and other improbable incidents and accidents — but only in England does all this take place entirely among ordinary, plain-looking, working-class people, often middle-aged or old, doing menial or boring jobs, wearing cheap clothes, eating beans and chips, drinking in scruffy pubs and living in realistically small, poky, unglamorous houses.”
“Why do millions of ordinary English people want to watch soaps about ordinary English people just like themselves, people who might easily be their next-door neighbours?
The answer, I think, lies partly in the empiricism and realism that are so deeply rooted in the English psyche, and our related qualities of down-to-earthness and matter-of-factness, our stubborn obsession with the real, concrete and factual, our distaste for artifice and pretension.”
“This can be partly just a matter of laziness, the employment of a practice the Americans call ‘klutzing out’ — deliberately making such a poor job of a domestic chore that one is unlikely to be asked to do it again. But among English men, uselessness at shopping is also a significant source of pride. Their female partners often play along with this, helping them to display their manliness by performing elaborate pantomimes of mock-exasperation at their inability to find their way around the supermarket, teasing them constantly and telling stories about their latest doofus mistakes. ‘Oh, he’s hopeless, hasn’t got a clue, have you, love?’ said a woman I interviewed in a supermarket coffee shop, smiling fondly at her husband, who pulled a mock-sheepish face. ‘I sent him out to get tomatoes and he comes back with a bottle of ketchup and he says, “Well, it’s made of tomatoes, isn’t it?” so I go, “Yes, but it’s not much bloody use in a salad!” Men! Турical! The man positively glowed with pride, laughing delightedly at this confirmation of his virility.”
“All of these relate directly to our second main method of dealing with our social disease: the ‘ingenious use of props and facilitators’ method.
It is no accident that almost all of the most popular sports and games played around the world today originated in England. Football, baseball, rugby and tennis were all invented here, and even when we did not actually invent a sport or game, the English were usually the first to lay down a proper, official set of rules for it (hockey, horseracing, polo, swimming, rowing, boxing — and even skiing.”
“The English have the highest rates of teenage sexual activity in the industrialised world, with 86 per cent of unmarried girls sexually active by the age of nineteen (the US comes a poor second, with 75 per cent).”
“If some evolutionary psychologists are to be believed, flirting may even be the foundation of civilisation as we know it. They argue that the large human brain — our complex language, superior intelligence, culture, everything that distinguishes us from animals — is our equivalent of the peacock’s tail: a courtship device evolved to attract and retain sexual partners.”
“Ian Hislop, editor of the satirical magazine Private Eye and a self-confessed ‘lukewarm’ Anglican, illustrates this perfectly in his account of a sudden outbreak of religion at his C of E boarding school, caused by two former pupils who returned with a born-again, evangelical message, which somehow temporarily caught the imagination of the boys. ‘It was very, very bizarre,’ Hislop says. ‘People were having prayer meetings in dormitories and the staff were terribly worried.’ It might strike some people as a bit odd that the staff of a Church of England school — by definition a faith school’ — would be so frightfully worried about pupils voluntarily saying prayers together, but as Hislop explains, ‘You know, being sort of Church of England, people want a very quiet and moderate faith.’ Hislop describes his own faith as ‘so vague as to be sort of not really there at all’ — which gives an idea of the degree of quietness and moderation instilled by his C of E education.
It is hard to find anyone who takes the Church of England seriously — even among its own ranks. In 1991, the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. George Carey, said, ‘I see it as an elderly lady, who mutters away to herself in a corner, ignored most of the time.’ And this typically comment was in an interview immediately following his appointment to the most exalted position in this church.”
“Surveys regularly show that up to 15 per cent of those identifying themselves as Christian freely admit that they do not believe in God. This may seem utterly bizarre, but Alan Bennett wasn’t joking: in the C of E, belief in God is optional, and even raising the issue of belief would be in poor taste. Over half of those who tick ‘Christian’ do not believe in Christ.
My own research indicates that many of the unbelievers are ticking the ‘Christian’ box for the same reason as the woman quoted above: they mean ‘Well, I suppose I’m sort of Christian as opposed to Muslim, Hindu, etc.’ — which they see as more of a cultural than a religious identification.”
“In many other countries — America, for example — politicians and other prominent public figures feel obliged to demonstrate their devoutness and invoke their deity at every opportunity. Here, they must do the exact opposite. Even to mention one’s faith would be very bad form. The former prime minister Tony Blair was known to be a devout Christian, an affliction we tolerated in our usual grudgingly courteous fashion, but only because he had the good sense to keep extremely quiet about it and was apparently under strict instructions from his spin-doctors never to use ‘the G-word’. (His press spokesman once famously told reporters, ‘We don’t do God.’) Despite this precaution, he was caricatured in Private Eye as a pompous and self-righteous country vicar, and his speeches and pronouncements were scrutinised for any sign of unseemly piety, the slightest hint of which was immediately pounced upon and ridiculed.”
“It was alleged that Mr Blair and President Bush had actually prayed together during his visit to the White House, the media had a field day, and Blair is still denying that any such inappropriate act took place.”
“The death of a public figure who is widely detested, such as the former prime minister Margaret Thatcher, generally prompts a public outpouring of . .. jokes. Within seconds of the news breaking that Thatcher had died, the torrent of caustic humour began, starting in typical English fashion with a pun: ‘Rust in Peace’ — a reference to Thatcher’s ‘Iron Lady’ nickname.
More elaborate jokes swiftly followed, including revellers drinking milk and handing out free glasses of milk on the streets, and a milk bottle placed in ironic tribute outside her house — references to an earlier epithet, ‘Maggie Thatcher, Milk Snatcher’, from 1971 when, as education minister, she abolished free milk for schoolchildren, an act seen as an early example of her callous lack of compassion for the less fortunate.
A media and internet debate ensued about whether or not Thatcher should be given the honour of a full ‘state funeral’, punctuated by jokes such as ‘A state funeral for Thatcher? Surely she would want to go private?’ This was, of course, a reference to her constant championing of private industry at the expense of the public sector, and her penchant for privatising formerly nationalised industriesalso highlighted in jokes such as ‘Maggie has only been in Hell for twenty minutes, and she’s already privatised all the furnaces’. When the prolific joke-mongers were criticised for lack of compassion’ towards the deceased, they responded with ‘To those concerned about lack of compassion: don’t worry, it’s what she would have wanted.’”
“In Austria, sekt is drunk on formal occasions, while schnapps is reserved for more intimate, convivial gatherings — the type of drink served defining both the nature of the event and the social relationship between the drinkers. The choice of drink dictates behaviour to the extent that the mere appearance of a bottle of schnapps can sometimes prompt a switch from the ‘polite’ form of address, Sie, to the intimate du.”
“Many people think of Easter as one of the few genuinely Christian calendricals, but even its name is not Christian, being a variant of Eostre, the Saxon goddess of spring, and many of our Easter customs — eggs and so on — are based on pagan fertility rites.”
“If we get a bit more specific, and take into account the size of our island and the density of its population, then the geographical argument starts to look a bit more promising. This is not just an island, but a relatively small, or at least very overcrowded island, and it is not too hard to see how such conditions might produce an inhibited, privacy-obsessed, socially wary, uneasy and sometimes obnoxiously anti-social people; a negative-politeness culture, whose courtesy is primarily concerned with the avoidance of intrusion and imposition; an acutely class-conscious culture, preoccupied with status and boundaries and demarcations; a society characterised by awkwardness, embarrassment, obliqueness, fear of intimacy/ emotion/fuss — veering between buttoned-up over-politeness and aggressive belligerence…”
