Watching the English

by Kate Fox

Congratulating yourself on a bargain or saving, however – boasting about how little something cost you – is universally acceptable among English shoppers of all classes.

It is one of the very few exceptions to the money-talk taboo.

‘polite egalitarianism’: even very rich people will often pretend to be either apologetically embarrassed or grumpy and indignant about the cost of expensive things they have bought, when in fact they can easily afford them, in order to avoid drawing attention to any disparity in income. Shopping, like every other aspect of English life, is full of courteous little hypocrisies.

‘shopping as saving’ principle,

This involves wearing expensive designer clothes and flashy gold jewellery (a look originally known as ‘bling-bling’, now shortened to just ‘bling’),

The ‘bling’ culture is not so much an exception as a deliberate challenge to mainstream rules of Englishness;

As a form of rebellion, however, ‘bling’ has not been particularly effective.

The style, like the word, has gradually become more ‘mainstream’. ‘Bling’ now simply means pretty much anything shiny, sparkly or glittery. As with many youth subculture fashions, a very diluted version is now to be found in the wardrobes of all age groups and classes. Most important, mainstream bling is no longer about displaying wealth. In typical English fashion, mainstream bling-wearers of all ages now often boast about how little they paid for their new ‘blingy’ sandals or necklace.

Not that anyone would admit to choosing a supermarket for its class status, of course.

They are effectively saying, ‘I am so obviously, unquestionably higher class that I have nothing to fear from these lower-class symbols.’

you need to make a quick assessment of an English shopper’s social class, don’t ask about her family background, income, occupation or the value of her house (all of which would in any case be rude): ask her what she does and does not buy at Marks & Spencer. I say ‘she’ because this test only works reliably on women: men are often blissfully unaware of the yawning social gulf between M&S knickers and an M&S patterned dress.

Imagine the most over-indulged, fêted, adored bambino in Italy, and you will get a rough idea of the status of the average English pet.

The English relationship with animals is different: our pets are more than status indicators (although they do serve this purpose) and our affinity with them goes well beyond sentimentality. It is often said that we treat them like people, but this is not true. Have you seen how we treat people? It would be unthinkable to be so cold and unfriendly to an animal. OK, I’m exaggerating – a bit. But the fact is that we tend to be far more open, easy, communicative and demonstrative in our relationships with our animals than with each other.

You see, the English really are quite capable of Latin-Mediterranean warmth, enthusiasm and hospitality; we can be just as direct and approachable and emotive and tactile as any of the so-called ‘contact cultures’.

is just that these qualities are only consistently expressed in our interactions with animals. And, unlike our fellow Englishmen, animals are not embarrassed or put off by our un-English displays of emotion.

However badly your hosts’ ghastly, leg-humping, shoe-eating dog behaves, you must not speak ill of the beast. That would be a worse social solecism than criticising their children.

am convinced that the English get great vicarious pleasure from our pets’ uninhibited behaviour.

Our animals represent our wild side; through them, we can express our most un-English tendencies: we can break all the rules, if only by proxy. The unspoken law states that our animal alter egos/inner

If our pet takes against someone, even if we have no reason at all to dislike the person, we trust the animal’s superior insight and become wary and suspicious.

Although our pets usually provide a vital therapeutic substitute for emotional relationships with human beings, the superior quality of our communication and bonding with animals can sometimes also have beneficial side effects on our relations with

other humans.

We didn’t create or codify all of these, of course, but sports and games are widely recognised as an essential part of our culture, our heritage and our legacy – one cannot talk about Englishness

without talking about sports and games.

Fortunately for me, this scornful tourist had only noticed about a dozen or so typical pub games, and had not heard of all the more obscure regional eccentricities such as Aunt Sally, wellie-throwing, shove ha’penny, marrow-dangling, conger-cuddling and Wetton Toe Wrestling.

‘What is it with you English? Why do you have to play all these silly games? Why can’t you just go to a bar and drink and talk like the rest of the world?’

We need help. We need props. We

need excuses to make contact. We need toys and sports and games that get us involved with each other.

The English are capable of engaging socially with each other, but we need clear and precise guidelines on what to do, what to say, and exactly when and how to do and say it.

Games ritualise our social interactions, giving them a reassuring structure and sense of order. By focusing on the detail of the game’s rules and rituals, we can pretend that the game itself is really the point, and the social contact a mere incidental side-effect.

have already mentioned that the English are mostly a nation of ‘closet patriots’ – we may feel proud of our country but, apart from a tiny minority, we are normally too inhibited and squeamishly embarrassed, perhaps too cynical, to make a big gushy flag-waving fuss about it.

Except over sport: big sporting events such as the London 2012 Olympic Games provide an antidote to our social dis-ease,

The 2012 Olympics were like a carnival or tribal festival, a period of ‘cultural remission’, ‘legitimised deviance’ and ‘festive inversion’, where some of the usual social norms and unwritten rules are temporarily suspended and we behave in ways we wouldn’t normally

‘limbic resonance’,

As I predicted in some radio interviews just before the London Olympics, there was a brief outbreak of un-English sociability on public transport during the Games, but we very quickly reverted to our usual contact-avoidance, hiding behind our newspapers, tablets and laptops, and only breaking the taboo on talking to strangers when there is a delay or disruption to grumble about.

our special kind of humorous mock-moaning

probably the primary form of social bonding in this country,

This often seems to happen – that one sex is required to be ‘more English’ than the other, in a certain context.

may all balance out, but my suspicion is that, overall, the rules of Englishness are probably a bit harder on males than on females.

The English concern with fair play is, as we have seen, an underlying theme in almost all aspects of our life and culture, and in the context of sports and games, fair play is still

an ideal to which we cling, even if we do not always manage to live up to it.

or cringe with shame and embarrassment, and tell each other that the country is going to the dogs.

My colleague Peter Marsh (among others) has shown that human violence – including specifically English football-hooligan violence – is not a random free-for-all but a rule-governed affair, in which considerations of fairness may often play a part.

The hooligans’ aim is to scare rival fans into running away, and then jeer at their cowardice, not to beat them to a pulp. A typical football chant (this one sung to the tune of ‘Seasons in the Sun’) encapsulates the hooligans’

am not trying to whitewash or defend football hooligans here. They are loud, ill-mannered and often racist.

All I am saying is that they do have their own codes of conduct, and that ‘fair play’ is very much part of the etiquette governing their aggressive and violent encounters.

But even leaving all of this aside, the ‘Tebbit Test’ would still not work as a test of Englishness. Those who are truly, culturally ‘English’ – whatever their race or country of origin – can be distinguished by their automatic, instinctive inclination to cheer for the underdog.

So, in the logic of English fair play, you must always support the underdog, but too much support for the underdog can be unfair on the overdog, who then becomes a sort of honorary underdog, whom you must support until balance is restored, or until the real underdog is clearly going to lose, at which point you must support the real underdog again. Simple, really. Once you know the rules. Or at least at Wimbledon it was relatively simple, as there could be no doubt as to who was the real underdog. When this is not immediately obvious, there can be difficulties, as the English dither over who is most deserving of their cheers; and further problems can arise when an English player (or team) happens to be the overdog, as fairness demands that we give at least some token support to the underdog opposition.

You are not obliged to support your local team: many young people from all parts of the country support Manchester United, or Chelsea, or Arsenal. The point is that once you have chosen, you stay loyal; you don’t switch from

Chelsea to Arsenal just because the latter happen to be playing better, or indeed for any other reason.

between the strong individualism of the English and our penchant for forming and joining clubs, between our obsession with privacy and our ‘clubbability’.