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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Antony Miall
Read between
February 26 - February 28, 2013
The last invasion of England was perpetrated 900 years ago by the Normans. They settled, they worked hard, they tried to integrate and fit in, they tried to share their wisdom and experience with the locals. They failed. The English did what they do best. They ignored the funny cooking smells, the unfamiliar clothes and peculiar accents and set about the long, slow, arduous task of turning the invaders into Englishmen. It took centuries of course, but it worked. ‘Norman’ is no longer a name redolent of invasion and locking up one’s daughters: it is a quintessentially English first name.
The English are convinced that the best things in life originate in England or have been improved there. Even their weather, though it may not be pleasant, is far more interesting than anyone else’s, and is always full of surprises.
‘The English are moral, the English are good, And clever, and modest, and misunderstood.’ This claim to be misunderstood is not to be seen as a plea for understanding. They do not want to be understood – such intimacy would be an invasion of their privacy.
Mostly they are seen as a relic of the glory days of the past when they were major players in the European sport of empire building. They are also perceived as hidebound, prejudiced and unco-operative – a people who live in a land of costume dramas, shrouded in grey skies, sustained by deep fried sausages.
Nowhere is the English people’s instinctive distrust of the unfamiliar more clearly seen than in their attitude to the denizens of their own country.
Nevertheless, any English person no matter how hairy or soft, is entitled to special treatment. You only see faults in people you care about so, in a way, this continual criticism of each other is actually a display of affection.
However, the Irish, the Scots and the Welsh should take heart. To most of the English they are not quite as foreign as their cousins across the Channel. They should also remember that ‘foreign-ness’ for the English tends to start at the end of their own street.
They have a subconscious historical belief that the French have no right to be living in France at all,
However, the actual French are perceived as a bit too excitable for any people with ambitions on the world stage. It is thought that a few more decades of English influence would improve them no end.
Their own experience has taught them to expect the worst of any situation, be pleasantly surprised if it doesn’t happen, and slightly gratified with their own sensible misgivings if it does.
It is acceptable to show one’s feelings at football matches, funerals, or when welcoming home someone thought to have been dead. At all other times the English find a display of emotion disconcerting, though it is more acceptable if the perpetrator looks suitably embarrassed afterwards. In recent years, however, there have been a increasing number of public occasions at which the English have allowed themselves to become positively Mediterranean.
The whole business of making a fuss has its own vocabulary, guilty parties being said to be creating a ‘to do’, a hullabaloo, a palaver, a kerfuffle, a song and dance – all of which are seen as socially undesirable.
Underneath this calm exterior, however, there seethes a primitive unruliness which they have never quite been able to master. Climate has a lot to do with it. Heat waves bring out the beast in the English. Cold and drizzle calm them down.
There is an illogical relationship between the head and the heart. English people are capable of admiring something without enjoying it, and enjoying something they suspect is fundamentally reprehensible.
Such two-facedness in the English character prompts the most common criticism of them – that they are hypocrites. They certainly appear to be, but appearances can be deceptive. The English believe that even the truth has two sides.
Being trapped with a group of English people in, say, a train in a tunnel, might result in community singing, even the exchange of confidences, but it is not an invitation to more permanent intimacy. When, after such an experience, English people say: ‘We really must meet again’ – you are not meant to believe it.
Winning a fortune instead of earning it is one example. Having debated for decades whether or not to have a national lottery, they now debate about whether or not the prizes should be quite so large. There is, they feel, something faintly indecent about people being able to win such huge amounts of money all at once, and that it would be only fair and decent if the person who has won a huge sum would spread it about a bit. They also worry about moral standards on television and have a 9 p.m. watershed after which the children ought not to be around to be corrupted by explicit sex, bad language
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There is some loss of pride in asking for help or in not being able to solve your own problems. Initiative is therefore compulsory and is used long before resorting to reading the instructions, calling in the washing machine repairer or borrowing the neighbour’s ladder.
If you feel the need to protect the English language, try the Society for the Prevention of Inadvertent Transatlanticisms (SPIT). There are even temporary situation-based clubs where a train full of people will turn into the Signal Failure Club at a moment’s notice, given the right circumstances.
It is an English saying that a person who likes animals cannot be all bad. The English adore animals – all kinds of animals. They keep them, not for status or to guard their property as other nations do, but for company. Animals, especially pets, are vital to English life because pet-owning is for many English people the closest they ever get to an emotional relationship with another being. They are not always very good at talking to each other, but they excel in conversation with their animals. They touch, hug, cradle, carry and stroke them, and whisper sweet nothings into their hairy ears.
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Even the criminal fraternity is smiled upon if it shows kindness to animals. The press reported a story about a couple who emerged from a pub to find that their car had been stolen, but that the thief had carefully transferred their dog to the safety of another vehicle before taking off. No mention was made of the car, but the report concluded: ‘The owners of 10-year-old Sadie expressed their gratitude.’
The English, who look on stoically as national health hospitals in run-down metropolitan areas close their wards through lack of support and patients spend time on trolleys in corridors, are comforted by the knowledge that wounded hedgehogs are tenderly cared for in a hedgehog hospital.
In greeting an old friend, Englishmen allow themselves to put an arm around the other’s shoulder, then almost immediately tap the other a couple of times on the back, a bit like a wrestler’s gesture of submission, to show that is enough of that.
In public places, strenuous efforts are made not to touch strangers, even by accident. If this should occur, apologies are fulsome (but they should never be used as an excuse for further conversation).
“Because their past is infinitely more glamorous than their present, the English cling to it tenaciously, preserving something not for what it is now, but for what it once was.”
Though they are the least family-orientated people on earth, the English would not dream of spending their Christmas anywhere else but among the bunch of people they refer to as the ‘bosom of the family’. This annual merry-making almost always ends in tears and to get over it takes many families a good six months. But tradition rules and, come October, the whole population is beginning to plan for another family Christmas, having apparently completely forgotten the mayhem of the one before.
“Family members manage to avoid each other fairly successfully throughout the year except on compulsory occasions.”
Christmas apart, family members manage to avoid each other fairly successfully throughout the year except on compulsory occasions such as christenings, weddings and funerals. Of these, christenings and funerals, being the shortest, are the most popular. Weddings are something to be ...
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It is the triumph of English hope over English exper-ience that these family gatherings ever take place at all.
The English are most at home in the garden and they truly excel out-of-doors. Gardening is a national pastime and ‘green fingers’ a proudly borne deformity.
The first sound of spring is not the song of the cuckoo, but the echo of the unprintable oath of the gardener who discovers that his lawn mower will not start. The primeval shout awakens the mower from its winter hibernation and they are off.
The garden gnome reveals a secretive side of the English character – a reminder not of some pagan past but of a time before the coming of adulthood, the very childhood the English think they have left behind.
‘Olcote’ (Our Little Corner of This Earth),
“The English have imbued tea with almost mystical curative and comforting qualities.”
Leisure activities share with sport the element of competition so essential to the English way of life. The high-flying executive who plays with model helicopters in the local park is subconsciously waiting for another high flier with similar toys to compete with. The man who cleans his car in a suburban street on a Sunday morning is running a polishing race with his neighbour’s every grunting sweep of the chamois leather. Even a peaceful pint in the pub can easily turn into a drinking competition if the right adversary turns up. Theme parks reign as top pleasure outlets on the simple
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A close cousin of the theme park is the safari park, an attempt by impoverished aristocrats to keep their creditors at bay by populating their estates with large predatory African mammals and charging people to drive their cars around in the hope of seeing one. Large notices warn visitors to keep their windows shut; most English people respond by leaving them just a little bit open, to allow the possibility of being just a little bit mauled.
Sport forms the arena in which the English let go their reserve, their stoicism and – seemingly – their senses, and can become almost continental in their enthusiasm.
But the English person’s true devotion to sport involves watching other people play it, ideally surrounded by snacks.
People who are interested in cricket are passionate about it; those who are not are totally indifferent to it. On village greens and TV screens, groups of men, dressed in white, stand around waiting for something to happen. Watching cricket is like transcendental meditation: your mind slowly empties, your mouth goes slack and you start to drool.
The betting shop is the perfect illustration of the English tradition of taking one’s pleasure unpleasurably. Disappointment at backing a loser is tempered with relief at not having to go back there to collect one’s winnings.
This is strange, for they are fearless in their confrontation of almost everything else. In all other matters emotional or psychological, while angels hover nervously on the sidelines, the practical English rush in, dragging their tea urns behind them, ready to cope. When it comes to sex, however, their attitudes are still characterised by the myths and taboos of less enlightened ages.
Their sex is not free of class distinction. Tradition has it, for example, that the sign of a gentleman is that he will take his own weight on his elbows and, however intimate the moment, he will always remember to thank his hostess for having him, just as she will thank him for coming.
“In English eyes one may be pardoned for all manner of social sins if one is able to laugh about them.”
In England, brains are optional but a sense of humour is compulsory.
Kept reasonably steady on home ground, English bowels suffer exquisitely abroad.
“While the French will even treat a headache with a suppository, the English would rather doctor themselves with potions and prunes.”
Drinking in England is not centred on the fluid that is consumed. Drinking is used for companionship – even if you are drinking on your own.
“The village pub is the focal point of local life, a cross between a social club, a citizens’ advice bureau and a parliament.”
The habit of drinking ‘rounds’ is responsible for perhaps two-thirds of pub sales. It is not the done thing to drink with others without buying your round. The advantage is that only one person needs to leave the group in order to get six drinks instead of six people queuing up individually. The disadvantage is that you can end up drinking six pints when you only came in for one.
Other nations may thrill to Henry V’s call to arms at Agincourt or warm to Juliet’s tearful pleas to her Romeo, but English audiences of all ages reach for the tissues on hearing how Jemima Puddleduck outwits the fox, adjusts her bonnet and escapes the cooking pot to live another sunny day.
